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William R. Freudenburg as a Teacher and Mentor

Article  in  Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences · March 2011

DOI: 10.1007/s13412-011-0054-8

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Dana R. Fisher
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William R. Freudenburg as a Teacher and
Mentor

Dana R. Fisher

Journal of Environmental Studies and

Sciences

ISSN 2190-6483

J Environ Stud Sci

DOI 10.1007/s13412-011-0054-8

1 23
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 Author's personal copy
J Environ Stud Sci
DOI 10.1007/s13412-011-0054-8
William R. Freudenburg as a Teacher and Mentor
Dana R. Fisher
# AESS 2011
Abstract This paper discusses William R. Freudenburg as a
teacher and mentor.
Keywords Mentorship . Teaching . William R. Freudenburg
As sociologists, we are all trained to study social interactions.
In this piece, I will provide a brief review of Bill Freudenburg
as a teacher and a mentor based on our social interactions. This
piece is separated into three sections. First, I will talk about my
first encounters with Bill. Then, I will discuss how learning
from his intellectual contributions and the process of learning
from him has resonated with me and my work. Third and
finally, I will present a brief summary of the major lessons that
I learned from Bill Freudenburg.
The first time I ever heard Bill’s voice was when he left
me a message at my apartment in San Francisco to tell me
that I had been accepted into the sociology PhD program at
the University of Wisconsin—Madison. The thought of
starting graduate school (and of moving from San Francisco
to Madison, WI) terrified me. As a result, I did not return the
call. Bill was persistent and after the third message, I called
him back. During the conversation, he talked me into a visit
to the prospective student day at Madison.
During my visit, I liked Bill from the start: his office was
filled with piles of papers that provide an opportunity to
excavate down to his original ideas, he had an easy laugh,
and his bright blue eyes would sparkle when you asked him a
question that made him think. By the end of the visit, Bill had
convinced me to leave my job at a think tank in Berkeley and
D. R. Fisher (*)
Department of Sociology, University of Maryland,
2112 Art-Sociology,
College Park, MD 20742, USA
e-mail: drfisher@umd.edu
my apartment in the Castro District of San Francisco to move
to Madison, WI and become a sociology graduate student.
I had the distinct pleasure of learning about environmental
sociology from Bill; I took his environmental sociology class,
which confirmed that I had made the right decision in leaving
my life to go to graduate school in Madison. Throughout the
semester-long course and the following years working with
him, I learned all about Bill’s favorite characters, “Joe and
Judy Sixpack.” I learned about how many things were re-
markable, that is, they were “worth remarking upon.” I also
learned that there is this thing called a “double-diversion” that
explains so much of the society–environmental relationship
(for a full discussion, see Freudenburg 2005; see also the
Wikipedia listing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_diver
sion [Accessed 22 March 2011]).
I was also blessed with the chance to experience how Bill
created community as he practiced his craft. During my time
as an assistant professor, it became clear to me how special
and unique my experience and training was. One of my
favorite of Bill’s works was on the conjoint constitution
between society and the environment (co-authored with
Frickel and Gramling in 1995). The central component of this
concept is the recognition that there is a “mutual contingency”
between the physical and social worlds. In his own words in a
2002 article in Society & Natural Resources, Bill explained
further: “What have commonly been taken to be ‘physical
facts’ are likely in many cases to have been shaped strongly by
social construction processes, while at the same time, even
what appear to be ‘strictly social’ phenomena are likely to
have been shaped in important if often overlooked ways by
the fact that social actions often respond to stimuli and con-
straints from the biophysical world” (2002: 233; see also
Freudenburg et al. 1995). I used this concept as the theoretical
anchor to my work on the role that natural resource interests
play in explaining climate politics in the USA (Fisher 2006).
 Author's personal copy
Upon closer scrutiny, I think that the mutual contingency
outlined in the conjoint constitution can also be applied to
personal success and achievement. Some of an academic’s
success can be explained by raw talent and intellectual capac-
ity. However, much of a person’s success in the world is also
shaped by the social interactions we have and the people who
invest in these interactions. Bill Freudenburg was committed
to such social interactions and he invested a significant
amount of his time in making such social interactions mean-
ingful for graduate students and junior colleagues, whether
over a beer and popcorn, or over the twenty-fifth draft of a
paper. He had this amazing selfless capacity to give to others
through his time and attention.
As environmental sociology expanded, Bill was a leading
force in bolstering the subdiscipline. He published rigorous
sociological work in peer-reviewed journals (many of which
were placed in some of the highest ranked sociology journals
in the USA). His work is a testament to the ways that we can
make our work relevant and important by doing quality re-
search and taking the time to write it up well.
I conclude this piece by listing five main points that I
have learned from Bill Freudenburg about how to be a great
teacher and mentor.
Be an active member of the community and help to con-
nect people with similar interests. Bill asked Arthur Mol
to lunch and invited me. He spent much of the lunch
explaining why Arthur should work with me, which
resulted in my receiving a fellowship to do dissertation
research in Wageningen.
Do not give up on ideas and research—persevere and
get the work out! I thank Bill (and sometimes blame
him) for teaching me how to write and how to agonize
over sentences until they are just right. Bill also taught
me how to understand reviewers comments (even if
they were inane) and how to respond in a respectful
way. As recently as 2009, I called Bill to help me
understand reviews that were extremely confusing. Bill
responded with a multi-page email about how to inter-
pret the different reviews. When I shared these com-
ments with my co-author who is a former student, he
was awed by Bill’s careful reading and extensive ad-
vice. Finally, Bill taught me never to give up on a good
idea until it is published. He was the model of
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J Environ Stud Sci
perseverance, living by example, revising his papers
as many times as was necessary. Through this example,
I also learned how not to take rejection and reviewers’
comments personally (although I still have not mastered
this lesson).
Being a good interdisciplinarian means being a good
sociologist within an interdisciplinary team. Bill’s expe-
rience provides a stunning example of how to be a
meaningful member of such a team through his work
on the Madison LTER and IGERT programs. More
recently, Bill once again taught by example with his
role in the new Association for Environmental Studies
and Sciences. Even with so much interdisciplinary col-
laboration and his extensive contributions to interdisci-
plinary programs, Bill continued to publish cutting edge
work in sociology.
Teach by doing and listening and by being there. Above
all, Bill was a teacher. He taught by doing, without
judging. He was always open to all different perspec-
tives coming from his students (even when he did not
really love the idea). One of his favorite phases was:
ideas are up for debate, not people. I try to remember
this and many other lessons from Bill in my teaching. In
the end, I can only hope that I will be able to give to my
students some of what he gave to me.
Last, but definitely not least, Bill taught me that being a
good teacher is all about paying it forward. In other
words, the mentor always always always buys the first
round!
References
Fisher DR (2006) Bringing the material back in: understanding the
United States position on climate change. Sociol Forum 2(3):467–
494
Freudenburg WR (2002) Navel warfare? The best of minds, the worst
of minds, and the dangers of misplaced concreteness. Soc Nat
Resour 15:229–237
Freudenburg WR (2005) Privileged access, privileged accounts:
toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses.
Social Forces 84(1):89–114
Freudenburg WR, Frickel S, Gramling R (1995) Beyond the nature
society divide: learning to think about a mountain. Sociol Forum
10:361–392