Instructor Spotlight: Dr. Tillman
Dr. Micah Tillman is a current instructor at Stanford Online High School. He teaches History and Philosophy of Science and Methodology of Science - Biology. Next year, he will be teaching an Advanced Topics in Philosophy course in the philosophy of play!
Anyone who thinks of Dr. Tillman could easily imagine him as a video game designer! Always having been fascinated with playing and developing video games, Dr. Tillman majored in computer science, certainly not expecting to end up teaching philosophy. In fact, it was not until he began to take philosophy in graduate school that he realized he wanted to be a philosopher. From the moment he took his first philosophy course, Dr. Tillman began to eagerly fill all gaps in his schedule with philosophy-related courses. Once he began to work as a math tutor, Dr. Tillman found another passion: teaching. His time as a math tutor made him “realize that [he] would actually enjoy the normal career path for a philosopher: teaching.” He loves teaching at OHS in particular because he describes it as “getting to help OHS do the good work of educating people right!” He believes the educational system to be broken and, in being a teacher, finds that he is able to make an impact.
Because he is such a successful philosopher, it comes as no shock that Dr. Tillman taught philosophy for five years at various colleges and later went on to be a visiting assistant professor at George Washington University. However, though he loved teaching students as a temporary professor, he describes the experience as “a bit like losing a friend” because he got to spend so little time with each student since he “was teaching at so many universities at the same time” and was never assured that he would be guaranteed a teaching job for future semesters. Because he “gets emotionally invested in [his] students,” the prospect of having students for the entire year greatly appealed to Dr. Tillman and encouraged him to become an instructor at OHS, where he now teaches History and Philosophy of Science (HSC) and Methodology of Science - Biology (MSB). He loves that he gets to be “with the same students for multiple years at a time” and greatly enjoys that he gets to “see students develop over [the] years” at OHS.
Whether he is teaching, researching fractals or mysterious prime numbers, making educational and fun video games for his students, or playing video games, Dr. Tillman is always able to offer great advice to OHS students, challenging them to recognize that life is not about grades and living to pass classes. Instead he argues that life is about doing things that are worth doing because they are worth doing. He strongly believes in prioritizing one’s mental health and in doing something because you are genuinely interested in it, not because you want to receive a certain grade. “It is a real blessing to be a part of [the OHS] community,” he shares.