Michael Munger's evaluations went up dramatically after he stopped working so hard on his lectures. As the recipient of the Howard Johnson Teaching Award this year, Munger says he shudders to think what a boring lecturer he was in political science classes of more than 1,000 students at the University of Texas where he began teaching nearly 20 years ago.

"Once you've had that experience, there's almost nothing you can be embarrassed by," said Munger, chairman of Duke's political science department.

As Munger began feeling less concerned with what students were thinking about him and more attuned to what they were thinking about the topic, he got in touch with his inner ham. He had acted in several plays as an undergraduate at Davidson College, though he admits, "If I'd been at a larger school, I wouldn't have gotten any parts. I wasn't very good."

In the classroom he puts his enthusiasm and flare for the dramatic to use by dressing up, affecting an accent and taking on various personae to rebut policy analyses his students present. Students, too, become different characters to defend their positions. Such role-playing gets rid of the hierarchy in the classroom, Munger said.

"Role-playing makes it easier for students to criticize and argue, because they're not taking me on, they're taking on some mythical person," he said. "They can say awful things: 'That's stupid! That's wrong!' and they're not arguing with the professor."

Munger doesn't claim this as a universal teaching strategy. It might not be effective in a chemistry class, he said. But it works for him in political science, judging from student comments such as, "He changed the way I think about economics and politics."

In nominating Munger for the teaching award, student Kesav Mohan spoke of the way Munger challenges his students.

"I often enter his office with firm convictions," Mohan wrote, "only to have them carefully and kindly torn to pieces. When I finally agree to his viewpoint, he quickly begins to put forth a strong case for my original argument."

Students learn their own positions by encountering wrong points of view and having to deal with them, Munger said, a process he calls "collision with error" that sums up his basic teaching philosophy.

In nominating Munger for the teaching award, political science Professor John Aldrich wrote, "Mike values shaking up people's thought processes, making them see new things, old things in new ways or connections where they had seen none before."

Munger did not reduce his course load when he became chair of the department; in fact, he took on the additional responsibility of leading a new FOCUS program, The Power of Ideas.

As department chair, Munger advises junior faculty members to create a context in which students can take ownership of the process of learning.

"It takes some confidence and experience to do that, because you're no longer in control," he said. But by making students the judges in the daily policy debate and rewarding them for listening, thinking clearly and writing well, he said, he is able to encourage them to teach themselves.

"I try to guide them," he said. "They learn more, and I work less. And I don't even feel guilty about it anymore."