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For Ryan Coyne, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and Theology and in the College, teaching begins not with delivering knowledge, but with creating the conditions for discovery. 

“Above all, I want the course material to come alive for the students,” he said. “I can only create conditions in which the students do this for themselves.”

Coyne, who studies philosophy of religion and critical theory, approaches the classroom as a space of shared inquiry. Rather than emphasizing the accumulation of information, he encourages what he calls “the power of free inquiry”—a capacity students cultivate by asking and pursuing their own questions.

That approach is especially striking in courses built around demanding texts. In his undergraduate course on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, students confront one of the most challenging works of 20th-century philosophy. Yet, as one student wrote, Coyne’s lectures were “eloquently put and clearly well prepared,” helping transform the difficulty of parsing the text into “an extremely rewarding process.”

Coyne sees those moments of transformation not as mastery, but as a shift in how students engage one another.

“I find it rewarding when students stop guarding convictions and start asking questions together,” he said. “Seminar discussions flow when students… work hard to see the world from others’ perspectives.”

That work, he notes, requires intellectual flexibility and a willingness to confront one’s own assumptions. It is also what students often remember most, along with Coyne’s engagement beyond the classroom. Coyne is described by students as a professor who takes their ideas seriously, supports their academic ambitions, and connects them with broader intellectual communities.

Coyne’s teaching is closely tied to his research, grounded in careful attention to texts.

“Testing ideas means scrutinizing textual evidence—in teaching, as in research,” he said. “The devil is always in the details.”

For his students, that scrutiny becomes a foundation for creative and independent thought, one that extends well beyond the classroom.

The transformative education offered at the University of Chicago begins in the classroom, with the teachers who inspire, engage and inform their students. 

UChicago annually recognizes faculty for their incredible teaching and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students through the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards, believed to be the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching; and the Faculty Awards for Excellence in Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring, which honor faculty for their work with graduate students.