On Tuesday, Dec. 4 a large audience sat in the Spartan Auditorium to sit and listen to Professor Tim Malone’s final lecture. After twenty-three years of teaching American history at Elgin Community College, Malone will retire at the end of this semester.

Throughout his farewell speech, Malone expressed his satisfaction with his work and gratitude for being able to teach at an institution like ECC.

“I was lucky to get this job, especially because I was older,” Malone said. “I think ECC is a great place. We do good work here.”

Malone was first hired as adjunct faculty, and after seven years, he was offered a full-time position. He recounted that after getting hired full-time, he knew he would retire from ECC. He didn’t plan on leaving before, because he considered himself lucky, describing teaching at the collegiate level as “hard to come by.”

“I love what I do here,” Malone said. “Like I said, I’m good at it, and I don’t consider it work. So when you have a job that pays you a living wage and you don’t think of it as work, you’re lucky.”

Dean of Liberal, Visual and Performing Arts Mary Hatch, preceded the final lecture by sharing a few words about Malone and expressed her admiration for his dedication to students.

“He’s an incredibly generous, kind soul,” Hatch said. “His affection for students — I think that just sort of exudes from him.  I think that positive aura about him is genuine.”

During his lecture, Malone shared his teaching philosophy and how it was influenced by his graduate school professors. He explained it as being “content-oriented” rather than focused on grades and taking exams. He expects his students to truly learn the subject and assigns writing assignments very frequently.

Second-year student Alannis Muñoz took a course taught by Malone last semester, who she described as a jokester and recalls the class being a review of high school U.S history, except more in depth.

“He deconstructed history and made us analyze everything,” Muñoz said.

Hatch said Malone would teach at least five courses every semester, and his classes would always be full, meaning he had about 150 students.

Malone joked with the audience about the number of students who took his courses.

“My classes were always full,” Malone said. “I made ECC money if you want to look at it that way.”

Hatch shared that Malone always scored high on student evaluations, and accredits that to the amount of effort and time dedicated to his students. She was amazed that although he had so much on his plate, he always provided feedback to all his students on their assignments in order to help them improve. Hatch shared what student evaluations consisted of for Malone.

“The course was valuable to them,” Hatch said. “They felt they had learned something and that [Malone] was enthusiastic [about the material] and timely in feedback.”

The sheer number of students and staff present at his lecture said a lot about Malone’s consistent impact at ECC. Hatch and others spoke highly of him.

“I think that Tim Malone is a positive force in the world,” Hatch said. “I think he’s going to go off and do good things.”