Ellie Owen and Shaye Phillips, Editor-in-Chief and Asst. Features Editor–
Michael Tangeman ‘91 still remembers sitting at the kitchen counter before his freshman year at Denison and deciding to take a Japanese class. He’d become interested in the language after reading Shogun by James Clavell while on a fishing trip in Canada.
“What are you going to do with that?” He recalls his mom saying.
Four years later, Tangeman graduated with a BA in East Asian Studies and a few months after graduation he found himself living North of Tokyo and teaching in a Japanese junior high school.
Now, 33 years later, Tangeman is Denison’s only tenured Japanese professor. He’s currently teaching Japanese 112 and 212, along with a directed study and a class called Japanese Genre Fiction.
During his time at Denison, Tangeman studied under Gil Chang, who taught him both Japanese and tai chi. This sparked his interest in martial arts and he started practicing aikido, a Japanese martial art that was popularized by actor Steven Seagal. Tangeman earned his black belt while he was working in Japan for six months.
In the late 1990s, Tangeman was a graduate student at The Ohio State University and taught Japanese there as well. Then in 2001, he started working at Denison.
The best part of Tangeman’s job is working with students. He likes that he’s able to get to know the same students over the course of a year, since Denison students often take two semesters of a language class.
“Professor Tangeman is a knowledgeable and passionate teacher. When he teaches the class, he teaches us the correct way to use the language, and how social hierarchy plays a role in the language and culture of Japan,” Pearl Adu Gyapong ‘27 said.
Balance and flexibility are important to Tangeman. He expects students to work on assigned material outside of class and come into class prepared to demonstrate what they have learned. He thinks of building a rapport with students as “banking goodwill.” As long as they prove to him that they are respectful and diligent in their work, he’s able to be flexible with them when mistakes occur later on.
“I’m very interested in helping students learn how to be human beings. If students don’t learn anything else in my class, they’ll learn discipline and persistence,” Tangeman said.
Tangeman’s most important piece of advice for students is to engage.
“It’s really easy to show up for an hour of class and wait for the class to be over,” he said. Simply showing up to class is the minimum. Tangeman wants his students to engage with the material, take intellectual risks and share their thoughts.
He hopes that the people in his life would describe him as kind, funny and empathetic. Tangeman has a self-proclaimed “deliberating sweet-tooth” with a preference for chocolate chip cookies.
He is also a big fan of dim sum.
“I could probably eat my weight in dumplings,” Tangeman said.
A big part of why he loves working at Denison is how academically driven the students are. They expect to be pushed in their studies but also supported. Tangeman loves that the Denison faculty are always willing to step in and lend a hand.
“They want to get to know you,” he said.
If you have the time, stop by his office. His cozy place on the top floor of Fellows has a nicely cushioned chair for you to relax in as he talks about Japan, Steely Dan, DND, and any of his interests in between.