Phil Hopkins admits to feeling like a different person from who he once was. "Here I am now an academic. That is so far removed from who I thought I was going to be 20 years ago."

Recounting the many transitions he's had since then, he says, is like "following the path of a strange kind of gypsy." For most of his life, Hopkins has lived in more places than he has been years old. Upon graduating from high school, he worked as a carpenter, a construction worker, a ranch hand, a horse trainer, a social worker and a police officer. He attended Stephen F. Austin University on and off for nine years before earning degrees in literature and humanities.

Ironically, he found his passion for teaching while working as a cop. He was asked to teach other officers in on-the-job training. "I enjoyed taking something that seemed complex and helping others understand by making it simple." After getting married, he went on to teach at a business college in Maryland and at high schools in Sante Fe and Denver.

"I was getting somewhat bitter and frustrated teaching in secondary education, but the experience was enough to show me that I wanted to teach for the rest of my life. My wife Lisa suggested I go back to school to get my doctorate and teach college. I was concerned about the timing because we were just starting a family, but she insisted."

And he's thankful she did. Hopkins earned a master's in liberal arts at St. John's College in Sante Fe, then a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. He's been at Southwestern three years, the first two as a visiting instructor.

"I am happy to be at Southwestern, and I have enjoyed my classes here, in part, because I have been able to pursue teaching and learning in a way that I think is important—as a unified process. That is, I have been happy to be able to focus on helping students become better practiced at being their own teachers."

He says he enjoys teaching philosophy in particular because he is a "voracious questioner," and he believes philosophy's primary task involves "the effort to understand the processes of understanding, the processes of making sense of the world, the relation of questions and answers and of ourselves and our worlds."

Since he's been at Southwestern, Hopkins has had the opportunity to branch out from his own specialty of ancient philosophy and develop new courses like Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Science.

"These courses allow me to ask not only interesting philosophical questions about the practices and structures of other disciplines, but also, and more importantly, about what philosophical questions lay at the heart of these disciplines. Sometimes I think that some of the core philosophical questions are best approached by engaging their occurrence in other disciplines.

"I think that teaching is a wonderfully devious activity, wherein the teacher, if he or she works it well, can remain a learner. If doing so entices others to more deeply engage in their own questioning, to explore paths of thinking that are exciting and challenging and worth pursuing for them, then I count that a success."

Hopkins and his spouse Lisa have two children, Becca, 7, and Isaac, 4. In his garage, he has a furniture shop where he spends much of his free time. He also refurbishes antique tools that he uses in his shop.

"I would have never imagined settling down in Central Texas–especially a guy who would go crazy if he was away from the mountains for too long. But we like it here, and I'm excited about what my students and I are able to do together in the classroom."