Dr Mike Woodin
One of my fullest and warmest memories of Mike Woodin is also one of the most recent. He had just published his book, Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto. He had written it jointly with Caroline Lucas, one of the Green Party's first MEPs, and we were holding a party in the Master's Lodgings in Balliol to celebrate. The book, the party and the people in the room said so much about Mike.
An overused phrase in business circles is 'Think Global, Act Local'. Like many mantras, it can become empty of content. Not so for Mike. Without being pompous about it, he thought on a big scale and yet cared for and understood the local and the particular.
Indeed, one chapter in the book is entitled 'Local Food: The Global Solution'. But it went beyond his writing. His friends in that room - and the friendship was palpable - spread from MEPs to his fellow local councillors to his children to his students.
Mike first came to Balliol to teach Psychology in 1991. He was a graduate at Wolfson, but as an undergraduate at Manchester University he had already written a paper that was published in a top-rank journal. His two main areas of interest at that stage were working memory (the bit that holds telephone numbers) and child development (where changes in working memory are of special interest). His talents and his energies were immediately apparent. So too was his spread of interest. He was passionate not just about Green Politics, but music (especially choral and instrumental), cycling, climbing and mountain walking - not that he overplayed it.
Mike had a capacity to combine skill, enthusiasm and modesty that is unusual. He stayed with us until his death. Somehow alongside his teaching, he managed to be an active local councillor (he was leader of the Green Party on the City Council), the Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales and a very devoted, and by all accounts a most amusing, parent. Extraordinarily, at no time did I ever feel that Mike's students received any less than his full attention.
Of course, as Master I don't sit in on tutorials, but at the end of term Handshaking (or whatever the meeting between tutors and students is called in your college) I am able to form a good impression of how things are going. In Mike's case what stood out was his passion for his subject and a willingness to go to great lengths to impart both knowledge and commitment to his students.
Let me end by allowing one of his students to speak more directly for him. Lucy Parkin, a third year at Balliol, recently sent me the email that follows:
"Mike is the reason that I am at Oxford, his down to earth attitude and enthusiasm for the subject persuaded me to apply and inspired me. Mike was a fantastic tutor, someone who was always around if you needed help academically or otherwise. Challenging yet understanding, we always left tutorials with satisfied brain ache and he didn't mind when I knocked on his door for help the night before a statistics exam! He was well loved by his own students and others alike and was always one of the first to stand up and support the things that he believed in, often the things that the students believed in too. Mike touched my life and I cannot think of someone for whom I had more respect."
Few of us would mind an epitaph of this kind. Balliol, his students, his friends and his family will miss him.
6th Oct 2004