Good teaching takes hard work. A professor must be an expert on his or her subject, understand the what the audience already knows about it, and be able to present new knowledge in a compelling and informative manner. That might explain why so few professors are good at it.

In many classes, the trend is often away from lecture and toward “discussion,” where students, and not the professor, do most of the speaking. Discussion classes work well when students are already well-versed in a subject, but when they are not, discussion easily degenerates into the blind leading the blind. The result may be less work for the professor, but bad news for students, who miss out on the benefit of a solid course of instruction.

Yet not all GMU professors are willing to abandon lecturing; some, in fact, excel at it. You ask students on campus who the best lecturer is—and perhaps the best overall professor—odds are you’ll hear one name repeated again and again: Prof. Thomas Rustici of the Department of Economics.

Rustici teaches 100-level micro and macroeconomic theory and 300-level economics and public policy. A one time Mason student government “faculty member of the year” in economics, Rustici’s enthusiasm permeates his classroom.

“I love economics and I’m passionate about teaching it,” says Rustici. “Too many professors shirk their responsibility to be professors. They don’t profess their own knowledge and experience in a way that teaches students how to be scholars.”

“Other professors place too much emphasis on what they believe students want, going soft on them rather then challenging them to think scientifically,” says Rustici. “A class on current events is of no value if a student doesn’t first understand the scientific method of his field.”

To teach that method, Rustici relies almost exclusively on lecture, with few, if any interruptions.

“I’m a classical professor,” says Rustici. “It is my moral and educational duty to provide my students with the fundamentals so they develop into scholars who know what they think and can think on their own.”

Isaac DiIanni, a graduate student working toward his PhD in economics at Mason spent a year as Rustici’s teaching assistant. DiIanni says Rustici’s teaching method allows students to learn economic principles in a way that shapes their thinking in a whole host of disciplines.

“Rustici’s curriculum is such that each student is invited to explore their own ideas, discover how they can pursue these ideas within reality, and use critical thought to observe and learn about the world in which they live,” says DiIanni.

“Undergraduates leave his classes with a better understanding of economics and human behavior than many graduate students,” says DiIanni. “He covers nearly every important area of economics, from government intervention in the economy to the environment, in a way that is interesting and relevant.”

Rustici’s classes are not without their controversy though. Students are expected to write cogent papers and sloppy thinkers do poorly on his assignments. Yet DiIanni says Rustici is willing to go the extra mile for a student who is having a hard time but willing to work to learn, or needs mentoring.

“While the queue to his office hours is often filled with students stopping by for advice on an assignment, it is equally filled with students coming by just to chat. Many of his students are regular visitors,” says DiIanni.

DiIanni also says some Mason professors resent Rustici’s impact on students. “They hate it when one of his students takes them to task for something they teach which contradicts what they learned in his class,” says DiIanni.

Yet Senior Tim Bainton, a current student in Rustici’s public policy class says that is exactly why he likes Rustici’s teaching. “He is passionate and not afraid to express controversial positions,” says Bainton.

“I think he is the most amazing professor at Mason,” says Bainton. “He gives you a wealth of knowledge in a three hour course that would take other instructors 15 hours to communicate.”

GMU alumnus Tim Cheadle (SITE ’04), a computer engineer at America Online agrees. “Rustici’s classes are as much about reality, truth and morality as they are about finances,” says Cheadle.

“Rustici’s aim, stated clearly during the first 20 minutes of his first lecture, is to exhibit that economics is the bridge between an individual's values and reality,” says Cheadle.

“When I took Rustici's class, I wanted to be there,” says Cheadle. “It was like watching a master at work, with the side benefit, of course, being that you left the classroom more knowledgeable and reasonable than when you entered.”

“Rustici provided a challenge to think that was unparalleled in any other class I attended in my career at Mason,” says Cheadle. “Not only do I still vividly remember material from his lectures I attended four years ago, but they also provided a foundation of discovery that I utilize every day.”

“Rustici simply pushed me to be a better person,” says Cheadle.

And that, perhaps even more then his lecture method, is why Rustici shines as a professor.

Dear Mr. Zawahiri:

This is a memorandum that should have been served by our President and State Department ten years ago on you, your master, Osama bin Laden, your whole killer organization, and your criminal colleagues in Iran and wherever else the servants of your ghastly ideas murder, torture, imprison and enslave men and women.

This is to inform you that you are wanted, dead or alive, but that we are otherwise not interested in you, your creed, or its political manifestation of global hegemony. Not in your primitive, degrading, barbarous religion. Neither in submitting to it, ever, nor even “tolerating” its rights-violating practice in our country.

This is to remind you that your “jihad” against our country and against any of our soldiers and citizens abroad is no better than a “contract” put out by a criminal gang on someone who refuses to submit to extortion. The viciousness of a Mafia conspiracy, however, pales in comparison to the magnitude of your evil actions and designs. Our measure of man is the degree to which he subscribes to reason and how well he exploits the breadth of his freedom. Your measure of man is the degree to which he quavers before a ghost, and how well he unthinkingly submits to your creed’s “commandments” and lives his life in the barbed wire corral of anti-life Mohammedan ethics.

Obviously, there is no compromise possible between those positions. Nor is one possible between living happily in our country and also being a “moderate,” non-violent Muslim in it. If a “moderate” devoted any thought to the matter, he would either need to sabotage his mind to evade his creed’s fundamental killer premise, or repudiate and abandon that creed. But thought and moral honesty are not what your creed encourages or tolerates.

Several days ago, you sent us another message. In it you presumed to deliver a moral injunction. It reveals that you have forgotten one important fact: You declared war on us, though you speak as though we were the invader. But, it was your mindless minions who drove planeloads of civilized people into our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, our Pennsylvania field. Who have murdered hundreds of people since then, and who wish to erase Israel from the map and initiate a second Holocaust. We have not forgotten, nor have we forgiven.

We have responded in kind. You invaded. We retaliated. We have embarked on a crusade to give you the opportunity to die for your cause -- either by our weapons, or by your own hand in an Afghan cave in emulation of Hitler in his Berlin bunker. If anyone can be characterized as “Satan,” it is you and your master. Like your colleague in malice, the late Yassir Arafat, you and your master are caricatures of irredeemable evil.

In your latest message to us, you state that “we will continue fighting you until the last hour.” So be it. When, in that last hour, you and your master are blasted to atoms, we will be rid of you, and we will have many more hours to live as you do not want us to live -- happy, productive, prosperous, and free.

In that same message, you offer “one last advice” on how to deal with you and your primitive culture: “You must choose between two methods in dealing with Muslims. Cooperate with them based on mutual respect and interests, or deal with them as if they are spoils of war. This is your problem, and you must choose.”

You must believe that we have short memories, or that we know nothing of your creed and political ambition. We know that your creed does not respect Western values -- the values expressed in our Declaration of Independence -- and that you declared war on us in a campaign to deny them in men’s lives.

There are fools in this country who wish to replace our Declaration and Constitution with Sharia law. Does not your Koran exhort believers to murder or enslave non-believers? You cannot have it both ways. You know that. You are hoping that we do not know it, and that we concede that “cooperation” is the best way to ameliorate conflict and avoid bloodshed. But, since you and your ilk have repeatedly proclaimed your goal of destroying us, our “cooperation” with you or with any of your “faithful” would simply guarantee more conflict and bloodshed, and our eventual demise. In such a conflict, “mutual respect” is an oxymoron. We are not buying it.

We have no “mutual interests.” We wish to live on earth. You wish us to exist in a miasma of self-immolation, or die by your swords, guns or bombs. You and your spokesmen have made that eminently clear. The onus of moral choice is on you. You made that choice, and it has condemned you.

You are right. It is our problem. We have chosen. And our solution to it is to exterminate you, your master, and whoever else dares to declare war on us. Neither you nor the numberless obedient manqués who submit to Islam would be “spoils of war.” You are not a value to free men; you offer nothing but negation.

So, please, spare us further messages and your unsolicited advice. We, the people of the United States of America, are not interested.