The Teaching Company

The Teaching Company makes college-level courses from prominent professors and scholars available in recorded formats by top-ranked teachers. The courses cover a variety of disciplines. The company is based in Chantilly, Virginia and is headed by Thomas M. Rollins. Courses are available in different formats including audiotape, CD-audio, DVD, and MP3 formats. Content is pitched towards continuing education, particularly for adults, and are often available at public libraries.

The company was founded in 1990 by Thomas M. Rollins, former Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and a graduate of Harvard Law School, who noticed the effectiveness of videotapes in learning during his study. He initially tried to create a government program to produce tapes for the public, but was unable to do so because of legal restrictions. After leaving office the idea stayed with him and he started seeking out top professors to create courses for sale to the public, according to the Teaching Company website.

Rollins persevered. He selects professors personally in many instances, and gets feedback from customers as well as members of the academic community. The ideal teacher is a recognized expert and established scholar in a given subject area who has excellent teaching and communication skills. For example, classics expert Elizabeth Vandiver and former librarian is a widely-respected authority on subjects such as Greek mythology as well as epic poems such as the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Aeneid. The Teaching Company offers several courses by Dr. Vandiver. By 2009, there were more than 300 courses with 3,000 hours of content in the following subject categories:


 * Business
 * Economics
 * Fine Arts
 * Music
 * Ancient History
 * Medieval History
 * Modern History
 * Literature
 * English Language
 * Philosophy
 * Intellectual History
 * Religion
 * Science
 * Mathematics
 * Social Sciences.



Professors and scholars featured in The Teaching Company courses
(others)
 * Kenneth R. Bartlett
 * Arthur T. Benjamin
 * Bob Brier
 * Sean M. Carroll
 * Phillip Cary
 * Philip Daileader
 * Dennis Dalton
 * Malcolm David Eckel
 * Bart D. Ehrman
 * John Esposito
 * Brian M. Fagan
 * J. Rufus Fears
 * Alexei Filippenko
 * Sylvester James Gates
 * Steven L. Goldman
 * Anthony A. Goodman
 * Robert Greenberg
 * Allen C. Guelzo
 * James Hall
 * Ken Hammond
 * Kenneth W. Harl
 * Peter H. Irons
 * Luke Timothy Johnson
 * Douglas Kellner
 * Alan Charles Kors
 * Edward Larson
 * Seth Lerer
 * Amy-Jill Levine
 * Allan Lichtman
 * John McWhorter
 * Sherwin B. Nuland
 * Joseph Nye
 * Robert A. Oden
 * Daniel N. Robinson
 * Rick Roderick
 * Robert Sapolsky
 * Benjamin Schumacher
 * John Searle
 * Jeremy Shearmur
 * Seth Shostak
 * Robert C. Solomon
 * Michael Starbird
 * Edward B. Burger
 * Jonathan Steinberg
 * Steven Strogatz
 * Timothy Taylor
 * Neil deGrasse Tyson
 * Elizabeth Vandiver
 * Irwin Weil
 * Arnold Weinstein
 * Richard Wolfson
 * David Zarefsky