Russell Peck (scholar)

Transcription

Russell epitomizes the best in education because he brings his talents to bear on so many facets of education. When you see him in front of a group of students you just think it's as if he were starting out all over again. It's that same passion for his subject matter, and I think that's what really draws the students in. It's hard to resist that, that kind of enthusiasm. He is somebody who takes events that have happened in the past, and he shows how they are continually reenacted and recreated in the present. Only Russell could get away with talking about making the present relevant. Russell is a world-class teacher. He is more than an acclaimed academic, which he is, but he wears his scholarship enormously lightly. But he can convey to his students, and he certainly conveyed to me, the enormous richness of the literature which he taught. I think there's no ambiguity here... I came to this program in part to work with Russell. His great interest in medieval literature, particularly in medieval romance and folklores, I wanted to kind of work with him because of that, so I could have an advisor who had the same type of passion as I did. Are you going to develop further this idea of the power of the heroine? He takes every task he handles extremely seriously, and so when he gives you feedback, you get feedback in that he's developing you at all levels. With your scholarship, your style, your work, where you are currently, and then he'll make sure that he always helps you to develop further. So life in the humanities at a research university, one spends untold hours just by oneself trying to amass a sufficient amount of information and knowledge, and then having spent all of this time by oneself, there come those hours in the week when one has to go into a classroom, join a crowd of young people, and try to convince them that those words and ideas that mean so much to you should come alive and deserve the impassioned attention. Russell Peck, more than anyone else I've ever encountered, has succeeded in seamlessly and energetically making these worlds come together for 50 years of students at the University of Rochester. He routinely fills classrooms. He gets 60 or more students for a range of subjects that go from myth and fairytale to classical sources of scripture to Chaucer to Shakespeare. I once saw him give a lecture to a packed house at Hubbell Hall on fundamentals of grammar in which he brought down the house by illustrating every kind of grammatical and syntactical mode using dragons. So a dragon would march forth, and he literally had people laughing and calling for more. "More dragons!" And only Russell Peck could pull something like this off. Given this kind of range of accomplishments and the charisma that Russell has always shown, one is tempted to say that he is a unique personality, a one-man show. Except that one couldn't say that because none of this would have been possible without Russell's partner, Ruth. Ruth has been there to nurture projects, to offer counsel to students, to inject excitement and ideas, to make things happen. I think it's important to honor Russell's legacy and Ruth's as well because she's contributed equally to the University of Rochester because it's unusual to have a faculty member on campus for 50 years. You don't often have that kind of continuity. It provides something that all the students that have had him can have in common. My idea of his legacy would be the impact he has on students that we remember the university fondly not just because of his classes and his enthusiasm or the work, but just that we remember and we see our own growth. His legacy is all those people that he has taught and inspired. Russell's commitment and dedication to his students is just something I have never soon. I've been in several universities, both in this country and in the United Kingdom, of the highest caliber and never have I came across a better teacher, a finer man, than Russell Peck.