The Graduate College

Introducing Enlightened Emeriti

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, known to English students for centuries, we read about the medieval Clerk of Oxford. He is at once a teacher and a pupil, in the time-honored sense, a ‘student.’ His clothes are not much to look at, and his possessions, apart from his books, are few. Higher learning is his joy and his calling. He would, Chaucer says simply, “gladly learn and gladly teach.”

So it is down to our own time. There are easier paths to wealth and fame than university teaching. Materially, it is a scramble from beginning to end. Obtaining an entry-level position follows nearly a decade of post-secondary preparation, and for many young professors with a family, there is no job security. With respect to salary, only over the past half century have university faculty joined the middle classes. Why, then do they do it?

It is not hard to construct a cynical answer in our own, postmodern age. One might imagine explanations based on a penchant for commanding the attention of young minds and a desire for freedom from punching a clock. Theirs, however, is a special kind of freedom, for it is closely tied to discipline. For nearly two hundred years, university faculty have been specialists dedicated to discovering new knowledge and new human sensibility. They have, in effect, given their life to this pursuit. We are the beneficiaries of their findings.

In this section of our web page, we introduce some people who exemplify these commitments. We focus on illustrious husbands and wives who have both devoted many decades of their life to scholarship at Western Michigan University. They continue, in retirement, to gladly learn and gladly teach. Our claim to greatness is built on their labor.

Erika Friedl and Reinhold Loeffler