Richard Kroll, 1953 - 2009

Earlier this week I learned some sad news regarding the passing of a marvelous professor who taught at UC Irvine, my alma mater. Many things regarding my UC Irvine career still trouble me. Nonetheless there were certainly a few professors who inspired me. Richard Kroll inspired me most. He was the epitome of what a university professor should be.

A friend of mine wrote an article in Professor Kroll's honor in the New University, UC Irvine's official paper. Here is an excerpt:

Kroll genuinely wanted to raise the standard in his classroom, never failing to mix his flamboyant presentation and sense of humor with the keenest, most nuanced analysis of any professor in the department. Kroll developed his own parlance to engage students, making sure everybody knew his playfully ironic distinction between the “Crap Poets” of Oxford and the “Good Poets” of Cambridge (of course, it was just a coincidence he went to Cambridge himself). To keep things interesting, there was always the possibility that a blue ball might glance the side of your head if you started nodding off.

He backed up his bravado in the classroom by giving enormous amounts of time to any student that bothered to seek his wisdom. As he did for me, he was willing to look over a draft, word by word, six, seven or more times, giving specific, constructive criticism; he forced students to look at every aspect of their writing and improve it, even if it meant scaring the hell out of them by giving their first paper a D. That’s not to make him sound like a nitpicker — such an epithet is only reserved for lesser scholars. This was not criticism for the sake of criticism, but unusually prescient, invaluable pedagogy — a lifetime of refined skills generously heaped upon every single student he could reach.

After he was crippled by a genetic disorder, Spino-Cerebellar Ataxia, he was so thoroughly dedicated that he made light of his own impaired gait and, despite the immense pain caused by the disorder, took the time to write copious notes on students’ work, however many times they asked him to do it.

Professor Kroll, I learned more from you than others. You were the most valuable asset to the English Department at UCI. You made students work for their grades. Getting a B+ in your class was considered great (normally this was considered the highest or one of the highest grades on a paper). The first time I took your course you gave me a B+ on a paper and I worked harder. Later you confessed that my paper should have gotten an A- and you wanted me to work toward an A+ because you knew I could do better. No one has ever spent so much time during office hours painstakingly going through every sentence I've written to constructively critique my writing. Your brilliance persuaded me to take four classes with you even though I knew I'd be working twice as hard in one of your classes.

Thank you, Professor Kroll. You were so proud of me during graduation. You clearly loved your students.

As your favorite poet Alexander Pope once wrote, “now upward will he soar, and little less than Angel, would be more.”

RIP.

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