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September 28, 2007 > News > Grob leaves behind legacy of inspired students

Grob leaves behind legacy of inspired students

By Jocelyn Wright | Thresher Editorial Staff

English professor Alan Grob passed away last Friday. Those who spoke of him called him a beloved teacher, friend and long-time Hanszen College associate.

“When I first got [to Rice in 1963], Grob was already such a legend that they had a sign in Jones College that said ‘Grobliness is next to godliness’,” History Professor Allen Matusow said.

Grob won the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching — Rice’s most prestigious teaching award — so many times that he was no longer allowed to be nominated.

“He was just the kind of person that you hoped you would have a few of in your university at any given time and that is someone who cared deeply about teaching,” English Professor Dennis Huston said. “It was his mission, and it was sacred with Alan. He just felt like that was what he was hired for, and perhaps what he was created for.”

In his first years teaching, Grob inspired some Rice students who went on to found and write for and edit Texas Monthly magazine. Among then was Bill Broyles, who in addition to being the first editor of Texas Monthly is a renowned screenplay writer whose works include Cast Away and Apollo 13.

Grob’s reputation for teaching made his classes very popular.

“He immediately attracted students to his courses, especially his Shakespeare course,” Sociology Professor Chandler Davidson said.

Grob’s love of Shakespeare will live on through the Alan and Shirley Grob Endowment for Shakespeare in Performance, a fund he and his wife established to bring Shakespeare’s plays to the Rice campus.

“[Alan] was a scholar, and he published books,” Matusow said. “But he was primarily dedicated to undergraduates, and he worked very hard on his teaching. He taught literature and through literature I think he tried to teach about life.”

Forming relationships outside the classroom was just as important to Grob, who spent countless hours at Hanszen talking to students.

“Alan’s devotion to Hanszen was really standard-setting,” History Professor John Zammito said. “He was of the generation who really believed in undergraduates … .There was nothing he cared about more than students.”

Grob’s concern for students made him a memorable associate.

“Alan was a wonderful associate partly because he loved to talk to students so much,” Huston said. “He had incredibly wise things to say about politics particularly, which he could have easily well have taught as Shakespeare or poetry.”

Grob put his enthusiasm for politics to work as a tireless civil rights activist. After Rice was desegregated in 1965, he organized a group of professors to go out and actively recruit black students. Although the Grob Committee, as the group was informally known, stopped when Richard Stabell became Director of Admissions in 1972 and began to make efforts on the part of the administration to recruit more minorities, Grob continued to fight tirelessly for civil rights throughout his time at Rice.

“He was ferociously interested in civil rights and activism here,” Zammito said. “It was a commitment he never relinquished.”

Recently, Grob advocated that President David Leebron recruit minority faculty more aggressively in the hopes of making Rice a more appealing place for minority students.

Grob’s commitment to civil rights was memorialized after his retirement in 2002 with the Alan Grob Prize, which is given annually to the Rice undergraduate who embodies the values Grob strove to teach and has demonstrated devotion to economically and culturally disadvantaged. Additionally, in 2003, the Recruitment into Collegiate Education through Minority Scholarships board set up a scholarship in Grob’s name for an incoming undergraduate minority student.

Grob’s strong convictions are something all his colleagues will remember.

“Alan and I used to have screaming fights in the English Department halls and people would come outside of their rooms mostly in fascination or sometimes to shut us up, and then we’d go back in our rooms and be friends again,” Huston said.

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