June 16, 2019
Clark Honors College Commencement
Dr. Samantha Hopkins
I feel tremendously fortunate to speak to you today in honor of Louise Bishop’s illustrious career as a member of the Honors College Faculty. Louise has retired from the CHC in order to have time to pursue her many other interests, and her gain (in time to work in her garden, to travel, to sing in the choir, to read, to pursue her research, and to write) is truly our loss. Her teaching, heavily inflected by her research, as well as her service and advising work have been pillars of the Honors College community for more than two decades, and will be sorely missed.
Louise came to the UO in 1987 to join the faculty of the English Department, where she was recognized for her teaching with an Ersted Award in 1993, the highest teaching award given to junior faculty at the University of Oregon. She first taught in the Honors College in 1997, and joined the college full time in 2001. Her book, Words, Stones, and Herbs: the Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England, was published during her time in the CHC, and was among the texts she used in teaching students about concepts of medievalism and of early modern literature in her classes. While part of the CHC faculty, Louise also picked up a Herman Award in 2014, which is the highest teaching honor conferred by the university on senior faculty.
All of these awards are no surprise either to the students who have taken her classes or to the colleagues who have worked with Louise; her passion for teaching and her devotion to student success has been a hallmark of her work at UO and particularly in CHC. Her classes, continually rewritten and reinvented, are centered in her area of study, in medieval literature, but range far beyond this time to consider what the medieval can teach us about fundamental ideas of human culture, of narrative and language, of emotion and intellect, and of what it is to be a person and a scholar. As a geologist, I am in a discipline commonly considered to be “hard science,” but I stand in awe of Louise’s ability to tackle the extraordinarily hard “science” of developing more than just student knowledge but also morality and citizenship. Louise always asks students to pursue the really hard questions demanded by a rigorous liberal arts education, and they do, and furthermore they enjoy the experience. I can’t count the number of students who have told me about the transformative experience of taking her class, and about the way that Louise has devoted so much to their learning. This experience has become one of the hallmarks of a CHC education, on the bucket list of many a student. I’ve had advisees crow over finally being able to get into one of Louise’s classes after years of waiting to come up on the crowded waitlists; others tell me she blew their minds by remembering who they were two years after she first met them at New Student Orientation. One student, struggling early in her CHC career and told by others that she couldn’t cut it as a pre-med, went to Louise for advising; in characteristic form, Louise simply told her “I’m not worried about you. I believe in you.” The student persisted, and is now a med student at OHSU.
One of Louise’s signature efforts has been to grow access to Study Abroad for CHC students. Recognizing that conventionally available Study Abroad experiences created challenges for CHC students trying to check off requirements in both their major and the HC, she started the CHC Oxford program, where our students could design their own study abroad coursework through tutorials with Oxford faculty. This program transformed the experiences of a series of HC students, some of whom had this experience in their freshman year; the program has also created demand for more CHC-specific study abroad experiences, an initiative that is taking off this year with support of the Dean’s office. These efforts inspired Doug Ragan, a CHC alum and major donor, to endow a scholarship this year in Louise’s name that will support students pursuing study abroad experiences in CHC.
Louise’s teaching was not confined to the students in the CHC. She was the first Associate Dean of the Honors College, named alongside our first dean when we became a fully independent college in 2008, and served 3 terms totaling 5 years, including a term of 7 months AFTER she entered the Tenure Reduction Program (and was no longer expected to do administrative work). In this role, she was a mentor to CHC staff and faculty, coaching us through the arcane and occasionally medieval structures of the University of Oregon. I, myself, have been proud to have Louise as a mentor from my first days here and, like many of my colleagues, have come to her for advice on my career, on my teaching, on life as a whole. Like our students, we faculty and staff have shared in Louise’s teaching and mentoring. She has straightened many an academic gown at graduation, where she is always present for all of us, students and faculty alike.
Louise has been a cornerstone of the Clark Honors College for two decades; her warm, welcoming presence in the classroom, in the office, and around the building has been a given for longer than I have been with the CHC, and while she is moving on from her role as a regular faculty member in the college, I don’t expect we’ve seen the last of her around here. I know I speak for all the students, faculty, and staff of the college when I say thank you, Louise, for all you’ve given the CHC. We have been so lucky to have shared time with you, we will miss you, and we wish you all the best in your retirement to come.
We’ve produced a little token of our appreciation for you Louise, to share some of what students had to say to you on the occasion of your retirement. Thank you!