A man of great intellect, humble bearing, friendly demeanor, and sophisticated speech, Steven Werner, 62, will leave the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha this May. He started teaching at the campus in 1974, was elected one of the two best teachers by the students in 1995, and will retire this year.
Although the young man from West Bend, WI, started college at Lawrence University (then College) in 1960 intending to major in biology, a couple lab classes convinced him that was not his field. He preferred the mental over the manual. However, when he enrolled in a required Western civilization course, “a phenomenal professor who awakened an interest in history” in him riveted his attention. The longest serving faculty member at the school, that professor stayed at Lawrence for nearly 50 years. Certainly, he enkindled at least one flame.
Werner earned his bachelor’s degree in history, graduating summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. From there he went to Yale University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, where he continued studying European history. Not liking the structure of the department there and attracted by the work of a UW-Madison professor, he returned to Wisconsin to complete his master’s and doctoral degrees focusing on modern European intellectual history. Later, in 1978, he was selected to participate in an NEH summer seminar held at UCLA for college teachers in that field.
Armed in 1974 with his degrees, an inquiring mind, and experience as a UW-Madison graduate teaching assistant, Werner sought employment, only to find the job market rather lean. The administration at UW-Waukesha had tapped Gordon Goodrum from the history faculty to serve as associate dean and needed to hire a replacement to teach, opening an opportunity for the new Ph.D. A few years later, he started helping out at UW-Sheboygan as well, and traveled between the two campuses for ten years. Werner gained tenure in 1981 and retires as an associate professor.
He brought his intellectualism with him, amusing both students and colleagues with “tales out of school” on historical figures and events. In 1995 he was awarded a UW Colleges Kaplan Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to education by “teasing students’ minds with probing questions laced with creative possibilities.” Eight years earlier he and Ken Cooley from the philosophy department had founded a Friday seminar, a weekly gathering at which faculty and staff carried on intellectual discussion on a chosen topic, and then broke for refreshments.
In addition to the usual fare of the history curriculum, he co-taught a course with Sara Toenes from the French department on French culture through film and admits to learning a lot from it himself. He gave open lectures on an array of subjects, from John Dewey to Adolf Hitler and on the invention of the New World to Orwell’s 1984.
Looking back on these past 30 years here, Werner feels he made the right decision. “I have had so many enjoyable, positive experiences. I don’t look at what might have been. Historians don’t do that. We don’t ask ‘what if.’” He appreciates the excellent students, many of whom were non-traditional-aged. “It was very rewarding to teach them and talk with them outside of class as well.”
Yet, he does look forward, too – to getting rid of the stack of blue books and to traveling in the autumn. During his teaching career, he was able to travel to Europe frequently (more than a dozen times) and found “the experience greatly enhanced my teaching of European history.” His mind won’t rest with retirement.
While he has no projects planned, Werner subscribes to Roman philosopher Seneca’s aphorism, “Leisure without study is death; it is a tomb for the living man.” He proposes to start by re-reading the same book that led off is college career, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, now marking its 50th year since publication.
Werner and his wife, Julia, who also has a Ph.D. in history and taught for many years at Nicolet High School, live in Brown Deer. |
