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FACULTY IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Bob Durand

Dr. Bob Durand, 1941-2019, was an Associate
Professor of History. He joined the institution in
1981 and retired in 2008.
In Memoriam by Stephen Taylor, Professor of History

Anyone who took a history class at Macon swered.”
State College between 1981 and 2008 will remem- Bob’s passion went beyond the classroom.
ber Bob Durand. Professor Durand passed away
suddenly at his Alabama home on April 7, 2019 at He was an evangelist for the study of history, as
the age of 78. his community outreach demonstrated. Whether
with National History Day or more local endeav-
Bob was the first history faculty member I met ors, Bob was always on the job. Laura McCarty,
when I arrived at Macon State in January 2000. president of the Georgia Humanities Council,
The division chair assigned me an office across worked with Bob for many years on National His-
the hall from Bob, and I thus had a front row seat tory Day. She recalled that “Bob Durand’s highest
for what I came to call “the Durand Show.” Bob commitment was to insuring that each student
was never too busy to take time with students—as had a chance to learn and grow as a leader. The
much time as it took to explain complex historical passion that he had for teaching and students
concepts. He always addressed students as “Mr.” shone forth clearly.”
or “Ms.”—his way of reminding them, subtly, that
they were expected to be adults who were ulti- Godspeed, Bob. Your work here goes on.
mately responsible for their own education.

Bob’s personality was unforgettable. The self-
styled “Wild Man of History” was always in mo-
tion, reaching, engaging, challenging, sometimes
shouting. The stereotype of history classes as
“boring” or “irrelevant” could not withstand Bob’s
bombastic, over-the-top presentation style. As a
junior colleague, I watched carefully and adopted
some of his teaching techniques as my own be-
cause I could see their effectiveness.

As Chris Tsavatewa, MGA’s Director of Experi-
ential Learning and a former Durand student, re-
called, “between the stories and the animation of
his delivery, you would get lost in the narrative of
the lecture and would find yourself sad when it
ended.” He added that taking his first class from
Durand was “a formative experience in my aca-
demic career.”

Former student Lee Greenway, now commu-
nications director at MGA, reflected that “wheth-
er in a classroom lecture or a casual conversation
in the hallways, you could see that history wasn’t
just an academic pursuit for Bob Durand; he was
personally engaged with the people and places
and events he’d studied. Punctuating intricately
illustrated stories with genuinely intriguing ques-
tions, Bob Durand made a history lecture into a
living thing that forced you to re-examine things
you’d known your entire life, and--like all good
lessons--inspired as many questions as it an-

Academic Affairs Annual Report 2019 | Middle Georgia State University 57