Now in academia himself, Bryan Berger appreciates those professors whose doors were always open and whose wisdom was always spot on.
Here’s looking at you, Bill Brown (Germanic studies) and Deborah Leckband (chemical engineering).
“Bill was a fun mentor, helping me find an opportunity to spend a year studying in Munich, talking about German literature and sharing his experiences growing up in New Castle, Delaware,” says Berger, a 1999 chemical engineering major who now teaches the subject at the University of Virginia.
“He always made time for me to come by and talk about undergraduate studies, and what to do after UIUC.”
And “doing research in Deborah Leckband’s lab when I got back from Germany really motivated me to go on and pursue an academic career in chemical engineering. Like Bill, she was always available to talk research and life after UIUC when I needed help.”
Berger’s two most memorable C-U spots also have something in common: they were both best known for their beverages.
There was Murphy’s Pub, where “as a senior, we used to run into our TAs on weeknights, so much so that it ended up often turning into an impromptu office hours over beers. We knew where to go to get help with our homework.”
And, of course, Espresso Royale — “right around the corner from Roger Adams Lab, I spent a lot of time there studying and shuttling back and forth between RAL for coffee when we sat up working on assignments in the basement of RAL all night, or going there after we left Murphy’s to get back to studying."
