Every year, students without means find their way to Champaign-Urbana via the Susan Silver and Ross Erlebacher Scholarship.
It’s the Illini couple’s way of giving back to the university that gave her a bachelor’s degree in economics and him a pair of degrees from the Grainger College of Engineering.
It was there that Erlebacher encountered one of his most memorable faculty members — the late C.L. "David" Liu, a professor of computer science who was remembered for his “foundational and pioneering research in combinatorial mathematics and algorithms.”
“I took several courses with him and he was my advisor for my master's thesis,” Erlebacher says. “He always started the lecture with a joke. What was memorable about him is that he was both a world-class researcher and beloved instructor. Often, those two don't go together.”
Also leaving a lasting impression on the Chicago-based assistant vice president with Cognizant: late economics Professor Fred Gottheil.
“I took both introductory economics and a course on the Israeli economy from Professor Gottheil,” Erlebacher says. “In the course on the Israeli economy, we needed to reschedule a time to meet as Professor Gottheil had to cancel classes twice due to the timing of the Jewish holidays.
“After unsuccessfully trying to find times that worked for the entire class of 30 students between the times of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a variety of days, he grinned and wrote ‘5 AM’ on the board.
“He started getting very excited and said we could tell this story for years — about the time you went to take a class with that crazy Professor Gottheil at 5 a.m. in the morning.
“Turnout was surprisingly good.”
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