Eleven Faculty Members Retire

These faculty members provided a combined 314 years of service to the college upon their retirement last spring. 

Most people who call themselves Anselmians have spent only four brief and transformative years on the Saint Anselm campus; several seasons of their lives that flee with incomprehensible speed, and then reside with mysterious permanence in their memories.

Then there are those of us who come to this bucolic hilltop in New Hampshire for a more extended stay, often having left our own homes in a distant part of the country or another part of the world. We remain season after season after season after season until the years mount up—like so many melting snowbanks behind the pub or piles of windswept leaves on the campus quad. Before we know it, the years become decades that we casually call a career. Though it was always more than that.

Our transformation is much slower than those whom we teach. We study. We lecture. We learn a vast amount from our colleagues and students. We complete individual and group projects of all sizes and variety. We are tested in a myriad of ways. We compile our share of triumphs and disappointments. And though we never graduate, the time inevitably comes when, unlike the men who have professed a vow of stability to the Abbey, we take our leave.

These partings are usually marked by banquets, speeches, shared remembrances, and fond farewells. But this past spring, 11 longtime members of the Saint Anselm faculty ended their careers as Covid circumstances upended any celebratory pomp. They taught their final classes and received congratulatory toasts in the two-dimensional world of Zoom. And just like that, 314 years of service to Saint Anselm vanished from our daily lives into the archives of the library and our hearts. Wherever you are reading this right now, it would be fitting for you to stop and raise a glass in honor of:

Landis Magnuson’s departure prompted him to recall when he came to “stoic New England from the Midwest as a newly minted Ph.D.” over 30 years ago: “I could not foresee at first that the new colleagues and students I met would over time become many of the most important and influential people in my life, personally and professionally.” On behalf of this impressive group of 11 who will grace our hallways and classrooms no longer, Landis offers the words of William Kloefkorn, a favorite poet of his from his home state of Nebraska: “When you spend a lot of time in one place, that place spends a lot of time in you.”

Someday, on the other side of this pandemic, we hope to enjoy with our retired colleagues the celebrations and embraces we have missed. Meanwhile, we pray that the best of who we are remains alive in one another. And may Saint Anselm College, to which these tireless teachers and scholars devoted so many years of their lives, continue to spend time in them.

Missing Photo Professor Gilbert Becker

Eleven Faculty Members Retire