Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays (1931-2024) was known for playing 22 seasons with the Giants in New York and San Francisco. Mays had a career stacked with accolades and praise, breaking records and winning awards left and right.
Near the end of his time on the diamond, Mays returned to New York to play for the Mets but announced his retirement after the World Series in 1973, reasoning that his age had begun to impact his ability to play the game.
Mays’ experience connects to the belief that one shouldn’t wait to leave a job until they can no longer perform their duties well. For Seth Katz, who loved to watch Mays play growing up, this notion was one of the driving forces behind his impending retirement.
“He [Mays] could still swing the bat, but the knees weren’t so good, and it was hard watching him,” Katz said. “Not to say I’m Willie Mays — I’m not Willie Mays by a long shot, not even as an English professor — but I was good, and I did a lot of good. I wanted to leave while I was still doing good.”
Katz, the associate chair of and a professor in Bradley’s English department, is preparing to retire after this semester following a decades-long career, leaving students and faculty feeling the impact of his knowledge, compassion and dedication to being an educator.
Early days in education
Katz’s teaching at Bradley has mainly focused on language, grammar and other linguistics topics. However, he didn’t always know this was the path he wanted to take.
As an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1980s, Katz initially studied physics and philosophy before switching to Russian and East European area studies. Katz got his degree in the latter but knew English was his passion.
“I woke up somewhere in the spring of my sophomore year faced with the prospect of taking a lot of Russian [classes] in the fall of my junior year and said, ‘What am I doing? I want to be an English major. I’ve always wanted to be an English major.’ And that’s what I did,” Katz said.
Katz didn’t immediately pursue graduate school in English, though, getting his master’s degree in general studies in the humanities from the University of Chicago in 1985. His studies ultimately paved the way for his future in linguistics.
“I wanted to look at literary language, which is something linguists generally don’t look at,” Katz said. “That’s how I found myself applying for jobs where I would be the linguist in an English department, and that’s what I ended up doing at Bradley.”
But while pursuing his doctorate, Katz struggled to see the light at the end of the graduate school tunnel.
“I had always gone to school. It was all I had ever done, and graduate school, frankly, was kind of grueling,” Katz said. “It pushed you constantly … and I finally got fed up with it in the fall of 1987. I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore unless I find out what’s on the other end.’”
After sending out several applications, he landed a job as an adjunct faculty member at Loyola University Chicago. As challenging as it was, Katz knew he found his calling.
“It was an amazing experience. It was an intense experience,” Katz said. “I was thrown in the deep end, and … by the end of the semester, I was well into the thinking, ‘If this is what I get to do after I go through all that PhD stuff, oh yeah, I’m in.’ And I returned to my work on my dissertation with a will.”
Finding a home at Bradley and navigating changes
Despite the challenges graduate school presented, these years were also a time of great joy for Katz. He met and fell in love with his wife, whom he married in 1989 after two years together. The couple moved to Minnesota where Katz began teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth for a year before switching jobs and commuting to Marquette.
Katz crossed the final academic finish line in December 1991, graduating after five and a half years with his doctorate in English from UChicago. That same month, he had his first interview at Bradley, and by March 1992, he’d been offered the job.
Finally settled in the place that would become his home for the next 32 years, Katz had to figure out the deeper components of higher education.
“I had no idea what service was. The institution is run by committees of the faculty. It’s called faculty governance. I had no idea what that meant,” Katz said. “I had no idea what it would require me to do. I had to learn that on the job. It was very bewildering and frustrating.”
Teaching at a new institution also created unexpected challenges for Katz in the classroom. He realized quickly that applying the same methods to a new group of students with different needs would not pan out.
“I had things under my belt, but I hadn’t taught Bradley students,” Katz said. “I just took my syllabus for business communication from Marquette and brought it to Bradley … and then by halfway through the semester, they were ready to come at me with torches and pitchforks.”
Like any determined professor, Katz took his misstep in stride and worked on communicating and negotiating with students about course materials.
Now with decades of experience in both areas, Katz is well-informed about administrative work and student-facing obligations, which has allowed him to support his colleagues.
Interim English Department Chair Patricia Dahlquist says his expertise has been a significant help to her in her role.
“We work really well together. I rely heavily on his knowledge,” Dahlquist said. “He has such a depth of understanding of the university and how it works. He has such an understanding of how to teach effectively with the students.”
Leaving an impact
There has been no shortage of service that Katz has offered to the English department, the university as a whole and the larger academic realm. He has served on at least five faculty committees, presented at over 10 conferences, participated in several community service events and has had numerous academic publications.
Katz’s book, “American English Grammar: An Introduction,” was also published in 2020. He wrote and revised the book with the help of student feedback and has incorporated the work into his curriculum. Recruited by his publisher, finishing the second edition of the guide will be Katz’s first retirement project.
“My students were my guinea pigs, and they were the ones who made the suggestions for [the book],” Katz said. “I give lots of credit in the acknowledgements to students who were very specifically helpful along the way.”
Perhaps even more gratifying has been Katz’s work with Bradley Hillel, the Jewish student organization on campus. When Katz first started working with Hillel, they only had a small building and relied on his volunteer leadership. By the time he was done, the organization was completely transformed.
“In the end, we raised something like $800,000 in order to renovate and expand the building,” Katz said. “I managed to put together the money to hire a self-sustaining, full-time executive director, a paid professional. So, I left Hillel in a massively stronger place than it was when I got to Bradley, and that’s a major legacy for me.”
Lasting connections
Ultimately, nothing compares to the way Katz has positively influenced his coworkers and the students he’s worked with.
Throughout his tenure, Katz has received the Faculty of the Year award from Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, multiple times. In 1997, he was honored by the Office for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development for his contributions to an award-winning project.
More recently, Katz participated in Bradley’s first-ever TEDx event in September, speaking about the potential of AI to help students draft ideas for writing assignments.
Students have attested to Katz’s enthusiasm for providing a comfortable learning environment in his classroom. Olivia Waddell, a senior English education major, says Katz’s personality renders him able to create bonds with everyone he comes across.
“When I first met him, I immediately knew he was a very kind and understanding professor,” Waddell said. “He’s always got something up his sleeve with his random voices or just silly little jokes that he makes among the students. On the first day he meets a student, he immediately makes a connection with them. I really appreciate that.”
This parallels the impact Katz has had on English faculty members. Creative writing professor Devin Murphy remembers meeting Katz when he interviewed for a job over a decade ago.
“He was so warm and inviting and just spectacularly smart,” Murphy said. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is somebody I would like to get to know more,’ and that all has proved true over the last 12 years.”
Murphy says he will never forget Katz’s reaction to him coming to campus with his firstborn just two weeks after starting work at Bradley.
“He’s got an office two doors down from me, and the first thing he said was, ‘Give me that baby,’ and started rubbing his back and the baby fell asleep on him,” Murphy said. “He is just this super warm, kind, sweet man, dad, teacher and friend.”
Post-retirement plans
The decision to retire was ultimately not a difficult one, as Katz was nearing the age of eligibility. After talking it over with his wife, he went forward with the process.
The last thing Katz is looking forward to is teaching in London for the study abroad J-term one last time. This past winter, Murphy got to teach a class with Katz, an experience he cherishes.
“I was the newbie and he’d done it about eight or nine times, so he sort of let me shadow him,” Murphy said. “My class thought I knew what was going on, but I really didn’t know where we were going. I followed him [Katz] and he was just as gracious as always and an amazing tour guide. He’s been pretty consistent this whole time as a great friend. I’m going to really miss him.”
As his final semester nears its end, Katz has reflected on the things he loves most about teaching. His major takeaways emphasize the importance of educators investing in the student learning experience.
“I love getting students to think in new ways,” Katz said. “Teaching is the opportunity to help people become the next bigger version of themselves. If I can help one young person become themselves but larger … then I have done a good thing in the world.”
Retirement can often present an identity crisis for people who have worked in a career for so long, but Katz says he isn’t worried about it.
“I don’t think I’m done teaching,” Katz said. “I might be back to teach a section here or there, but I don’t have to do it full time. I don’t have to be that person anymore. There are other people to be.”
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