After 23 years, Paul S. Wright Professor of Christian Studies Robert Kugler has retired from full-time teaching at Lewis & Clark. In the following Q&A, Kugler looks back at the highlights of his full-circle career with deep gratitude and some assurances for the longevity of the liberal arts tradition.
What was your path to Lewis & Clark?
I first came to L&C in 1976 as an undergraduate and completed my BA in three years, with the middle year in Munich. Twenty-three years after graduating—after completing an M.Div., serving five years in a Lutheran parish, completing a PhD, and spending nine years teaching at Gonzaga University—I returned as the Paul S. Wright Professor in Religious Studies in 2002. Sort of a full circle journey!
What was your favorite course(s) to teach?
Jewish Origins and Christian Origins have always been my two favorite courses to teach, as they constitute my broad area of research and expertise. Teaching in the college’s core program is a close rival. That made me explore ideas and authors I might never have engaged so deeply as I had to for the sake of teaching in the core, ensuring that my liberal arts education, started in 1976, was renewed and extended during my years teaching at L&C. What a privilege!
What did you enjoy most about your work?
While I took delight in working with our students and with my close colleagues, I confess somewhat selfishly that the work of constantly expanding my intellectual horizons to meet the needs of the programs my courses served—RELS, CLAS, Gender Studies, Health Studies, and Core—was the best part of my work. I constantly remind myself how lucky I have been that someone paid me to do that “work.”
What changed the most during your time at the college? What remained constant?
I came to Lewis & Clark under a president who wanted to make Lewis & Clark an elite liberal arts college. Although he was gone at the end of my first year, the aspiration he instilled remained and for my first fifteen years or so we made significant strides toward that goal. I cite as an example the addition of the Classics Program that Nick Smith (Miller Professor of Humanities, Emeritus) and I put together, and that then acquired the excellent skills of Gordon Kelly. That program and others were significant changes. But so also has been a subtle turn away from that president’s aspiration as the college has faced the severe headwinds besetting liberal art colleges these days.
And that brings me to what has remained constant. For all the challenges the college faces these days, we have remained true, so far, to upholding the ideal of the liberal arts. While other liberal arts colleges faced with the same difficulties have compromised their mission to pursue what I regard as sure-to-be-transient programmatic fads, we have mostly resisted that path. Challenges to the liberal arts tradition have come and gone, as have the trendy alternatives meant to replace or refresh it, and yet it has endured because it speaks durably, intelligently, and with consequence to the fundamental, enduring features of human experience in a constantly changing world. That Lewis & Clark remains constant in its devotion to the tradition is reassuring to me.
What’s something people might not know about you?
When I came to Lewis & Clark in 2002 I succeeded my own teacher, Dick Rohrbaugh, the first holder of the Paul S. Wright Chair.
What is your favorite place on campus?
The open area outside my office in JR Howard where I experienced in countless soul-nourishing conversations the wonderful collegiality of Paul Powers, Fritzman, Gordon Kelly, Jessie Starling, Susanna Morrill, Nick Smith, Joel Martinez, Jay Odenbaugh, and Claire Pilien. So, not so much a favorite place as favorite people!
What are you most proud of?
It’s not what I’m most proud of, but what I’m most grateful for: a career in academe, the colleagues and students I work with, and the enormous growth in intellectual horizons this teaching gig afforded me. But what I’m most grateful for is my partner, Mitzi, and our children, who seem to still love me in spite of my obsession with that career and all that comes with it.
What’s next for you?
Refocusing, not retirement. I am a climate activist and have already ramped up my work on that front (watch for a Climate Superfund Bill in the 2025 Oregon Legislative Session). I am a Lutheran pastor and will start serving parishes in need (parttime) in February. And I have a pile of scholarly projects I will complete and start anew as I step away from full-time teaching. Grandparenting and vegetable gardening, too.
Several longtime professors retired from Lewis & Clark this year. Check out the employee comings and goings archive for a full list of those who joined our community recently and those who said a fond farewell.
