Writing Center Named in Memory of Robert Emery

Assistant Dean Robert Emery (GRS’70, Wheelock’81), who died of cancer in June 2010, was devoted to the art of writing and to teaching that art to his students. In recognition of the 32 years Emery spent helping CGS students improve their writing skills, the College has renamed its Writing Center in his honor.

In His Own Words

“A beneficial attribute of the social human being (and an absolute requirement of college students and professional adults) is the ability to articulate clearly a point of view in the form of a persuasive argument. At first there are techniques that must be learned for this, but later, as the writer grows, he or she discovers that there is an excellent kind of art to the elegant sentence, paragraph, passage, and that the essay, too, ultimately requires the very best of the creative imagination. This is a fine field to teach.

“There is great joy and satisfaction in all of it, and I must say that teaching here at CGS, with this faculty and these students, is just the best.”

—Robert W. Emery

Dean Linda Wells dedicated the Robert W. Emery Writing Center on October 29, during BU’s 2010 Alumni Weekend. Wells told the audience at the evening ceremony that CGS’s Writing Center thrived under Emery’s direction. “He tended it as he would a prized garden,” she said, “making it a welcoming space for students and articulating his appreciation to the faculty and staff who helped tend it along with him.”

Division of Rhetoric Chair Matthew Parfitt said of Emery, “He believed, rightly I think, that the only really effective way to help struggling writers was to work with them one-on-one. He spent many, many hours doing that in the Writing Center and many more hours doing that in his office.”

“It’s by this devotion to students,” Parfitt continued, “that he really exemplified what CGS is all about: that interest in and concern for our students as individuals. So it’s perfectly fitting that the Writing Center will be named after him.”

Emery’s name now appears on the wall of the Writing Center, and a plaque bearing his photo and a personal statement he wrote for the College (see sidebar) sits near the center’s entrance.

A full transcript of the dedication ceremony is available in the CGS news archives.

A remembrance of Emery appeared in the Fall 2010 edition of Collegian.

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