Robert Ruddell Retires after 37-Year Teaching Career at Berkeley

Robert (Bob) Ruddell has announced his retirement from the Graduate School of Education after a distinguished career of teaching and research that began in the era of the Free Speech Movement and extended into the new millennium. His work on early literacy and influential teachers have earned him the highest honors in his field--the International Reading Association's William S. Gray Citation of Merit for lifetime achievement, and election to the International Reading Hall of Fame.

His career as an educator began at the age of 18. That year, both his parents suffered heart attacks, and he was forced to support himself by teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in a coal mining community in the Appalachian Mountains in his home state of West Virginia. "Every month I used to turn out school early one day and go visit my students' families. I visited the homes of each of the 32 students I taught," said Professor Ruddell. "I'm still in contact with four of the students."

He went on to earn his doctorate from Indiana University, and at the age of 26 received an offer to teach at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. He has been here ever since, helping to found the School's Education in Language, Literacy, and Culture (ELLC) area of study. "I'm proud of the quality and range of faculty members we have in ELLC," he said. Bob Ruddell was also instrumental in creating the Advanced Reading Language and Literacy Program (ARLLP) in 1975. He served as acting dean of the GSE from 1978­79, working on reestablishing ties with other departments on campus, and with alums and other educators in the field. "I've received offers to go to other universities," Bob Ruddell remarked, "but Berkeley's intellectual climate has held me here."

Bob Ruddell's research originally concerned methods of reading instruction in primary grades, leading to the publication of Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, the most widely-used graduate-level reading research text.

As his research evolved, he explored a different area. "I noticed that methods made less of a difference than instruction," he commented. He had collected data on students and teachers in Berkeley's Washington Elementary School. Seven years later he interviewed many of the same students, and discovered their academic careers were often jump-started by a particular teacher. This led Bob Ruddell to his internationally known research on influential teachers. He looked up the teachers cited by students he had interviewed, and compared their techniques to those of the winners of UC Berkeley's own Distinguished Teaching Award, and found many characteristics in common. He has passed this information on through his book, Teaching Children to Read and Write: Becoming an Influential Teacher, and through the many students he has taught and mentored.

Rick McCallum, who now heads the ARLLP program, was one of Prof. Ruddell's students when he completed his Ph.D. at Cal. "Bob Ruddell was an exceptional adviser, outstanding and very supportive," Rick McCallum said. "He's continued to provide substantive feedback on my research." Though Bob Ruddell has lectured in all 50 states of the U.S., he also plans to use his increased free time to travel to places he's never been, including U.S. Civil War battlefields and Italy. Retirement won't stop him from pursuing his work as an educator, though: "I will continue to write," he said. "But I'd also like to spend a couple of hours a week reading to kids at a local library. And I look forward to reading on my own without guilt."

Dean Garcia on Professor Ruddell....

Bob Ruddell has been an influential figure in reading education for three decades. Bob is an internationally recognized scholar, and he is also a much-appreciated teacher. The most telling evidence of Bob's effectiveness as a teacher comes from his advisees, current and former, with whom he maintains a close and supportive relationship, even long after they have completed their programs and are well established in teaching and research jobs of their own. Throughout his career Bob has made important contributions to the University and the Graduate School of Education. At the university level, for example, he cooperated in 1982 with the University's Student Learning Center to design study skill courses to support students' learning in their regular academic work. These courses continue to be evaluated positively by students. There is no one in the field of reading education who even approaches Bob's level of productivity over an extended period of time. Bob has made outstanding and continuous contributions in all areas of his professional life during his career at UC Berkeley--we will miss him greatly.

--Eugene E. Garcia

Robert Ruddell