Painful news came to Montgomery on Friday when I received word of former faculty senate president Karen Steckol’s untimely passing. After the initial shock, I reflected warmheartedly on a classy lady’s amazing impact on a university she loved.

Being president of the faculty senate is a difficult job – certainly one of the most difficult on a college campus, because of its constantly differing constituencies.

Doing it while defending the rights of faculty, while simultaneously raising their standards, improving student life through challenges instead of mandates, and enhancing the college experience for all members of the UA family all at the same time is really an impossible job.

Only an individual as charismatic and refreshingly stirring as Professor Karen Steckol could have done it, and nobody will be able to do it like her again.

Steckol made everybody around her want to be better and it didn’t matter if it was President Witt, one of her students or even a student body president. I vividly remember her leaning over a table in a campus coffee shop and telling me to “shape up” over an issue students were butting heads with faculty over. I recall thinking that I really needed to do what this lady said, which was OK because she had a laugh and a wit that would make anyone feel energized, important, and up to her challenge.

She was warm and wise and had a remarkable passion for people. It didn’t matter if she was rooting for the UA softball team, negotiating a deal for her faculty colleagues that she respected so much, or helping countless of our fellow citizens with communicative disorders, everything she did was done with this passion. What an incredible legacy she leaves us.

I did not keep in touch with Dr. Steckol the way I wish I would have – especially now that she’s gone.  But her impact on me and the students of this University will be with us for a long, long time. The University of Alabama has lost a brilliant supporter, friend, and teacher and it is on the behalf of a generation of UA grads that I say, “thanks, Doc.”

R.B. Walker is a graduate of The University of Alabama. He served as SGA President during the 2007-2008 academic year.