Naomi Raphael
Contributor
Dr. LeRoy Panek walks into the classroom holding an ancient copy of The Complete works of William Shakespeare and lays it on the table, which he pushes against the wall so that he can propel himself around the room on a backwards-facing office chair.
“Ok” he starts, “Does anyone have any questions before I begin to drone on in a monotone? No? Excellent.”
He then goes on to discuss whatever play that was due for that day, stopping to have students read passages from “act something scene something” and uses a plethora of interesting noises to emphasize his points.
For more than 41 years, Dr. Panek has lured students into Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, and popular literature with a teaching style that is both straightforward and eccentric.
“The most joy I find is in classrooms. I enjoy a reciprocal relationship in the classroom, everybody brings something to the table, and I feel very fortunate that I can have it,” Dr. Panek said.
Ironically, Dr. Panek was not sure that he wanted to go to college after high school, so he floated through the first two years relatively indifferent. However, he has not left the collegiate world since. After earning a Bachelor of Arts from Marietta College, he earned a Masters degree from Lehigh University and then a Ph.D from Kent State University.
He began to work at McDaniel in 1968.
“The one thing I would like to think I am is a workaholic, which is good but also bad,” Panek explains. “I’ve found that I don’t know how to relax.”
But he does look relaxed, as he sits and leans back in his office chair, hands behind his head, wearing khaki shorts, polo shirt, and sneakers. His office is filled with bobble-head dolls and action figures of Shakespeare and Poe. He holds out a thousand printed pages worth of detective stories looking thrilled to have found them.
“Feel them, they’re still warm,” he says, holding them up to his face.
Beyond McDaniel, Dr. Panek spends most of his spare time researching detective and police novels. Once he retires, he is going to put most of his time and efforts into creating an online database of American detective stories prior to 1891.
To date, Dr. Panek and Dr. Mary Bendel-Simso have 700 stories catalogued, and are nowhere close to being finished.
“It’s a goldmine of a database for all sorts of stuff,” Panek said. “You can really get a feel of what the attitudes were towards different people.”
Why spend so much time researching detective stories, only to teach mostly renaissance literature?
“I think it’s more important for undergraduates to know Shakespeare, Milton and John Donne,” Panek said. “The other stuff they’ll read on their own.”
Dr. Panek said he often thought of what he could have done if he had not remained in the academic world: “I used to think that it would be fun to be a lawyer, it’s the same idea, dealing with reason and facts in a public forum…Sometimes I want to be a full time writer, but that’s a lot of sitting around.”
“I’ve been here for 41 years—since 1968—and the college has changed incredibly since then, a lot for the better,” Panek said. “I’d like to think that I have some status in taking a role in that.”
“I am committed to community,” Panek added. “It has always been important to me, whether a family community, a school community, or a community of communities.