Schmerl, Rudy | Faculty

About Rudy

Rudolf B. Schmerl (Ph.D., English, 1960), Associate Professor Emeritus of Education, served the University of Michigan as a technical editor, research administrator, and faculty member in the College of Engineering’s former Department of English from 1965 to 1968; the College’s Program in Technical Communication from 1996 to 2007; and the School of Education, from 1970 to 1988. From 1970 to 1979 he was that School’s Assistant Dean for Research under Dean Wilbur J. Cohen. He retired in 1988 to become Director of Research Relations at the University of Hawaii, returning to Ann Arbor in 1995. During much of his career at Michigan, he was involved with the University’s inter-institutional program with Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Alabama, teaching and helping to write proposals for support. This led to consultancies with about a dozen other historically Black colleges and universities and other institutions and foundations. He has lectured internationally, e.g., at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Schmerl’s publications include a book co-written with the late Leonard A. Greenbaum of the College’s faculty (Course X: A Left Field Guide to Freshman English), another co-edited with David M. Gates, then Director of the University’s Biological Station (Perspectives of Biophysical Ecology), and several dozen articles on literature, social concerns, and education, most recently (2010), “Some Multicultural Reservations” in the Australian journal Education and Society. He is also the co-author of a privately printed novel, Gatekeepers, with Sheldon Stone.