Today was Copeland Cookie Day in my class. This is Dr. Copeland:
He was my first professor in the doctoral program at Alabama. He served on my comps committee and was always full of great jokes and good advice. Not too long after he was on my committee, and just after his retirement, he died. Dr. Copeland was a giant sweet-hearted man. There’s a group on Facebook that is still growing long after his death, which probably says a lot in the modern context.
He always did a lot for his grad students. He’d take them out one night for drinks. He gave them tickets to the pancake breakfast his Kiwanis chapter ran. He’d take one class and bring cookies and put away the syllabus. He’d just talk about whatever seemed important: conferences, papers, dealing with colleagues. You could have viewed it as a night the guy didn’t want to teach. In time, I think, we came to realize that a lot of the most important things we learned came from there.
So that’s why I have a Copeland Cookie Day every semester. I bring in snacks, put aside the plans and just talk about industry, courses, war stories, whatever. Today was Copeland Cookie Day. These are all that remain:
The students always agree, after I tell about the man, that Dr. Copeland must have been a good man. They are right. His students knew it too. That Emmy was won by one of his former students. Instead of displaying that in his home or office, or giving it to his parents, he brought it to Dr. Copeland. There are at least a half dozen Copeland Cookie Days going on around the region this semester. I just thought you should know.
