Ron Sass was truly a stalwart of Rice. He was hired in 1958, when William Houston was president, and he stayed for his entire career. He was here for the semi-centennial and here for the centennial. Ron’s wisdom, compassion, and generosity of spirit were coupled with a keen intellect and a sort of hard-headed practicality. These qualities made him an extraordinary teacher–he won the Brown Award three of the first four times it was given and was the first teacher at Rice to be retired from the competition– and they also helped guide us through the campus tumult that began in the late 1960s and bubbled through the ’70s.
Back in 2018 the Woodson unexpectedly received a package of materials from the Warren Skaaren Charitable Trust. Among the papers was a draft of a letter that Skaaren ’69 wrote in support of Sass’s nomination for the E. Harris Harbison Award, a national prize for excellence in teaching that was given by the Danforth Foundation. (He didn’t get it, but he should have.) The last page of the letter is missing but even so I can’t do better than Skaaren. This is the Ron Sass I knew:
Bonus:
