Robert Greene saw possibility in students.  He held us to high standards.  He excited the room with an intellectual fervor classes seldom have. Studying the base and superstructure at 8:00am on a dark winter-session morning, conspiratorial whispers hushed as he entered the room and we were all ears.  Tito's letter to Stalin will always replay in my head in Robert Greene's voice. His passion for understanding cultural and linguistic nuances buzzed in the air of his classroom like electricity.  He was one of those good people and kind professionals who could always find time to sit with a student and help you find your direction in a paper or discuss graduate school opportunities, seated in his office full of Russian-language books and Russian and Soviet memorabilia or seated in one of the cafes near campus enjoying a good coffee.  Robert Greene was an incredible bridge between Russian literature and the world of cultural history. He would throw quotes of poets and playwrights into his assessments of famous events or cultural trends. He brought Russian literature into the history classroom, and the stories of Sofia Petrovna, Vera Figner, Anton Chechov, and Anna Pavlovna Vygodskaia personalized the hiSTORY.  He named his cat Vera Figner, but had wanted to name her Leon Trotsky, why I asked, did his cat have little round glasses?  Such were the details of his classes we will never forget.  Robert Greene demanded excellence, but treated his students with understanding and compassion.  He's a professor you wish you could continue to talk about life with, ask his opinion of current events, and even ask for guidance 10 years later.  He's a professor who became a good friend.  He believed in each of us.  He saw ability.  He saw potential.  He saw inspiration, future accomplishment, and possibility.  And he held each of us to our own possibility and potential.  I learned about history and about writing in my courses with Robert Greene, but I also learned about being a compassionate human being and a true mentor. I won't get to share with Robert my questions from graduate school or projects I work on in the future. But if one day I can mentor students as he did, sit with them and truly listen to them and support them, walk into a room and truly challenge them and yet inspire them, then I will know I somehow gave back just a tiny bit of what Robert Greene gave to all of us.

~ Julie Ammons