A distinguished professor of English at UF has a reason to celebrate.
The Southeastern Conference named Sidney Homan UF’s 2015 Professor of the Year. This award is given out every year to 14 professors, one from each school in the conference.
Homan will receive $5,000 and a commemorative plaque with his name at the awards ceremony that will be held later this month.
“I come from a neighborhood where no one ever went to college,” Homan said, “so the scholarship is a wonderful thing to have.”
Homan joined UF’s English department in 1972 after teaching at the University of Illinois and Boston University.
Paul Richards, a professor of music composition in the College of Fine Arts at UF and also one of Homan’s good friends, spoke highly of Homan.
“Everybody loves the guy,” Richards said. “Many students take as many classes as they can with him because they love him so much.”
Caitlin Carey, a junior at UF and also a student in Homan’s Shakespeare: Learning by Doing class, also called Homan an extremely personable and caring professor.
“He really gets to know each of his students,” Carey said. “If anything, he makes you want to learn and come back each day.”
Homan said the ultimate justification universities have is the combination of teaching and scholarship, and that this achievement award simply underscores this principle.
Homan is there watching the Gators play and cheering them on in every sport, but that isn’t the main priority, he said.
“All of it is secondary to the only real business of this college,” Homan said, “and that is you and me, teacher and student.”
Moving forward, Homan said he has no plans to retire. Instead, he is trying his hand at different things such as writing a fiction novel with his son and performing in and directing a play with one of his friends from Purdue University in California.
For now, Homan looks forward to continuing to teach at UF.
“I love coming into the campus, and I love my students,” Homan said, “even though they have lousy taste in music.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 5/19/15]
