TheSkiffView
GIVE BACK
Alumni show appreciation for professor

This semester former business students went a little farther than coloring in the extreme right-hand bubbles on teaching evaluation forms to show their appreciation for a professor.

To be exact: $1.4 million farther.

Stan Block, a finance professor who has taught at TCU for 36 years, was named the first holder of an endowed chair for finance named after him. He described it as the “pinnacle of his career.”

The alumni-supported chair is a testimony to Block’s impact during the past decades. He began the country’s first Educational Investment Fund, which currently allows students to manage $2 million worth of assets and has helped business students break into prominent Wall Street jobs.

The establishment of a new endowed chair will also attract prestige to the university. Other universities have copied Block’s EIF program and this latest recognition will add to his legacy of success.

The new chair also shows the extent to which students will go to show their gratitude toward sterling professors. Hammering knowledge into our brains may seem like a futile exercise sometimes, but it means we leave college with the skills and attitudes it takes to succeed the rest of lives. It’s something Block’s students certainly noticed.

Block heartily deserves the praise he has received from his past and present students.

In the end, the concern and energy professors invest in their students really are like the MasterCard commercial: priceless.