Marvin Druger took off his jacket and green corduroy hat and put them in the corner of the Gifford Auditorium stage Monday. He plugged in the cords to the overhead projector and slipped the clip-on microphone onto his green and red checkered shirt. He tossed his umbrella into the corner and opened up his folder filled with papers and slides for the day’s lecture.

Gifford was about half full, with students in Druger’s BIO 123 lecture chattering. The professor paced in front, looking relaxed.

‘Today I’ll be teaching my last lecture of Biology 123,’ he said. ‘I was going to have an inspirational message – but first we’re going to go over the circulatory system then do that at the end.’

The 74-year-old is relaxed, of course. He’s been doing this for 54 years.

Druger, the Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence and chair of the department of science teaching at Syracuse University, will be on research leave next year to work with 12 Ph.D. students. He doesn’t know if he’ll be back.

He gave two BIO 123 lectures Monday – maybe his last. He’s been at Syracuse for 45 years, through five chancellors – from William Tolley to Nancy Cantor. Druger has taught more than 40,000 students since he came to SU in 1962, with a graduate degree from Columbia University.

And he’s not sure what comes next.

‘What are you going to do now?’ one student asked after the lecture.

‘Follow my wife around,’ Druger said, a hint of Brooklyn sneaking in the end of his joke.

Why not? They’ve been married 51 years. Druger met Pat back home in Brooklyn, when his college fraternity threw a party for a local high school sorority. He was 20, she was 15. They married three years later.

He still carries a copy of a poem he wrote to her on their 50th anniversary, along with a few others he’s penned over the years.

Pat inspired some of her husband’s soon-to-be-published book ‘The Misadventures of Marvin (including his wife Pat): Lessons in Life.’ The book is a series of vignettes: little things he’s learned during his 74 years.

One scene stands out – he was in the airport with his wife, and someone asked him if he was Hugh Hefner.

‘I said, ‘If I was Hugh Hefner, would I be sitting next to this old gray-haired lady?” he laughed as he told the story.

Druger wrote a book of children’s poems once too, ‘Strange Creatures and Other Poems.’ He’s working on a sequel: ‘Stranger Creatures and Other Poems.’

The Syracuse University Press published the first volume. He says it’s one of its best sellers.

Druger’s dedication to SU is obvious – he said his wife ‘donated my money’ to start the Marvin Druger Recognition Fund, which will earn Druger’s name a place in the new Life Sciences Complex.

Already, their names are inscribed on a brick in the Orange Grove, on a plaque in front of a tree and a bench in front of Huntington Beard Crouse Hall.

‘I wrote ‘A celebration of 46 years of love and marriage,” Druger said. ‘She said ‘That’s very nice, but if it says 46 years you’ll have to get a brick every year.’ I changed it. It says ‘In celebration of many years of marriage.”

As for the bench – benches on the quad might not be there if it wasn’t for Druger.

‘There was a time we had no benches on campuses,’ he said. ‘I saw Buzz Shaw on the Quad. I mentioned it to him. He said ‘Nice campus we have here.”

‘I said ‘Yes but there’s no place to sit down and talk to people!”

Druger doesn’t know if the conversation provoked the chancellor to do anything about it or if there were already plans in the making. But sure enough, ‘all of a sudden, they put benches in!’

Smart work from Druger, the valedictorian of his high school class.

‘I had all the medals, English medal, social studies medal, the biology medal. Valedictorian of my class,’ he said. ‘So I could’ve done anything.’

A career as a teacher was how it worked out. He did undergraduate work at Brooklyn College, then graduate work at Columbia. Then he made his way upstate.

‘I tell all my students to plan their lives – but I didn’t plan mine,’ he said. ‘It just happened.’

He knows he sparked careers in medicine for many students. He got a letter just a couple of weeks ago – ‘I save all my letters, of course,’ – from a woman whose son he taught ‘maybe 28 years’ ago thanking him for helping her son.

Druger still has that effect now, for those willing to listen.

‘The worst thing you can eat is trans fat,’ he said during his last lecture.

A labeled diagram of the human heart was splayed on the screen behind him.

‘Trans fat, that’ll get ya.’

Some students stayed to talk science or shake hands after the lecture, while some just shuffled out the back of the auditorium. Freshman biology major Guang Yu Lee was one of those who came by afterward.

‘I just wanted to shake your hand,’ Lee said as he walked toward the professor.

‘He’s definitely interesting,’ Lee said of Druger. ‘He’s just been here for so long.’

Freshman biology major Nate Miska recognized the respect he thinks Druger deserves after working at SU for so long – and staying so passionate about his work.

‘It’s sad that a lot of kids are disrespectful,’ Miska said. ‘It’s apparent that a lot of kids aren’t paying attention, but it’s like he said: A lot of kids don’t get it.’

Jaime Hernandez, a student in his BIO 123 and BIO 200 lecture and freshman biology major, said Druger was supportive – and engaging – as a professor.

‘He really focuses on human interactions,’ Hernandez said. ‘When he’s talking about his wife Pat, or going off on tangents, that’s what’s different.’

The final overhead transparency, under a list of topics covered in the year, read ‘Bio 121-123 is meant to provide knowledge about life through experiences that make you think about LIFE in a new way.’

The overall mission of the course is ‘to provide meaningful, motivational experiences that enrich your life and help you identify your unique talents and where you fit in life.’

Fitting.

Though he seemed a bit wistful walking out of Gifford Auditorium, Druger chattered at his usual rapid pace.

‘My first class gave me a standing ovation,’ he said.

The second one applauded. But they didn’t stand. And Druger didn’t mind.

He walked out of the auditorium, by the bench with his name on it and through the Quad that he might have put benches on, rumpled black umbrella shielding himself from the afternoon drizzle.

He knew it would come to an end.

‘Can’t go on forever, that’s the secret of life,’ he said. ‘Nobody lives forever.’

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Published on April 30, 2008 at 12:00 pm