Robert Gurval

---

For more than 15 years, the UCLA Department of Classics and the campus at large have enjoyed the extraordinary and inspiring talents of Robert Gurval as a teacher, motivator and mentor of students.

The campus-wide success of UCLA’s undergraduate program in Classics is largely due to Gurval’s wide-ranging vigilance to the quantity and quality of the Classics courses and their attraction to majors and non-majors alike.

Gurval enjoys the challenges and rewards of teaching at all levels ranging from freshman Fiat Lux seminars to graduate courses. He created three seminars for the College Honors program: The Hollywood Myth of Ancient Rome, Male Identity and Sexuality in Ancient Rome, and Representations of Cleopatra in History, Literature and Film.

Gurval is often chosen as a campus speaker, demonstrating that his outstanding lectures are recognized widely to represent the best of UCLA.

Gurval actively encourages excellence in teaching. During his term as department chair, five nominees in five years received the Distinguished Teaching Award. Four of those nominated were graduate students who had served as teaching assistants in Gurval’s courses and benefited from his example of excellence in the classroom.

He inaugurated and hosted an annual graduation ceremony for undergraduate majors and minors in the department of classics. This end-of-year occasion gives students a collective experience with individual rewards, helping them realize their potential.

After taking a class from Gurval, students have been inspired to major or minor in classics. Many declare his course the best taken at UCLA or call him their favorite professor of all time.

His colleague Kathryn Morgan writes, “I am amazed at the number of visits he gets from students who graduated years ago and are now in professional schools or in mid-career. Whether they are lawyers, doctors, CIA analysts, or even academics, they all keep a soft spot in their hearts for a teacher who has the rare gift of being influential whether or not a student majors in his discipline.”