Furman has always been blessed with exceptional professors.

One of our finest is Dr. Charles Brewer. A native of Arkansas, he has taught psychology at Furman for over 35 years, and he has received every major award the university can bestow, including the Meritorious Teaching Award and the William Kenan Jr. Chair of Psychology. Alumni and friends have endowed a fund in the psychology department to honor him. He has also received the South Carolina Governor's Distinguished Professor Award as well as the Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Teaching Award from the American Psychological Association.

Over the years, Dr. Brewer has become a legendary campus figure. When students say they are taking Brewer, it carries special meaning. Teaching to him is a noble calling rather than simply a career. He displays an almost holy reverence for learning, and he shares such passion with his students and colleagues.

People quickly realize that Dr. Brewer views learning as an exalted activity, a rare human privilege that should not be shirked or sullied. He assaults lazy thinking, and he lets students know when they fall short of his expectations and their own abilities. Whatever the specific title or topic of his course, whatever the actual material to be covered, he remains focused on a broader goal: to teach students how to think and speak and write for themselves.

Much of what teachers do, he once told the Furman faculty, is inappropriate and a waste of time. Dispensing information, he explained, should not be the primary purpose of higher education. Instead of such fact-limited teaching, he seeks to help students see the principles behind the details and to become independent thinkers themselves. He wants them to ask why as often as they ask what.

Blessed with a rapier wit, keen mind, extraordinary intelligence and an unflagging elegance and brilliance of language, Dr. Brewer demonstrates an important truth: great teaching cannot be reduced to a formula. It is an art, not a science, a messy, complicated human endeavor that springs from the sincerity and energy of the teacher.

In his case, he sees teaching as a dramatic art; he transforms his classroom into a stage. He is as entertaining as he is learned. His teaching is theatrical, his methods eccentric, his ideals transparent. His style is urgent, intense and embodied.

He himself is a perpetual student, and he is willing to go to great lengths to excite his students about learning. During his classes, he is known to climb on the desk or circulate through the room, all the while displaying his many different moods and manners with an actors sense of timing.

Whatever his methods, he demands excellence. Like an ultimatum, he implores students not to fall short of their potential. Write with clarity, conciseness and felicity of expression, he tells students as they begin their own research projects. And, he reminds them, such investigative projects always take longer than they do.

Charles Brewer is passionate about professoring  and it shows. His eagerness to help students borders on a compulsion. When asked about his office hours, he replied: Seven a.m. to seven p.m., seven days a week. He means it. Students are welcome to contact him anytime about a question or concern.

To be sure, learning with Dr. Brewer is not easy; he has a falcon's eye for error and a passion for precision that forces students to think before they speak. Impatient with mediocrity, he prods and cajoles students to do their best. Yet his demanding courses have made students better scholars and stronger persons. Over 50 of his former students have gone on to earn doctoral degrees in psychology, another 50 have earned masters degrees, and another 30 are currently in graduate school.

Dr. Brewer loves to quote the late 19th century historian Henry Adams, who said: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. Likewise, Professor Brewers luminous teaching continues to brighten generations of Furman students and alumni. He is an audacious, exhilarating force. His credo is reminiscent of what Kenneth Tynan, the provocative British drama critic, adopted as his motto: Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise a whirlwind.

Those who have been fortunate enough to know Professor Brewer as a student or colleague will never forget his cyclonic power  or his infectious love for learning.