By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The day after Marc Simon, chair of the Political Science Department, died BGSU President Rodney Rogers was searching for just the right words.
“Model faculty member,” Rogers said. “We are just going to miss him so much,” both as a teacher and as a scholar.
After a few minutes and an anecdote, he said of Simon, who also directed Peace Studies: “He was a gentle man and a gentleman.”
Simon, 61, who had a 35-year tenure at BGSU died Dec. 6, following a brain hemorrhage.
Speaking a couple days later, David Jackson, Simon’s long-time colleague in Political Science, concurred with Rogers’ assessment.
“He was actively nice, legitimately caring about people,” he said. Out for drinks, watching sports, Simon would engage those he knew least at the gathering. That’s reflected in the number of messages, Jackson has received since news of Simon’s passing. “Marc’s foundational attribute was caring about people.”
Before Jackson knew him as a faculty colleague, he knew him as professor. Jackson received his master’s from BGSU in 1992, and took a graduate seminar in international relations with him. Simon was “extremely knowledgable, and expected a lot of us in terms of reading and making presentations in class. He challenged us in terms of what we thought no matter what side of the spectrum we were coming from,” Jackson said.
“He also graded my comprehensive exams for the master’s degree. He passed me but he did so with kind criticism.”
Jackson though wanted to make it clear that while Rogers’ description as “a gentle man” was accurate, he didn’t want people to come away with the idea that Simon was not strong.
His strength was evident on the basketball court, Jackson said, where, true to his Indiana roots, he was “very fluid and good.”
“Marc could be tough as nails,” Jackson said.
Simon was firm in his commitment to principles and ideals. “He absorbed a lot of conflict and difficulty and managed it.”
During his various terms as chair, Simon faced dealt with a department that was smoldering with long-held grudges and disagreements.
Simon knew how to handle interpersonal and professional conflict. “I watched him manage the difficult people in such a way as to take concerns seriously and not let them drag everything down,” Jackson said.
“He worked to rebuild the department. As older faculty, “more entrenched in the conflict” left, Simon worked with other members of the faculty to hire people who wanted to be at BGSU, who took research and teaching seriously.
The department now has 15 faculty members who work well together. “To me the success of the department, the collegiality of the department, is a testament to him,” Jackson said. “He gave a lot of himself and did a lot of work to rebuild the department into one of the more successful departments on campus.”
Rogers said graduates of the department often have stories about Marc Simon, about how he cared deeply about their success, and went the extra mile.”
Rogers saw that when his son Isaac was at BGSU.
An economics major he was taking an international relations course with Simon. During the spring of 2020 they were going to do the Model UN, for which Simon served as advisor. Then they learned “everything was going to shut down” because of COVID-19, Rogers said.
But Simon was intent that the students would not miss out. He still wanted students to participate in the program.
“Marc did all this extra work, so these 12 or 14 students had a chance to have that kind of experience. He created that literally in two days,” Rogers said. “That is the kind of faculty member he was, just so dedicated to students.”
His wife, Maria Simon, said this weekend that when she and their three grown children, Anne-Marie, Genevieve, and Martin, visited his office, the equipment he used for that session of Model UN was still there, just in case it was ever needed again.
