Dr. Victor Matthews, Professor of Religious Studies, Dean of the College of Humanities and Public Affairs, and thesis advisor and teacher par excellence, announced that he will retire from Missouri State University in June 2023.

While we congratulate him on his retirement after an outstanding career at MSU, we also know how much he will be missed.  Many, many students benefitted from his teaching and advisement, as well as the many new faculty members whom he mentored during their first few years teaching at MSU.

On a personal level, Victor taught my first graduate course in Religious Studies at MSU; I was immediately hooked on the subject and his teaching.  He, along with Dr. Jim Moyer and Dr. Steve Berkwitz, comprised my thesis committee; I (and probably many other students) will be forever grateful for their captivating and rigorous teaching, helpful advice, and kind encouragement.

Victor is a walking bibliography for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies: whenever I thought my research was done, he would list ten more books that I should read.  I ran out of time before he ran out of book suggestions.  🙂

Later, after I was hired as the administrative assistant in Religious Studies here, Victor continued to generously advise and support my work, as well as that of our department heads, faculty, and students through the years.

Originally this post was going to be a simple list of Victor’s accomplishments while at MSU, but it morphed into something more personal.  However, if you are interested in his many accomplishments, please see the blogpost from Strategic Communications (where I grabbed the great photo seen at the top of this post):

https://news.missouristate.edu/2022/09/02/vic-matthews-retirement/