Dr. Richard Brucher
Associate Professor of English
Department of English

Dr. Richard Brucher has been a pillar of the department for 35 years. Dick is a popular teacher in courses ranging from English 101 to a graduate seminar on Shakespeare and his contemporaries; he is typically rated “excellent” by 80% or more of his students, who applaud his humor, knowledge and intelligence, and the lively class discussions he fosters. Because of Dick’s experience as an actor, students in his drama classes come to understand the ways in which a play is much more than words on a page. Dick has given compelling performances in plays such as “Glengarry Glen Ross” on community theatre stages in Orono and Belfast. His research focuses on late-nineteenth and twentieth century playwrights including Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Miller and David Mamet.

Every full-time faculty member has been impacted by Dick’s work as one of the original and ongoing members of AFUM and a member of the Negotiating Team from 1999-2004. He worked on three consecutive contracts, helping to achieve the current system of post-tenure compensation review, as well as increases in rank minima that boosted the salaries of the lowest paid faculty on campus. The English Department relies upon Dick’s candor and good sense, as well as his persistence, to help us forward in complex and intractable tasks. This year, as chair of our Undergraduate Studies Committee, he managed to bring the department to agreement on learning goals and an assessment plan for the major, which was a long deferred task.

Dick Brucher is an esteemed colleague who has contributed enormously to the University of Maine for the past 35 years. Congratulations, Dick, for your achievements!