Walk into any of political science Professor Neal Wise’s classes, and sit and wait for his greeting: “Question number one…”

Wise and his sense of humor have been part of St. Edward’s University for 45 years.

This semester will be his last before bowing out on his favorite stage: the classroom.

“Everyone says ‘How long are you going to work?’ and most everybody replies that they will work until they wake up someday and it’s time to move on; so it’s time for me to move on to something else,” Wise said.

Wise is not concerned with what he plans to do after leaving. He said that he “will do different things than I have.” While he may not have planned everything out, Wise wants to read five hours a day, play some golf, do some yard work and travel.

“I’ve been to all the lower 48 states, I’ve never been to Alaska or Hawaii. I might want to do that,” Wise said.

The only problem with visiting Alaska and Hawaii is that Wise likes to drive.

“Any road that I’ve not been on before I find it beckoning to me to come take a look,” he said. “There’s lots of roads, especially in Wyoming and Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. I’ve been up and down the pacific coast highway from Mexico to Canada, but I haven’t driven on the East Coast from Maine to Florida.”

There is one place Wise knows he wants to visit — President George W. Bush’s presidential library; it’s the only presidential library he has not visited.

Every story has a beginning and end; retirement may be the end of Wise’s long teaching career at St. Edward’s but he originally got his job thanks to a friend who was teaching here.

Although the Texas weather had a major influence on his decision to teach here, Wise wanted to find out if the campus had a sense of place. Wise pulled out a framed photo of the student union at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — where he went to graduate school — and talked about the great sense of place the school has.

Once he discovered that St. Edward’s had a sense of place, too, he made his decision and has taught almost continuously since August 1969; there was a period of three years in the mid-’70s when he did not teach.

Wise has had an impact on the department to the classes required for the major, the current professors and, of course, the students.

“I just think that what Dr. Wise brings as a professor is so valuable and I feel like the future (political science) kids are going to be missing out on stuff,” senior political science major Sam Haynes said.

Senior political science major Marlana Svoboda is sad that Wise is leaving, but hopes he has a fun retirement doing what he wants to do.

Another political science student, senior Dellea Copeland, shared her favorite memory of being in Wise’s class.

“He walked out of the classroom in the middle of my presentation on Gandhi,” she said. “I realized he likely went to the restroom during my presentation because he trusted my analysis. At least, I hope that was the case.”

Many professors’s first experiences with Wise was during their job interview.

“I met Neal on my job interview and it was Easter-time 2003,” associate dean of the Behavioral and Social Sciences school and political science Professor Brian Smith said. “We had gone out to lunch and his contact lens got stuck in his eye wrong and he couldn’t see clearly out of it so he asked me to drive his car and it was a standard. I thought that was a big test. I said to myself, ‘Thank God I can drive stick.’”

Wise and Smith’s colleague Professor Chad Long consider Wise an institution at St. Edward’s.

“If you stop and really think about 40 years, you know devoting 40 years of your life to any institution that’s pretty impressive,” he said. “It’s kind of rare in any field to have somebody with his kind of longevity, and I think it speaks well to his commitment to St. Edward’s, his belief in the mission of St. Edward’s and his love of the students.”

Wise is unsure about his impact at St. Edward’s, but he knows what he will miss the most about students.

“I think I will miss the part of the individual students’ story,” Wise said. “They come here and are in their early chapters, but when they get here they start writing some new chapters and that’s fun to see— enormously satisfying. People show up they are just out of high school and when they leave they are ready to start shaping the world. They know a lot more about who they are. They got some ideas about what they want to do with their life, and hopefully they learned some stuff here about being an ethically aware thinker who’s ready to do some stuff. That’s very satisfying.”

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