Harold E. Nugent ’58, age 77, died suddenly on October 14, 2010, at his home in Gainesville, Fla. Dr. Nugent taught English and linguistics at KSC from 1965–1989 and helped start the Center for Writing while he was here. As a proponent of developmental studies, he helped design and deliver a course on critical thinking and supported the assessment of all incoming freshmen for placement in English composition. He was also a dedicated environmental educator who earned several awards and citations for the conservation work he did in Florida.
The Gainesville Sun published a nice obituary for him. Dr. Nugent touched many lives while he was at KSC. If you were one of those lucky lives, please use the “comments” link to let us know.
Harold was a fun, but demanding teacher. I took several graduate level courses with him in the 70s while working on my masters. We laughed a lot in his class. When I was graduate assistant in the English dept, he asked me to teach a section of ENG 101 Freshman Comp. Little did I realize at the time that I would be doing that for the next 30 years. He encouraged me in my writing and presenting (at conferences) and seemed proud whenever I got published. Later he came to me and told me that he and Susan were going to open a Writing Center and asked me if I would help them. I worked in the Writing Center for several years as a professional tutor and designed and conducted all sorts of workshops. When they left KSC, Susan recommeded me as the interim director/coordinator of the Center. What I admired most about Harold is that he always spoke highly of his colleagues. You could tell he really liked and admired them.
Anybody remember chain letters? Harold allowed me to hustle like a snake oil salesman one day in our freshman composition class-got up, used the black board, made sense to me…at the time, of course. Then after moving on in ’67 for a little tustle with the VC in the Iron Triangle-Aug68-June70, upon my return I had him again with required course for English majors education certification- Descriptive Grammar- which ran ever so contrary to my traditional sentence diagramming which had been pounded into me by a Greek linguistics expert in Hollis High. Such a quandry-but he did find me amusing when I stumped him with term “adverbial noun”. He gave me opinions when I asked, and for that I appreciated his honesty.