The teachers that influence our lives

If you've never had a strong bond with one of your professors, this story won't mean anything to you. If you've managed to go through high school and college without a teacher influencing your life and inspiring you to test your limits, you won't be able to relate.

For me, that teacher was Dr. William Curran, professor of Computer Science at Southeastern Louisiana University.

He taught my first CS class, my last CS class, and three others in-between. His "Survey of Programming Languages" final exam was the last test on the last day of my undergraduate college career. I remember sitting there, my exam finished, looking around at my classmates and thinking that this was the end of an important stage in my life, and that Dr. Curran was a huge factor in my success. When I turned in my test, he called me by my last name, as he always did, and said something about the real world and how it would be easy for me since I had worked so hard. The previous semester, I was his student-assistant in the introductory programming class that I had taken from him 3 years earlier. I graded his students' programs, reinforced the points he made when the students were working on programming exercises and insisted that they follow his coding philosophies.

I spent time in his office discussing Computer Science-related issues even when I wasn't in his classes.

After I graduated, I returned as a guest speaker to his Software Engineering class on 4 different occasions. I told his students that the things he was teaching them would serve them well in the real world.

He invited me to sit on two discucssion panels with him. He recommended me for membership in the Computer Science departmental committee as SLU's at-large representative.

It was with great sadness and sense of personal loss that I learned Dr. Curran was killed in a car accident on his way to campus on Wednesday, April 7th. He was 68 years old.

He will be greatly missed.

From the student-run newspaper, the Lion's Roar:

Professor dies in interstate accident
Dr. Bill Curran, 68, of Covington,was pronounced dead at the scene after his vehicle was struck head-on in the early hours of Wednesday, March 31. His car was in the right, westbound lane of I-12 near mile marker 49.5, when a car traveling eastbound crossed the median, impacting Curran's vehicle. This caused Curran's automobile to spin counter-clockwise and roll over several times before it came to rest off of the right side of the roadway, according to Sgt. Randy Fandal with the Louisiana State Police Troop L. The car that struck Curran's 2003 Toyota SUV was a 1991 Mazda 626 driven by Kimberly R. Spears, 20, of Hammond. Spears was injured in the accident and transported to Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Police officials said Spears lost control of her vehicle for unknown reasons, causing her to veer into oncoming traffic in the westbound lanes. Spears has been charged with careless operation of a vehicle and negligent homicide according to Fandal.

Curran was an associate professor in the Computer Science department at Southeastern. The University released a statement expressing its condolences on his death. The statement also indicated that his family said there was to be no wake or funeral services per Dr. Curran's request.