Dive Summary:
- The apparent suicide Tuesday of 59-year-old communications professor James Aune left the Texas A&M University campus and broader academic community, who saw him as a master of written and oral language and remembered his inspirational and outgoing personality.
- Aune, who jumped from a campus parking garage, was a tenured professor and chair of the school's communications department.
- Classes at Texas A&M are not yet back in session, but formal and informal remembrances of his life and work will likely take place, and George Washington University professor Margaret Soltan, who has blogged extensively on the issue of suicide, says students can be among those most affected by the suicide of a professor.
From the article:
James Aune's apparent suicide this week at Texas A&M University stunned the campus and the broader academic community - especially rhetoricians, among whom he was a leading scholar. Since Tuesday, when 59-year-old Aune died after jumping from a campus parking garage, students and colleagues have remembered him on social networking pages and in news accounts as a dedicated teacher and mentor possessing both a vibrant personality and mastery of written and oral language, not someone who outwardly demonstrated mental health issues. ...