Invasion of Privacy: Professor of English and creative writing, Dr. Rob Doggett
Photo Courtesy of Rob Doggett
This week, The Lamron staff decided that it was high time to sit down with Dr. Rob Doggett, professor of the SUNY Geneseo English department, who recently received the rank of Distinguished Service Professor.
Dr. Doggett has been a professor in the English department at Geneseo since 2005; he served as chair of the department for six years, and currently serves as the chair for the College Senate. He is well known among English majors for his engaging and discussion-oriented classes, many of which focus on careful analysis of poetry.
Dr. Doggett’s path to his current position was not always clear—in fact, he initially enrolled in college as a business major, and remained one for the first two years of his undergraduate experience. He notes that this was largely at the behest of his parents and that he was “really not good at it,” receiving a D+ in one memorable accounting class. His path diverged when he took an English class for his general education requirement and found that he loved diving into the classics and investigating authors like Dante, Homer, and Milton; deciding to follow his passion, in the spring of his sophomore year, he told his parents that he would continue as a business major so long as he could also acquire a degree in English.
Eventually, once it became clear that English was an area he both enjoyed and excelled in, Professor Doggett abandoned his business major altogether. He comments, “I enjoyed writing. I enjoyed reading. I enjoyed all my humanities classes.”
As he discovered later, he also enjoyed teaching. Following a year in which he worked “all sorts of jobs,” including work in warehouses and factories, as a custodian, and as a substitute teacher, Dr. Doggett decided to enroll in graduate school. He “wasn’t really sure what [he] wanted to do,” but knew for certain that he loved reading and studying; provided the opportunity to attend the University of Maryland with a paid teaching assistant position, he decided to take a chance and see how it went. Professor Doggett “loved the work as soon as [he] got there.” After acquiring his PhD in 2002, he pursued a career in higher education, initially working at SUNY Potsdam for three years before moving to Geneseo.
Professor Doggett’s love for the Geneseo community is evident as he describes what led him here 21 years ago and what has kept him here since. He reminisces on his first visit to Geneseo after making the final cut in the application process, remarking, “I came to campus in March and it was beautiful. It was a snowy March day and the village was so pretty.” Sitting at the Big Tree Inn on Main Street, Dr. Doggett listened to two Geneseo students discussing their classes; the nature of their conversation—the vibe of the student population as a whole—paired with Geneseo’s beautiful and personally convenient location sealed the deal.
Over the years, Dr. Doggett’s love for the student population has not waned, and neither has his love for the faculty, which he highlights as “fantastic.” He concludes that what he values most is “the community of people who are interested in literature and art and the life of the mind and [are] committed to public education.” He “wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere else” and “couldn’t imagine a better job.”
In his years at Geneseo, Dr. Doggett has taught many classes; among his most rewarding is his study abroad program, ENGL 280: Poetry of W.B. Yeats. The three-week program is primarily conducted at the Yeats International Summer School, which has been operational for nearly 70 years and is situated in Sligo, a village in the west of Ireland. It is not a traditional university, which means that “it draws people from all over the world who are not just undergrads.” Through the program, students can both learn from and form connections with scholars from top universities around the world. Professor Doggett piloted the program at Geneseo, inspired by his own fulfilling experience at the Yeats International School during his time as a graduate student.
Dr. Doggett reflects on the parts of the experience he finds most meaningful, noting that “you go to a place where everyone is into literature and art, and there’s poetry readings and there’s plays and there’s dancing and music…[you are] in a small community where everyone’s into that kind of world…And [it’s] not just the college experience of that, but people from all different walks of life.” Students stand at Knocknarea and read Yeats’ “Red Hanrahan’s Song About Ireland,” experiencing his site of inspiration firsthand. They are immersed in the community and are able to “get to know the rhythms of the town,” learning the shops and cafes and attending local events.
The class opens up a world of possibilities for Geneseo students, many of whom have not yet experienced travel abroad. If you are at all enticed—how could you not be?—applications for summer of 2027 are currently open and will close on Nov. 29.
As his takeaway message, Dr. Doggett highlights the importance of living in the present. He acknowledges that many students feel “the weight of future expectations and the sense that everything they’re doing should be focused on their career.” He wants students to feel comfortable entering into partnerships with their professors and engaging with the community side of their majors. He hopes that students can pursue research opportunities, fostering their “interest in the subject for the subject’s sake,” and not solely for a grade. He encourages students to be okay with uncertainty, to be okay with saying “I’m doing something I like, and that’s enough.”
The future is unpredictable and unmanageable. Professor Doggett advises that “you cannot manage future happiness in the present…you don’t know what’s going to come about and you don’t even know who you’ll be.” The world wants you to be a noun, to fix who you are and your identity; Dr. Doggett encourages you to embrace the verb—the experimentation, the becoming.