Faculty Profile: Mel Storm

Melvin Storm, professor of English, wants to see the world – and he is already half way there.

Storm has spent his entire teaching career of nearly 40 years at Emporia State, but has not confined himself to the borders of Kansas, or even the U.S. Storm’s research and curiosity has taken him across half the globe. He’s seen most of Europe, parts of Asia and some of Africa.

Storm said that Africa, by far, is his favorite place to travel. The walls of his office are covered with photos that he has taken of animals from the places he has travelled.

“I love the mystery of it,” Storm said. “I’m fascinated by the wildlife. Africa has provided the most memorable experiences I’ve had with a camera.”

Storm has photographed elephants, a set of lions taking down a zebra and a leopard getting ready to eat a gazelle, among other things.

“The leopard was carrying his own body weight up the tree,” Storm said. “He carried (the gazelle) up. Then he carried it out of the tree just like a cat carrying a mouse and wandered off into the thickets with it.”

While traveling is his favorite past time, teaching is also something that Storm loves to do.

“He’s very informative,” said Eric Hemphill, junior English major. “He has lots of example to back up what he’s saying.”

Originally, Storm was going to be a physicist. Through his entire high school career, he took as much math and science as he could.

“A few weeks before I graduated (high school), I decided that I really wanted to spend my time doing what I enjoy most which, while I always enjoyed science, was reading and writing about literature,” Storm said.

After graduating from the University of Wyoming with a master’s degree, Storm went on to get his doctorate degree from the University of Illinois. Storm taught a few courses as a graduate teaching assistant in Illinois before he made his way to ESU.

“I’ve been teaching here since the Nixon administration,” Storm said. “Watergate happened when I was here.”

Storm mostly teaches linguistic classes and says that he likes working with the technicalities of language. However, his favorite subject to teach is early literature, such as Geoffrey Chaucer.

“Dr. Storm always helps everyone out,” said Kevin Rabas, assistant professor of English. “Since I’m a young faculty member, it’s been an honor to learn the ropes from him.”

While the language classes that he teaches are all based on English, Storm has learned a few others through the research that he has done over the years. He hasn’t used the languages in a while, but he said that he was once fluent in French, knew some Italian and Latin and studied medieval French as an undergraduate student. Storm also said that all of the languages help him in his work.

“I’d like to be able to learn Swahili, but I’m never in Africa long enough to make that big of a dent in it,” Storm said.

Storm is currently working on a paper that he will be taking to Minneapolis next month. It is about decapitation and dismemberment in medieval history and medieval literature. More specifically, Storm’s paper will be over the late 14th century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”

Storm has been working on a couple of books that have yet to see publication. Both books are centered around Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. He has put aside the books for now to work on shorter projects.

“Sometimes I’m more of a sprinter than a long distance runner,” Storm said. “I love putting an article together.”

There are several things that Storm still hopes to do in his lifetime, including a tiger safari in India and searching for mountain gorillas in Uganda.

“A safari always means cameras with me, not guns,” Storm said. “That would be at the top of our want list – go to India and follow tigers around.”

Storm says that his life motto is “live well and do good work.” He hopes that he has lived up to that by successfully teaching students what they need to be prepared for outside of college. Storm will not reveal his age.

“I’m in my 60s,” Storm said. “That’s always kind of a mystery among my students. I always like to keep them guessing.”