PROFESSOR EMERITUS STRIKES CHORD WITH DONATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 11, 2000
Fairbanks, Alaska - Professor Emeritus Rudy Krejci has struck a chord with students in the University of Alaska Fairbanks music department to the tune of a $20,000 donation for annual scholarships.
The scholarship will emphasize the study of the foundations behind music, including theory, history, philosophy and psychology of the field. Krejci's latest donation is just another milestone in his 40-year history of giving to UAF students as a philosophy professor, faculty leader and student mentor. But his journey towards higher education instruction was rough hewn and hard fought.
Krejci was expelled from all schools of higher learning in his native Czechoslovakia in 1949– not because of bad grades or poor class attendance, but because of his involvement with student political groups working to overturn the Communist government. He spent the next five years hiding in secrecy under threat of imprisonment before escaping to Vienna, Austria.
Eventually Krejci went to Innsbruck, where he was able to continue coursework towards a doctoral degree in philosophy and history. After working for Radio Free Europe in Munich and Bechtel Engineering in San Francisco, he earned enough money to finish his doctorate at the University of Innsbruck in 1959.
One year later Krejci was hired by University of Alaska President Ernest Patty to teach German and Russian in Fairbanks– just two of the six languages which he speaks, reads or can write. Since then, Krejci has become a faculty cornerstone on the college campus, founding the philosophy department in 1963 and becoming the first dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, which was created at his instigation in 1975.
While at UAF, Krejci taught courses ranging from epistemology, the branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge, to the philosophical impact of contemporary physics and other sciences.
He also co-instructed several courses in mathematical sciences and organized seminars with several Nobel Prize winners, such as Eugene Wigner, John Wheeler, Richard Feynman, Sir George Porter and other scientists. Krejci has offered seminars for UAF's various science institutes on the interplay between science and the humanities.Although he retired in 1997, Krejci is still involved with the UAF community, as a faculty doctoral program adviser, mentor for several students, volunteer classroom instructor and guest lecturer.
Krejci himself has played a positive role influencing his students, but the new scholarship he established recognizes his former professors and UAF colleagues who were deeply involved with the study of philosophy and music, and their shared impact on humanity.
Krejci's past professors honored by the scholarship include his uncle, Josef Tomastik, past director of Leos Janacek's Conservatory of Music in Brno, Czech Republic, and Sir Karl Popper, Krejci's philosophy mentor and former professor of logic and the scientific method at the London School of Economics.
The music scholarship honors the memory of several UAF professors and honorary degree recipients, including Keith Runcorn, former Sydney Chapman Endowed Chair in the Natural Sciences, mathematics professor emeritus Jack Distad; past mathematics professor Robert Piacenza; former music professor Thomas Johnston; and local artists Joe and Claire Fejes. Claire Fejes received an honorary doctorate degree from UAF in 1982, while her husband received a meritorious service award in 1995.
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CONTACT: UAF Professor Emeritus Rudy Krejci at (907) 456-8257 or Jillian Swope, University Relations, at (907) 474-7778.
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