Schreiner University’s inaugural Margaret Syers Lecture on October 13 featured noted Shakespeare scholar Dr. Dennis Huston, a Rice University English professor. Dr. Huston spoke about the film “Shakespeare In Love”, the movie’s historical accuracy, its comic undertones and its relation to “Romeo and Juliet” and entertained the audience with interesting and little-known facts about William Shakespeare and the movie.

The inaugural speaker, Dr. Huston, has an impressive list of credentials, including having taught a wide range of subjects at Rice since joining the staff in 1969, including Shakespeare, Shakespeare on Film, and Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. He was named Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and received the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation prize. He has also acted in Shakespearean and modern plays at Rice, including “Measure for Measure,” “The Tempest,” Twelfth Night” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

The Margaret Syers Lecture Series was endowed by Susan Stark and William Syers, children of the longtime Kerrville educator, Margaret Syers, who passed away in February. Mrs. Syers was an English teacher and a faithful member of First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville.

Her children said they hope the endowment will bring to Schreiner outstanding speakers on topics of literary interest for the benefit of the campus and the community.

“What better way to honor Margaret Syers, a teacher and lover of language and literature, than through an endowment to bring outstanding speakers to our city to share their own knowledge and enthusiastic love of these same things?” said University President Tim Summerlin. He added that the lecture series was another way for Schreiner University to bring an even larger array of events to the community.

“One mark of a first-class institution of higher learning is the program of enrichment and learning that it offers its students and community beyond the formal academic program,” Summerlin said. “Adding the Margaret Syers Lecture to a growing array of events shaping our intellectual and cultural atmosphere at Schreiner and in Kerrville helps us make just such a mark. This is one way we can reach our expectation that ‘all learn, all the time’.”

Joe Benham, a journalist and long time friend of Mrs. Syers, came up with the idea of an endowment in her name, saying she had a great love of the English language and great literature, especially Shakespeare.

“She was a person of unshakeable convictions, but she loved debating people, myself included, who dared to question those beliefs,” Benham said. “We never won, but we had some great discussions.”

Former student of Mrs. Syers, Joe Herring Jr., remembers her as a strict taskmaster who would not let her students get away with giving second-rate efforts.

“She was one of my favorite teachers at Tivy High School, and I know she had a direct influence on me, on my love of writing and literature,” he said.