Department of Classical Studies

Barbara P. Wallach joined the MU faculty in 1980. She emphasizes student involvement in the learning process by engaging her students in lively classroom discussions and re-enactments of historical events.

Her concern doesn’t stop with academics – she shows a level of compassion and warmth that is often unmatched by her peers. One student wrote, “I felt she was genuinely concerned about my success in her class. My writing has improved, and I wanted to excel for myself and professor Wallach.”

Wallach doesn’t only serve as a teacher, but as an “unofficial mentor” to faculty members and students. A peer wrote, “There’s nothing formal about this, no title proclaiming her departmental mentor, nothing that requires her to spend hour after hour in her office listening to sob stories. That’s just the way she is: a selfless person who cares sincerely about other people, not just what they’re learning, but how they’re feeling.”

Wallach’s professional awards include the Purple Chalk Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1987 and a 1990 Faculty/Alumni Award. She received her bachelor of arts in Latin at Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia, and both her master of arts in classics and PhD in classical philology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.