On April 25, 2009, the College of Charleston and the Charleston community lost a beloved teacher, mentor, scholar, and colleague, William V. Moore, distinguished professor of political science.
In his 37 year career at the college, Dr. Moore was, first and foremost, a truly devoted teacher and mentor. He held many different titles and undertook many responsibilities over the span of his career, but he always identified himself as a teacher. His courses were invariably the first to reach capacity; one of the most persistent tasks for the chair of the department was explaining to students that there simply were no more seats available in Dr. Moore's class. He always had an extremely large number of advisees and took on special responsibilities for student-athletes, always mindful of the special challenges posed by pursuing both athletic and academic achievement.
A caring father and family man, Bill, balanced the life of a teacher with an impressive scholarly output, a passionate commitment to College of Charleston athletics, and a willingness to share his expertise with both print and television journalists in Charleston and across the country. He was as much the voice of the political science department as he was the voice of Cougar basketball.
Bill earned his BA and masters degrees from Southern Illinois University and his Ph.D. from Tulane. He was a well-known expert on South Carolina politics, Southern politics, and political extremism. He was the author of Political Extremism in the United States, co-author of South Carolina Politics and Government, as well as numerous scholarly articles, encyclopedia entries, and publications on Southern and extremist politics, civil rights, electoral politics, campaign spending, and intergovernmental relations. He served as chair of the department of political science, director of the master of public administration program, speaker of the faculty, director of summer programs, director of the Taft Institute for high school civics teachers, NCAA faculty representative, and vice president and president of the Southern Conference. In 1997, Bill was designated as the S.C. Governor's Professor of the Year. He has also been awarded the distinguished teaching award at the college (1981), as well as the distinguished service award (2000), the distinguished advising award (2001), and the first-ever distinguished teacher-scholar award (2001). Bill also served on the Board of Advisors at the Charleston School of Law.
He will be greatly missed by students, student-athletes, alumni, faculty, staff, and area journalists. He is survived by Kathryn Heape; his son, Mark Sheldon Moore; his daughter, Laura Meredith Moore; his sister, Francis Moore; Mikko Lamminen; Erik Lamminen; Stephanie Heape Reller; Jason Reller; Quinn and Brewington Reller; Laura Heape Brisson; Bradley Brisson; and Kathryn Brisson.
