Couch's life

Professor Couch's personal and professional style was to entice and incorporate those whom he taught and worked with into the sociological venture he eagerly pursued. Doggedly independent in his views, he worked prodigiously to involve others. Undergraduates designed and conducted research projects in his classes; he advised many, many graduate students and co-authored numerous papers with them; he sought funding for and organized symposia of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Iowa City and facilitated these often intellectually-electric fora at other sites; and he organized dozens of special topic sessions at Midwest Sociological Society meetings and American Sociological Association meetings.

Carl treated sociological work with passion and utter seriousness. If interlocutors were not persuaded to his positions, they were duty-bound to rethink and clarify their own with commensurate intensity and probity. Carl taught often and well and was infinitely patient, in his way, with all students. He was hardly indifferent to whether someone comprehended what he taught. He may have been incredulous and eventually bemusedly growl if the positions taught were contested. But he was unrequitedly dismayed and discouraged if a student would not define some sociological position and commit heart and vigorous argument to its defense.

Professor Couch is survived by his wife, four children, one brother and one sister, three grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Stephen G. Wieting

Courtesy of American Sociological Association, Footnotes, November 1994.