Richard J. Schieber

Instructor in Modern Languages
Cordingley Teaching Chair
Appointed
2005
Richard Schieber

"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen. The one who does not know a foreign language is ignorant of his own." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Education

M.A. University of Alabama

Ph.D. University of Alabama

Biography

Born in Strasbourg, France, Mr. Schieber grew up in a small village just south of the city. He spoke Alsatian until elementary school, where he first learned French. When he was in third grade his family moved across the river, to Germany, where he learned his third language. After high school, when he did his military service, his knowledge of French and English (language number four) allowed him to take on interesting jobs with NATO troops.

In 1983 Mr. Schieber came to the United States for a year, as an exchange student at the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!). He returned to Germany and started his undergraduate degree there but then completed his DEUG at Nancy, in France. Having met his future wife in Tuscaloosa, he moved back to the University of Alabama and completed his advanced degrees there. While finishing his dissertation, he taught French and Latin at a small independent school. The next move was to the Roger Williams University, in Rhode Island (which he had to find on a map…). After six years, he continued north to join the Exeter faculty.

Mr. Schieber teaches all levels of French and German and has served as department chair. He has been a dorm head and has coached club soccer and fitness. Beyond Exeter, he is a reader for the French AP test.

With his wife and son (Exeter class of ’16), Mr. Schieber loves trout fishing, and they go camping every summer in Maine or in the southern Smoky Mountains of Georgia and North Carolina.