MARSHALL — Among Southwest Minnesota State University students, Robert Ridley had a reputation as a tough instructor.

“There was probably no professor students dreaded more,” said SMSU associate professor Mark Fokken. But the interesting thing was that students’ reactions would always change after graduation.

“If they came back to campus, Bob was the professor they would seek out,” said Jan Loft, retired dean of the College of Arts, Letters and Sciences at SMSU.

“He required that students brought their very best to the classroom,” Loft said. “On the other hand, he really cared about his students.”

Former students and colleagues of Ridley said those two sides of his personality and teaching style were part of what stood out most about him.

Ridley, a former Southwest Minnesota State University communications professor with a career spanning 41 years, died Sunday in Farmington. He was 75.

Ridley started teaching in Marshall in 1969, at what was then Southwest Minnesota State College. During his time at the university, Ridley served as chairman of speech and theater for 14 years, and director of the university’s forensics program for 25 years. He also worked with students in SMSU’s radio and television programs.

“He held students to a high standard, and he held himself and his colleagues to a high standard as well,” Fokken said of Ridley. He also instilled leadership and real-world communication skills in students. Fokken said one example that stood out to him came after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Like many people around the U.S., students in the university broadcast studio were stunned by the news that day. But Ridley got the group up and working on localized coverage of the story.

“He told them, ‘This is news! We’ve got to start working on this,'” Fokken said.

Ridley was just as passionate about his interests outside of public speaking and forensics. He was an award-winning photographer known for rodeo action shots, and in 1983 he received the ProRodeo Gold Buckle for best action photo.

Ridley had something of a cowboy personality as well, said SMSU alumna Julie Choudek.

“He was larger than life,” Choudek said. As an educator and a forensics coach, “He could give you the most direct feedback,” and would always “tell it like it is,” she said.

But Ridley was also good at bringing out students’ abilities. Choudek said Ridley was the reason she decided to attend SMSU. After Choudek took a class from Ridley when she was a high school senior, he encouraged her to come to the university. Choudek would go on to be active with the SMSU forensics team, and compete at events around the country.

Choudek’s brother Tim Alcorn said he also saw the different aspects of Ridley’s personality while he was an undergraduate student at SMSU from 1986 to 1989.

“He was very direct in his conversation, and in his critiques of what you did,” Alcorn said. The feedback wasn’t always easy to take, but Alcorn said Ridley helped prepare him for the real world.

“Probably one of the best classes I had with Bob was persuasion. He took the subject seriously,” Alcorn said. Ridley saw his students who committed to speech communications as showing they had potential.

“He saw it as his duty to develop that potential as far as he could,” and he had confidence in your ability to get there, Alcorn said.

SMSU alumnus Aaron Ziemer said Ridley was one of the first people who encouraged him to go into radio, and taught him a lot of important skills.

“To have success in his classes, you had to be prepared,” Ziemer said. “It taught me to go into every new thing with preparation.”

“He demanded a lot of students, but when you were able to have success, he was also really caring toward you,” Ziemer said. Ridley would have long conversations with his former students, Ziemer said.

While Ridley had high standards for both SMSU students and faculty members, Loft said he also had a sense of humor.

“He was a lot of fun as a colleague,” Loft said. She and Ridley had some long-running jokes, like making $1 bets with each other about events on campus.

“We had this same $1 bill that went back and forth,” she said.

Family was very important to Ridley, Loft said. Ridley’s wife Marian, and their daughters and grandkids “meant the world to him,” she said.

Celebration of life services for Ridley will be held Oct. 12 in Okoboji, Iowa.