As a professor, Martin R. Stoller was simply electric. From the moment his students stepped into his Northwestern University classroom–which they affectionately called “Marty World”–he commanded their attention with his booming voice, animated gestures and a glare so piercing that former students swore it could burrow holes in steel.
In the world of theater, it’s called “breaking down the fourth wall,” penetrating the invisible line that separates actors from the audience. And Stoller’s flamboyant, passionate and occasionally outrageous teaching style blasted right through it.
His courses in crisis communications at the university’s Kellogg School of Management were more popular than Oprah Winfrey’s–who briefly taught a course on leadership–and sparked “bidding wars” among students competing for one of 30 coveted slots in his management communications class.
Stoller, 49, a clinical professor of organization behavior who consulted for Fortune 500 companies, died of cancer Saturday, April 2, at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
“Professor Stoller’s rapier wit, rich insights, refreshing candor and boundless energy had a profound impact on many. He was one in a million,” said former student Paul Earle Jr., who considered Stoller a mentor. “He truly cared deeply about his students and committed himself to them fully.”
A resident of Kenilworth, Stoller was born and raised in New York and came to Illinois in the 1970s to attend Northwestern University. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication studies from Northwestern in 1984 and 1986 respectively and a doctorate in rhetoric from the school in 1989.
Stoller became a professor at the Kellogg School in 1988 and developed innovative curriculum for Kellogg’s business communications course. He co-developed Corporations and the Media, the first Kellogg course in corporate media relations, public relations and crisis management.
An outspoken contrarian and risk-taker, Stoller was proud of the fact that in 1991 graduating Kellogg students selected him professor of the year, the same year that the business school was ranked No. 1 by Business Week magazine.
“When he taught, he really performed,” said his wife, Melissa, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. “His students really loved him.”
Stoller, who always kept one foot in academia and the other in the business world, founded a computer software company with two Northwestern students in 1994 called Plextel Telecommunications, which used a form of artificial intelligence programming to launch a computer dating service. The company started with $30,000 and was sold in 1999 to CUC Inc. for millions.
In 1997 Stoller co-authored the book “High Visibility,” which explored the overexposure of celebrity endorsers.
Two years later, Stoller launched the first entirely Internet-based proxy contest when he organized investors of a high-risk lending company that had filed for bankruptcy. With a professor from Yeshiva University in New York, he co-founded a Web site and an investment adviser firm, which used the Internet and a mutual fund respectively to rally shareholders against corporate greed and ineptitude.
Fortune 500 companies such as Hyatt Hotels and Anheuser-Busch turned to Stoller for crisis management help, but teaching fueled him. In 1999, he retired after a brain tumor was diagnosed.
Stoller is also survived by three daughters, Natasha, Bonnie, and Posy; a brother, Leigh; and a sister, Fran.A memorial dinner will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Dave’s Italian Kitchen, 1635 Chicago Ave., Evanston.
