Rose-Hulman English professor to compete in Jeopardy! tournament this week
In addition to English professor and singing waitress, Dr. Julia Williams can now add Jeopardy! contestant to her resume. The Owen County resident and professor at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology will appear Thursday, Dec. 9, as part of the game show's inaugural professors tournament. Williams is one of 15 professors from various universities across the country vying for the title of champion.
For this long-time avid Jeopardy! fan, it was a dream come true.
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"It was surreal," Williams told The Herald-Times, describing her first thoughts as she stepped on set. "I mean, it's a television studio. I've been in television studios before, but now it's the one that you've seen on your television night after night after night. It's quite bright and shiny. The board is there, but there are lights in your face and cameras everywhere and the crew. I had to kind of pinch myself like 'Wow, I'm finally here.'"
Both Williams and her husband, who teaches at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, have tried out for Jeopardy! in the past, taking the online quizzes as well as, in her husband's case, competing in-person at the regional auditions that were held several years ago.
This summer, Williams passed through each stage and call-back. During one practice stage where she took a test while on Zoom, Williams went to her local library to ensure her at-home spotty wi-fi wouldn't jeopardize her chances.
In September, Williams learned she was competing not only on Jeopardy! but within a new professor-centric tournament. She was to fly out to California in late October, but in the meantime, she had to remain discreet and, of course, train.
Everyone trains for Jeopardy! differently, Williams described.
"I know that some of the professors at the tournament — they studied, they crammed, they read Quiz Bowl prep books, they tried out different kinds of buzzer ringing-in techniques. I went for the low-stakes approach," Williams said.
She played faux Jeopardy! matches with her husband, using a click pen to "buzz" in.
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"I thought it was more important that I not freak out and not kind of mentally throw myself into a spin about it," Williams said.
Her strategy while playing the game was similarly restrained. Williams said her strategy was to press the buzzer only when she was relatively confident that she knew the answer.
"I think one thing that does occur for players is sometimes they start answering, they get wrong answers. They get points reduced and suddenly they're in the hole and they can't climb back out. So I was really trying to avoid being in the hole or so far behind that I wouldn't even make it Final Jeopardy," Williams said. "That was my strategy — try to have an idea at least that I could get a right answer (or) be pretty close."
In Jeopardy!, categories are diverse and can range across several academic disciplines such as English literature, world history and science. Some categories can even include pop culture such as television trivia or modern music. One category from past games is simply entitled, "Stupid Answers" where the answer is completely or partially included in the clue itself (an example being, "It is the title of Stephen King's novel about the clown Pennywise").
"One of the things that really helps is having a wealth of useless information," Williams said. "So there's often literature categories, right? But then you might get a category that's way outside your field of interest or academic training."
For those kind of categories, Williams said she pulled from her days of traveling, bartending or working as a singing waitress in a Tennessee restaurant.
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"It's kind of those pieces of information that are in your head that you think 'Oh, yeah, I know that,' so that maybe is more useful than being a PhD in English," Williams said.
On Thursday, she will compete in the quarterfinals against Ed Hashima, history professor at California-based American River College, and Ramón Guerra, associate professor of English American literature and Latino studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. These daily champions from throughout this first round, along with four wild-card non-winners, will advance to the tournament’s semifinal round. The grand prize is $100,000 and a spot in the show’s Tournament of Champions.
Williams has her own edge in the competition. She's an English professor at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a university that specializes in engineering, mathematics and science.
For many of these STEM-centered students, Williams provides a gateway to English studies in a very accessible way.
"I think it's really important to give students this access to other things that they can be good at or be interested in," Williams said. "You know, I still have students who message me on Facebook or Instagram telling me about the plays that they're attending that they studied with me or certain books that they're reading that their interest started with classes that I teach. So that's very, very exciting to me."
Professors can expand academic interests and skills for students, which is what Jeopardy! also can accomplish by hosting a professors tournament like this one, according to Williams.
"I think (the Jeopardy! showrunners are) intent on showcasing academic people and showing the value of higher education and education in general," Williams said.
In the past, many have attributed the decades-old game show for expanding their academic horizons or even helping them learn the English language.
In midst of growing cynicism toward college spurred by student loan debt and unemployment, Jeopardy! can showcase the importance of education through this event, Williams said.
"There's been, I think, a thread of 'What's college for?' and 'What happens in college? Do we really need it?' I think this is a great way to counter that," Williams said. "Here are some faculty from very different schools — community college, technical specialized college like mine, Research I and II (universities) — so it's that variety, that difference, in all of these different disciplines and these different people that kind of said, 'Hey, this is something that America really needs to be proud of, that education is one of our strengths.'"
The professors tournament began Monday, Dec. 6 and airs daily on WTHR-NBC at 7:30 p.m.
Contact Rachel Smith at rksmith@heraldt.com or @RachelSmithNews on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana Rose-Hulman professor to compete in Jeopardy! tournament
