As Bo Diddley once famously sang, you can't judge a book by lookin' at the cover.

Except when you can, we would add, which certainly seems the case with Roger Rouland.

The former Baylor lecturer pleaded guilty this week to possession of child porn two-and-a-half years after janitorial workers found images of underage girls on one of his work computers. His sentencing for the June 2009 offense is set for March.

Rouland had taught in the English department at the Baptist university until the end of the Spring semester in 2009. Renaissance literature was his specialty. He was also an adjunct professor at McLennan Community College.

According to a short 2003 profile in the Austin Chronicle, Rouland was deeply obsessed with "hermeticism," described as "a group of magical practices that includes alchemy, astrology, sacred geometry, and numerology." Back then, he was seeking financial backing for a scholarly journal he co-edited on those medieval arts.

His former students gave him decidedly mixed reviews...

One praised his dry sense of humor, but many others wrote about his weird fixation with alchemy and several others wrote things along these lines: "Don't take him! Avoid him at all costs. He's seriously creepy and a very tough prof."

Some more:

I HATED this class. My best subject is English, but Rouland is awful. I found myself wanting to leap out the window because this class was so boring. He chooses the worst books...there are like 10 of them, you litteraly read a book a week. He is the weirdest person I have ever met. Ugh...AVOID HIM AT ALL COSTS!!!

He is a horrible teacher. Quizzes are 15% of your grade and are over the most inconsequential things in the reading. Only two test, which compromise about 65% of your final grade. His test are over insignificant little facts and the essay part should be titled: "I think this is what this means. Write a comparative essay explaining why I'm right" He is very weird and plays favorites. Do not take him.

And finally, "No one will ever have to suffer having him again because this idiot just got sent to jail."

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