A serious head injury resulted in a fall and sent an NIU professor to the hospital late Saturday night.

English professor Gustaaf Van Cromphout, who has been teaching at NIU for 36 years, fell at his home Saturday night, said Janice Vander Meer, administrative secretary for the English department.

Van Cromphout was sent to Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, where he remained unconscious as of press time.

Doctors attributed the fall to a massive brain hemorrhage.

Surgery has been performed to remove pressure on the brain, Vander Meer said. The next 48 hours are critical for Van Cromphout.

“He is the English department,” Vander Meer said. “Everyone loves to take classes with him and the students love him as well.”

Van Cromphout, who specializes in New England transcendentalism, immigrated from Belgium and received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He can speak or translate more than 10 languages.

“I’ve only known him for a year, but he was one of the first people to greet me when I arrived,” said assistant English professor Kathleen Renk. “He made me feel like I was his peer immediately.”

Van Cromphout is instructing three classes this semester, including ENGL 200, 331 and 502A, a graduate class. The graduate class met Monday night and English chair Deborah Holdstein explained the situation at hand.

“Students need to know that we are on top of making sure that instructors take over his classes,” Holdstein said.

The NIU English department’s Web site was updated throughout Monday with information when it became available to staff.

“He’s a humanist in the scholarly sense of the word,” said Philip Eubanks, associate English professor. “He’s a wonderful person to talk to and I hope he’s back in the classroom real soon.”