Retirement Reflections As I Prepare to Say Goodbye to Grove City College

Recently I was asked to email answers to questions from Grove City College’s Communications department as they prepare pieces on this year’s retirements for various venues. I am sure they will do an excellent job. However, I know they will use quotes and facts and so on, but understandably are not likely to included my rather voluminous answers in full! However, I have the space here. Below are my answers as I prepare to retire from my beloved Grove City College.

What did you like best about GCC?

The students, without a doubt, as pupils, advisees, some that I have even been honored to mentor. I am still in touch with many of my former students, and now I am seeing some sending their own children to GCC. In 28 years of being at Grove City College, on any day of the week, the best part of that day was the time I spent in the classroom or otherwise with students. But a close second is amazing faculty colleagues.  Our faculty are second to none.

What will you miss most about GCC?

Those great moments when a thoughtful student came by my office just to talk about ideas, about something we were talking about in class, or about their future. Doing collaborative works, and the retreats, with fellow faculty. I can add one other thing I will miss, that is peculiar to my administrative work – our Board of Trustees. They are an incredible, godly, dedicated group of men and women who care deeply about this college and are not only professional but a lot of fun to be around. That was the best part of my 18-month stint as Interim Provost, as much fun as I had working with faculty. I wish more faculty could get to work with our Trustees as closely as I have. But still, hands down, I will miss our students more than anything else.

What was your favorite class to teach?

I liked them all (yes, really) – with Family as a Social Institution and Classical Sociological Theory being tied for #2.  Family is my most important class and the area in which I have done most of my publishing. But hands-down I loved teaching Cultural Anthropology most of all. The highlight of each year was the day I got to present, in that class, my experience being a mostly-clandestine (for the purposes of research only) card-carrying member of a militant right-wing Jewish organization while doing anthropological field research as a graduate student at New York University. The funny thing was that I had never taught Cultural Anthropology in any of my other faculty positions prior to coming to GCC in 1996, and I was quite reluctant to take on the assignment when I was asked to do it. Then I fell in love with that class. Now, it is almost painful for me to have to walk away from it.

Do you have plans for retirement?

I have six grandchildren, five married children with my one “holdout” child getting married in Wyoming next year. My wife and I want to give them some well-deserved time – for fun and to help and support them -- while we still have the energy to do so. Of course, there is some travel we have had to put off, including a trip to Scotland and visiting my old boyhood home in Germany, maybe even my other boyhood home in Greece if funds and time allow. Maybe we will take another trip to South Korea (or two) to visit sites and dear friends there. For me, I am looking forward to time in the Fall archery hunting not only in Pennsylvania and later in Ohio when we move there, but some new places out West and near our previous home in Missouri, rocking out on my collection of guitars, amps and effects pedals, and pursuing my beloved genealogy travels and research. I hope to continue to teach on Marriage and Family issues around the country, as I have been doing for years. I also hope to develop workshops for Homeschool and Classical Christian School parents and students to help them properly research prospective evangelical colleges and universities. I may author a practical book or articles on the topic. I also intend to stay professionally active, publishing and maybe an occasional online course.

Anything you’d like to say to your former students?

Thank you for giving me the honor of teaching you, even if it was just one class. Thank you for putting up with my idiosyncrasies, including my dry and sarcastic sense of humor. Think about what you’ve learned, embrace what is true, and spit out the inevitable mistakes. If you do marry (and most of you will), marry someone who is godly, do it only when you are ready and you can’t imagine living without that person, and be prepared to give yourself to that person and your marriage totally and without reservation in good times and bad.  If you have children, remember that it is about them, not you and, like your spouse, put their needs ahead of your needs. When you mess up, repent, confess, and get back on the horse. Don’t beat yourself up too bad, we all screw up.  Most of all, follow the Lord with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul. If you have embraced Him as Lord, you will be with Him forever, so get to know Him, enjoy, serve, and adore Him, best as you can, by His grace, right now. If you have not embraced Him as Lord, today is a great day to do that – then join a strong, faithful, Bible-believing church and begin walking it out, one day at a time.

Long service at GCC?

Yes, 28 years. I started in August 1996. 

In addition to Professor of Sociology, what other roles have you had here?

I started as Assistant Professor and undertook being Chair of the Department of Sociology almost right away. In the latter role, I brought back the Sociology major (which had been cancelled by a previous President), and it increased to roughly 65 majors in just a few years. Following a consolidation of departments under then-Dean Chuck Dunn, I became chair of a new combined Department of the Social Sciences (Economics, History, Psychology, Political Science, and Sociology). When long-term professor and Chair of the Business Department, Dr. John Sparks, was appointed Dean of the Alva J. Calderwood School of Arts & Letters in 2003, I was promoted to being his Assistant Dean. (At that time and until just a couple years ago, the Calderwood School included all of Grove City College’s academic departments outside of the Hopeman School of Science, Engineering & Mathematics.)

In 2013, with Dr. Sparks’ retirement, I was promoted to Dean of the Alva J. Calderwood School of Arts & Letters following an open competition for that appointment. I held that position until the summer of 2018—five years. At that time, I was asked by President McNulty to serve as Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of GCC, when then-Provost Robert Graham resigned to become President of Redeemer University in Ontario, Canada. I held that position of Interim Provost until the last day of 2019—18 months. I think the most important thing I accomplished as Provost was conceiving and then, with a great team of faculty, the Hopeman Deans, and the support of our President and Vice Presidents, designing and launching, our new BSN of Nursing program. That was quite a feat, getting that, which involved a partnership with Butler Community College, in only 18 months along with keeping up with all of the regular responsibilities of the Provost office. I also headed the committee that selected Dr. Richard Savage as the new Dean of the Hopeman School. He has been fantastic, and I am proud that he and I are now both retiring this May.

After serving as Interim Provost, rather than returning to being Calderwood Dean, I opted to come full circle back to full time teaching and scholarship effective January 1, 2020 (with a transition period teaching half-time while helping our new Provost get settled in, and a sabbatical in the Fall 0f 2020). It was always my goal to “return to my first love” here at GCC, for at least a few years before I retired. This has been a gratifying and successful move, and I am so glad I made that choice. In addition to a full schedule as Sociology faculty member and Institute for Faith & Freedom Fellow, and on top of two Sociology texts I had already published with Cengage Publishing during my first 15 years here, I published two books with Lexham Press – Christian Marriage: A Comprehensive Introduction (2019), After the Revolution: Sex and the Single Evangelical (2022), two heavily promoted booklets (Track: Dating, Marriage & Sex: A Student’s Guide to Dating, Marriage & Sex, 2023, Christian Focus, and Why Would Anyone Get Married?, 2022, Modern Reformation’s Core Christianity project). In addition, I researched and authored a cover story on cohabitation among evangelicals for Christianity Today, numerous other articles, and a major report for the Maryland Family Institute entitled The State of the Maryland Family in 2023. But best of all, I had the incredible honor and delight of spending more time teaching the amazing students at Grove City College than I had been free to do in my years of academic administration. It was fantastic to be able to return to the GCC classroom full time for a few years, after so much time teaching less often to accommodate my administrative duties. The last thing – teaching Sociology to Grove City College students -- is what I will miss the most after my retirement. I am so grateful that God gave me the opportunity to do this so much in my last years at the college.

Further thoughts about GCC and your time there?

I have served under three presidents – John Moore, Dick Jewell, and Paul McNulty and was hired by a fourth, (interim) Garth Runion. When I started out, our new Stem building, the Breen Student Union building, the Staley Hall of Arts & Letters, and Colonial Hall apartments, did not exist. I got to watch, along with my colleagues, the old Calderwood Hall being knocked, from the window of the Faculty Lounge in the new HAL building that replaced it. We cheered. In the old Calderwood Hall, I taught on wet tar floors covered with sawdust (tiles removed due to asbestos then heat and humidity doing the rest) during that transition, sometime giving lectures at the top of my lungs with the windows open and rivet guns pounding steel on hot days (no air conditioning) while the new HAL was being built right next door. My office during my early years at GCC was a windowless former broom closet with no ventilation directly on a busy hallway. I sometimes ate and hung out with students and professors in the “real” Gedunk (GCC’s historic name for the main campus informal gathering spot) – a kind of dinette in what is now our Career Services Center. It has been quite a ride.