Serial interviews. Business lunches. The drudgery of shaking hands, remembering names, making long-distance phone calls. Single-use shampoo bottles and scratchy hotel towels. This is what Hillsdale College subjects its professorial candidates to before making a hiring decision.
It’s what Kelly Franklin called home about.
“It was wonderful,” Franklin said. “It was fun. It was also long and somewhat stressful and it was a ton of work to prepare for. But as soon as I got to Hillsdale, it all clicked. I called my wife after the first night — I couldn’t sleep! I didn’t sleep more than a few hours each night. I was so jazzed up and energized by the conversations I had with the faculty and the students.”
Franklin, the man who bested more than 80 applicants throughout the hiring process, is refreshingly earnest. A student by heart and educator by profession, his philosophy is simple.
“I think that, when you’re teaching literature, it relates to the impact literature has not just on reason but on the heart,” Franklin said. “What teachers are trying to do, particularly at places like Hillsdale, is communicate goodness, truth, and beauty.”
Sophomore Josiah Lippincott, one of the students involved in the interview and selection process, noted that Franklin’s style was very much in keeping with Hillsdale’s commitment to dynamic, authentic classroom engagement.
“We all very much liked him,” Lippincott said. “We really wanted someone who could engage with people like myself, who haven’t had much advanced experience writing: a teacher who would let us be able to really get something out of the class, even if we weren’t English majors.”
In addition to fostering meaningful discussions within the classroom, Franklin’s personal philosophy appears closely related to the liberal arts orientation of Hillsdale’s students and faculty. Franklin stressed the idea that classic literature is more than an aggregate of arcane and irrelevant texts. The great books, when approached correctly, have implications reaching far beyond a student’s transcript.
“As an educator,” Franklin said, “I think that literature goes a long way to reach human beings in a way that is more than intellectual. Art and literature touch us in an emotional way. It touches our hearts. You get a great impact by reaching the intellectual as well as the human element in your students.”
English Department Chair Michael Jordan said that Franklin’s educational background as well as his personal outlook made him a good fit for the position.
“In the English department, two-thirds of our teaching is in the great books,” Jordan said. “One of the major qualities we were looking for was someone who has the ability to teach the great books of the Western, British, and American traditions. In addition, Franklin focuses on Walt Whitman — that was one of the gaps we had in the department.”
Franklin wrote his dissertation on Whitman, but his accomplishments are not limited to the American literary heritage. He has a master’s degree in both English and Spanish and is currently in the process of finishing his doctorate in English at the University of Iowa.
“I love being a student,” Franklin said. “I’ve been one most of my life. I love what happens in the class. I love being in the classroom.”
