Paul (left) and Maria (right) Schmitt hiking in Colorado in 1996. Courtesy | Maria Servold
How can lifelong Coloradoans pick up, move to a small Midwestern town, and make it feel like home? How can Hillsdale College, a mere 400-acre campus in rural Michigan, bring the same joy as the busy streets of Ann Arbor or the cathedrals at South Bend? What are the makings of the perfect combination of friendship and home? A sibling.
Siblings are poison and nectar, kryptonite and a superpower, all wrapped in one. For the Schmitt, Hutchinson, and Whalen families on Hillsdale’s campus, siblings are also colleagues.
“This was never really the plan,” said Maria Servold, formerly Schmitt, assistant director of the Dow Journalism Program. “After I graduated I worked as a reporter but was surprised and delighted to get the chance to come back to Hillsdale.”
Servold and her brother Paul Schmitt, a first-year associate professor of chemistry here at the college, are natives of Longmont, Colorado. Both attended Hillsdale College in the early 2010s.
“I knew I wanted to study chemistry, so it took some convincing, but Maria eventually got through to me,” Schmitt said. “I am thankful for the two years we spent together at the college.”
As with any sibling duo, their personalities and academic interests are not in total accord.
“I’m not sure I understand what he teaches,” Servold said.
Schmitt agreed.
“I guess there’s a difference between science minds and the minds that study English,” he added.
Servold said while they were on campus they would bicker about whose classes were harder.
“To end the debate I think we eventually agreed each class was hard in its own way,” Servold said.
After graduation, Schmitt earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Purdue University and later accepted a teaching position at Wabash College in Indiana. After some time, his big sister ran another campaign for Hillsdale College.
“We were both in the Midwest for what seemed like permanent careers, so I wanted Paul around Hillsdale again,” Servold said. “Since he was hired, the faculty has gradually found out that we’re related. It’s always fun to watch someone realize that he’s my brother.”
They now call Hillsdale home thanks to a mass migration of Schmitts from the Colorado mountains.
“Now our parents have moved from Colorado, and we see them almost every weekend. We call this ‘living the dream,’” Servold said. “Paul and I both agree that 10 years ago we could have never imagined a life in the Midwest, but we are thankful. That’s the power of Hillsdale.”
Ryan Hutchinson, professor of mathematics, knows the draw of a sibling at Hillsdale. After some time at the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame, Hutchinson settled down in Hillsdale because of his brother, Eric Hutchinson, chairman of the collegiate scholars program and associate professor of classics at Hillsdale College.
“My brother had been here for some time and when a math position opened, he encouraged me to apply,” Hutchinson said. “Now we work together and I get to watch his children grow up.”
With two sons teaching at the same college, Hutchinson’s mother moved to Hillsdale County from Ida, Michigan.
“It’s a lucky situation,” Hutchinson said. “To work with a brother and to see him weekly is a blessing.”
Two of the members of the Whalen sibling clan also share Hillsdale’s campus: Benedict is an assistant professor of English. His brother Patrick, a Marine veteran, worked in the President’s Office and now works with Hillsdale through American Classical Education, a charter school network affiliated with the college.
“Patrick and I are number two and three in our large family so we did a lot of growing up together in close quarters,” Benedict Whalen said.
The two played on the same sports teams together in their younger years and eventually attended boarding school together in Pennsylvania. Whereas most of the Whalens have only known Hillsdale as home, the older siblings remember the flatlands of Kansas.
“It is a fun experience we older ones have,” Whalen said. “We have memories together that our other siblings don’t share. That and the small age gap brings us even closer.”
During Patrick’s deployment, his wife stayed for some time with Benedict and his wife. They all grew close.
“By distance and the busyness of life, we did not see much of each other for those few years,” Whalen said. “When he moved back my wife and I were ecstatic. For me a sibling was coming home, for my wife, a great friend. There’s no slice of home like a sibling.”