The members of Lords of Atlantis from left to right: Dane Carter (drummer), Jonpaul Balak (bassist), Ivan Pongracic (guitarist, and Jeremy DeHart (guitarist). Courtesy | Ivan Pongracic

On the first day of class, professors often ask students to share a fun fact about themselves — yet, students rarely ask the professor in return. It turns out that some of them make their own beer, one keeps bees, and a third plays guitar in a surf-rock band.

Douglas Dobrozsi, laboratory director in the chemistry department, has been brewing his own beer for more than five years.

“Some years ago I was culturing a type of yeast in the lab while studying antifungal drugs,” Dobrozsi said. “That got me thinking about fermentation. I grew up in the ‘germs-are-bad-kill-them’ age when the strong message was ‘Kill them, avoid them, and get vaccinated.’ But I realized how many wonderful creations rely on microorganisms for their production.”

Dobrozsi said he likes to cook, a hobby that led to his brewing of beer. Beer brewing is a particular form of cooking, according to Dobrozsi.

“When making a five gallon batch of beer, a typical home brew size, you grow a huge quantity of yeast,” Dobrozsi said. “The first time I saw that at the bottom of the bucket when bottling my first batch, I was shocked. This is referred to as brewer’s yeast, a waste product of beer brewing that’s so rich in B vitamins that it’s sold as a nutritional supplement and added into pet and livestock feed.”

Dobrozsi said he practiced fermentation with sauerkraut, sourdough bread, and Hungarian summer pickles before moving onto beer.

“I started hanging out on the second Friday of the month in someone’s garage with the Hopsdale Homebrew Club. Beer was the next thing, and they convinced me that, even if I screwed up, it would still be beer. Over the last five years, I have probably brewed about eighteen five-gallon batches,” Dobrozsi said.

Dobrozsi said his beers all have a story behind them.

“I can have the style of beer I want,” Dobrozsi said. “The craft beer popularity explosion has been wonderful, but there is a lack of breadth of style. I have three different Trappist ales in my fridge right now and two Bohemian dark lagers — wonderful beers that are tough or impossible to find available for purchase.”

Dobrozsi is not the only professor with a passion outside the classroom. Cameron Moore, visiting assistant professor of English, keeps bees.

“My wife and I took a homesteading class during graduate school,” Moore said. “I remember looking over the curriculum with her, seeing beekeeping as a subject, and thinking, ‘Well there’s something I’m not interested in.’ After the course, I thought, ‘Wow, bees are awesome, but I can’t imagine I’d ever keep them myself.’”

Moore said the startup process initially seemed daunting, but his friends, who are also beekeepers, helped him get started.

“About six years ago, I was helping my buddy who keeps bees, and while we were loading hives in a truck and getting stung a lot by enraged bees, he said, ‘Hey, you should get bees yourself.’ That was a convincing argument,” Moore said.

Bees keep their hives going by replacing their queen when needed, Moore said.

“When a hive needs a new queen, the bees don’t make just one queen cell; they make a bunch of them, maybe five to ten, all at the same time,” Moore said. “The first queen to emerge immediately goes to the cells of all the other queens and kills them.”

Moore said he has a few hives every year, providing him with just enough honey to either use himself or give away to family and friends.

“It is deeply satisfying to hear the hum of a healthy, working hive,” Moore said. “That industrious June humming means golden honey in the heart of the dark, long, cold Michigan winter. I really appreciate practices that tie me to the natural cycle of seasons and to the long history of human cultivation and husbandry in response to that cycle.”

While Moore has been keeping bees, Ivan Pongracic, professor of economics, has played in a band for more than 35 years.

“I started playing guitar in rock bands when I was 19 and have been at it almost continuously ever since,” Pongracic said. “I’ve played several different kinds of rock music through the years, but for the past 29 years, it’s been exclusively instrumental surf music, a mostly underground genre originating in the early sixties in southern California. It got a big boost in the mid-nineties from the success of the ‘Pulp Fiction’ movie, which featured many classic surf tracks as part of its soundtrack.”

While the instrumental surf genre is less known to the average music listener, its largest festival is held in Livorno, Italy, according to Pongracic. Over 10,000 people attend the multi-day festival, which Pongracic has performed at.

“There are amazing bands from all over the world, including pretty much all European countries, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and Japan,” Pongracic said.  “We’re all connected through various forums and social media groups, and it’s a closely-knit community of enthusiasts that have fallen deeply in love with this music.”

Pongracic said, over the years, he has performed around the world.

“I’ve been closely involved in this global scene since 1995, and it’s taken me not only around the country but even around the world, having played shows from Boston to Fort Lauderdale to Seattle to San Diego, and most points in-between,” Pongracic said.

Pongracic said he is very proud of his accomplishments as a musician.

“I have a deep passion for music in addition to my academic interests that I get to pursue at Hillsdale,” Pongracic said. “I wouldn’t have been happy with just one or the other. I really think I’ve needed both in my life.”

Pongracic said he has befriended dozens of people as a result of being in three bands, the Space Cossacks, the Madeira, and the Lords of Atlantis.

“I’ve recorded seven albums of original music, three live albums, and two best-of compilations between my three bands,” Pongracic said. “I’m immensely proud of it all, and I look at it as a major achievement in my life, as much as anything academically related that I’ve been fortunate to also be able to do.”