After the Hillsdale College Honors Program Retreat in August 2000, incoming freshman Lee Cole was in a bad car accident.
He spent the next week at the Fort Wayne hospital.
Junior Kelly Heinz ‘02, president of the honors program, visited Cole in the hospital and helped keep him connected to campus, the honors program, and classes while he recovered.
When Cole came back to campus three weeks later, they went for a long, late-night walk and ended up by the eagle statue around 3 a.m.
“Inertia ran its course after that,” Cole said. “I obviously didn’t show much respect for our differences in class and station, since we were dating by October.”
Four years later, on July 2, 2004, Cole proposed to Heinz by the eagle statue.
Cole married Heinz exactly one year later and this past fall Cole returned to his alma mater after accepting a position in the philosophy department.
Student to Professor
Cole, instructor of philosophy, matriculated in the fall of 2000 — the same year President Larry Arnn became Hillsdale College’s twelfth president. Cole graduated in the spring of 2004 with a bachelor of science in mathematics and philosophy. He received his master’s degree in philosophy at Villanova University.
Last year, while researching at Notre Dame University, Cole received a surprising, but welcome, email from the Dean of Humanities, Thomas Burke.
“I opened my inbox early one frosty February morning and nearly spit my coffee out,” Cole said.
After several interviews and much counsel from friends and family, he returned this fall to teach at Hillsdale.
He said his best memories as a student involve his wife, Kelly.
“I largely have in mind many cold, wandering walks at night that involved us conversing, getting to know one another,” he said.
Then and Now
Cole said he does not miss the old buildings.
“I’m teaching in buildings that didn’t exist eight years ago, and many of the rooms in which I attended lectures have been destroyed,” he said. “There is a bit less mustiness in the air these days, which is probably a favorable change. Much important learning happened there, but few tears were shed in the architectural community, I’m sure.”
There are subtler differences Cole said he noticed as well, especially in the students.
“On the whole, the students are perhaps a bit bolder and more self-assured than they were a decade ago — although this assessment applies more to their demeanor outside the classroom than in it,” he said.
Current students seem to display more confidence in being on campus, Cole said. At the freshman ice-cream social he attended, Cole said the students seemed smarter, more put together.
“The types and groups of students do have family resemblances to types and groups of students from when I was a student,” he said. “Although I’d say that students used to dress in a slightly more conservative manner (although generally not as smartly) and were a bit more timid outside the classroom.”
Perhaps social networking has helped current students bond and form camaraderie, Cole said.
Some things, like Hillsdating, have not changed, although Cole said the name did not exist when he was a student.
“Quirky dating rituals have always been a part of this campus,” Cole said. “There were strange dating practices when I was a student but I tried not to participate in those, I like to avoid ambiguity.”
Comfortable Challenges
These slight changes have not significantly affected Cole’s transition from student to teacher.
“On the whole, the transition from being a student here to being a faculty member has been quite seamless and natural,” he said. “I don’t in any way still feel like a student — despite being surrounded by so many of my own teachers — but there is a common thread of co-naturality with the culture here that links my two sets of experiences. So there is none of the uncanny ‘unfamiliar familiarity’ that sometimes accompanies a return to a previous time or place in one’s life.”
Cole said the ease of his transition from student to teacher surpassed his expectations.
“Strangely enough, there’s nothing really unnatural about being co-workers with my former professors,” he said. “I’ve always tried to be deferential, so calling Dr. Connor by his first name was understandably odd the first time, but they’ve all been generous about treating me as a colleague.”
Cole said being a Hillsdale student has helped him to be a better Hillsdale teacher.
“I’m obviously aware of the campus culture,” he said. “Already knowing the defining end of a Hillsdale education has been tremendously valuable.”
There are still challenges to being a new, full-time, college-level professor.
“It’s always easy to become a bit obsessive about helping your students learn,” Cole said. “And it’s difficult not to feel an added sense of investment in Hillsdale students, in a way I wouldn’t quite feel invested in, say, Ferris State students. I was a Hillsdale student, too, so I want them to receive what I received, and if possible, even more. The students here are generally quite dynamic and, on the whole, more interested in serious issues.”
Cole said he needs to remember that Hillsdale students, just like other college students, are young adults who face challenges and difficulties and can not always live up to undue expectations.
He reconciled himself to this fact immediately upon receiving his first round of essays.
Back Home
“I don’t think of my time at Hillsdale as a collection of favorite memories so much as an entire period of intense formation that, while rather trying at the time, constitutes with the hindsight of a few years a rich and happy period of my life — apart from which I’d be a different person,” he said. “Of course, much of the richness of this period also follows from the many deep friendships that I forged with others, and these relationships continue to this day, in effect, preserving our connection to the college.”
One such lasting friendship exists between Cole and Assistant Professor of History Matthew Gaetano. The two were friends as undergraduates, through their time at graduate school, and even still as colleagues working on the same floor of Delp Hall.
“I love the school, and I suppose I never completely felt like I left Hillsdale behind,” Cole said. “For scholarly reasons, family reasons, social and personal reasons, even spiritual reasons, teaching at Hillsdale is in my estimation a fairly enviable station. So as for whether I’m glad to be back: absolutely. Unequivocally. Yes. I feel very fortunate for having the opportunity to teach here.”
ejohnston@hillsdale.edu
