The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently published an article about the life and career of Phil Adamo, professor of history at Augsburg College and 2015 .

The article focuses on Adamo’s engaging approach to teaching history and his personal history with academia. As a young man, he decided to forgo a college education in favor of a career as a clown with the Ringling Bros. Circus. Eventually, the constant demands of performance wore him down. “I was exhausted by performing so much, and I started to think that I wasn’t funny,” he said. “That’s a bad thing for a clown.”

Returning from the circus, he enrolled as a medieval studies major at Ohio State University, where a senior project involving a summer in a monastery led to an award-winning dissertation and propelled him toward a career in academia.

The article also depicts Adamo as an ardent supporter of having a liberal arts education, which he says “gives the benefit of having a better life, a more interesting life, a better understanding of who you are as a human.”

Read Augsburg professor left circus to bring history to life on the Star Tribune site.

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The five-day institute involved eight faculty from UIC in China and eight faculty from seven Minnesota private colleges, including Augsburg. The Institute is under the direction of Diane Pike, Professor of Sociology at Augsburg, assisted by Theresa Kwong, Senior Teaching and Learning Officer at The Centre for Holistic Teaching and Learning at HKBU.

“We have learned about the rewards and challenges of teaching that we have in common,” Pike said. “It has also been wonderful to learn about the cultural differences and to benefit from thinking about things in new ways. The colleagues from UIC and from the set of Minnesota private colleges have collaborated to advance their understanding of teaching and learning in a liberal-arts setting. It has been an invigorating week and we look forward our visit to China in November to continue our learning.”

The Institute focuses on  practices and student learning in both China and the United States. The meeting at Augsburg will be followed by a conference in Zhuhai, China on November 14-17, 2011.

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