Professor Spotlight: Kirk Anderson

Professor Spotlight: Kirk  Anderson

Meet Kirk Anderson, an Assistant Professor of Educational Studies.  From Austin, Texas, Anderson went to Texas A&M for English Literature and got his master’s and PhD in educational policy studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Before moving to Carlisle, Anderson also lived in Madison, Wisconsin for seven years.

Being a professor was one of Anderson’s first career aspirations, but young Kirk didn’t quite have a full understanding of what it meant to be a professor.  “I was really obsessed with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so the Narnia books and the Middle Earth books were like my favorite as a little kid.  And I knew that both [Lewis and Tolkien] were professors.  But I think, like my impression of what being a professor was hanging out with your friends and pubs writing fantasy stories.  I’ve actually been to the pub where they did this!”  Despite the less than “fully formed understanding of what it meant to be a professor,” Anderson always knew after undergraduate school, he always wanted to go back and get a PhD.

Since coming to Dickinson, Anderson is “flabbergasted.”  “There’s so many things I love about Dickinson.  I think one of the big ones is that they actually value undergraduate teaching here. Teaching is a really big, important part of my identity, and I really, really love teaching undergraduate students.  And so I love being in a place that’s so invested in teaching and really values and support and rewards good teaching.”  

Anderson credits some of the great things about Dickinson to his colleagues and students.  “I think like the level of engagement and enthusiasm that students have here at Dickinson is just second to none.  The opportunity to have students who are so engaged and are so intellectually curious and want to go beyond what we’re learning to connect to their lives is just the most rewarding thing in the world.”

Anderson references a book called Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery and the idea that people who walk for their commute are usually the happiest.  And Anderson couldn’t agree more, “I love that I get to walk everywhere, like I very rarely drive, if at all.  I get to walk to and from work to campus, push my son in the stroller to the library…we walk everywhere we go to.”  Anderson also has been more conscientious of his family’s carbon footprint and credits Dickinson’s sustainability efforts.  “The fact that we’re on track to be carbon neutral in the next academic year boggles my mind and is something I’m incredibly proud of.” 

Besides his work in academia, Anderson is also a vinyl enthusiast, avid reader, and loving father, and is often seen taking his son with him around campus, whether in a running stroller or on the back of his bike.  “I try to take Des [his son] to everything.  We were at the lavender graduation until he starting talking too much during the keynote address,” he laughed.  “It’s also really fun raising a kid around a college campus with the diverse, intellectual, multifaceted environment here.”