tHE MYTHOLOGY OF TIP SHANKLIN

Shanklin said he was kept out of school to keep from exposing the disease to anybody else. The way he contracted scarlet fever has remained a mystery. No one at school or in his family contracted the disease.

“It was like, there he is,” he said while pointing to emphasize, “give it to him!”

Shanklin grew up in Western Kentucky with an “affluent family,” experiencing what he calls a normal childhood.

“I think I did all the stuff kids do and all the childhood diseases.”

The scarlet fever caused him to miss school, however, he got to skip the fourth grade. He went from third to fifth and graduated high school early as well.

To Move Far Far Away

Shanklin said his goal after graduating from high school was to always leave Kentucky.

“I couldn’t wait to get out,” he said.

He went to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. A small liberal arts college by the name of Franconia College was his home until his sophomore year arrived.

Franconia had become “financially insolvent” in his sophomore year causing the college to close.

“They just didn’t manage their money well,” he said about Franconia College’s financial problems.

The entire college was in an old resort area in the White Mountains. According to Shanklin, rich people would come from Boston to go skiing or would spend the summer there. His dorm was a cottage that had a fireplace, because it was “geared to be a resort getaway for wealthy.”

During the Christmas Holiday, the college shut down for eight weeks because it had become too cold and they did not want to heat up all the buildings.

Leon Botstein, president of Franconia College, was just 24 years old when Tip Shanklin enrolled. Even though he was only 24 years old he did a good job as president to the perception of Shanklin. According to him, after the college closed down, Botstein went on to become the president of Bard College in Upstate New York and has been the president for 30 years now.

The college closing down had caused him and the president of the college to go find something else, but Shanklin said it provided an opportunity.

“It was a great school. There was people who had left Harvard to teach there, there were people who left Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to teach there, so it was an experimental college, but it was a really good start for me.”

After Franconia College closed down, Shanklin went to New York for three years. After living in New York, he moved to Boston, more specifically Watertown for around four years. Shanklin then moved back to Kentucky and lived in Bowling Green for several years.

He eventually went to Burlington College after Franconia closed down to earn his degree. The college, to his estimation, had around 200 students. It was in the middle of Burlington and was next to Lake Champlain.

“It was a wonderful city.”

The Green Mountains could be seen from everywhere to his satisfaction.

“I have a thing for mountains and New England.”

Shanklin finished his undergraduate degree with a double major in Philosophy and Comparative Literature. He went on to get his Masters Degree in English at Saint Rose College in Albany, New York. At Binghamton College in New York he got his Ph.D in English as well and taught there for a while.

A double major can be a struggle, but the doctoral degree was more difficult for Shanklin because he was “a lot more involved.” The masters felt like an “advanced undergraduate degree” when the doctoral had more classes, and he had to teach as well.

He did not teach as a graduate assistant, which involved working with a professor. Instead, he always taught his own courses. It took him four years to get his doctoral degree, because he had to finish his dissertation, which took him two years, and field exams.

The Fall into Teaching

It was not a life-long dream for Shanklin to become a professor. He did not even think of it when he was an undergraduate. However, it crossed his mind when he was getting his masters degree.

“I kind of just fell into it. I kind of like what everybody is doing.”

After he got his Ph.D, he knew that he had to enter the job market and compete against other people all over the world. He knew that it would be difficult because finding a job in Humanities would be hard. There were not many teaching jobs in Humanities.

He taught most of his time before coming to Lindsey Wilson College at Binghamton College. While he was getting his Ph.D he also taught at the Community College in Binghamton.

His Journey to and Time at LWC

An advertisement for his “speciality” in 19th-and-20th Century British LIterature led him to LWC in 1998. The mission of LWC made him want to come as well because it offered people that could not come to college a chance to earn a degree.

British Literature might be his “specialty,” but an interest in Greek Mythology, tragedy, and his translations were developed more at LWC. In 2002, he developed a Humanities major and minor program. He was the head of the program for a couple of years. However, it did not attract many of students and in his words, “[administration] let it kind of die.”

He was the coordinator of the English program for the first time around that time between 2002 and 2004. In 2009 he became the coordinator of the English program again.

Shanklin said LWC allows flexible and creative freedom in the English program, which allows him to create courses that interest both he and his students. Shanklin has used some of the flexible creative freedom to create two courses: Greek Mythology and Culture and Values.

“I have developed courses that require me to use my knowledge and information from lots of different fields. From philosophy and art and psychology and history and all that to incorporate, because I think it is a fuller experience, as I’ve said too for students.”

Even though he does have some freshmen in his Literature Interpretation course, he also has seniors. It is a one-room schoolhouse, which causes him to have to gain all of their interest.

Greek Mythology has a mixture of student with different majors despite the fact that it is an English course and the fact that it is 3000-level course he has to take into account when constructing the course.

“Which is nice because they are coming from a different place.”

Culture and Values is a general education course and appeals to every major on campus. The first time he taught the course was when they first went online for advanced registration in 2002. It did not close the course when the cap was reached causing him to have over 100 students. He had to teach the course in the auditorium.

“It depends on the level of the class and the nature of the class to how one approaches the material. Do we have quizzes, Do we write papers? That sort of thing.”

A professor has a lot of professional obligations and some people see them and think that all they do is sit in their office to talk and read.

“It looks like that,” he said about the assumption.

However; they have meeting to go to and reports that have to be filled out.

“So, there are a lot of professional responsibilities that go with it, but I can’t imagine doing anything else you know but teaching.”