DOC SLIK

A political science professor looks back on a journey through academia accompanied by God in this sprawling memoir.

Van Der Slik presents a soup-to-nuts survey of his life, from his boyhood in Kalamazoo, Michigan, through his retirement in Florida and subsequent world travels. In between, he recaps a long career as a professor and administrator at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois, and as a dean at Trinity Christian College, near Chicago. He gives brief, sketchy accounts of his research interests in lawmaking decisions and processes in Congress and the Illinois Legislature, which he studied with the help of pioneering computer models, as well as other professional pursuits, such as hosting a radio interview series on politics. But the author’s focus is less on political science than on the nuts and bolts of being an academic. He reminisces about applying for university jobs; developing courses with newfangled graphics technology and improving his and others’ teaching skills; supervising students and interns; starting new programs, including a nursing baccalaureate at Trinity; and serving on search committees, creating brochures to help people with newly minted departmental Ph.D.s find jobs, and hiring secretaries. Along the way, he discusses his private life: dating and wedding his wife, Bonnie; repeated house-hunting projects; the joys and anguish of fatherhood; and his vigorous participation as a worshipper and elder in Christian Reformed and Presbyterian churches. Throughout the book, he celebrates teachers, colleagues, and bosses who mentored him and mines insights into pedagogy and leadership. (Stuck at a repair shop while his car got fixed, he observed “how the more experienced mechanics helped the others—not doing their work, but clearly coaching them.”)

Van Der Slik’s memoir paints a remarkably full and detailed portrait of the work of an academic. He pens some colorful, dramatic episodes that limn the currents of ideological tension that can course through seemingly placid institutions—he left Trinity, he avers, after the new college president refused to hire a well-qualified sociology professor because the man was not entirely certain that God created Earth in six days—or the vehement office politics that can poison them. (At one conference of administrators, “the ex-Marine tough guy minimized small talk and, with an eye-to-eye look, said to me, ‘We’re watching you, Van Der Slik. You be careful.’ ”) His prose is normally rather staid, though with flashes of droll humor. (“We tried turning the aquarium into a terrarium,” he writes of a pet search. “How about live turtles? They could live a long time. Not ours. Ours died.”) There are moments of real pathos, as when the author describes bouts of depression or the rancor that erupted between him and his troubled son, and heartfelt expressions of gratitude to God for a “benign and blessed” life. Unfortunately, the meandering, repetitive, anecdotal narrative bogs down in minutiae—“The first administrative issue I needed to address was the vacancy in the registrar position”—or in altogether too much information. (“Tag displaced his colon, literally blowing it out of his behind. The vet did surgery, but the stitches did not hold.”) Professors will glean wisdom from some of Van Der Slik’s experiences, but casual readers may find the book slow going.

A rambling account of life in the ivory tower, sometimes engrossing but often unfocused.