Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
NORTH MANCHESTER - Manchester College employs the top baccalaureate professor in the United States.
Dr. James R.C. Adams, 74, was named the 2002 U.S. Professor of the Year for baccalaureate colleges today in Washington, D.C., by The Council on the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
More than 400 colleges and universities were nominated for the annual honor.
Adams received the award at the National Press Club and a Congressional reception followed at the Rayburn House Office Building.
Adams has taught at Manchester College since 1957. His interests and tenure have led him to teach in the English, Spanish and music departments as well as the art department, which he chairs.
"His selection recognizes a fascinating man who is distinguished as a teacher, artist, college servant, active learner and the kind of colleague everyone wants but seldom finds," Manchester College President Parker G. Marden said.
This prestigious award was first handed out in 1981. Besides the baccalaureate professor, the award is presented to a professor at a community college, master's university or college and research and doctoral university.
"Jim Adams is the kind of professor who is able to bring out the best in his students because he helps them believe in themselves," said Vance Peterson, president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
Sitting in the college's sculpting classroom, Adams said he enjoys seeing his students honored for their work, especially when they considered the task impossible.
Adams and 58 Manchester College freshmen restored the ceiling of the Huntington County Courthouse's Grand Army of the Republic Room.
"How do we do that?" was the students' initial reaction to the project, which took three terms to accomplish.
"I want my students to become inquisitive, to gain self-confidence and to believe that they can meet any challenge if they try hard enough," Adams said.
People were astonished by the restoration work.
Adams designs his courses to stress interrelatedness. He said the knowledge of foreign languages and living abroad are coupled with art and learning its history.
Art history sources are written often in one language and you have to know that language to get the information, he said.
He has lived in Germany, Mexico, England and Spain. He has a reading knowledge of seven languages and is fair to fluent in five of them. He has taught German to students in Germany and American students in Spain, he said.
"Always eager to share stories and discoveries resulting from his insatiable and unabashed curiosity about life, Mr. Adams inspires me to learn - about myself, about others, about the world around me," Ejenobo R. Oke, a former student of Adams, now a middle school teacher in Texas.
Adams has carried the same enthusiasm and curiosity about the world with him since childhood.
"I always studied what interested me," he said, adding that he neglected things that failed to capture his attention. He marked that as the reason for the grades' range on his report cards.
Adams' students have caught that same curiosity.
"Through the mentoring of Professor Adams, I have followed my interests in the cultures of the Americas, both ancient and modern," Loa P. Traxler, a Manchester College alumnus, said.
She is now a curator at one of the pre-eminent research institutions in pre-Columbian studies, at Dumbarton Oaks, trustees for Harvard University.
"I also expect (students) to learn enough about the civilization to which they belong that they join in 'the great conversation,' in the words of Robert M. Hutchins," he said. "I want them to become citizens of the world, not just of their own countries."
