Emeriti Club Gathering and Awards Program
Kalamazoo College
John Grandin ’63
October 7, 2023

Dear friends of Kalamazoo. I am eager to thank you for selecting me as a recipient of the Certificate of Merit. Certainly, there are many in our class deserving of such recognition. I regret also that I cannot be with you to help express our thanks to the college for the academic “jump start” that provided the groundwork for long and lasting careers. In my own case those undergraduate years led to a rewarding career in international education. I benefitted greatly from the wisdom and dedication of Kalamazoo faculty and the wisdom and generosity of the Richard Light family. 

I remember President Hick’s “fellowship in learning” that opened our eyes to so many new things of which we could only dream in our younger years. I, for example, was not open to language classes when in high school and completed my Latin course on a very embarrassing level. It surprised me, therefore, when Frau Mayer called me up to her desk and asked me if I wanted to go to Germany for the summer of 1960 to live with a German family, take a university level German language course, and soak up what I could of the German culture.

The summer experience in Bonn opened my eyes to a different world and became the new basis for my future interests and direction. From here I would take a year off between my junior and senior years and spend that year in Germany becoming fluent in German and waking up to a different and larger world than that of the small-town Massachusetts community where I grew up. From here I would go to the Master of Arts in Teaching program at Wesleyan University with the thought of becoming a high school German teacher which reshaped my career plans for the next two years. But that was changed again when I successfully applied for a two-year German teaching job at Union College. Teaching German at the college level became my next hope, supported by an assistantship in the University of Michigan German department Ph.D. program. In 1972 I became “Herr Doctor.”  

The next step was a tenure-track position in German at the University of Rhode Island where I would stay for the next 40 years. Alongside my academic career, I have been continually supported by my wife, Carol, who has been my life’s partner for the past 58 years and the mother of our son, Peter, who is father to three members of the next generation. They bring great pleasure to our lives.

Though I always loved teaching German, it became a tough issue in the early 1970’s. Language requirements were being abolished in the wake of the Vietnam War and language enrollments everywhere were taking a dive. I realized in this situation that my career might soon be over if I did not get creative. Ironically, my solution turned out be the Dean of Engineering at URI who turned out to be an international thinker and believed that engineering students could benefit by language study and international exposure of all kinds. Dean Viets and I came up with a plan that might seem overly ambitious. Now known as the International Engineering Program (IEP), it consists of five years with the fourth year spent abroad: one semester of study as an exchange student and one semester as a professional intern in a German company. Graduates would receive the BA in German and the BS in engineering over five years.

The IEP is a big success, educating young engineers to be bilingual and to graduate with strong international and liberal arts skills. It has expanded to include French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin and exchange possibilities with several partner universities abroad. The IEP is regularly sending engineering students abroad and engineers make up much of the URI language enrollments.

I can’t help but note the University of Rhode Island has benefited from this program in many ways. Several articles and books have been written about the IEP, and I personally have received many awards, for example, the German Federal Cross of Honor. The program has been funded by several major grants from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Education. Our faculty are regular presenters at both engineering and language conferences. The IEP also is well known as the sponsor of an annual conference dealing with the issues of international engineering education. The annual colloquium celebrated its 25th year last fall and its 26th year will take place this fall and will be co-hosted by Virginia Tech.

When asked about the origins of the IEP and the German program at URI, I always begin with Frau Mayer, Richard Light, and Kalamazoo College. Without their wisdom none of this would have happened.