Two of Blackburn College’s professors are retiring this semester: Chair of the Business and Economics Department and accounting professor Robert Schweikle, who has been with the college for 18 years, and Chair of the History Department Dr. Jan Zimmerman, who has been teaching for 31 years.
After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his MBA at Northwestern University, Schweikle didn’t initially see himself as a college professor. “If anybody had told me that when I retired, I’d be retiring from being a college professor teaching accounting, I would have told them they were crazy,” said Schweikle. He spent 20 years prior to teaching working in corporate accounting.
Over his time at the college, Schweikle has seen many changes at Blackburn. “I think the students have a lot more distractions today with technology and social media and I think there becomes, sometimes, a distraction from academic focus,” said Schweikle. He also believes students are missing something that they used to have when he first started teaching. “When I came in I felt that the students had a stronger work ethic in the classroom because of their participation in the work program. I think today that students might not appreciate the work program as much and therefore they might not feel as strongly in the classroom,” said Schweikle. However, he does think “the business department has grown into one of the top programs on campus.” After retiring, he looks forward to getting away from the daily grind and dealing with “bureaucratic minutiae” that makes up his job. What he will miss is the one-on-one time with his students.
Schweikle will be leaving the college with a long legacy of students that are grateful for all that he has taught them. Business and accounting 2015 graduate Jonathan Griffel believes that Schweikle taught him a very important lesson. “Bob taught me to look at a situation and try and maximize it in your favor,” said Griffel. He added, “Bob was a terrific part of my Blackburn experience, and his wisdom and ability will be sorely missed.”
Zimmerman has been with Blackburn since the fall of 1985, making last fall her 31st year at the college. Zimmerman earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and her doctorate at Northwestern University. Most of her teaching career has been at Blackburn with her first two years in the profession at Texas Tech University. During her time at Blackburn, Zimmerman discovered that she had a similar complaint to Schweikle’s. “The thing I remember most vividly is how much real power the students had because of the work program,” said Zimmerman. She believes that they have lost much of that power. One example she cited of this was the college’s decision to “call in corporations to do basic services like the food.” She added, “The biggest change is in the students’ ownership of this place.” Zimmerman is not without fond memories, however. She recalls one time when a student from North (Challacombe) Hall had been sneaking spoons from the dining hall. The student was an artist that melted all the spoons together to make a statue of a ballerina. Zimmerman will miss interacting with her students, but plans to get back to gardening and all the other activities she’s put off for years.
For the past 10 years Zimmerman has worked closely with the other full-time member of the history department, Dr. Gary Long. Long recalls that his transition to Blackburn was made easier by Zimmerman. “For the entire time that I’ve been here, she’s always been the mentor,” said Long. He also believes that the historian is a life-long learner. Long learned much from Zimmerman over the past 10 years including the valuable lesson that “one is capable of teaching oneself a great deal of many things.” She taught him how to learn to teach a subject despite it not being a main area of focus. When Long arrived on campus Zimmerman had been teaching constitutional law even though it wasn’t something she had studied in college. “She simply sat down and taught herself, became an expert to some extent,” said Long. Long knows that he will miss her very much and isn’t sure that the department will be quite the same without her.
Zimmerman had a marked impact on many of her students, including 2016 alumna Chelsey Jeffers. Some of her favorite moments with Zimmerman “were the one-on-one discussions we had during her office hours,” said Jeffers. She added, “Not only was she an excellent professor, but she was remarkably kind and her wisdom about life in general resulted in advice that I continue to use to this day.”