Get to Know
- Name:
- Michael Kimball
- Title:
- Director of the Center of Honors Scholars and Leadership, Associate Professor of Anthropology
- Colleges:
- University College and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
- Programs:
- Center for Honors, Scholars & Leadership and Anthropology
- Years Teaching:
- 10 (2 at UNC)
- Degrees :
- B.A., College of the Atlantic, Human Ecology, 1989;
- M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anthropology, 1992;
- Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Anthropology (Archaeology), 1998
- Areas of expertise/Research interests:
- Civic engagement education; community-based learning; gathering and preserving local knowledge; impacts of climate change on global coastal cultural heritage resources; and Ireland’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
- You might not know that I …
- train in Tan Tui, Hou Quan and Jian Kung Fu.
- When I let my hair down, I can be found …
- African drumming in Fort Collins.
- My welcome-to-teaching moment that I’ll never forget was …
- This is more of a welcome-to-learning moment, but it influenced my decision to teach many years later. It happened in Mr. Novick’s English Literature class, when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. We were reading Beowulf – an Anglo-Saxon epic poem of heroic battles and monster-slaying that’s kind of tough to get through. One day, Mr. Novick came to class wielding a battle-ax. I’ll never forget it. He passed it around the room and, when I held it in my hand, it brought Beowulf to life for me in a way that no amount of reading could ever do. That battle-ax lit a fire in me not only for experiential teaching and learning, but maybe also for archaeology.
- I chose UNC because …
- I was selected to be the Robert O. Schulze Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2007. The rest is history.
- Confucius would say my teaching philosophy is …
- frustratingly Buddhist.
- If I’m not teaching a class, or in my office, you can find me on campus at …
- the U.C. Starbucks.
- I cannot live without …
- air, food, water, my imagination, my community and my family.
- If I hadn’t become a teacher, I would be a …
- starving fiction writer.
- Yearbook quote (advice you like to give to students or best advice you’ve received):
- “When your views … and your intellect are being challenged and you begin to feel uncomfortable because of a contradiction you’ve detected that is threatening your current model of the world … pay attention. You are about to learn something.” – William Drury
- Links:
- University spotlight
- Professional activity