HALF CENTURY OF SERVICE

Dr. James Kirkland is a professor of English at East Carolina University. For one of the largest departments on campus, with more than 80 faculty, this is not particularly noteworthy. What makes Kirkland unique, however, is that he is the longest serving faculty member, having taught at ECU since 1969, and he has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

“I had no clue,” Kirkland said about whether he knew he would spend 50 years at ECU. “It was funny when I came here, because I had never been to eastern North Carolina before.”

Kirkland, who was completing his doctorate in American Literature at the University of Tennessee, said he saw an advertisement for an ECU assistant professor position posted in the English office and thought the job sounded attractive.

He moved to Greenville with his wife Paula and their newborn daughter Becky in tow. Their son Craig would be born just three years later.

“The idea of somebody staying in one place for 50 years is kind of unusual these days,” he said. “Once I settled in, I liked it here a lot.”

Over the past 50 years, Kirkland has adapted to changing circumstances. He started his career under ECU President Leo Jenkins and has seen the coming and going of six university chancellors and now two interim chancellors.

Campus itself also looked much different when he arrived.

The ECU FactBook lists the student population of ECU in 1969 at 9,259, and according to Kirkland, there were 42 faculty members in the Department of English.

English was housed in the Austin Building, which was considered “New Austin,” because it was only three years old and had replaced the original “Old Austin” located on 5th Street, where the department had resided during its first 55 years of existence. Up and down staircase signs were located at the ends of each hallway and school bells announced the end of each class.

“None of the newer facilities on campus were here. Even the Brewster Building hadn’t been constructed yet,” Kirkland said. “One of the things I joke about is that the ‘Old Cafeteria’ was actually a ‘cafeteria’ when I got here. Joyner Library had not yet acquired such novel architectural features as musical steps, water walls and creepy clowns popping out of clock towers at midnight.”

Kirkland came to ECU thinking he would mainly teach composition, but he has taught graduate level courses and later developed a special interest for folklore and urban legends.

“Teaching has always been the great joy of being here,” said Kirkland. “We’ve always had a diverse group of students; some first-generation students, and others who had experiences traveling abroad or studying at other universities. Every class has always been interesting.”

He said the best measure of the department’s value has been the accomplishments of its graduates, which have included a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for the Washington Post, a Brody School of Medicine class president, law school graduates, teachers, poets, novelists, and other community and business leaders.

As time has passed and Kirkland has instructed thousands of students, he periodically receives a knock on his door from a former student returning 10 or 20 years later to stop by for a chat.

“A few years back, someone knocked on the door and said ‘Hey, Jim. How are you doing?’ and I said, ‘Oh, hey, Ricky. How are you?’ He had been a graduate student of mine in the 1970s, and we used to talk all the time. His daughter actually ended up in my class.”

Kirkland has taught many of the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren of his previous students. However, his time at ECU has involved more than mentoring and teaching countless students. He also has taken on roles as director of composition, a position he had for 15 years; director of the University Writing Center, when it was still part of the English department; interim director of university writing; and an advisor for students in the department.

For more than 20 years, Kirkland has acted as the faculty sponsor, or co-sponsor, for the English Graduate Student Organization, and in 2018, he was selected to serve as faculty sponsor for ECU’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, an international English honors society.

“The administrative roles were things I didn’t envision at all when I started,” Kirkland said, “but I was always interested in the connections.”

Outside of academia, Kirkland’s interests involve exercise and travel.

He likes to play basketball, and in 1972, Kirkland started the ECU Recreation Center’s men’s basketball league, which he still plays in today. He also enjoys working out with the student trainers, who are often exercise physiology majors, because he said, “they are all really excited about what they do.”

On the subject of travel, Kirkland said, “I love to travel. I’ve had the chance to go to some really interesting places.”

His list of travel destinations, whether for work conferences, presentations or just fun, include Athens, Greece; the island of Crete; New Zealand; Australia; Botswana and Namibia, South Africa; Machu Picchu, Peru; Asia; and Thailand. He loves trying local foods and attending festivals.

Kirkland said he would “absolutely” encourage students to travel abroad and said it is “one of the great means of education that we all have the chance to do.”

“The fun thing about travel for me is it’s always giving me a chance to bring things back for classes and talk about with students,” he said.

_{Street art discovered by Dr. Kirkland}

Kirkland and his students have had discussions about other civilizations and cultures, and he shares his stories through photos of street art and wall painting he discovers within the local neighborhoods or museums.

When asked how long he plans to continue working at ECU, Kirkland said, “That’s the question I get asked most often. I don’t really know. So far, I still enjoy teaching every day. I still have a lot of research projects. I like being involved with the graduate student organization and now with the Sigma Tau Delta group. I still go to the gym all the time, and with the concerts on campus, artists’ series and Voyages of Discovery, there’s a lot here that interests me still.”

Adventures in Photos

Dr. Kirkland’s adventures during his 51 years at ECU include the joy of teaching and mentoring students, staying fit through exercise, and traveling abroad, experiencing other cultures through food and art, which he shares with his students through his photography.

View some of his photo galleries – local and abroad – from New Orleans, Canada, South America, Europe, and Australia below.

^{English commencement 2019}

^{Dr. Kirkland at the Campus Recreation & Wellness Center}

^{Dr. Kirkland weight training}

^{Machu Picchu}

^{New Zealand South Island}

^{Venice Grand Canal}

^{Tuscany villas and vineyards}