Few liberal arts college are so blessed as is Gustavus in having an Edgar Carlson legacy. After serving as a religion professor, Edgar M. Carlson became president of Gustavus Adolphus College when he was 36 and led the College for 24 years from 1944 to I968. During that time, he not only made the College what it is today helping to establish the Nobel Conference and build the Nobel Hall of Science and Christ Chapel-but he provided the leadership which made him the exemplary college pre ident at a church-related liberal arts college. It was not the building but the vision which made Edgar M. Carlson great. He understood how a Swedish heritage, a Lutheran tradition, and a liberal arts commitment can converge to create an atmosphere for the pursuit of truth and the nurturing of a community of scholar.
Graduating Class of 1994, it is your day today not the faculty’s. But the presentation of this award in the name of Edgar Carlson brings to mind for all of us the ideals of excellence in education which knit us together.
The Edgar M. Carlson Award for Distinguished Teaching has been presented each year since 1971 during commencement to a professor who ha. demonstrated a dedication to the finest in liberal arts education.
After letters of nomination from students, administrator, and faculty flow into the dean’s office, they are discussed at length by former award winners. Then a recommendation is made to the dean of the College. She knows who this year’s winner is, but she has kept it a closely guarded secret.
Few liberal arts colleges are o blessed as is Gustavus in having a teacher as outstanding among teachers as this year’s winner of the Edgar M. Carlson Award for Distinguished Teaching, Professor Thomas A. Emmert of the department of history.
Dr. Emmert is a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of our sister college, St. Olaf. He went to Stanford University a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. At Stanford, while pursuing his MA and PhD, Professor Emmert was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, and a Social Science Research Council Foreign Language Fellowship. His students will immediately know what he worked on with these fellowships-the history of Yugoslavia. I’m certain his students and colleagues could have said that in unison because we all know of Professor Emmert’s passionate concern for the culture and people of the Balkans.
Professor Emmert has spent his academic career studying this once beautiful and sanguine, now tragic and despairing, land. In 1990 his book, Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389, awoke many of us to the reality of Serbian nationalism, only a short time before the deep-seated and implacable violence erupted. When it did, and the horror of “ethnic cleansing” became known, Tom Emmert was sought out for his insight into this irrational fanaticism. He was wanted on Minnesota Public Radio, on National Public Radio, on the Christian Science Broadcast Network, was featured on National Public Radio’ s “Talk America,” and wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled, “Why Serbia Will Fight for ‘Holy’ Kosovo.” Mo t recently, Professor Emmert’s new book, Kosovo: Legacy of a Medieval Battle, was cited by the North American Society for Serbian Studies as the most important recent work devoted to Serbian history.
However, with the calamitous war in the former Yugoslavia destroying the archive and libraries, Professor Emmert has been compelled to change the focus of his research away from medieval Serbia. His new project, on which he will work during a leave in the coming year, is a biography of a Yugoslavian writer, Louis Adamic, who migrated to America at the beginning of this century and became a voice speaking out for the unity of Yugoslavia and against the narrow interest of its many ethnic group.
At Gustavus, particularly with our Edgar Carlson legacy, dedicated scholarship is linked with devoted teaching. ln their letters nominating Professor Emmert, students have pointed to those attributes which make a great teacher-his accessibility, willingness to help, easy approachability, and pleasant demeanor characte1ize Professor Emmert among hi students. His enthusiasm for his subject, his capacity to field classroom questions, his desire to probe all alleys of inquiry and give students the whole picture, create, as one student put it, “a desire to learn. … and a true environment of liberal arts education.” A senior citizen, who had studied at many colleges in a long life and had recently taken a class from Professor Emmert, gave her judgment: ”Tom Emmert is the finest!’
A few year ago, Professor Will Freiert, the 1986 Edgar M. Carlson Distinguished Teacher, said, “Cinema has its Oscar and television it Emmy. At Gustavus the pinnacle is winning the Edgar.” Here’s the envelope.
Tom, for representing in our community the best of what Edgar Carlson envisioned as great teaching, I have the honor to congratulate you with the 1994 Edgar.
Presented by Ronald S. Christenson
Professor of Political Science
1993 Recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award
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