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Published in The Spectator, the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire;
Monday, September 17, 2001
Hildebrand receives Distinguished Professorship honor
Award will fund research trip
By Bill Olson
Money received as part of an award will
help fund a research trip to Alaska for an English professor.
John Hildebrand is the third recipient of the Maxwell Schoenfeld
Distinguished Professorship, said Bernard Duyfhuizen, interim associate
dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
He was selected for excellence as a teacher and as a writer of
nonfiction prose, Duyfhuizen said. Hildebrand will receive a $5,000
budget to support professional activities such as travel for research or
to purchase research materials or other supplies, he said.
Hildebrand, who has taught English in Eau Claire since 1977, said he
would like to use the money to continue investigating an article he’s
writing for Harper’s Magazine about oil drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
Hildebrand said he is exploring the issue from the viewpoint of two
remote native villages in northern Alaska.
The Gwi’chin village opposes drilling while the Inupiat village
supports it.
“It’s pretty expensive to get there,” Hildebrand said.
There are no roads, so the $5,000 will go toward hiring a plane, he
said.
Kristen Seas, a graduate student in the M.A. English program, has taken
a number of courses from Hildebrand.
“He has an ability to find a story in the events that happen to
anybody,” Seas said. “It makes you appreciate how a life can become
a narrative when approached by the right kind of writer.”
When Seas started the Seminar in Nonfiction Writing, she said she was
intimidated by writing something that was actually happening.
“But he put it into perspective and I did something I didn’t think I
could do,” she said.
Hildebrand, who has degrees in journalism and creative writing likes
combining the two.
“I take the fact-finding, the research and the field work of
journalism, and I try to use the literary devices of narrative to put it
together.”
In literary journalism, the writer often starts out not knowing what the
story is, he said.
“You go into the field and gather data, which, in my case, is talking
to people and doing library research, and you try to find the story in
it,” he said.
For Hildebrand, having teaching as a steady job gives him freedom as a
writer.
“I’m not under any pressure to complete an article in a hurry
because I have bills to pay,” he said.
Hildebrand said the detective role of the writer is, in some ways, the
reverse of the teacher’s role.
“The teacher in the classroom is an authority; he knows what he’s
speaking of,” he said. “But the journalist begins in a position of
ignorance and has to ask questions. And for me, that’s exciting.”
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