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Steve Fisher
The Academic Hillbilly
"Academic" and "Hillbilly" may seem to be an
oxymoron but only if you fail to recognize that many academics come from peasant and
working class stock. Some salt-of-the-earth types forget where they come from when they
get their PhD and then reach the rarefied atmosphere of college libraries and research
laboratories, but not Steve Fisher of Emory & Henry College near
Abingdon, West
Virginia. A political scientist, who was trained to study German politics, was born into
a coal miner’s family in West Virginia, Fisher returned to his
"neighborhood" when he took a job at Emory & Henry in the early 1970’s
as a first step to reaching the academic big time.
After trying to get to the academic big times through publications
on German politics throughout the 1970’s, he switched to a nearby window of
opportunity---Appalachian Studies. As he said, I "placed community at the center of
my life, …which profoundly changed how I live and how I relate to students." He
established the Appalachian Center for Community Services and introduced a major in Public
Policy and Community Service at Emory & Henry. He also worked to build up the
community of scholars throughout the region to enhance and encourage the study of
Appalachia. His efforts have multiple impacts, which include:
- Giving his students experience and skills that will help them to be
good citizens
- Generating thousands of hours of volunteer services to more than
fifty different government and not-for-profit agencies in the area
- Conducting research that will lead to better government policies and
conditions in the area
The irony of Steve’s career is that in 1999, two of the most
prestigious and elite academic organizations in the United States, the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education,
honored him as U.S. Professor of the Year. This just goes to prove that Genuine
Do-Gooders
end up on the top of the really meaningful heap each and every time. Steve can be reached
through email at
slfisher@ehc.edu.
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