About Author and Book
Schooling recounts the academic life of historian Carroll Engelhardt. He was born in an Iowa farmhouse that did not have electricity, indoor plumbing, or a working furnace. While growing up on a small, diversified dairy and hog farm, his parents schooled him in the virtues of hard work and thrift. Carroll attended nearby Elkader public school, received a diploma in 1959, matriculated at Iowa State Teachers College (renamed State College of Iowa and subsequently University of Northern Iowa) where he graduated in 1963 with honors and a B.A. in Social Science Teaching, and earned a history doctorate at the University of Iowa in 1969.
Carroll first taught college history at Iowa as a Western Civilization Teaching Assistant during the 1964 Fall Semester and instructed his last course, American Thought and Culture, during the 2007 Winter Semester as an Adjunct Professor at Concordia College – Moorhead, MN. South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring 1981) published his first article, “Man in the Middle: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Postwar American Liberalism.” Six books, two book chapters, eight professional journal articles, and three entries in The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa followed. More than thirty book reviews appeared in national, regional, and state journals.
Carroll’s sixty-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Joan (Jo) Hartman, has been blessed with two daughters, Kristen Engelhardt Gerlach (Todd) and Rachel Engelhardt, as well as two sets of fraternal twin grandchildren, Cecilia and Gus Gerlach and Oscar and Annalise Gerlach,. The nearly adult grand twins still refer to them as “Bopa” and “Jo-Jo”. The couple have traveled widely, visiting four continents, twenty-five countries, forty-six states, and one United States territory often with Concordia College May Seminars initially, and subsequently with Road Scholar adult education groups.
Readers have commented favorably about Schooling:
“Schooling may have offered ‘a way out and up’ from the farm for Carroll Engelhardt, but his book Schooling: A College Life shows that the best lessons of stewardship learned on the farm have lasted a lifetime. Here there is stewardship of personal and family experiences and memories, as well as local, regional, national and international historical events. Those of us fortunate to have been his students recognize the same conscientiousness, commitment, and care in his writing that we benefited from and enjoyed in his teaching. In examining his own life at school and study of history, he helps us gain a sense of our own lives as history in the making.”
–Jennifer Ristau, Acquisitions and Cataloguing Librarian, Concordia College – Moorhead, MN.
“Engelhardt recounts his undergraduate and graduate years at the universities of Northern Iowa and Iowa with clarity, candor, and an historian’s understanding of the institutions that nourished him and the historical tides that buffeted his generation. Clarity, candor, and historical understanding, supplemented by fine-grained memory and observation, continue in the bulk of his book, focusing on his teaching at Concordia College – Moorhead, MN. Those who have read his earlier memoir—The Farm at Holstein Dip: An Iowa Boyhood, winner of the Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award—will not be surprised to discover that Schooling is a fine book too.”
–John Schacht, author of The Making of Telephone Unionism, and Librarian Emeritus, University of Iowa
“Carroll Engelhardt’s beautifully crafted memoir seamlessly weaves the personal and professional aspects of a life well-lived. It traces his journey from an Iowa farm to academic success at a small Midwestern liberal arts college. Alternatively poignant and amusing it gives readers a glimpse into an academic world that may no longer exist.”
–Shelia Skemp, Professor of History Emerita, University of Mississippi