Submitted photo. Southwest Minnesota State University professor of history Dr. Jeff Kolnick is retiring after 33 years.

MARSHALL — In a career that brought opportunities to lead, share knowledge of historical roots and inspire generations of students, Southwest Minnesota State University professor of history Dr. Jeff Kolnick is retiring after 33 years.

“It’ll take a little getting used to. I started working when I was 16, and I’m almost 66, so that’s almost half a century of working. It’ll be a little bit of an adjustment,” Kolnick said. “I’m looking forward to retirement, and I might adjunct some classes. Maybe travel, write and read.”

Kolnick made the move to SMSU in 1992 from the west coast, where he is originally from the Los Angeles area. He came to Marshall as he was finishing his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California-Davis, and also has a bachelor and masters from UCLA.

“More than moving from the west coast of Minnesota, a bigger change really was moving from a metropolitan area to a smaller town. That was probably more of a challenge,” Kolnick said of his transition. “I studied small towns. My doctoral dissertation was on the history of Blue Earth County in the last 20 years of the 19th century. So, I’ve been to Mankato and done research there, but I’ve never lived in a community like Marshall.”

Kolnick’s PhD dissertation on Minnesota was an appealing factor to SMSU in the hiring process, giving him his first job out of college.

“I’m a historian, and there was a job opening for someone who could teach U.S. History, and specifically Minnesota history,” Kolnick said. “I applied for that job, and I wrote my doctoral dissertation on a part of Minnesota history. I was competitive in that field, and got hired.”

Kolnick taught a variety of history courses over his time at SMSU, such as Civil War, Rural World, U.S. Foreign Policy, African American History, U.S. Involvement in Vietnam and several upper division classes.

“I discovered at a fairly young age, while I was an undergraduate, that I had a gift for history. I initially wanted to be a political scientist, and once I went to UCLA, I discovered that I could be doing the same amount of work and I would get an A in a history class, but B+ in a political science class,” Kolnick said. “I never understood why I couldn’t get an A in political science, so I realized that I was just naturally already pretty good at history. I became a historian based on that.”

Through his time teaching, Kolnick had opportunities to attend conferences, one of which was in 1999 in Salzburg, Austria, where he met his now wife, and brought important figures to campus to speak to his students.

“One of the best things about having been a professor at Southwest State, was that sometimes we would invite important people to campus to give talks … I had some of the best experiences of my life driving people from the airport to Marshall,” Kolnick said. “I drove important civil rights activists back and forth to the Twin Cities … That was a little unexpected benefit of having taught in Marshall, and being involved in bringing people to campus. I got to spend time with really interesting people.”

“Because I had this job, I was able to get admitted to that conference in Salzburg [where he met his wife]. I was admitted to national conferences where I met these civil rights activists that really shaped my life,” Kolnick added. “I have benefited from that in ways that are just incalculable. Being a college professor is a giant, giant privilege, and I hope I took as much advantage of it as I could.”

When it comes to other aspects of the job, Kolnick enjoyed seeing what his students did from afar after leaving his classroom.

“The best part of teaching as long as I did, is that my students are now middle-aged people. They’ve gone on to do remarkable things,” Kolnick said. “They’re deans at colleges and universities, medical doctors, they’re lawyers. They’re helping people in a variety of professions … The best part, for sure, is maintaining contact with your students and seeing their success that you hopefully played a role in.”

Kolnick also served for some time as the President of the Faculty Association, representing SMSU faculty, which he also noted as “a great privilege.”

Through his over three decades of teaching, Kolnick said he would often share life advice in each of his classes, to personally show support to students.

“I always stress to my students, that you know the most important thing you can do is tend to the relationships that you have in your life. You’re going to work, everybody’s going to work, but you really need to think about those things that you can control,” Kolnick said. “You can control how you treat people in your life. That’s the most important thing you can do.”

Kolnick expressed a special thank-you to SMSU for the opportunity to teach, and to the Marshall community for its continued support to the university.

A final piece of the job Kolnick took seriously while he welcomed in hundreds of students over the years, was taking a moment every semester to instill confidence in moments of self doubt.

“I always like to tell them that, ‘Professor Kolnick thinks you’re pretty smart and strong. If you hear those voices, you tell them to go away because that is not true,'” Kolnick said. “I usually tell them that toward the end of the semester, so that they hear it from somebody who says, ‘No, that’s not true. You’re pretty smart and strong.'”