Speaker: Mike Kukral
Title: There is Always a River
About: The importance of rivers in the human geography, history, and settlement of the American Midwest. Rivers are essential to our urban locations, economy, and transportation from the times of Native Americans to the present. There is beauty in the river and an attraction to it for recreation and bearings. The rivers of the Midwest give us our direction on the ground and in life. There is always a river in our lives.
Bio: My interest in Geography began in Northeastern Ohio where my grandparents had a farm on the western ridge of the Cuyahoga Valley in Bath Township. We lived a mile away and I spent as much time as possible on the farm and learned to appreciate the land, woods, crops, swamps, animals, weather, and culture of farm life. It also seemed like all of my friends’ grandparents came from other countries and spoke different languages in this rural area 30 miles from Cleveland. I worked many summer jobs since the age 15 and became very interested in restoring old mechanical technology, from farm machinery to player pianos. We hardly ever traveled out of Ohio but I spent a great amount of time studying the world through maps. I did not have access to any Geography classes until college. I graduated from Revere High School and then earned a B.Sc. in Geography from Ohio University in Athens. During my college days I played trombone in the Ohio University Marching 110 and became section leader of 24 trombones (who were mostly music majors). After graduation, I backpacked around Europe and North Africa with college friends and little money for two months.
I was offered a scholarship to stay at Ohio University for a M.Sc. in Environmental Science and completed a M.A. in Political Science as well. As a teaching assistant, I realized that teaching about the earth and its people was my career goal. I then began work on my Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Kentucky. During that time I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Prague, Czechoslovakia. I arrived in Prague in 1989 and soon was in the middle of a revolution overthrowing communism in Central Europe. It was an exciting and anxious time that year behind the Iron Curtain as it opened!
After completing my Ph.D., I began my career as a visiting professor at my alma mater and also at Ohio Wesleyan before coming to Rose-Hulman in 1999. I am the first and only tenured Geography prof at Rose and have been very pleased with the interest shown by my students. During 20 plus years teaching at Rose I have organized and led students on programs in Africa, Europe, and Asia.