A professor’s career is not limited to a classroom

Academic Division Chair Dr. Stephen Maynard Caliendo is a political science professor at North Central College, a political analyst for CBS2 Chicago and he is an author.

“All of that is being part of a professor,” said Caliendo. Balancing so many jobs seems difficult, but Caliendo downplayed this. The most complicated area of Caliendo’s life is his role as chairperson of his division: his administrative responsibilities for the school. Caliendo said, “So much of it is careful planning, setting deadlines for ourselves.” He continued by saying, “just like being a college student, it’s about time management.”

Caliendo said that, “Before I was division chair, I took full advantage of the flexibility that comes with being a faculty member.” He said that now, as a division chair, he must be on campus five days a week.

Caliendo explained that before he was a division chair, he was able to do a large amount of his work at home on the days he didn’t have classes. “I was still putting in 60-65 hour weeks, just not all Monday through Friday.”

The public speaking that comes with being a political analyst on television or doing lectures at other colleges may have bettered Caliendo as a professor. He said his goal is always to teach – as teacher, author, and analyst.

“The whole idea with intellectual curiosity and learning over a lifetime is to figure out ways to have multiple perspectives so that those things can come to life to us in different ways,” Caliendo said on his love for learning and teaching.

Race is a subject that Caliendo has tackled several times, in his recent book “Inequality in America: Race, Poverty, and Fulfilling Democracy’s Promise,” and his two previous books, (both co-authored with Charlton McIlwain) “The Routledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity” and “Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns.”

Caliendo believes – at least for him – that it is important to have a broader perspective, which comes best with a variety of perspectives.

“I pick my co-authors fairly carefully. My primary co-author is Charles McIlwain from New York University and we have worked together constantly and steadily for 14 years,” Caliendo said.

He continued to talk about his collaborations with McIlwain, saying, “We complement each other in a number of ways; because we’re working on race, I don’t think it’s insignificant to note that he is black and I’m white, and I think that has enriched the conversations we have had and the directions we have taken our research. But, more important than that, he’s trained as a communications scholar and I am a political scientist.”

Caliendo said he and McIlwain are currently working on a book about the evolution of the n-word and “who is allowed to say it.” The idea of the book stems from debates the two scholars conducted at colleges throughout the country.

“Hip-hop is an important part of what has happened to that word,” Caliendo said. “Especially the encroachment of hip-hop into white suburbs and white kids thinking they can use it because they hear [it]in the music from the people they appreciate.”