Professor Jack Shindler bids farewell to North Central

Professor Jack Shindler has pursued a career — both personal and professional — in international education for the past 30 years. Shindler completed his bachelor’s at Williams College in 1968, studying English but retaining a love of the French language and forming an itch for international travel early on.   

“I needed to get out of the country,” he said of his initial urge to get out and go during his young adult years. Participating in the USAID program, a program no longer running, but which allowed college students to spend a summer abroad living and working in exchange for expenses paid. Shindler worked as a bellhop in a high-end Swiss hotel during the summer of 1966 when he was abroad. 

The Swiss Alps were a sight Shindler spoke fondly of seeing for the first time through railway windows, and though the job itself was full of its own aches and pains, it was the ride to Paris that he would take as often as he could that reminded him why it was worth it.  

“(I would get) on the train to Paris after a day’s work… (riding back) until midnight of the next night,” Shindler said.  

He later completed a Fulbright assistantship in France, traveling back to his linguistic roots and affinity for the culture. After considering a graduate program in comparative literature at Rutgers University, Shindler rounded out his earlier studies with a Ph.D. in English. 

Up until this point, Shindler’s interest in the international was contained to his own active experiences. But it was a 10-week course at Princeton University, taken after his time at Rutgers, that sparked Shindler’s interest in intercultural curriculum. The course focused on teaching English as a second language and would prove to be a turning point in his subsequent involvement in international education.

“I lapped (the course) up and put it in my pocket for future use,” he said, before turning to his involvement at Texas Southern University, where he found himself developing what was at the time the largest English as a second language (ESL) program in the nation. 

Upon seeing an ad for an ESL program director for a college in Naperville, Shindler accepted the offer to both develop and create the ESL program at North Central College in 1981. This he did for several years before the rest of academia caught up with Shindler’s desire to continue expanding the intercultural curriculum. 

“In 1989, ‘international’ was a new word… I investigated and in ’93, the Office of International Programs (opened),” Shindler said. He later completed an additional master’s in applied linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The rest is, as they say, still unclear.  

Shindler’s presence within the Center for Global Education (previously the Office of International Programs), a department that consistently turns out globalized student after globalized student, is far-reaching and not easily pierced. Yet with a background as diverse and internationally focused as his, the question must be asked as to why Shindlerremainedmined nestled in the quiet nook of this Midwestern college. 

The question is received with a laugh and a meditative pause that precedes Dr. Shindler’s answer. But the pause is not brief. 

“The colleagues,” he replies. “This is a warm environment,” and then, with a touch of mischief, “No one (at North Central) ever said ‘no’ (to my ideas). I just kept doing things…(I had) the ability to create and get out of (one) corner. Maybe it’s the Sagittarian in me… I like eclecticism.”  

Upon retiring, Shindler plans to continue traversing those lands not yet visited, potentially circling back to adult education, a sect of ESL teaching especially important to him.  

When the inevitable is asked of him — namely, which part of the globe holds the most significance for him — the professor’s eyes raise and alight on several landscapes bordering the ceiling of his office: stretches of land on the Isle of Skye. 

“There’s a magic there that’s nowhere else,” Shindler said.  

But the musings turn back to Paris, where Shindler retains vivid remembrances of his time there during his college years.

“Part of it was youth… (but) sitting on a bench and realizing I was in Paris,” Shindler began, seemingly looking for the words, “it was like food.” 

Looking ahead, Shindler hopes North Central will continue to build upon the intercultural and international courses developed during his time here, expanding study abroad programs during the proposed May term and even developing new intercultural experiences in the backyards of Chicago and other U.S. cities.  

Mounted on the far wall of his office in a heavy frame, Vermeer’s “Officer and Laughing Girl” sits, depicting the young lady sitting across from a man in the foreground, a large linen map spread out behind her. 

“I like to think she’s meeting with her study abroad adviser,” Shindler said about the painting with a smile.  

Vermeer as an artist notably depicted maps as an emblem of culture in his paintings, using light and a knowledge of culture to saturate his works.  

Its presence in the office of Dr. Jack Shindler cannot be more fitting.