Conveying a Blue-Collar Past

"Enthusiasm sometimes is more engrossing than knowledge perse," notes Assistant History Professor Bruce Nelson.

His own zeal for his academic speciality—labor history—may come from firsthand experience. After graduating from Princeton in 1962, Nelson became a blue-collar worker in San Francisco; a doctorate from Berkeley came 20 years later.

He admits to a conflict between his teaching load and his own scholarly pursuits—when he is teaching, there isn't much time for scholarship. But while he believes that the best scholar is not always the best teacher, Nelson maintains that "a genuinely good teacher who isn't involved in research is probably a rarity."

Bruce Nelson entered the field of labor history from the bottom—as a laborer, He works to achieve a shaky balance between teaching and scholarship.

Scot Drysdale likes to be user-friendly. Besides advising computer-science majors, he leads freshman trips.