Profile: Grand Valley State University professor and Renaissance Man ... - MLive.com

By Terri Finch Hamilton | The Grand Rapids ...

February 28, 2010, 5:58AM

Paul L. Newby II | The Grand Rapids PressPassion for the classroom: Craig Benjamin, associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University, sits among his students during a lively classroom discussion. “Well said, mate,” the Australian often tells students. “Now â€" who else thinks something?” Benjamin is an accomplished jazz musician, active in his Eastown community and a passionate mountain climber. “He’s a holistic educator,” says his GVSU history colleague Richard Cooley. “He’s passionate about his subject and his research, but he’s also passionate about people.” View Photo Gallery Trying to write about Craig Benjamin is sort of like trying to teach his “Big History” class.

You have a beginning and an end. The tough part is fitting in all the stuff in between.

History expert Benjamin is at the forefront of the newest kind of history education, called Big History. In a single semester, he teaches the history of the universe, from the Big Bang to looking ahead billions of years, predicting how the world will end â€" “The ultimate fate of the universe,” the effervescent Grand Valley State University prof says cheerfully in his Australian accent. “I have 14 weeks to teach it.”

We have to fit in his saxophone, flute, piano, dropping out of college, climbing the Himalayas, the Eastown Street Fair, ancient central Asia and a lot of jokes about sheep.

Did you know people have been farming eels in Australia for 8,000 years?

Benjamin makes pens run out of ink.

Benjamin, 55, is associate professor of history at GVSU, a career he started in his 40s, after 20 years as a professional jazz musician.

He’s a teacher in all sorts of ways.

You’ll see him all over town sharing his expertise â€" from lectures on the relationship between jazz musicians and the civil rights leaders of the ’60s to a library talk about his recent hiking trek through the Himalayas.

He’s a huge community booster, urging his neighbors and his students to get out and be part of things. Each September, he takes the stage as emcee for the popular Eastown Street Fair, a colossal event he helps organize.

Benjamin lives in a cool old house in Eastown with his wife, Pamela, and their dog, Buster, a cute cockapoo who craves attention. When he and Buster take their daily walks, Benjamin brings a plastic bag and picks up trash. Obsessively tidy, he mows his grass then rakes the clippings.

He’s an old-fashioned gentleman type, a polite guy who opens doors and helps you on with your coat. He’s addicted to Vegemite, that popular Australian food paste made from yeast extract with added vegetables and spices. He eats it every morning on toast with sharp cheddar cheese.

He’s a fan of “Lost” and “Battlestar Gallactica.” He loves road trips and has traveled to every state except Alaska, North Dakota and Iowa.

“Iowa? It’s right in the middle,” he muses at his dining room table. “How did we miss it?”

A scholar

His scholarly side earned a doctorate in ancient history with this dissertation: “The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria.” He’s co-writing a textbook for McGraw Hill â€" the first text on Big History, he says. Due out in 2011, it’s called “Between Nothing and Everything: Big History.”

On a recent Thursday afternoon in his Big History class at GVSU, he plays loud French jazz before class then enthusiastically walks the room and gestures as he talks about the beginning of agriculture, making jokes about sheep â€" they overrun Australia â€" and urging his students to see the world.

During the course of an hour, he bombards your brain with all sorts of stuff: There are fish in the Great Barrier Reef that swim into sharks’ mouths and clean their teeth; If you wait, as he did, in the French countryside for a glimpse of the Tour de France bicycle race, expect to wait three hours for a 38-second glimpse of the cyclists.

“It was worth it,” he enthuses with a grin. “Put that on your list of things to see and do.

“Now,” he says, “a quick timeline of the last 12,000 years.”

Everybody scribbles.

“We had an opportunity to get him, and we jumped on it,” says Benjamin’s GVSU colleague, Richard Cooley, on the committee who hired him. “We thought his life experiences, his music, everything that he’s done, would add a different flavor to the department.

“He’s sort of a Renaissance guy,” says Cooley, associate professor of history. “He’s composed music, he plays multiple instruments, he’s a world traveler. He just attacks everything he does, and he has his finger in so many things on campus. A lot of the department is in awe of him. Nobody is surprised at what he does next, but they always say, ‘Wow.’”

A musician

That’s Benjamin’s history side. His musician side is always nearby.

Benjamin often plays piano Tuesday nights at an invitation-only gathering of artists who meet for spaghetti and fun at an art studio on the Northwest Side. He is vice president of the 500-member West Michigan Jazz Society, one of the most active in the country. For two decades, he made his living as a jazz musician in his homeland of Australia, dropping out of college to pursue that dream.

He grew up in Brisbane, with dad, Gordon, mom, Fay, brother, Drew, and sister, Kymelle.

His father, who died in June, was a pioneering and well-respected TV journalist who traveled the world covering stories.

“I was born with the love of learning,” he says. “My dad put Hemingway into my hands and Dostoyevsky.”

His dad played saxophone, flute and clarinet, and Benjamin plays all of those and more.

“Music was a way for me to shine,” Benjamin says. “It was a way to express myself. I wasn’t a good rugby or cricket player.”

He would practice six to eight hours a day.

“Jazz was an obsession for me,” he says. “I wanted to play like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane.”

One day, at 19, he and his friend John went to the university office to drop out, then went home to tell their parents.

“I said, ‘We’re moving to Sydney to be jazz musicians.’”

It didn’t go over well.

“I was actually disowned for a couple years,” he says. “They said, ‘Everything we’ve done for you? We see a great career for you in journalism or government. Now, you’re gonna drop out? This is a disaster.’”

He sighs.

“There was strife,” he says. “They said, ‘We don’t think we should be in contact for a while.’”

So he and John moved to Sydney. They worked at a car assembly plant for six months to earn money to survive. Then, after intense auditions, they were accepted into a prestigious jazz studies program there. He studied during the day and played gigs at night.

He and John formed a modern jazz trio called “Out to Lunch” with another guy, and they played spontaneous improv. They were good. They did some recording and became pretty well-known, invited to the top jazz festivals.

In 1973, they were invited to perform at the Canberra Jazz Club â€" where his miffed parents were lifetime members. They patched things up.

He was 21 when he married Pamela and was a father by 22.

Suddenly, Benjamin had to play more gigs in clubs and casinos to support his family. He couldn’t be picky.

“I wasn’t just playing jazz anymore,” he says, “but whatever the owners wanted. When I realized I was playing ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Old Oak Tree’ five times a week, I thought, ‘This has become just another job.’ I wanted to just put my sax away.”

He decided to go back to school, to pursue music education. But the classes bored him. He started taking courses that interested him, and next thing he knew, he had a doctorate in history.

A tough decision

GVSU offered him a teaching job in 2003 and the Australian had to make a big decision.

“It was very, very hard,” he says of leaving Australia. “We’re a very close family. It was a shock for our kids.”

He and Pamela, married for 33 years, have two kids: Zoe, 32, and Asher, 28, both living in Australia.

“The toughest part is leaving your children behind,” he says.

But the job opportunity â€" a chance for Benjamin to put his new passion to work â€" was powerful.

“I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to touch the future in a positive way,’” he says.

“History has this reputation of being about dead stuff long past,” he says. But the beauty, he says, is you can learn from it to affect your future.

“You can see clear patterns that lead us to this moment,” he says. “Global warming, war, diseases â€" these are the problems 18- to 22-year-olds have inherited. If I can show them how people have solved big problems in the past ...”

He smiles. He loves this stuff.

“Of all the things he does, he loves teaching the best,” says Pamela, a former teacher and an active community volunteer. “He loves watching their minds unfold, to open to things they never heard of before, to life’s possibilities.”

“If you sit on the sidelines, you miss so much,” Benjamin says. “I try to model that for students.” He encourages them to join campus committees or student senate. He takes them to the theater, to tutor school kids, to help out at homeless shelters.

“I want to show the connection between the classroom and the wider world,” he says.

Mountain trek

His own world widened last fall when he trekked through the Himalayas.

“The secret dream of anybody who loves mountains is the Himalayas,” he says.

He made the decision last June, with his brother, at the funeral of their mountain-loving dad.

“We said, ‘You know, Dad loved the mountains. He would have loved to do this. Let’s do it.’”

They flew to Katmandu in October, then spent three and a half weeks in bitter cold and majestic splendor, in a high-altitude hiking trip at the base of Mount Everest.

When he talks of it, he glows.

“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” he says.

They climbed the stunning mountains â€" reaching 18,600 feet â€" with several other hikers, an English guide and 21 Nepalese sherpas who carried supplies.

“To engage with these wonderful Buddhist people every day ...” He sighs. “They’re positive, happy, immensely strong. They were smiling the whole time. Singing and dancing and playing the flute, welcoming each one of us as we struggled up the pass.”

Each new day was a revelation, he says.

“We were in the clouds, and when we woke up, it was clear,” he tells of one morning. “We staggered up these steps then around a bend, and there was Mount Everest. The wind was making the snow stream off it like a banner. Tears were running down our faces. We couldn’t help it.”

That was the reward for grueling work.

“We were up at 3:30 in the morning,” he says. “The cold was intense. It was minus 15 degrees. As soon as you left the tent, you couldn’t feel your fingers or toes.

“We got pounding headaches because of altitude sickness. You always felt slightly nauseous.”

He smiles.

“Then, you start to climb.”

Back in his classroom, live-wire world traveler Benjamin transports his students all over the place, from China’s Yangtze River to whatever place pops up in conversation. He poses a question, then calls on a student named Alexandria. He suddenly stops.

“Have you ever been to the great city of Alexandria, that you were named after?” he asks her.

Um, no.

“When you get there,” he says, all excited, “you’ll find it’s this big, amazing melting pot. You have to go there.”

E-mail T.J. Hamilton: tjhamilton@grpress.com

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