Know Your Professors: Dr. Kiril Kolev

A large part of what makes Hendrix what it is are the professors who teach here, and they have been joined by new Politics and International Relations professor, Kiril Kolev.

When asked about his hometown Kolev said, "it's a city of about 300,000, and it's very old. There are some Roman ruins and there is a Roman amphitheater so in that sense it's different in terms of some of the age and history of the landmarks. It's not that different in terms of people. I feel like people across the world are kind of similar in a lot of really important respects."

Kolev is from Plovdiv, Bulgaria originally but he came to the United States to attend college. He ended up staying in the U.S. for graduate school and then came to Hendrix immediately after graduating. 

Kolev became interested in politics in Bulgaria.

"I don't remember the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism in 1989-1990, because I was too young," Kolev said."In '97, about seven years after Bulgaria became democratic there was a huge financial crisis and hyperinflation, which led to massive civil unrest .The government collapsed as a result, and that solidified for me the relationship between the crisis and the attitudes of the people towards government. That made the relationship between society, economics and politics very clear for me. That was the first incident that got me interested in economics and politics. Unsurprisingly, in college I studied economics and in graduate school I studied politics and international relations."

Kolev went to a small liberal arts college, Whittier College in California, for his undergraduate degree. He said he chose Hendrix because he had forgotten how nice it was to be on a small campus where the professors get to interact with the students.

He said it was easy to choose Hendrix because he had an enjoyable lunch with the students on the search committee and he felt comfortable here. He added that he loves it here so far.

Kolev's ideal student is "a student who takes a class at least partially because they have some substantive interest in it beyond it major requirements, professional development, or good grades. Even though those are important, it is great when there is some pure interest in whatever the class is about."

His favorite thing about teaching is getting a student's perspective on things, because it helps him think about the material he already knows in a new way. This is evident in the way he runs his classes.

In his Democracy, Development and Violence course he has his students send in reading journals before every class with their thoughts on the reading. He then responds to their journals before class and asks students with useful or intriguing thoughts to share them in class.

        "My mom was a high school teacher and I remember once she came back from teaching and said, ‘I explained the lesson so well, even I understood it.' That's teaching," Kolev said."It's not that you know everything and you're standing there disseminating it. I think Hendrix knows that and does that really well."