Holding a small postal package under his arm, Patrick Campbell looks around and jokingly says, “There’s a small dog in this box. But don’t worry, it should be okay.” 

He steps around the corner to say good morning to a fellow political science professor, and with a pleasant smile announces that coffee sounds like a good idea.

It may be another ten minutes before Campbell can actually exit the building to get coffee. Three conversations happen at one time, and greetings fly around the halls of Andrews that make it the warming place it is during the first classes of the day. 

Morning and dusk are his favorite time of day.

“You know,” he says, “when the sun is just below the horizon, yet it’s not quite dark, that time is my favorite.”

And yet that phrase can hold so many more meanings. “When the sun is just below the horizon, yet it’s not quite dark…”

During his undergraduate years at Bridgewater State College (now Bridgewater State University), Campbell cofounded an organization to help adults get their GED. The same test he had taken only years before, and had gotten a perfect score. 

“The reason I dropped out of high school didn’t have anything to do with my abilities,” Campbell said.

In fact, the University of Massachusetts-Boston had promised a scholarship because of his perfect GED score, a promise that was never fulfilled, but a promise that created ambitions. 

After transferring to Bridgewater his sophomore year, Campbell finally figured out what his professional dreams were. After starting as an illustration major, he soon realized his passion for philosophy and anthropology. But it was with his GED organization that he found his true calling. 

“I didn’t teach a lot in the program, I was mostly on the administrative side of things. But, I sometimes went in to help teach, and that was my first experience of teaching,” Campbell said, “and I absolutely loved it.”

Soon after, he was on his way to getting a Ph.D. 

“I went right from my under graduate degree to getting my Ph.D. I knew I wanted to be a professor; I knew I wanted to be a scholar; and I knew I wanted to teach at a university.” 

Take any political science class at Ashland University, and be prepared to take long strolls into the depths of political thought. 

“You have to take the temperature of the students in the room,” Campbell said. “If they want to explore an idea you have to walk there with them. You want to bring out the most important intentions and questions. That sort of teaching is very demanding because you don’t have a tight script. You are having a conversation hoping to have touched on the main things you were hoping the students would take away, but many times you go in other direction.”

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For many years, he was afraid to admit he was a dropout. But even after coming so far in life, he is still very humble. 

“A lot of people say, ‘oh isn’t that great you went from being a drop out to having your Ph.D.’, but there are a lot of people who do that,” he said, “even other professors at Ashland.”

 But it is here in the United States that ambitions and dreams such as these are allowed to come true. 

“Here in the United States we can realistically achieve goals and you can over come money problems. We’re not always destined or faded to wined up somewhere based on where we were born, or poor choices we made as teenagers,” he said.

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Walking back from lunch with his Department of Justice colleague, Patrick Campbell ran into a very well known radio journalist. The three were talking about the reporter’s shoes because he had felt lucky to have found them in Washington D.C. Upon returning to work, another colleague was concerned with the conversation they shared.

“I saw people make mistakes and say silly things to reporters,” Campbell said. “We just had certain cleared people who were allowed to talk to the press.” 

After completing his Ph.D. while being employed full–time at the Department of Justice, it was then that he made the move to teach. Ashland University became one of three schools he had had chosen that fit his teaching style. Ultimately Ashland won, but being a Boston native, the move was a big one.

“Ashland was a perfect fit for me, but the downside was that it is in Ohio, and oddly enough it still is in Ohio,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with Ohio and the longer I’ve been here the more I’ve grown to love it. Ashland fell right in the boarder of where I wanted to go.”

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Patrick Campbell grew up as the second generation born in the United States after his grandparents emigrated from Ireland. 

“The name on my dissertation is actually Patrick Barrett Campbell because I wanted to recognize the bravery of my grandmother and grandfather,” he said. “Three of my grandparents are from Ireland, but I wanted to honor my mothers’ parents and my mother.”

But no one would guess right away that Campbell is from Boston. He covers up his accent with the average Northeastern one. But he credits his sense of humor to growing up around nineteenth century Irish people. 

Music, scholarship, teaching and politics are what make up his passions, but his corky sense of humor seems to be another.

“I was born really young in a log cabin I helped build myself, “ he said.

Although he may not be in the entertainment business, his sense of humor shines through even in his classes. He often says things like, “If you understand Emerson, you are probably insane.” And, “No –ize words, that’s business school language. Only Latin and Anglo-Saxton words please.” 

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But teaching is a journey in the same way that life is a journey. Every day there is something new learned, and someone else to help guide. Patrick Campbell wants nothing more than to help students realize what true potential they really have. 

Sometimes when the sun is setting, there is still enough light to be guided in the right direction. It is not a matter of fulfilling ones own passions, but a matter of helping realize the passions of others.