Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Andrew Shenkman.  He was born and raised in Bergen County, New Jersey.  His father was an auto mechanic, and his mother was a teacher’s aide for a school that focused on helping the developmentally challenged.  He has an older brother and an older sister.  He attended public schools and graduated from Westwood High School in 2007.  He graduated from Rowan in 2011 with a history major concentrating on European history, as well as a minor in political science.  After graduating, he took a clerkship with the Bergen County Courthouse, where he was digitizing property deeds.  During this time, he began studying for the LSAT and hoping to attend law school.  He then took a job working for his father’s business.  One day, he was contacted by Tesla due to his LinkedIn resume.  This was very early for LinkedIn, and he had an unusual profile as a history major who worked as a technician on cars.  He thinks that that Psi Iota Fellow Laurie Lahey was the one who recommended he create this LinkedIn resume.  Tesla offered him a position as an entry-level service technician.  He had a rapid period of professional and personal growth, and he now oversees all service for Tesla in two regions of the Northeast.

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I chose Rowan because a friend of mine from high school went to Rowan in 2006.  I visited him one weekend, and I fell in love with the feel of the campus.  My single mother had three jobs most of my youth, and we definitely could not afford anything other than a state institution.  Thus, I came to Rowan.

The first semester at Rowan was exciting, and I had a great time and felt that I belonged.  I remember writing about Abigail Adams and women’s rights for your class, Dr. Carrigan.  My second semester was far more challenging, and I questioned many things, especially whether or not secondary education was the right path for me.  While the start of my sophomore year was rocky, the second half of that year was when I truly fell in love with the history program at Rowan.  Of the many classes I took at Rowan, three history courses stand out.  One of those was a class on the Crusades with Scott Morschauser.  The other two courses were both with Professor Joy Wiltenburg, who was the single most important faculty member that I had.  One of her two courses was The Enlightenment, and the other was a seminar on witch hunting.  Both of those courses brought together many strands of things that I loved.  They involved religion and science and were set in the time of history that I found most interesting.  I loved studying the period of transition to the study of reason and science.  I remember well Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and using that book to discuss the historiography of witch hunting.  I learned in these classes and others that history was about the decisions made and not made by the authors more than it was about the contents of the actual writing.  I remember thinking “this is so damn cool” as I worked on that paper. 

I really valued the small class culture of Rowan University.  I learn best from dialogue and discussion.  I am not sure even sure I would have graduated if the classes had been only lecture-oriented.  The Rowan class structure was foundational for my success after graduation.  I was not a great student, especially at the start of my sophomore year, and I was actually suspended.  I had a serious period of reflection, and I decided that I would come back.  Due to the close-knit relationship between students and faculty, my return was very successful.  I made the Dean’s list nearly every semester after I came back, and I am not confident that I would have been able to even get my degree at most other institutions.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/