Professor Duane Osheim is a man with a seemingly endless knowledge of history who truly loves his job. The study of history is his passion. He has made the most of it through his education, overseas research and the 18 years he has spent teaching at the University.
Osheim grew up in an Iowa town with less than 1,000 people, a population less than the student body at many high schools. He attended Luther, a small college in Iowa, and furthered his education at the University of Nebraska and the University of California at Davis. He went on to spend two years working on a post doctorate at the American Academy in Rome.
The job market is what led Osheim to the University.
"When you decide you want to be a history professor, you go where there are jobs, and I was willing to go anywhere," Osheim said. "I couldn't have ended up in a more marvelous place. I didn't choose it. It chose me. I came in 1976. A number of us got here, decided it was a great place and just stayed."
This veteran professor has seen many changes over the years.
"The biggest change is really the diversity of the student body," Osheim said.
Osheim has done research in Germany, Scandinavia and Italy.
"I lived in Italy off and on four or five years when you put everything together," Osheim said. He also lived in Rome for two years, working in monasteries and rural villages.
Osheim claims to have a very poor memory, but a conversation with him affirms his aptitude for recalling historical facts.
As a historian, Osheim has interesting answers to thought-provoking questions. If he could meet any historical figure, his choice would be Machiavelli.
"The best part of what I find interesting about him is that he had such a nasty sense of humor," Osheim said. "It seems like he was deadly serious about a number of things, but he was just a tremendous prankster as well."
Though he is a champion of historical study, Osheim did not express any strong desire to visit another time period.
"Let's face it, when you go back before antibiotics, it's a pretty rough and nasty world," he said. "If you go back before the '70s, then you're back before down-filled jackets and central heating. I suppose [I'd visit] the 16th or 17th century, but it wouldn't be pleasant in all sorts of ways."
Osheim said he occupies his free time with activities such as fishing, woodworking and golfing.
"There are a lot of things I like to putter with, but what I like most of all about them is the total escape," he said. "You're just thinking about an entirely different set of problems."
Osheim described himself as quiet and reserved with a dry sense of humor.
"I don't know how other people describe me," Osheim said. "That sort of thing I stopped thinking about when I was about 23 or 24. It was a very important question at one point in my life, but it's not what I worry about much lately. At a certain point, I just stopped worrying about that."
Osheim appears to be a content man -- his intellectual thirst quenched by his job, his emotional needs satisfied by his family. He is married to a molecular biologist and has two children.
"I suppose the fascinating thing about what I do is the way you keep noticing other things," Osheim said. "Every time you walk through the Lawn, because the light is different, you notice something different about it. I think that's what is fascinating about being a historian. When I teach Western Civilization again, or look at a particular set of problems again, I notice other things about it. It's an endlessly fascinating job to have."
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