Adam Hill

What do you like about your job?

One of the great things about working in higher education is that I get to work with bright, inquisitive people who take their work seriously. At UIS, I work with a team of academic advisers who have welcomed me and modeled excellence in their service to students. My advisees are mostly graduate students who are highly motivated to grow in their knowledge and skills and to advance within their chosen fields. The faculty I work with, conduct meaningful research in their fields while also focusing on helping their students grow academically. Across campus, I have encountered a wonderful community of students, faculty and staff.

Can you give me a brief timeline of how your career led you to UIS?

My mother was an elementary school teacher, and she instilled in me a love of learning. I developed an interest in education at an early age. However, my academic path was rather circuitous. I was not terribly focused during my first two years in college. I took a year off from school and started working full-time. 

I went on to spend six years managing movie theaters. Along the way, I started taking classes again and did well enough that I was ultimately able to complete a Ph.D. in history. I've taught middle school and high school, but mostly I've worked in higher education.

I've been a full-time faculty member at several small colleges, including six years as a department chair in the social sciences and humanities. I always enjoyed the advising side of my work—I value working closely with students and am also something of an academic catalog nerd—and so I have been very happy to move into a full-time advising role here at UIS.

Where have you lived or traveled?

I was born in Kankakee and spent most of my childhood in Springfield. I went to college in River Forest, then worked and studied in the St. Louis area for eight years. After that, I spent another eight years in graduate school in Connecticut and commuted to New York for three of those years. I later moved to Minnesota for a teaching job, then to Kansas for another teaching position, before eventually returning to Illinois.

I have visited 40 of the 50 states, plus Washington, D.C. I enjoy traveling internationally whenever the opportunity presents itself. My academic specialty is European history, and because of that I have had opportunities to spend considerable time in England and Germany. My most recent adventure was attending a scholarly conference in Mexico.