Did you know?

Did you know?

October 9, 2014
A conversation with Dr. Art Gunlicks

Article by George Pangburn, photo by Art Gunlicks

If you’ve been around Osher at UR for a while, you probably know that Dr. Art Gunlicks has a following. Art has been leading classes for Osher since his retirement from the Political Science Department at UR in 2005. His diverse course topics, including Immigration Policy, the Modern Welfare State, Health Care Policy, and Comparing Liberal Democracies, are immensely popular. We sat down with Art recently to learn a bit more about him.

He was born in North Platte, Nebraska, which is located in the southwestern corner of the state. His maternal grandmother and grandfather had emigrated separately from Germany in the 1880’s and settled in Nebraska as did many Germans at the time. His father grew up on a small farm in Kansas to which his father and mother had emigrated from Norway and Sweden, respectively, in the 1860’s.

Art attended the University of Denver where, with a scholarship and various jobs, he paid his own way through college. (He remains very proud of that fact to this day.) After finishing his Bachelor’s degree at Denver, he applied for and won a scholarship—a German Government “Thank You” scholarship—to study in Freiberg, in the Black Forest of Germany. Art wasn’t entirely focused on study: he enjoyed hiking in the mountains nearby, and he met a young woman named Regine, who was later to become his wife.

Upon completing his study in Germany, Art entered the US Army as a Second Lieutenant and served for two years at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in the Adjutant General Corps. He applied for graduate schools in political science and was accepted and offered a scholarship at Georgetown University. Between his first and second year at Georgetown, he traveled to Germany where he and Regine were engaged. They married in 1962 and lived in Rosslyn, Virginia, where they were eyewitnesses to some of the key events of the 1960’s: the Cuban missile crisis, Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and the funeral procession of President John F. Kennedy.

After Art completed the course work for his PhD, he and Regine moved to Germany for two years where Regine completed her university studies leading to a teaching certificate and he conducted field work for his dissertation. The subject was a case study of local government and political parties in Germany with a focus on Lower Saxony, Germany. As he was completing that work, he began looking for a full time position teaching political science. That search led to a position with East Tennessee State University.

After two years at ETSU, Art applied for and was accepted into the faculty of the University of Richmond in 1968. For the next 37 years, he taught graduate and undergraduate UR classes in political science and pursued research interests in political party organization in Germany, local government organization, federalism, and campaign and party finance. He published or edited five books and wrote numerous journal articles in these areas. These efforts were supported by a Fulbright Grant in 1982-83 and by a number of grants from UR. Beyond his teaching and scholarly pursuits, Art also provided leadership to the University as Chair of the Political Science Department for three different terms, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Dean of the Graduate School.  

Since his retirement in 2005, he has remained committed to teaching, both in his Osher classes at UR and at the Shepherd’s Center. For the latter, he helps assure quality intellectual challenge and social interaction in a variety of course offerings by serving as Chair of the Education Committee and Past President. Art continues to enjoy teaching and interacting with his students, providing them with stimulating discussions of political systems at the local, national, and international levels. He is one of the most consistently popular Osher instructors at UR.

He and Regine live near the UR campus and have two sons who also live in the Richmond area. Michael is an attorney, and Lars is a custom furniture maker. While Art and Regine enjoy traveling, especially to Germany, perhaps their most enjoyable pursuit is spending time with their three grandchildren, Olin, Sabina, and Ian. You may have seen him walking with them to the gazebo on the UR campus to feed the ducks. In his limited spare time, he tries to maintain his yard, feed his addiction to reading newspapers, and keep up with current events. We are pleased to have Art as a major contributor to the Osher program at UR and look forward to his future classes.