Associate Professor of Classics Carolin Hahnemann never planned to get a Ph.D. from Brown University. But she did. While she acknowledges that her studies required hard work and perseverance, the native of Munich, Germany, admits she stumbled blindly into the East Coast Ivy League institution, thinking she was applying to an American university located "somewhere in the middle."

Hahnemann wanted to stay at Brown only for a semester or two. Seven years after her arrival, she emerged with an M.A. and a Ph.D. in classics, the only person in her entering class of six students to finish the program.

"I think the others looked too far down the road and got lost," she says. "I just took things one year at a time. I entered the program thinking I'd stay for a year or two and return to Germany."

While Hahnemann laughs at her own naivet é upon entering Brown, she takes her teaching and her research seriously. She specializes in Greek tragedy, comparative epic, and textual criticism, teaching a variety of courses at Kenyon. In 2000 Hahnemann received the Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence. Students praise her use of technology in the classroom, including the use of PowerPoint presentations in her mythology course.

Hahnemann's style extends to a more personal level as well. She's been known to wear floor-length ball gowns to class. Her rationale? If she doesn't wear a dress within a year, she discards it. Hahnemann also likes to lighten things up a bit to show her students that classics can be fun as well as rigorous.