Behind The Syllabus: Joe Troncale

What do you do on the weekends?

On Saturdays I usually go kayaking or help my wife with chores around the house and the farm, and on Sundays we go spend time with friends at our ashram in D.C.

What's the craziest thing you did when you were in college?

I took a leave of absence to go to a small town in Mississippi to work as a civil rights worker during the '60s non-violent movement, then enlisted in the Army to avoid the draft and was then given an honorable discharge when I declared myself a conscientious objector to all war.

What's one thing your students would never guess about you?

I love to go camping with my Russian friends to pick mushrooms and I make lunch for my 93-year-old mother-in-law every day before leaving for the university.

What's your favorite college memory?

A meeting in Moscow as a foreign service officer with Andrei Sakharov, the Russian scientist who developed the hydrogen bomb and then protested against it.

If you could take a year off, what would you do?

I would spend six months on retreat at Adi Da Samrajashram on the Fijiian island of Naitauba and the other six months in St. Petersburg, Russia.