Dr. Phillip J. Campana

Professor of German, Emeritus

Dr. Phillip J. Campana teaches German language, culture, and literature courses. He came to Tennessee Tech in 1970 as Chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and served in that capacity until August 2003. A native of Jersey City, New Jersey, he received his B.A. in German from St. Peter's College (1962) and his Ph.D. in German from Brown University (1970). He was also a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Saarbrücken, Germany, in 1962-63.

Dr. Campana's research interests are in German language pedagogy, German culture, and German literature (especially the authors Heinrich Böll and Ludwig Tieck). He is the author of several journal articles and two dozen book reviews, and he has given over three dozen workshops and presentations at state, regional, and national conferences in 16 states and at a workshop in Germany.

His professional activities have included service as member and as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; member of the Executive Council of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; founding member, treasurer, and president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German; member of the Board of Directors and president of the Tennessee Foreign Language Teaching Association (TFLTA); and service to other organizations. He served on the Board of Governors of the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute from 1986 to 2001, having been appointed by Governor Lamar Alexander and reappointed by Governors Ned McWhirter and Don Sundquist. In January 2000 he was appointed to the Editorial Board of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, the pedagogical journal of the American Association of Teachers of German and has been serving as Associate Editor for Book Reviews since 2002. He has received awards from several state and national organizations for his service, the most recent being the 2006 Founders Award for Professional Excellence in Foreign Laguage Education, presented by the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

In addition to his year in Germany as a student he also spent a year and a half in the U.S. Army in Heidelberg, Germany, and he has been to seminars and workshops of two to six weeks each in Bonn, Berlin, Freiburg, Munich, Sankt Andreasberg (Harz), and Kiel. He has traveled extensively in all parts of Germany, east and west, gathering materials for his classes.

Among his activities on the Tennessee Tech campus, Dr. Campana has co-hosted eight statewide German Festivals for high school students of German and is the faculty advisor for German majors. He has served as faculty liaison for the Newman Campus Ministry of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Community, and for seven years taught "Citizenship in the World" for the Boy Scouts' Merit Badge University.

For high-school foreign-language teachers he has received grants for half a dozen intensive summer workshops in French, German, and Spanish. He was co-founder of the Rural Educators' Alliance for Languages, which brings together foreign-language teachers from 10-15 counties as well as the faculty in the TTU Department of Foreign Languages.

In his leisure time Dr. Campana enjoys reading, stamp collecting, and gardening. He is the father of Lisa Chappell, TTU '91, and Michael Campana, TTU '92 & '93, and the grandfather of Robert Nathaniel Chappell, born December 1999, Thomas Orvan Chappell, born July 2001, and Caroline Nicole Campana, born October 2010. He and his wife, Nancy, have a blended family of five children, eleven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

In May 2007 Dr. Campana retired from full-time faculty status, but continued to teach two courses a semester until Spring 2011 on the state's post-retirement program.

Link to courses taught and course materials by clicking here.