Milan Kovacovic looks back on his education and teaching career
Milan Kovacovic has come a very long way from his one-room primary school in Normandy, France.
After continuing his education in Paris, 14-year-old Milan found himself in Chicago with his mother, attending four different schools in the span of four years. New experiences became the norm. His nomadic lifestyle led him from France to Chicago, California, Germany, until he finally landed in Duluth, where he has stayed for the past four decades.
Milan has not only trotted around the globe, he has also journeyed through different socioeconomic classes. He was raised in foster care for a time, lived with the “haute bourgeoisie”, was drafted in the U.S. Army, and completed college and graduate school. He is now retiring from his teaching career at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
“My mother got a job as a live-in cook in Paris with a very rich family,” he says.
“In the village, we didn’t have anything. It was very primitive. No running water. In Paris, it was a mansion, and what impressed me most was the showers and terry cloth towels.”
This family had lavish antiques, furnishings and paintings, even a Van Gogh. “To me, the shower was more exciting than their possessions.”
While the conveniences of the mansion were a positive change, Milan says it was a difficult transition, from near poverty to wealth, almost overnight. He was living in a home where half of the residents were live-in domestics.
At school, surrounded by the French upper class, Milan felt out of place. “I had an identity problem,” Milan says. “There I was, a peasant living at this address, going to this school, wearing the expensive clothes of the family’s grandson.”
When he was 14-years-old, he and his mother ventured to Chicago, and new experiences became the norm. He entered the military, attended college, and traveled even more. Eventually, he landed at UMD in 1974.
Milan is now a renowned faculty member and associate professor of French language, cinema, literature, and culture, and a published author. Over the years, students have given Milan praise. In 2010, former students of Milan created a “Friends of Milan Kovacovic” study-abroad scholarship in his honor.
Other awards and recognitions under his belt include a CLA Teaching Award (2000), a UMD Student Award for Outstanding Faculty (2013), and a UMD Student Award nomination for Outstanding Advisor (2016). In 2017, Milan was awarded the French Teacher of the Year Award by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French.
After all of his pilgrimages, one would think Milan is due for another trek around the globe. Spending so many years in the Zenith City seems out of the norm for the well-traveled instructor. He says, however, he won’t be leaving anytime soon.
“Duluth... It just feels like home,” says Milan. “Especially after all of these wanderings.”