Frank F. Koscielski

About Me

Call me Ishmael, I mean Frank; I know that’s easier for most people. I am an Academic Services Officer for the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State University. That means I’m an academic advisor, recruiter, sometime instructor and all-around good guy. Although I’ve only been in this job a little over a year, my career with Wayne State goes back a good long way to 1968. That was the year I graduated from Pershing High School in Detroit and tried out Wayne for the first time. To make a long story short I hated it and only lasted a couple of semesters. My grades, incidentally, were dismal. My childhood dream was to be an automobile mechanic and here I was stuck in college at the behest of my parents. I was truly a fish out of water! These people did not talk, eat, breathe and live cars. So I dropped out. Well, then I couldn’t find a job in a dealership. So with the help of some neighbors, I got a job as a sheet metal worker (Sheet Metal Workers Local 292). In short order I decided I hated that too: outside in the cold during the winter and inside in the hot during the summer—heavy lifting, lots of heights and every factory, foundry and heat treater in the Detroit area.

Geez, I hated sheet metal work but stayed on through a four-year apprenticeship so I would have some security. I decided I wanted to be a musician. I had played the piano since I was ten and took up the guitar at 14. Another long story short—I became a rock and roll musician and made a full-time living at it for a few years (Local 5 AFM). It was heaven! Except for the starvation part, of course. The moderately successful band broke up. What to do? I went into business with a guy in Hamtramck, doing van conversions. I worked my butt off to build that business and my partner took the money! Lesson: in business, never have a partner.

But in life, you do need a partner, a soulmate, and in 1977 I got married to Debbie. I got away from that crummy business partner and went to work at Garrity Motor Sales in Hamtramck. Finally I was a mechanic. A fine job indeed—I worked hard and made good money. But in 1987 a nagging desire from the past reared its head. I knew I could do college and with a little push from my wife, I discovered the Weekend College Program (now the ISP) at Wayne State. After a 19 year break I was back in school. This time it was different—I loved it. My fellow students were just as "seasoned" as I was. I got along great with the profs and enjoyed school so much that when graduation time came along in 1991 I just had to go on.

There was no Master of Interdisciplinary Studies Program in 1993 so I went to the History Department at Wayne. My wife let me quit my job so I could do school full time (a marvelous woman indeed). My ambition was to come back and work for the ISP. Starvation time again. But I loved every minute (well almost!). To make a long story short once again, I couldn’t stop at the Master’s of History so it was on to the Ph.D. After lots of blood, sweat, and tears that degree came in 1997. I had done a considerable amount of teaching for the ISP, Labor Studies and History Departments at Wayne and Oakland. When an opening came along at the ISP for an Academic Services Officer, I grabbed it—full time work with benefits in a program that had been so good to me. The rest, as they say, is history!