James Pula, professor of history, was awarded the 2017 PNW Faculty Research Award. Pula has been at PNW since 2004. Born in upstate New York, Pula grew up in a diverse household.

“My mother’s family came from Canada and my father was a first generation Polish-American,” Pula said. “I was surrounded with things about the Colonial Era and the Revolutionary War. I was also surrounded by different immigrant groups,” Pula said.

As a result of that, he became interested in people and history. When he was a graduate student at Purdue University, Pula started studying his own heritage when he researched a Polish general who fought in the Civil War. Pula would later expand his research to the study of Polish immigrants and how they compared to other immigrant groups.

Pula graduated from State University of New York at Albany and went to graduate school at Purdue University, where he graduated with a master’s degree and a doctorate’s degree in history. He eventually went to the University of Maryland. There, he gained a master’s degree in higher administration.

As a teacher, Pula adapts to the type of class he is teaching. In upper level classes, Pula’s lessons tend to be student-centered compared to the lower level classes, which tend to have more group-oriented lessons. In both types of classes, Pula always tries to teach his students to think critically. He puts a strong emphasis on learning about different cultures.

“Not everybody is exactly alike in the way they perceive things,” Pula said. “The way a person grows up sometimes affects their worldview and how they look at different things.”

The rejection and acceptance of different groups in the history of the U.S. is also something Pula finds to be quite fascinating and interesting.

“When you study immigration you’re studying people, groups of people, and how they interact with themselves and other groups. It’s how society works,” Pula said.

Pula believes learning about cultures is also beneficial for mental wellness.

“If you have a strong feeling of who you are, then you will be more okay,” Pula said.

Pula explains how this works by comparing it to a study he came across on Jewish immigrants coming to Israel.

“I found that those who have strong ties to the main culture of the place they emigrated from tend to be well and those that stay within their own sub-group to be mentally healthy,” Pula said. “However, those who are caught between the middle with no strong ties to either will tend to have higher rates of alcoholism, divorce and criminal behavior. [The researchers] found those who don’t have a strong identity one way or the other seem to be the ones who have more difficulties getting along in society.”

Janusz Duzinkiewicz, associate professor of history and a colleague of Pula’s since the beginning of Pula’s career at PNW, describes Pula as an enthusiastic professor.

“He has a passion for truth that every true scholar has,” Duzinkiewicz said. “He is driven to grasp the truth of things.”

Pula was on the editorial board for the Polish American Studies Journal and the board of directors for the Polish American Arts program. He is also the treasurer of the Polish American Historical Association. Pula earned the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the highest achievement that can be rewarded to those who are not citizens of Poland. Pula was given the award because of his research on Polish history and the contributions he has made to the Polish culture.

When Pula is not working with cultural groups or doing research, he’s working on his online classes or attending committee meetings at Purdue Northwest University, where is he an acting senator for the Westville campus.

On weekends, he likes to watch a good movie or read a good book, both in English and Polish.

“Though I don’t speak Polish,” Pula said, “I can read it to some extent.”

Pula enjoys watching college sports, researching and going to his favorite coffee shop, where he can find some down time to write, another one of his favorite hobbies.