{"id":15646,"date":"2014-07-24T16:02:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T22:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=15646"},"modified":"2022-01-12T14:05:49","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T21:05:49","slug":"napierkowski-receives-polish-government-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=15646","title":{"rendered":"Napierkowski receives Polish government honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"740\" height=\"417\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-Cygtlydohg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tom Napierkowski, professor, Department of English, thought about his grandfather and the blue collar south side Chicago neighborhood of his youth when his name was called this summer during a concluding gala of the Fifth World Congress of Polish Studies in Warsaw.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, Napierkowski awarded the Knights Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, a diplomatic order given to those who have rendered great service to the Polish nation and only granted to foreigners. A foreign minister presented the award along with a certificate signed by the president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrowing up next to a steel mill and having been told stories about my immigrant grandparents, I was taught that this was the greatest country in the world and provided us great opportunity,\u201d Napierkowski said. \u201cBut also not to forget the old country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think my dad and grand dad would be proud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Napierkowski, the award for his work in Polish-American and Slavic literature studies was a reminder of the opportunities UCCS provided him. Originally hired as a medievalist 40 years ago, the youthful campus allowed him to pursue scholarly work in what was then a non-traditional academic area, the literature of early immigrants. He studied the literature of African-Americans and applied a similar approach to learning about Polish-American literature.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere at UCCS, we\u2019ve always been encouraged to follow these avocations of ours,\u201d Napierkowski said. \u201cIf I\u2019d been at another place, this never would have happened. UCCS said \u2018go for it.\u2019 I\u2019m appreciative of the opportunities the university has provided me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Tom Napierkowski, professor, Department of English, thought about his grandfather and the blue collar south side Chicago neighborhood of his youth when his name was called this summer during a concluding gala of the Fifth <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=15646\" title=\"Napierkowski receives Polish government honor\">(More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,7,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-kudos","category-video"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/napierkowski-receives-polish-gov.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-44m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15653,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646\/revisions\/15653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}