If Andy Seeger isn’t at IVCC, he could truly be anywhere from New York City to England. Once, he was in Germany for less than 48 hours just to catch a band.

Between the concerts and world travels, you can find Seeger teaching a language course at IVCC.

Typically, the music junkie wears a flannel with a band T-shirt and a pair of jeans. His pale-blonde hair hangs just slightly in front of his wire-brim glasses. His appearance and style are as laid back and down-to-earth as he is.

Every day, Seeger walks into his Elementary Spanish class with a travel mug of coffee and a package of Pop Tarts. This is the first class of its kind at IVCC which offers a year’s worth of Spanish in a single semester and it was started by Seeger.

When asked how he got to IVCC, Seeger leans back in his chair to reminisce before replying, “Pretty much the interstate.” His dry sense of humor carries over to the classroom as well.

Growing up with a high school German teacher for a father, Seeger was raised bilingual.

“Growing up, he only spoke German to us, and we spoke German back,” he says. “We lived [in Germany] a couple different times when I was a kid.”

With his mother a teacher as well, teaching was the logical way to go. Truly, it seems like Seeger was actually raised to be the world-traveling, foreign language teacher he is today.

After earning his Ph.D. in Spanish, he started teaching.

“I spent seven very long years in Montgomery, Ala.,” says Seeger.

Always knowing that Alabama was not the place he wanted to call his permanent home, he made the best of his experience there, breathing new life into a dilapidated film course.

He remembers when he was faced with the decision of accepting tenure and possibly getting stuck there for the rest of his life. This major decision prompted him to make the move back to the Midwest to be closer to family and live somewhere he enjoyed.

Starting his third year at IVCC in January 2018, Seeger continues teaching Spanish. Walking throughout the classroom, he answers any questions with a calm and joyful tone, ready to explain anything on the whiteboard. It just shows that he loves his job and his students appear just as happy as he his.

Although not his main goal, Seeger says, “I want to get some fun stuff started here like film nights and conversation tables.”

With big plans already in mind, he says, “I’m hoping that I can build up the Spanish program so that there’s more than one beginning section and do the same with German.”