A new semester has commenced, breathing life back into the temporarily vacant North Idaho College campus. New students are now exploring the world of academia and returning students can look forward to seeing friendly faces and getting back into the swing of the school year.

One familiar sight on the North Idaho College campus is theater instructor Joe Jacoby, who has instructed potential stars of the stage for 15 years.

Seen from afar, his tie-dye socks, lengthy locks, pleasant smile and glasses are a dead giveaway. In the classroom, his students know he is prone to puns or may break into interpretive dance or slapstick when the moment is right.

Students also know Jacoby is a master of his craft and is a valuable source of insight and information when it comes to understanding the theatrical world. Jacoby has directed countless productions at the college and is looking forward to directing Shakespeare's whimsically wordy "The Misanthrope" at NIC in the spring.

Jacoby's classes are not just about reading plays or honing acting skills. They are open spaces where students can speak their minds and explore the thoughts of others. Conversations can be fun, silly, serious or sad, but Jacoby has a way of leading students down a path of knowledge they may not have set foot on had they never entered his classroom. He believes in the magic of the theater, the art of communication and the human connection. He is a defender of education and an advocate for personal, academic and spiritual growth. And his cheesy jokes can really drum up the guffaws.

Humble, talented, jovial and kind, Jacoby is a colorful character students don't soon forget once they reach the destinations of their academic journeys. And they'll remember he treated them all like stars.

Why did you become an instructor?

When I was in grad school, I had an assistantship so I started teaching intro to theater classes and acting classes for U of I. As I was getting ready to graduate, I was realizing ... I had this vision I was going to try to become an artistic director somewhere, work as a director and try to make a living, and I thought, "Boy, I'm going to miss having this steady work ... I am going to miss being in the classroom, maybe more than doing the projects or being in the theater. I'd really like to stay in the school environment." I love being in the college environment, I love being around students. The theater instructor here at NIC went on sabbatical just as I was getting ready to graduate and sent a letter down asking if there was anybody interested, so I applied and managed to get hired. I've been at NIC ever since, because when he came back I hung on doing part-time work until he decided to retire. I treated that whole period as the longest job interview I've ever had.

So it was a natural transition then, with him outgoing, to have you just fill that space?

One of the reasons I wanted to work here was because they wouldn't just hire me because they liked me. They wouldn't hire me unless they really felt I was the right person for the job, to do a good job teaching and educating the students here, because I knew it wasn't going to be a "gimme," I didn't want to work for somebody who'd do that. I knew that there were people with more professional backgrounds than I have. I knew I was going to be competing against people who had sometimes better qualifications, but having been raised and educated in Idaho, and I know, still, people involved with Idaho Shakespeare Festival, who's at Idaho (Repertory Theatre at U of I), who's at Boise State, who's at U of I ... I know a lot of the companies, I know the people at the schools, so for our students who are looking to be educated and looking at the schools in the area, I'm much more connected than a lot of the other people who might be applying. I was just trying to make the argument, "I'm the right person for this job." And every semester I come back and try to prove it again. That's always my goal.

How old were you when you first got interested in theater?

I was in high school when I really started seriously thinking about it, and it's because I was a fan of "Star Trek" (laughs). But I was so naive; I thought that they made it at the local TV station. I got really curious about the process. How do they do this? How do they film it? Who decides about the camera angles? How does this start to work? ... I didn't have access to film in Boise, but there was a community theater, and there were drama classes in high school, so I could learn about that process. I've always been a process person ... it's all about process, I'm just fascinated by it.

Why theater? What draws you to it?

I've loved theater for so long. My original intention was to work in the theater and make a career in the theater. This way, I get to teach and be doing theater, both of which I love. What I love particularly about theater, there are a few things. One, it's magic. It's not a play until the audience imagines. It's the audience's imagination that makes a play a play. Otherwise, it's a bunch of actors wearing costumes in front of this piece of wood that's been painted to look like a particular location and you're sitting in an audience watching a bunch of people up on the stage. But when the audience imagines that they're in Venice, watching this guy named Othello and Iago have it out, now it's a play. There's this imaginative, magical experience that we get to have for that two- or three-hour period that will never be recreated because no performance will be the same twice, which is part of the magic. It's so unique. Then, I don't know of any other art form that reminds us of the human connection that we share, because as an audience, we're in the same room with the actors, with those characters living and breathing, and we affect the performance and they affect us and it becomes this mutual experience where we are all influencing each other. And there are so few times when we get to remember what our human connection is, especially in our modern world where we're so mediated by electronic communication ... for theater, we're all sharing that experience and we're reminded of the connection that we have, and we're so much more connected than we realize ... that we really value the same things more than we value different things, so it can be very healing.

Why NIC?

I was on this campus maybe 15 minutes before I realized, "Wouldn't it be great to actually get to work here full time?" This is where I want to be. I like the school, I like the area, and most important, I love the people. This is a school that still values the people, and we have a great community. Coeur d'Alene has a great community and NIC has a great community, and I just feel so blessed to be part of two really wonderful communities ... I feel like I won the lottery, which is again all the more reason to go, "You've been given this gift. Now you have to show your gratefulness by earning it, every single day" (laughs).

What do you enjoy most about your career?

The students, no question.

What do you find most challenging?

I think it's cultural, and it's not just in our area, but there is a lack of respect for education. People are wanting to diminish it into job training, period, so (some) people don't respect education and it impacts students who come here with lowered expectations of what they should be getting, and it can impact budgets, I can imagine ... education should help us see connections we didn't see before. It should help us understand the world around us in a more meaningful way than we understood it to be before, so that not only do we get a job or a career that we value, but everything in our lives has more meaning and more richness, and our life becomes better as a result. And as a result we get to offer more to our communities. Colleges don't graduate students, they don't graduate workers, they graduate citizens. If we do our job, those citizens have lives that will be so much more meaningful and so much more fulfilled, because that's what education should deliver, is a more meaningful, more fulfilling life, in every aspect. If people are only coming for job training, they're missing out on so much and they're asking so little of us and they're not holding our feet to the fire.

The most rewarding?

Getting to see people who didn't think they could do something doing what they thought they couldn't do. Getting to see people grow, getting to see people make discoveries and see things they didn't see before ... and I'm really lucky because every day I get to come to work with people who inspire me and push me to do better work and any time I need anything, they're there and they make things happen. How many people get that? And how many times do we get that throughout our career? I just have such a wonderful situation.

Have you ever wanted to make it in "the biz?"

Certainly! Of course, you never give up on that ... I still haven't given up. That's one of the great things, there's no retirement age in theater. No mandatory retirements in the theater or in teaching.