2011 FIRST DECADE AWARDS The First Decade Award recognizes one male and one female graduate in the 10th anniversary class for early professional achievement.
Jonathan Poole ’01
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t’s been ten years since Jonathan Poole graduated from Gustavus, and most of those years were spent as a special agent in the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) of the U.S. Department of State, an agency that is responsible for protecting U.S. embassies and consulates from terrorist, criminal, and hostile-intelligence threats; protecting high-ranking U.S. diplomats and other officials; and conducting sensitive and complex criminal, counterintelligence, and personnel security investigations. During many of the years working for the State Department, Jonathan and his wife, Erin Cederlind ’01, have been living abroad. In 2004 and 2005 Jonathan was on special assignments to the Protective Security Detail of the U.S. Secretary of State and to the U.S. Consulate General in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. From 2006 to 2008 he served as a vice consul and special investigator in St. Petersburg, Russia, followed by two years as assistant security attaché at the U. S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya—once a relatively quiet place. Today, Jonathan and Erin live in Alexandria, VA, where he serves as a special agent for the Department of State, with assignments the specifics of which only he and a few other people know. During his years with the Department of State, Jonathan has received four Meritorious Honor Awards and two Benjamin Franklin Awards. Is there any logic behind a trajectory in which an 18-year-old student from Philadelphia comes to a small college in Minnesota and then ends up as a special agent for the U.S. government, working in different countries, and being trusted more by his superiors after each new assignment? I’m sure there’s plenty of logic, but likely there have been some leaps of faith as well! When I met Jonathan in 1997, I met a young man who was already extraordinary. He was more focused than most other first-year students, more curious, better read. Perhaps some students thought of him as a nerd at first—his future wife included, I understand—
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THE GUSTAVUS QUARTERLY
but a likeable, nice nerd. Because I was a book nerd myself in my teens, Jonathan seemed like a soul-mate and a god-send. For me, as a teacher, there was no need to pull teeth with Jonathan—he would always have answers, or questions, and, what’s equally important, he knew how to engage and activate other students. “Polyglot” is the first part of Jonathan’s e-mail address. I have always admired polyglots—speakers of many languages—especially those who combine their love for learning languages with a curiosity about the cultures that the languages represent. When Jonathan came to Gustavus he had already spent a year in Finland and knew Finnish. He had also studied Russian, which he continued to study at Gustavus and then, of course, had to perfect while he and Erin lived in St. Petersburg. At Gustavus he learned a real world language—Swedish. And in Libya and other places in the Arab world, he and Erin started studying Arabic. A polyglot Jonathan is, a polyhistor as well. In his job, reliable sources tell me, he uses his understanding of liberal arts and his own direct experiences as a young foreigner in foreign countries to help those of his superiors who are stuck in a more singular view to think of other possibilities Polyglot, polyhistor—big words to describe a man 10 years out of college perhaps. Big words, but true words. Jonathan moves fast. By contrast, his introducer became an American citizen only very recently, after he had lived in this country for 44 years. Thank you, Jonathan for what you are doing for this country, our country. And I will not ask you for specifics about your work in the U.S. Department of State. That’s my leap of faith.
Photos by Wayne Schmidt
from his award ceremony introduction by Roland Thorstensson, professor emeritus of Scandinavian studies