Issue date: 10/30/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Ian Hamilton Expert - George Giacumakis, director of CSUF's Irvine Campus, has been with the school since 1963. An expert in Middle Eastern studies, he is able to read several foreign languages and has helped translate a version of the Bible.

When George Giacumakis began teaching at Orange State College in 1963, the entire college of about 3,000 students operated out of one building now known as McCarthy Hall.

After earning his doctorate at Brandeis University, he was hired by the small California college - now Cal State Fullerton - as the Middle East history professor. With his wife and child, he left his home state of Pennsylvania. He said he had no desire to move to Southern California and did it as a favor to his mentor at the time.

Forty-three years later, he's still a CSUF history professor and has headed the university's branch campus since 1989.

During this time, Giacumakis has written books, toured and taught internationally, translated the Bible's New Testament into English - he's still working on the Old Testament - and raised four children in his 46 years of marriage.

"He's one busy person," said Marilyn Conklin, assistant director to Giacumakis and co-worker at the Irvine branch campus for 15 years. Conklin said that has been the case since she's known him.

Giacumakis, born in 1937, described his role as director the same way he said he explained it to his son many years back: "When no one else will empty the waste basket, I have to. The buck stops there."

According to Arleene Parsons, the facility coordinator at Irvine, Giacumakis fills this description.

"Once he gets out of his car, it takes him a while to get up to his office because he will go and check things to see if everything's in order," she said. "I see him picking up trash all the time."

Besides double checking for well-maintained campus grounds, Giacumakis's noticeable curiosity for the world around him has led him to double-check history as well as language throughout his academic career.

For instance, Giacumakis, who is a Christian, was a board member of the Lockman Foundation, which in the 1960s created the New American Standard Bible. Today, he is working with scholars on developing a new translation of the Bible, called the International Standard Version.

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