He never fails to get himself all suited up. Black jacket, ironed tie, leather shoes and hair gel—he ensures that not a piece of his slender figure disappoints. “Use the title ‘Prof.’ when you write me emails,” he tells his class.

But his signature smile always belies his efforts.

Calvin Chen, associate professor in the Politics department of Mount Holyoke College, a highly respected scholar in his field, former contributing writer at Huffington Post, author of multiple influential academic writings, is regarded as “such a cutie” by some of his students who laugh at the clumsy mistakes he makes, probably intended as jokes, in class.

“I’m making tea,” he explains the aroma of Chinese green tea in the room.

He has just changed from his suit into a plain grey T-shirt and put on his reading glasses. He starts grading a pile of bluebooks, leaning closer, attempting to recognize students’ messy handwriting. He is off work at four, and it is four already. But this will take at least another hour.

Like every other scholar, books are in orderly rows on his shelf. On the spines, Chinese titles stand out amongst English ones, some of which are political, others literary. A poster of Chairman Mao hangs on another wall. These Chinese elements in his office, combined with his Chinese last name, Chen, indicate his ancestry.

Chen gets standard questions every once in a while, like, “How come your English is so good?”

“I grew up here,” Chen responds. “I’m just as American as you are.”

Chen’s parents, followers of the Nationalist Party, arrived in the United States seeking job opportunities in 1966 after fleeing to Taiwan. There, they opened a high-end Sichuan restaurant that once served meals for the mayor, senator and governor of California at the time.

Born, raised and immersed in Los Angeles’s rich Asian-American culture, Chen’s childhood was embraced by a Chinese immigrant community big enough to maintain all the Chinese traditions. “Us kids in the neighborhood, we received HongBaos [red bags containing pocket money] from all of our neighbors on Chinese New Years,” Chen recalled, “and we had mooncakes for Lunar festivals.”

A combination of Asian features and flawless spoken-English sets Chen within a group of minorities called “second generation immigrants.” This group is assumed to possess characteristics, such as “being ignorant of their true origin,” which both Asian patriots and Caucasian descendants in the US enjoy criticizing nowadays.

Chen refuses to fall into this category. “This is very stereotypical,” he remarked.

He pointed out that this kind of tension in terms of their identity is overstressed by the public, like “they are somehow lost” or “they are not Chinese nor American.”

“I never felt like that,” he said.

Chen has never had to retain his American characteristics at the expense of his Chinese heritage, a heritage he is proud of. Growing up with authentic Chinese food and alongside Chinese festival traditions fostered within Chen an awareness and knowledge of his ancestry. Chen's knowledge and awareness was amplified in 1984, when the Olympics was held in Los Angeles, where China first participated with a full scale Olympic delegation.

Relentless Olympics promotions motivated Chen to take particular notice of the news about this country. One day, he discovered in newspapers that pandas in Sichuan, the particular animal that is regarded as the “national treasure” of China, were not doing well. Although across an ocean, Chen was still deeply concerned about this matter. He, along with a group of his fellow high school peers, helped raise money for replanting bamboos in the pandas’ habitat. “100,000 dollars,” he casually mentioned the number. “It wasn’t too bad.”

The Chinese Ministry of Forestry did not take this amount of money casually. Being invited to visit China as a delegation, this group of high schoolers was received in China’s Great Hall of People by Madam Kang Keqing, wife of Zhude, the head of the Communist Party. “Holy crap,” Chen thought back then. “This is big.”

Chen’s high school, which most of the LA Chinese dwellers attended, resembled Chinese schools in terms of heavy schedules and homework, but Chen had his college education the American way. His UC Berkeley education was a huge chunk of his life, Chen recalled, where the liberal arts education allowed him to wade through numerous academic fields and find his true passion. Out of pure interest, Chen randomly took courses about China until he suddenly realized that he was only 3 classes away from getting a double major.

“So, why not?” He got his bachelor degree in both Political Science and Chinese Literature. Henceforth, he embarked on a career as a political scientist and a Chinese politics professor.

Initially titled Luce Assistant Professor, Chen came to Mount Holyoke College through a grant from the Henry Luce foundation, which aims at aiding liberal arts education on Asian studies. During the early 2000s, big research universities had the funding to hire professors covering most aspects of Asian studies, but liberal arts colleges couldn’t afford to.

“At that time, Smith college was the only college that had someone teaching Chinese politics in this area,” Chen recalled, “then I became one of the two people.”

To Chen, this foundation is a great contribution to America’s liberal art education, for it offers students, at least to some extent, opportunities to get a peek into East Asian culture.

“It does take a certain kind of commitment, being a liberal arts professor—I do a lot of work myself,” said Chen, “but I’m proud to be part of this liberal arts mission.”

A second-generation Chinese immigrant teaching Chinese politics is rare. According to Chen, most people of his background teach the Chinese influence in American politics while sinophiles teach Chinese politics. “I’m the smallest minority of all,” Chen teased.

Yet this distinct identity never restricted him by any means— he claims to be “just another political scientist who analyzes what’s going on.”

“Obviously, I want to see both China and America do well,” he said. “But we all have to be scholars first.” As a political scientist, Chen believes in systematically and thoughtfully looking at the impact of political problems. Results simply come out through objective analysis.

“Scholarship first,” he repeated. “Our own preferences later.” To him, this is the ethics of professional political scientists. Perspectives and criticism are crucial in Political Science, Chen believes, but “don’t base them on sentiments and bias.”

This spirit of a political scientist is evident in his teaching style.

His classes involve relaxing discussions with bursts of laughter, but his workload and gradings less so. He assigns 100-page of readings every other day; he records students’ class participation with stars and dots on a sheet; he writes page-long critiques on their papers. He is equally amicable to everybody, but equally amicably indifferent to everyone as well. One of his former students remarks, after a long pause looking for the appropriate word: “He is…fair.”

Therefore, among his students, Chen has raving fans and disgruntled enemies.

Looking at his page on Ratemyprofessor.com, a website for students to rate their professors on a scale of 1-5, 5s and 2s appear alternately. “A TON of work…,” “Midterms were extremely difficult…,” “…won’t give you a good grade,” wrote the 2s.

“But I highly recommend taking a class with him if you want a professor who'll push you to the next level,” wrote a 5.

Chen is not surrendering to the 2s, in spite of his drop in ratings: “I am just helping them to improve. They should know, at least, how to make an argument.”

Now, stepping into the second decade of teaching, he just managed to start using Keynote. “I redden every key word on the slides, then I look at the students. ‘These are important. Please take down notes. Please,’’ he sighed. “They just don't.”