Temo Olvera / Managing Editor

Missouri Valley College campus chaplain and professor Rev. Nick Petrov published his first book: Robert College of Constantinople: Crossroads of Faiths, Cultures, and Empires 1863-1913. Petrov said the lack of published information on Robert College drove him to research and write. 

“I looked upon libraries and libraries and databases to find books to read about this school and I found out there’s only one account,” Petrov said. 

Petrov’s book records the history of the American educational experiment in the Ottoman Empire that is Robert College. His original country, Bulgaria, was a part of the Ottoman Empire and was affected by Robert College. The second president of Robert College George Washburn mentored four Bulgarian presidents. 

“It’s not only history of Turkey. It’s history of the United States,” Petrov said. “It’s also the history of different other nations: Greece, Armenia, Turkey, of course, all those nations from Asia Minor. They are all part of the book.”

Petrov’s ties to the college go deeper than his nationality. He said the Petrov family helped the early missionaries succeed in establishing the college. 

The book took three years for Petrov to finish. He sought out primary resources, contacted people tied to the school, and traveled to Manhattan to look at the Robert College archives that the University of Colombia held.