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Greetings. We welcome you again to another interview in the Oral History Project sponsored by TURFA, the Towson University Retired Faculty Association,

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and today's interview is with David Vocke, the Department of Secondary Education. Welcome, David. Thank you. Thanks for having me today.

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Let's go back to the beginning. Where were you born? I was born in Hamilton, Ohio, and, yes, I grew up there, went through elementary schools and we

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didn't have middle school then. I went through Catholic schools and high school and then went to a small college in Indianapolis for two years and then transferred back to Miami University, which is in Oxford, Ohio, about forty minutes from where I grew up and

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finished with a degree there and then went into teaching in Cincinnati. What was the small college in Indianapolis? Marian College. Marian College.

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Yeah, there's two Marian's, one with an A, finishes with an A-N, and one with an O-N. And I was the A-N. 900 students. It was a little small.

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And then you did your graduate work at...? I did my master's. I taught for four years in Cincinnati, high school, and then went back to Miami for my master's degree, taught at the lab school there.

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They still had a lab school at that time. And then went right to University of Iowa to do my doctorate there and graduated from there in '85. And obviously you decided on a career in higher education. What caused you to make that decision?

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I was a first-generation college attender and a lot of my friends from high school went on to college, but I didn't have anybody in my family that had gone before. So to be honest, I didn't even know what a PhD was until I

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got into the master's program at Miami. And my mentor there was also my undergrad mentor, really convinced me that I could go ahead and do a PhD. I was going back to grad, to Miami for my master's so I could go back and teach high school, you know,

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at another school system in Cincinnati and get more pay. I mean, that was one of my motivations to go on to grad school. But then through my work with Mike Fuller, who was my mentor at Miami,

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he had gone to Iowa. His mentor was still at Iowa. And I applied at several places and got accepted. I was accepted at Indiana and Iowa and decided to go to the University of Iowa.

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And your degree from Iowa is in what field? It's in secondary education, PhD in secondary, with a concentration in social studies. So worked there for three years, did graduate work and then was also a

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graduate assistant, supervised student teachers while I was there, but then also worked in the research office. I can remember one of the things we did, we reviewed new computer programs that

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were coming into education at the time and they were still on the Apple IIc maybe, very primitive, but it was interesting work and it was a lot of fun. From the University of Iowa,

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did that bring you directly to Towson? No. So, after I graduated from Iowa, of course I applied for many jobs and I ended up at a place, and this is how they say it in Iowa,

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Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is in the northwestern part of the state, and it was in Storm Lake. There really is a lake there and it's a town of 10,000 people, which was big for that part of the state.

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And I went there for a year and taught there. At the same time, while I was going there, I had applied at the University of Texas at Arlington and they contacted me after I signed on to go to Buena Vista because I graduated,

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I actually finished my degree in the summer of '85. And so things were kind of tight and Texas wanted me to come down, you know, for an interview at that time. But since I had signed the contract, I said I couldn't do it.

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But they contacted me, then, the next year, they didn't fill the position, so they contacted me. So after a year in Storm Lake, Buena Vista was a nice place, again, like 900 students, but we got snow on September 29th and

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then we got a blizzard at Thanksgiving and we didn't see the ground again until late April. So I decided that, yeah, I would go down to Texas and went to University of Texas at Arlington for three years and came to Towson

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from there. Now, what attracted you to Towson, and what was the school called then? It was Towson State University, as I remember anyway. And that would have been in '89.

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And at that time, Texas was changing. I don't know if you remember Ann Richards had been the governor. Mark White was the governor after her. So it had been a very, I don't know, this is political,

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but a very Democratic state and was, you know, kind to education. And with the new administration that was coming in, they were talking about no need for teacher education and cutting back on things.

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And I was just looking to get... I loved the weather. You know, it was very nice there. I had a new baby. My daughter had been born.

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My son was three. You know, my wife was comfortable. But we wanted eventually to actually get back to the Midwest. So I interviewed after that third or during that third year.

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And I interviewed at Wittenberg in Ohio, at Old Dominion, at Towson, and then at Xavier University in Cincinnati, which is really kind of my hometown. And I actually got offers from all of them.

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But I liked the idea that Towson was the state teachers college. I interviewed well here. I liked the faculty that I interviewed with and to be honest, Jim Lawler was the chair of secondary ed at the time and was very convincing about

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this being a good place to continue my career. So it wasn't the weather that brought you here. It was not the weather, although the weather is similar to what Hamilton and Cincinnati, you know, have.

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So I was kind of used to that. But yeah, I... So I came here in in August of '89. After you got here, what were your initial impressions of

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Towson State University? I'll tell you, things were moving so fast and I had a new baby and a three-year-old son and my wife was working and it was just trying to keep my head above the water.

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But I think that the students that I had were interesting in terms of, you know, folks really wanting to be teachers. Whereas in Texas, we had a lot of folks that were, at that time, because there was a dip in the oil industry that had been

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kind of flushed out and people thinking they could come back and, you know, and be teachers without having to take any courses. They didn't seem quite as dedicated. And I think the folks that were here were more dedicated to, you know,

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to becoming teachers. And then for me, it was interesting to go to all the different schools because I would go out to see student teachers as well. So to go to Harford County and then to Carroll County and to Anne Arundel

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County, Baltimore County, and to see the the differences, you know, in the area. I found it to be, you know, very stimulating. Who is the president of Towson when you came here?

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Hoke Smith. Hoke was the president and Bob, Bob Caret was the Provost. What do you remember about Hoke? I liked Hoke.

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I really liked Hoke. I did too. I know he came from Des Moines or he'd been at Des Moines, Iowa, at Drake. Very reserved, very quiet, I'd say kind of introverted,

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but I liked the fact that he wasn't a glad- hander. He didn't promote himself. And the thing I liked best about him is that he was really an advocate for shared governance and lived by that and followed through.

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It just wasn't talk to him because I quickly got onto the university Senate and became Senate secretary. You know, you knew that they believed in the shared governance then.

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And you mentioned that Bob Caret was the Provost. What do you remember about Bob? First thing I remember about Bob is that when Jim said, well, we're going to hire you and here's your salary.

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And so this was '89 and my salary was 3,300 dollars- 33,000, not thirty... 33,000 dollars. So think of that. And I said, I don't know. I said, you know, is there any way you could get more money?

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He said, I don't know. Bob's pretty... So he goes, well, he said, he's come up with more money for you. I said, OK, what did he get? It's 33,600 dollars now.

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I said yeah, OK, that'll seal the deal. And moving expenses. No, no moving expenses. No. So.

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Yeah. So things are a little bit different in that group. Let's get some dates on this. What year did you come to Towson? '89.

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And what year did you retire from Towson? It was exactly... It was 30 years. Well, 30 years plus a semester.

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So it was December of 2019. And for... And what department were you always affiliated? I was always in with the secondary education department.

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Yep. And yeah, it was a good group. You know, we cycled through a number of people, but I mean, the thing that was interesting when I

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came is that they had had a long period of not really having any new hires. So most of the folks were veteran. Now, the year before they had hired Lois Stover, who was at Wittenberg where I'd

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interviewed. I think I may have been interviewing for her position when, you know, from when she left there. But Lois came, so she was new and very helpful to me.

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And then Debbie Gartland was in special ed, and those really had been the new hires. So I was definitely, you know, in that new crop of hires that came. Tell me about the courses you taught in secondary education. So I taught principles of secondary education.

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I taught a version of that. There was a version of that for the phys ed folks, you know, that we taught. And then I taught foundations of education and then I worked with student teachers out in the schools, which I enjoyed.

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And did you get a reduced load by working with student teachers, a reduced teaching load? No, actually I can remember Jim saying, well, it's traditional for folks here in the department.

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You teach a full load and then you need to teach an offload course. So it was really fifteen credits and I think at the time you got about 1,100, 1,200 dollars in additional salary to teach that offload course. And you taught that... I'm going to call that a heavy load.

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You taught that heavy load over the course of your career here? No, no, no. For the first, I'd say maybe the first three or four years that was kind of the expected load.

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Yeah. And then during that time, so Jim Binko was our, was the dean when I came and was the dean that hired me. Trying to think of when it would have been, maybe the fifth or sixth year.

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He asked me to be our... Trying to think of the term we used, and I guess I'd use mentor, in conjunction, a partner on a grant with Morgan State that was sponsored by the DeWitt Wallace Foundation and it was a program with the city schools to recruit...

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It's called PRIME, the Program to Recruit and Inspire Minorities and Education. The precursor to that was ACE. I did that for I think one or two years.

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And basically what we did is we tried to, as it says, recruit middle school and high school students into education programs. And I was the mentor from Towson, but we had other faculty members from Hopkins, from Loyola, from Notre Dame, from Baltimore City Community College.

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There were a couple of foundations that had members as well. And then, but that was headquartered at Morgan. Coppin was part of it as well. So each of those institutions had mentors as well.

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And that went for six or seven years. So I got a reduced load in order for... That was my service. And that allowed me to have a reduced load that way. And I think then I was teaching at twelve credits, you know, so,

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came back from that. But during that time, we instituted two courses in the high schools and a course in the middle school that we had adopted where we were responsible for the teachers that were teaching those courses.

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And then we also were affiliated with the... At the time, it was Teach for America group. And we would hold conferences at different campuses for that. And then we also, with that, we would bring kids on campus from the

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schools, you know, to witness and see what it was like to go to college. And then they'd interview, you know, our students, you know, and get a tour just to see what it was like.

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So a lot of the kids have never been on college campuses before. Throughout the course of your career here, did you always supervise teachers in the secondary school? Yeah.

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Student teachers? Yeah, for most. Middle school. Each of our students would have experiences in middle schools and high

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schools. Half the semester would be in a middle school and then half would be in a high school and, right, we would go out and see them.

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I did that probably up until the last four or five years of my time here. But then with the course too, principals of secondary education, students had to get at least 20 credit, 20 hours of field experiences in the schools.

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So I worked with different schools to take my classes out, and I would always go out with them when it, you know, whenever, you know, they were there. So I used schools from Milford Mill to Randallstown, Pikesville Middle,

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Golden Ring Middle School, you know, over the course of my career. My last several years were at Dumbarton Middle School, though, which I really enjoyed because of the distance, number one, because it was so close to the university and my home.

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But also because at the time, the principal there was a former student. And then probably ten of the teachers that were there were former students as well. So it was nice to be able to take my current students in, put them in classrooms, you know, to observe and then to see the

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teachers in action. About how many did you have to supervise in one semester? I think... I'm trying to think.

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I think... Generally it was four for a load, four student teachers for a load. Yeah. And then the others, the the principals was a four-credit

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course. So that one hour was the time that you went out into the schools. You took one hour of that to go out into the field. And you may have mentioned this, but did you develop some new courses

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while you were here? I mean, I worked on all those courses in terms of, you know, with the updates that went with it. And I know that the syllabi that I put together were oftentimes used when new

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faculty came in because we always had to, you know, match them to standards with the with the national accrediting organizations. And then there was one time when Greg Bryant, who was in the elementary ed department and a good friend,

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we co-taught and developed a course, graduate course in social studies. And this, again, was late 90s, on using Internet resources to develop, you know, curriculum, you know, the existing social studies teachers could use in the classroom.

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And that was a fun course to do. Let's broaden this out a little bit and talk about the university generally, from the time you were hired 'til the time you retired, what were some of the changes you saw taking place at the university?

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I think when I came the university, I think the claim was had 12,500 students. And then when I left, I guess we were at what, 21 or 22,000? The Liberal Arts building wasn't there. That was Lida Lee Tall school.

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The union wasn't as big. There was a convenient parking lot there that we could park in. Also, there was a parking lot where College of Liberal Arts is now behind Linthicum Hall.

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I think the size of the university was the main thing, the expansion of programs. We didn't have a doctoral program in education at the time. You know, the other doctoral programs that came on, I think the change in the student population, definitely

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a broader geographic region that we drew from. I mean, it was even, you know, when I came, it was told to me that we're a commuter college, especially in the teacher aide program, you know, we're going to train teachers who come

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from the local school districts are going to go back to the local school districts. And I think, you know, bringing students in from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and Pennsylvania and other areas, you know, were probably the biggest changes.

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And then I don't know if it was an increase in faculty, but it was a turnover in faculty. I think when I came, a lot of the folks were, again, from this region.

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And as new faculty members came in, I think we kind of broadened the scope of where folks came from and the degrees that they had. You mentioned you appreciated Hoke Smith because of his support for shared governance.

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Did that share governance principle change over time from over the years that you were here? Yeah, I think it did. I think...

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And again, I left in '19. I think there were a number of of provosts, particularly, that didn't really care for shared governance. I won't mention any names, but I think there were some that

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worked very hard to to kind of skirt around that and to implement things that they wanted to implement. OK, I'll let up now.

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I won't get you into trouble. No, no, no. That's fine. I mean, you know, that was one thing that tended to bother

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me, whether it was a new president or a new Provost, a lot of times folks came in at that level and said, oh, well, we got the answers. You know, we're going to make these changes,

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but they didn't really know the culture of the place and they didn't ask questions. Now, I've been gone since the current president, since President Ginsburg came in,

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but I follow, you know, things on, you know, I'll go to the website and look at things and from talking to, you know, a few of my colleagues that are still here, and it seems that he's been very good at asking questions and listening.

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I don't know how he's perceived on campus, but from off campus, and to me, that seemed to be a positive thing. Were you always in the same building all those years? Yeah, always.

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I started out in Hawkins and I call it the basement. Everybody said don't call it the basement. It's the lower level. But I was in what used to be, I guess they had, you know,

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small classrooms or they're almost like cubicles, but they had one of the curtains that you pull. And it was divided. And there were four of us down there, Beth Saltwerger and Ocie Watson-Thompson

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and myself and and Joann Erickson were there. And a lot of times the early childhood classes were taught there because they were the bigger classrooms. A lot of times they were doing art projects.

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And I started down there. And every time they'd say, well, we can move you up to another level. I'd say, no, I like it down here, because nobody knows I'm here. I was by the mechanical room.

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They couldn't find me. My students could. But... But, you know, I didn't get a lot of chitchat from

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people just walking by because there was no walking by. With those curtains, could you hear what was going on in the other offices? Yeah, you you could. But a lot of times I was there really early in the morning and there weren't a

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whole lot of early classes at the time. And it's interesting because, as I said, my daughter was born. She was three weeks old when we moved here. And there were times when I would bring her into the office and the early

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childhood people knew that she was there and, like, if she was one or two or three, oh, can we use your daughter? We want to show the students what a two- year-old, you know, might do with, you know, with art or those things.

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So, yeah. So I still have some paintings that, you know, that she did in those classes when she was three or four. Let's now talk about after retirement.

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What have you done since you retired from Towson? I've enjoyed retirement is one thing I've done. People, I know, going into it, people would say, I don't know, I don't think I could do that. I don't know what I would do, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

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I've got two grandsons. My son lives in Ellicott City and so I don't babysit them on a regular basis, but I get to see them quite a bit. I enjoy playing pickleball is one of the things that I do.

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I travel some and I just... I work in my yard. My wife was an avid gardener and she planted numerous gardens with all kinds of different plants. And I spend a lot of time in the garden working, working there.

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One of the reasons why I retired when I did, because I probably would have gone a couple more years, was that my wife fought brain cancer for the last three years. Really the last year, last year and a half,

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I was working and then I took off to, you know, to help her. We were going to NIH for treatments and the Hopkins and the Maryland. She had, you know, three different surgeries and, you know, really put up a great battle.

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So that was another, you know, kind of motivator. And then COVID hit. So, you know, you didn't get get to do a whole lot, but yeah, so, that's pretty much it.

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And let me back up a little bit. When you said before, you talked about the students at Towson changing over the time here, you mentioned geographic changes, you mentioned racial changes. Did you see anything else in terms of the students at Towson and

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that they were different in any way over the course of the years, course of time? You know, I looked at that question. I thought, you know, I just always enjoyed being around,

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you know, I enjoyed going to high schools and middle schools and seeing kids and observing kids and I enjoyed the interaction with college students. I can't say that I saw major differences in, like, their writing ability or

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their thinking ability. The one thing I thought of right away is, and I can still remember this vividly, is that I taught a night class, a foundations class, from the 4:20 to the 6, 6:50, you know, time frame.

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And I'd always give a break. And I can remember when I first did that because I taught a course, you know, that first year like that, you know, the students would, would mingle, let's say by 2006, 2005,

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somewhere around there, early 2000-odds, you know, as soon as I said, OK, we're going to take a break. And you'd think students would go to the... The phones were up, you know, and that was the main thing.

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But, you know, you had your students that did want to work and you had students that didn't want to work. And you were always, you know, impressed with those who were willing to put their nose to the grindstone and really work hard.

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And I assume that the objective of all of them was that they wanted to be secondary school teachers. Yeah. Yeah.

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I think for the most part. I mean, there were those, you know, that you would find that, well, I don't know what else to do, so I'll teach. And, you know, you could kind of, you know,

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tell that they were going to have a rough time or weren't going to make it. But yeah, the ones that really wanted to, which was the majority, you know, tend to do very well. Yeah.

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What do you think makes Towson University a special kind of a university? And that's a loaded question, I know. Yeah. Well, I'll say that during my career and specifically in the College of Ed, or at least in our department, is

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the small class sizes that we had, the student-to-professor ratio. I very rarely, and it wasn't really till the end in the one class, did I have more than twenty students in a class, and sometimes they were smaller.

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And, again, with student teachers, although you're spending a lot of time traveling, going out to schools, depending on where you are, and that could take a long time too, If you're meeting with students before the student teaching and afterwards with

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their teachers, it was, you know, just the ability to form relationships with those students to find out what they're about and hopefully work on their strengths and weaknesses as they got ready to go into teaching.

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You know, it's nice to be able, for me, as I mentioned with Dumbarton, it was nice to go into a school, you know, and find students that you had, you know, former students that were either teachers or school administrators, you know, that remembered you and that you remembered them and you were

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glad to see that they had advanced, you know, in their careers, or stayed in the profession. I think one of the disappointments is not being a... You know, seeing people who, you know, after just a few years or less, you know, decided that,

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you know, that this wasn't for me, especially if you thought that they were those who would really be successful at it. And yeah, a lot of times, you know, the environment that you're in makes a big difference.

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And a lot of it is what's your school administration like? Do you get the support or not get the support? And when you don't get the support, that makes it a really difficult job.

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Although part of what you just said is going to answer my question, let me put a little different twist on it. If you were out being the PR spokesperson for the College of Education, telling others about what's so great about it, what would you say?

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Yeah, I would say the relationship with, you know, with faculty and the fact that I think what we do is we built cohorts. And so students didn't even have, you know, didn't just have relationships with faculty or with their professors,

00:27:10.330 - 00:27:27.240

but also with other students for support. And that was kind of a neat thing for me is that students, I think, formed friendships and professional support, you know, in that regard. And I would say that that's the strength.

00:27:27.280 - 00:27:36.160

And we've got networks. I mean, you know, over the years, you've got different names for them. But you know, they came to be known as professional development schools.

00:27:36.160 - 00:27:55.890

They were schools where we had built a rapport with those schools and teachers in those schools acting as mentors, you know, to our students. I know that when I student taught at Miami University, you know, I mean, fortunately my mentor was my advisor and helped me get into a school where

00:27:55.890 - 00:28:06.900

he knew the teacher and was friends with the teacher. So I felt very supported. But, you know, there were kids, the other colleagues of mine that were going to Cincinnati, forty minutes away, you know,

00:28:06.900 - 00:28:17.850

into a school where they hadn't really had relationships and you didn't know who you were getting. And when I first came, that's the way it was too. They'd go and they'd work with the different counties in terms of, you know,

00:28:17.850 - 00:28:25.480

finding mentors. But sometimes, you know, it was just... You were the only person in that building, you know, from Towson student teaching and you didn't have that support.

00:28:25.480 - 00:28:36.120

Whereas now we, you know, or at least later in the program, we provided that support and had, you know, after school once a week or every other week, classes, you know, that met in that school.

00:28:36.320 - 00:28:49.290

So you had a whole team of of teachers and interns, you know, that were working together. Did you do the actual matching of the student to the school? I did not. We had Towson faculty and they may have been... Most of them had

00:28:49.290 - 00:29:06.090

been lecturers who worked in those school systems that may have been retired or, you know, came to us because they wanted to be this role who actually made those placements. But we worked with them in terms that they'd come to us and say, well,

00:29:06.090 - 00:29:16.560

how'd this student do in your class and what are their strengths and weaknesses? And those were kinds of things that we discussed at department meetings. Let's look into the future with a crystal ball. What do you see?

00:29:16.560 - 00:29:29.040

What changes do you see occurring at Towson University over the next ten years, twenty years? Well, I really wondered because since I started here, let's see, we got the College of Liberal Arts

00:29:29.040 - 00:29:36.080

building. We've now got the new Health Science building and the new science center. 7800. Is it 7800?

00:29:36.400 - 00:29:50.340

I don't know. I call it the old Bill Bateman building, that's been taken over. The Union has expanded, Burdick Hall has expanded. It's like, well, I don't know if you need a building for a

00:29:50.340 - 00:30:02.480

new program. I don't know what else is, you know, what else is going to come. I know that when they said we were the growth institution back when Bob Caret was here, that, you know, we were going to go to 25,000.

00:30:02.480 - 00:30:15.200

I think we're almost to there. I think a lot, you know, in terms of, I guess AI is going to have an impact on it. More technology is probably going to have an impact on it.

00:30:17.440 - 00:30:34.670

I don't know, I really, really don't know what other programs, I guess more doctoral programs will probably come into play. I mean, that's something that that changed over time when I was here. You know what, I can still remember sitting in Senate

00:30:34.670 - 00:30:44.040

meetings trying to get that first doctorate in education and thinking that you're, you know, about to cross that finish line. So whoops, Maryland doesn't want us to have that program.

00:30:44.040 - 00:30:52.480

Therefore, you know, they've they've put a stop on us with MHEC. [Maryland Higher Education Commission] So, you know, but it seems like that's opened up some.

00:30:52.480 - 00:30:59.680

So maybe that's the route that we go. And you said a couple of times now that you were involved with the University Senate. Yes. Tell me a little bit more about that.

00:31:01.400 - 00:31:17.800

You know, we had to do some kind of service. There were committees we had to get on. As a, I guess, naive young guy coming in, I thought serving on the Senate would be interesting, trying to... I know that Jack Fruchtman was president for a while while I was secretary.

00:31:20.000 - 00:31:31.440

I enjoyed it. But again, then once Hoke moved out, it, you know, it kind of became a pro-forma thing almost. And I didn't enjoy it as much.

00:31:31.440 - 00:31:42.430

But, you know, you got to find out what was going on across the university. Whereas once I wasn't in that role, it's, you know, it's all kind of in your department and into college and you don't get to meet

00:31:42.430 - 00:31:52.480

with, you know, other folks. I got to meet, you know, other other folks that way, make friends in the math and science. And of course, you got to meet Rick Vatz that way.

00:31:53.400 - 00:32:03.960

Henry Chen was always a interesting guy to talk to. You know, it was good for somebody coming into the university to learn, you know, to learn a lot about the total picture.

00:32:04.280 - 00:32:07.840

And Henry has done one of these interviews for this project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:32:08.520 - 00:32:18.000

Well, let me ask you if there's anything you would like to add in this interview. You know, I mean, thirty years goes by in a hurry. You know, it's hard to believe.

00:32:18.000 - 00:32:30.640

I can still remember getting on an... When I came, I think it was either the second or third year, we went through what's called an NCATE review, an accreditation visit from the national group.

00:32:31.440 - 00:32:45.800

And, you know, I mean, that was just a flurry of, you know... But it helped learn about the program. I'll just say that it helped me really learn about what the College of Education was all about and how it worked.

00:32:46.600 - 00:33:01.280

And I remember getting on an elevator after going to one of these meetings and thinking, man, I'm going to be so glad when I'm a veteran and I've been here for 15 or 20 years because then I'll really, you know, know what's going on and have all the answers and I feel real good about things.

00:33:01.840 - 00:33:15.640

I can still remember getting on an elevator, I walked up the steps even at, you know, during 30 years and thinking at the end, I don't have a clue, you know, what's coming next or how things really work or what's going on. And I've still got a ton of questions.

00:33:15.640 - 00:33:26.620

So, you know, you're always learning and, you know, that's one of the things I enjoyed about it. I enjoyed being a classroom teacher. I mean, a classroom, I guess, professor, you know,

00:33:26.620 - 00:33:42.960

in teaching classes. And that was one of the things about retiring in December of 2019 as I looked at it that I was really grateful for because COVID then hit in March of 2020 and I would not have survived the online teaching.

00:33:43.800 - 00:33:58.880

I tried to do a workshop once. I did a workshop one summer. And it's... Not to have that interaction with students and to be able to move around the classroom and, you know, see the expressions on students' faces. It just didn't work for me.

00:33:58.880 - 00:34:09.800

Right, yeah. And I would not have loved it. I think one of the things that I wanted to emphasize or to look at or one of the things you'll see with the materials that I

00:34:09.800 - 00:34:23.160

brought is that with that work with PRIME, I was... I was pretty involved with city schools and bringing students onto campus from the schools, middle schools and high schools. We did, for a number of years

00:34:23.160 - 00:34:41.280

I did what were called Saturday academies where we brought kids from the... Two of the schools I remember were Digital Harbor High School and Walbrook High School and we did SAT preparation for them. So we'd bring them here and I'm going to say the buses would hopefully bring them

00:34:41.280 - 00:34:49.490

at nine. You know, they drop them off at 9:00 and we'd go 'til twelve. And I could recruit other faculty members to do classes that would, you know,

00:34:49.490 - 00:35:01.480

help prepare them for the reading and the writing and the mathematics portions of the SAT. And, you know, we might have, say 30 to 40 kids that would come in the morning.

00:35:01.840 - 00:35:16.880

I mean, these are, you know, city school students that, you know, went to school, you know, during the week and gave up their, you know, their Saturday mornings to, you know, to come for that. I did things and I've got a lot of pictures of that.

00:35:16.880 - 00:35:34.270

We did a... We got a grant from the... I'm trying to think... The American Association of University Women. We did a Saturday class in math and science and I got help from Don Forster, Mike Krach and Ginny Anderson and some

00:35:34.270 - 00:35:46.670

other folks in the math and science department that would come in on Saturdays and teach. These were girls from Western. We had 25 girls from Western High School that came in, you know, for that,

00:35:46.670 - 00:36:03.070

I'd go out and go to parent-teacher nights, you know, in various city schools to talk about encouraging, you know, students, their children to come to college and ways to get into college and what some of that lingo meant in terms of the

00:36:03.070 - 00:36:13.110

application process. And I always had support for that. Again, I mentioned that Jim Binko was the one that put me into that. Of course there was grant money coming from Morgan

00:36:13.110 - 00:36:26.900

to support that position. But, you know, I always felt that it was a duty to try to make those connections and bring those students and encourage them and those students were always very,

00:36:26.900 - 00:36:41.190

you know, grateful to, you know, to be able to come. And it was always something that I enjoyed doing. Kay Broadwater was the person that I worked with in art ed. So, but they mainly worked with the early

00:36:41.190 - 00:36:55.800

childhood department because there was... Art and education was the course that they did, but there were art education students that had to take a couple of secondary education courses. So we would, you know, we'd work with the people in the art ed

00:36:55.800 - 00:37:08.820

department in terms of, you know, well, you know, what are your needs and how are your students and what classes do you need? We worked quite well. But, like, Kay and I, as an example, we applied for grants through MHEC,

00:37:08.820 - 00:37:28.620

through the Maryland Higher Education Commission, to develop materials that I could take out when I went to see parents or students in the schools that said, you know, college is something that you can do. And we developed, you know, brochures and posters, you know,

00:37:28.620 - 00:37:39.600

and these kinds of art materials. So that was a way that we connected. Now again, there's a different program where math and science education is primarily housed there now.

00:37:39.600 - 00:37:59.160

But when I was here, math methods, how to teach math was taught in the math department, but their students took courses, a core of courses from secondary ed, like a general curriculum course and the foundations of education course.

00:37:59.920 - 00:38:13.320

They would supervise their student teachers then too, because they had expertise in that area. It was the same way with science, but I was able, and other faculty were able, to develop good relationships with either...

00:38:13.480 - 00:38:24.770

I mean, I can still remember Jim Lawler and Bob Hanson and they would coordinate those kinds of courses and things. You know, there were a number of folks that I

00:38:24.770 - 00:38:37.900

worked with in those two departments in terms of, you know, developing relationships and it... And as a result, I was able then to ask the people in math and science when I needed those people to help with the courses or the,

00:38:37.900 - 00:38:46.480

I guess, workshops, when the students from the schools came in, I knew them and could ask them and they were, they would readily respond and, you know, and help out with those kinds of things.

00:38:47.920 - 00:39:06.670

So there was a lot of cross pollination, you know, pollination that took place, you know, among the departments then that way. I know that over the years, one of the courses that I taught, applied grammar, eventually became something that

00:39:06.670 - 00:39:18.800

education students had to take. And so I had more and more education students. Yeah. And Phil Dowling was the second writing coordinator.

00:39:18.800 - 00:39:27.880

And I wonder if you worked with him at all. I did not. I'm trying to think, was it Florence Newman may have been a liaison with us at the time.

00:39:28.840 - 00:39:42.040

I worked more with social studies and the social sciences. So the history department. From the time he came, Bob Rook was really kind of my connection there. And he worked very closely with us in terms of we taught social studies methods,

00:39:42.040 - 00:39:54.030

but then there were core courses within the history program and social science program that students needed. And he taught, I would say it was kind of a historiography class that they needed that was, you know,

00:39:54.030 - 00:40:08.720

crucial for for secondary ed. We had someone in the department that taught English methods, I mean, and that changed over time, but they were generally specialist in English education.

00:40:08.720 - 00:40:18.480

Lois Stover, who I mentioned when I first came, you know, would have been that person. That was her background. She taught in the secondary schools, in high schools.

00:40:18.920 - 00:40:37.940

And then that was what her degree was from the University of Virginia, and she was very prominent in the English Teachers Association then, the national group for teaching English. We did coordinate courses because there were certain things that they required,

00:40:37.940 - 00:40:46.270

you know, like in social studies, you needed U.S. history courses, you needed a world history course, you needed economics. You know, we had to make sure that all of those

00:40:46.270 - 00:40:56.480

things were done. Were those formal agreements that you had to develop with each of the programs or was it just... They probably were formal agreements, but I wasn't...

00:40:56.800 - 00:41:11.360

That was above my pay grade. Although I did serve as chair for... I served for a year in the mid 90s and then I did a four-year stint from 2004 to 2008. As chair.

00:41:11.440 - 00:41:21.790

As chair. Yeah. And never... I can still remember Jim Lawler in that lower parking lot that's now part of the

00:41:21.790 - 00:41:30.840

expansion of the University Union, saying when I left after the interview, he said, yeah, and maybe someday you can be chair of the department. I said, Jim, that's one thing I never want to do.

00:41:31.560 - 00:41:36.920

I enjoy teaching. I don't want to be a manager. And I don't... I don't think that'll ever happen.

00:41:37.600 - 00:41:46.770

And then it came back, came back to bite me. Yeah. Yeah. Over the course of your career, did you see any changes in the culture of

00:41:46.770 - 00:42:00.940

the faculty that you were with? Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, for example, again, when we first started, I can still remember that we had a... There was a faculty member in

00:42:00.940 - 00:42:13.980

early childhood named Eileen Cohen. And they did... And she was kind of the, I think that the director of this, they did a bus tour of Baltimore for new families, you know,

00:42:13.980 - 00:42:23.560

for new faculty that were coming in. Like, I remember my wife and I went, you know, we went down to the Inner Harbor and went to the different neighborhoods and we got to see everything.

00:42:24.320 - 00:42:40.360

And then I know that there was Jim Binko and his wife was a member of my department, Gloria Neubert. They, you know, hosted, like, an open house at their house, you know, and everybody went and, you know, you kind of knew everybody.

00:42:42.200 - 00:42:57.480

I would say that over time, I guess the college grew in faculty. I'm sure it did. But, and again, by the end of my career, and it may have been be because of my, you know, my situation of not being on campus as much.

00:42:58.880 - 00:43:16.710

I can't say that there was that closeness in terms of faculty, you know, and I don't know if I want to call it a family feeling, but that feeling of knowing people in different departments or across the college, you know, I mean, I can still remember, you know,

00:43:16.710 - 00:43:34.910

ten years in you go to an all- college faculty meeting and I probably knew everybody there and could converse with them. Maybe that last year I was there, I, you know, maybe knew a handful of people, but that was a result of being the old guy in the room and the, you know,

00:43:34.910 - 00:43:44.720

the person with the most experience. And there were just a lot of, you know, a lot of younger folks and different departments even. And I just didn't have the opportunity to interact with all of them.

00:43:45.320 - 00:43:54.150

I can associate with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you think, you know that, oh, gee, when I leave, they're going to... Well, I guess I learned that, you know,

00:43:54.150 - 00:44:00.240

you think at at one point, well, gee, when I leave, they're really going to miss me. And people thinking how are things going to continue?

00:44:00.600 - 00:44:14.620

I could tell from all of my colleagues that left before me that, you know, once you're out the door, you know, they move on and, yeah, maybe they miss you, but it's not going to change much. Over the course of these interviews, nearly

00:44:14.620 - 00:44:28.430

every interviewee has referred to the early times they were here as being part of a family, extended family, and said this, essentially, the same thing had disappeared as time passed. And I think that's, you know, part of that idea of, you know,

00:44:28.430 - 00:44:40.120

being a smaller campus, you know, I always, you know, a lot of the higher-ups, you know, used to talk about, oh, we're growing, we're growing, we're growing. And I said, well, you know, getting bigger doesn't necessarily mean

00:44:40.120 - 00:44:55.490

you're better. And I really believe, but that's one of the things I was grateful for, I think in the college and especially in the department is that you know, we were always able to maintain small

00:44:55.490 - 00:45:03.760

professor-to-student ratios. And I think that really helped us. And the size of a class was... An undergraduate class was... Yeah, undergraduate.

00:45:03.760 - 00:45:15.240

Yeah. Was 20 to, you know, maybe 20 to 25. Now, again, when, as time moved on, that foundations class, which they claimed was more of a lecture class, may have gone to 35.

00:45:16.080 - 00:45:21.320

But I mean, there really aren't that many classrooms in Hawkins Hall that you can fit many more people in there. Right. Yeah.

00:45:21.480 - 00:45:26.920

So thanks very much for this interview. It was a great interview. I appreciated it. And I'm sure all the viewers will too.

00:45:27.200 - 00:45:30.800

And much happiness to you in the future. Thank you very much. I enjoyed doing it.