CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT

Dolores Osborn

(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)

MS:      [Inaudible] 1998.  Our interview today is Dolores Osborne.  Our camera person is Jean Putnam, and I’m Milo Smith.  Now Dolores, would you please give us a good thumbnail sketch of your autobiography starting with born, raised, graduated from high school, right on through your college degrees, up to the time that you came to Central.

DO:      I can do that pretty easily.  I was born, raised, went through high school in Hillsboro, Illinois, and I got a teaching degree from Eastern Illinois University.  Then I taught two years at a small school in Trenton, Illinois, and decided maybe teaching wasn’t my thing after all.  So I came west to California, because I have a brother and his family who lived there, and I got a job in an office, and was a private secretary for two years, and then decided, since I had grown up a little – because I was 21 when I started teaching – now that I was a couple of years older, I thought maybe I would be able to handle teaching again, so I wanted to try again.  So I moved to northern California, to a place called Hayfork, which is about 70 miles west of Redding in the Trinity Alps, and I taught high school in a high school of about 150 students for five years.  And while I was there, I went back to school in Colorado – what’s now Colorado – University of Northern Colorado – and finished a Master’s degree.  And during that time I had an opportunity to interview for a job here with Eugene Kosy [?]  And he was at a meeting in Palo Alto that I was attending.

The Dean of the School of Business at University of Northern Colorado was also there, and they happened to be good friends – they worked on their Master’s together, and the Dean in Colorado knew I was looking for a College job, and he knew Gene was looking for a new person, so I did my interview on the spur of the moment, and took this job at Central, never having been to the state, let alone to the school.  So anyway, that’s how I came to be here, and I lived here three years before I took a couple of years off and went back to the University of Northern Colorado again and got a Doctorate.

MS:      Now having come there sight unseen, do you recall any surprises when you were new to Ellensburg, new to the College?

DO:      I don’t think there were too many surprises.  Everything was very positive.  When you live in a town where there’s less than 2000 people, in the mountains, and you’re isolated, this seems like a huge city to you.  But it was kind of nice, for a change, to not have to run, like we did, to Redding if we wanted anything.  So – those things were here.  I don’t know that I was too surprised.  Friends of mine say they’ve been very surprised when they’d come in and it would be so arid here, but for some reason that didn’t strike me as particularly unusual at the time.

MS:      Because so many people have mentioned that – how arid it is – did you find the town and the school unfriendly, or friendly?

DO:      The first year I was here I tried to get myself involved in – well, I took bridge lessons from Marie Murphy, which she did for free, and would have numbers of people, and from that we formed a bridge group so I got acquainted with people.  I did a little class or two on decorations at the high school that they offered for adults, and that was a way to get a little bit acquainted.  Unfortunately, not having a family and children I missed out on some other opportunities that  some people had, but that was a way to get involved a bit, and I thought everybody – everybody I met was very friendly.

MS:      Now the year that you arrived on campus was?

DO:      Nineteen sixty-five.

MS:      And you have retired as of this year?

DO:      Right.  Just June 15^th.

MS:      Welcome to the pool.  Now when you first came, what was your academic assignment?

DO:      I was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Education, as it was called then.

MS:      Teaching what classes?

DO:      Oh, well . . . I’d say over the years I think I’ve taught almost everything that has ever been in the catalog, and it’s really hard to think of them.

MS:      People reviewing this tape 50 years from now won’t have that catalog.

DO:      No, I know.  I don’t have it either.

MS:      Some of the courses you taught – what were some of your pets?

DO:      The subject matter – I taught Business Communications, which at that time was just letter writing – business letter writing.  We also taught typewriting at various levels, on electric – not Selectric, not correcting electric – typewriters, and we also taught Gregg’s Shorthand.  And I suppose when I started that’s pretty much what I started with.

MS:      Now that you’re retiring this year, you can look back and you can probably make some estimation as to how much technological development changed teaching in your department, and for some of your classes.

DO:      It changed terrifically.  It was like – you know – kids are always saying, if they’re out teaching secondary school they’ll always say, “Can’t we have a methods class in how to teach?”  And I said, “You know, the methodology, as long as the techniques are the same you’re going to have to learn to adapt to what happens, because technology has proven time – when I did my Master’s degree the technology involved the circuit boards where you had to do the plug ins to get it to work, and the cards, and all of that, and I remember when I was an undergraduate we made a – when I was a senior we made a trip to a business about 60-70 miles away from the University to see a computer that filled an entire huge basement, and all you saw were a couple of lights flashing on and off.  Doctoral program – didn’t have any computer work for the Doctoral program because PCs weren’t invented.  And so everything we’ve been in this department we’ve had those of us who finished about when I did – everything had to be learned on your own.  There was no other way to develop those kinds of skills.

MS:      Now do you get involved in teaching some of those classes concerning computer use?

DO:      Oh yes.

MS:      You did?

DO:      Because we did mostly – the department did mostly applications type classes, and consequently I taught Word Processing at various levels, and  - actually that’s been the bulk of what I’ve done, although there are a lot of other areas.  But that was the one I chose, that I preferred to work with.  Then we used the word processor as we did other class props.  We’d use the word processor in Business Communications off and on, and if we had more equipment we’d have used it every day.

MS:      Now because you were teaching a full schedule, how have you had time to come up in Word Processing yourself?

DO:      You just take the time.  Of course, I was fortunate.  I had bought a computer, so I had one at home I could work on, too.  But I found I did a lot more work at school.  Somehow you just – you know how it is, you just make time.  It’s something you’ve got to do to be up to date.

MS:      Did you teach in any other department?

DO:      No.  I never taught anywhere else.

MS:      Always in Business Education?

DO:      Yes, which is now Administrative Management and Business Education.

MS:      Mm-hmm.  Now, what problems do you recall that you would class as significant during your tenure at Central?  The equipment shortages?

DO:      Well equipment shortages are always a problem, because we never have enough money to keep up to date.  I really was pleased that Spring quarter was over, because I’ve never had so many problems with computers as I had Spring quarter, and I know we’re desperately in need of new equipment.  They’ve just been abused – oh, I shouldn’t say abused.  They’ve been used to the point where they’re not working appropriately, and it’s really hard to keep up to date with equipment.  Costly.  So that’s a major problem.  The other one, I guess, is it would have been nice, while I was here, if salaries could have kept pace with – well, at least cost of living.

MS:      Did you – did you notice any resistance on the part of students when they discovered that they were going to be required to take classes with this new technology?

DO:      Well of course, being in my department I don’t think we ran into that.  In fact, it’s just the opposite.  The students really enjoy, and left to their own choices where we didn’t force them into some things, they would take all classes ready to use their technology and they wouldn’t take any basics.  And I don’t know why they think that’s necessarily all where it’s at, because at some point they’ve got to learn some other things. 

MS:      Now just for the record, Delores, when classes with technology such as word processing became popular and necessary, that had – that meant that something had to leave the curriculum in order to get that in.  What kind of courses left the curriculum?

DO:      Typewriting. 

MS:      Typewriting.

DO:      Sure did.  And then there have been other courses.  Those left, and they left quite a long time ago.  Some courses have changed because of technology.  Some new ones have been added, like there are spreadsheet courses, and data base courses, and even the Records Management course which I taught, also, years ago has updated to use the data base program as part of that particular class.  So things are – they’re – what we’re doing, I think, is incorporating more of the technology into other classes that were existing, and they’ve, in a way, become quite different than they were years ago.

MS:      Because I have personal friends who are adults who have a need to keep up [inaudible] so they bought a computer, not realizing that you needed some information about typing in order to upgrade computer keyboard.  I have developed an assumption that typing 1 must be required in a public school someplace in order to get kids ready for the computer keyboard.  Is that right?

DO:      In my view it is.  Unfortunately, I don’t know how we’re ever going to control that.  Children start learning computers when they’re in grade school, and usually the teachers don’t know – either don’t know how to teach keyboarding, or they have no interest in doing it, or they don’t think they have time, and so the children are playing at the keyboard and not really knowing what they’re doing.  High School, yeah, but they’ve already known some bad habits by then.  I sure see it in our classes here – the things they do, and the carpal tunnel we keep talking about?  Really have a lot of it.  So I’ve sort of decided maybe I should invest – I don’t know what that gadget is they put on there, but maybe I ought to invest in that, because there are going to be a lot of them.  Someone else and I were discussing not long ago that we didn’t know anyone – doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody, but we don’t know anyone who learned to key on a manual typewriter who has carpal tunnel, because you could not run your arms down in carpal tunnel.  If you did, you couldn’t get enough power to get the keys, so you didn’t do this, and that’s what the kids do today – they hold their –

MS:      That’s an interesting observation.  Good, thank you.  Now in the last ten years, would you say that the majority of your students have been coming to you ready for whatever your department had to offer? 

DO:      I really don’t think so.  I really don’t think so.  When I look at what they’re coming in with now – and again, I’m relating this to – because I used to teach typing and then we switched to computers and went to word processing – I could just compare kind of those two groups – the differences.  And students used to be much more capable of doing things on their own.  They had better skills and techniques than we have now.  They got greater speeds – accuracy.  They weren’t upset when you set your standards high, as they are, pretty much today.  Not all of them are that way, but there are many that think that you grade to rough.

MS:      I can well recall high school typing with my big, clubby fingers.  I almost didn’t pass the first year of typing because we had to get so many words per minute, or we couldn’t pass that first year typing.  And I remember the typing teacher, Miss McGraw, coming by and looking at my big square hands, which are very strong, but not very supple, and she says, “Milo, I don’t think you’re ever going to be a typist.”  And she said, “I may have to fudge to get you through this course.”  Well, I could just type up a storm and make lots of noise, and never could type fast enough.  And now, on my computer, I’m not out to set records, but just to satisfy myself, and I just don’t understand how a – well, I had a neighbor who recently found that he could buy a computer for $1300 by telephone, and he bought it.  He doesn’t know how to type.  He doesn’t – he’s never taken a class in computers.  He’s decided that he’s fairly smart – he can probably pick it up from the instruction book that came with it.

DO:      Well, he may have to go buy some books, but he can also buy software to teach you how to key if you really want to know.  It’s available, and there’s some that’s pretty good out there, I guess.  I’m not really – that’s not really my area.  I guess it’s pretty good, and I know there are books out there, depending on the program you’re using, that you can buy, that – I just laughed, because I say “Step One, do this, Step Two, do this, Step Three, do this, and here’s what you get.”  And it shows you a picture of it, so it’s a good – for me, it’s a good way to learn.  I don’t just read.  It says “Hit this key, this key, and this key,” but instead it’s explaining what’s happening as you go along.  So you can do a lot of self-instruction.

MS:      Now to move into a slightly new area, which administrators and faculty come to mind as important leaders while you were teaching here – especially in your area?

DO:      Well, I’d say Doctor Eugene Kosy.  A good friend, and he’s the one who hired me when I came here, and a good mentor.  One of the things I think I’ll always respect about him is the fact that if you did something wrong it didn’t make any difference how good a friend you were – he would let you know.  But the minute he let you know, it was never mentioned again, because he would tell you what he thought you should do, and then just expect you to do it, and he’d drop it.  And never carry a grudge.  I thought that was a great thing to be able to do.  I wish I were so good at it.

MS:      Of the higher administrators – any opinions?

DO:      When I came here, Jim Brooks was President, and of course was a newcomer.  You don’t come into much contact with people, but I’ve gotten to know Jim a little bit better – not well, but he certainly is exceedingly friendly and a down to earth person, and probably the only President  here that I’ve really got acquainted with. 

MS:      I found it interesting, Dolores, through all of these interviews, that the longer we go, the better Jim Brooks sounds as a President.

DO:      Yeah, I think that’s true for a lot of people.

MS:      Do you recall any significant differences which arose between students and faculty?

DO:      I was gone during a period of time when there was a lot of student – uprising’s the right word, but a lot of problems with students.  I had to be back to work on my Doctorate when that happened, so I don’t know if it went on here, or not.

MS:      Is this the Viet Nam period?

DO:      It would have been ’68 through ’70.  They were lighting fires in buildings and doing some things, and I don’t know if that happened at Central or not.  I can’t recall any major divisions, as I recall it here.

MS:      Do you recall any to do within the faculty concerning grade inflation?

DO:      No, and that’s still going on.  Grade inflation is never going to be settled.

MS:      What causes it?

DO:      Well, I’ll tell you what one person – this time I won’t mention the name, since it’s not real positive – said to me, “Well, we’ve got our objective.  We have our standards.  And so if a student meets the standards, then they should get the grade.”  And my comment was, “That’s probably true.  But have you been assured your standards are deep enough, and not so easy that everybody can make the grade every time?”

MS:      Well we had an administrator in front of this camera very recently to whom I suggested that I thought that part of our grade inflation problem was that faculty and budget allocations are almost always tied to departmental enrollments, and students enroll in classes in which they think that they will be able to get a decent grade, and find some success.  And that there are probably far too many faculty members who may have inflated grades in order to help improve the enrollments in their classes, in order to help the department gain a satisfactory or a more satisfactory budget.  And I just hate for budgets to be tied to student enrollments.

DO:      I’ve never heard that before.  That’s new to me, in my department.  In fact, we get the word every once in a while, “Your grades are awful high.  You better look at them.”  So it’s not somebody trying to get more money, from the point of view of having higher grades.  And our grades, compared to some departments on campus, are low already, and our student numbers keep going up.

MS:      Good.  Now, react, if you can, to the following list of subjects as you probably would have at the time you were teaching – recently, even.  The salary schedule at Central:

DO:      Well like I said before, it would have been nice if it had kept up at least with inflation.  It would also be nice if we could meet salaries of peer institutions.  The way it’s based on – of course, I’m – I guess I have to clarify the fact that merit really disturbs me.  It’s a way to – I think – to administratively separate people, and get them upset with each other, and I guess I just don’t like merit because there is no – in my opinion – good way that you could determine what’s meritorious and what’s not.  It might be several years down the line before you know whether something is meritorious or not.

MS:      I can recall being told one time by an administrator that just because you didn’t get a merit raise doesn’t mean you were lacking in merit.

DO:      Well  don’t want to sound like – you know – I don’t want to sound like that’s sour grapes, because I probably got more than my share of merit during all the years.  That doesn’t mean I liked it.

MS:      Right.  How do you feel about academic freedom at Central?

DO:      You know, that word – the words academic freedom – I don’t know how many years I was here before I heard anybody in my department ever use that term, and then it’s only been one person who has done it a few times from my department.  I never looked at it that way.  I mean, it never bothered me.  I did what I thought I needed to do to teach, but maybe it’s the area that I’m in, maybe there’s not a problem with that.  Some other areas maybe they do have more problems.

MS:      That was very possible.  You probably did not have any big discussions that were highly political, or charged with religiosity.

DO:      That’s right.

MS:      Maybe you were sheltered from that kind of foolishness.

DO:      They could.

MS:      Now how about town and gown relationships?

DO:      Well I worked here from ’65 until summer of ’68, and then I went back to Colorado to work on my Doctorate, and I was gone for a year.  When I came back I joined  Business and Professional women, and I still have friends today who are members of that organization which has disbanded many years ago.  But I was – I think there were two of us here on the faculty who belonged to that organization, and the rest were all towns people.  And if it were going today, I’d still want to be a member.  It was the best group I ever belonged to.

MS:      Did Business and Professional Women’s organization disband because it was not serving the membership?

DO:      Well I think we’re in – we’re still in an era when organizations just don’t – they don’t do well.  People don’t want to be organized and committed as a group, usually, and they had gotten to the point where it was the same group of maybe eight to ten people who did all the work.  You might get some new members, but they were really vitally interested in what was going on, and it just got to be too much because many of the members got to be quite a bit older – they were quite a lot older than me, some of them – and it was just – it got too difficult, so we just gave up.

MS:      Do you have any opinion concerning faculty and administration collegiality?

DO:      No, I really don’t, because I don’t see much of it.  [MS laughs]  I don’t think that having coffee at Christmas time is faculty and administrative collegiality.  I think it takes more than that.

MS:      Well one of the biggest problems has arisen in the past years concerning collegiality – I well recall, because I sat on the Senate for so many years – was that there was – there is a faculty attitude – that the faculty code has never been a faculty code.  It has been the Board of Trustees’ code, because the Board of Trustees can cancel anything in the faculty code at their will.

DO:      Which has happened, I understand.

MS:      And those faculty members who have been most upset by that wanted much more equality between the faculty opinion and the administrative opinion, and they never have had it.  And I can recall Dr. Brooks standing before the Senate and saying, “I am charged by law to do some of the things that you want me to let you do.  I can’t do that.”  And so there can’t be any equality, I would assume.

DO:      I would be very conservative then.  Any other business – and I do think higher education is a business – that you could let the employees, as a whole, run the organization.  Somebody has to be responsible at some level.  But it’s nice to be able to give input freely.  If once in a while some of the input is taken – it’s a recommendation that somebody accepts – I would think it would make that interaction more – a whole lot better.  I think administrators could do some things like get out of their offices, go to various departments, talk with people, meet with them.  I know they’ve got a lot to do, but that ought to be on their list, too.

MS:      Now I know that in all of the years that you have been here, and that I have been here, we have never been under great pressure to publish and perish, but I do know that publishing has often been rewarded by merit when the people who didn’t publish did not get merit.  What’s your opinion on publish and perish at Central?

DO:      I know that that happened because one year I was turned down for merit, and the reason was because the person who could have made that choice was counting – as a way to get merit – counting the number of articles published, and the higher the number, the better your chances of getting, which is an odd way to measure merit, but anyway, it did happen.  But on the other hand, I only had – in all of my career at Central, I didn’t – writing was not my thing.  I guess I can do it, but I’d look around and say, “Well that’s already been done.  What do you want to do that for?”  And it would get discouraging.  I did write one article for a major Business Ed magazine, and then just – what, has it been three years ago, now – I joined a group of two other people and we wrote an accounting textbook, and that certainly wasn’t to help me get anything, because by then I was getting close to retiring, and it was just a personal kind of thing that I wanted to do.

MS:      Now opinion concerning research v. classroom teaching?

DO:      You know, I don’t – again, in my department I think we have one or two people who might be really interested in research.  Most people there are in interested in the teaching, and that’s what they want to do.  I know that’s not true in, like, School of Business.  They have a lot of people who are really into research.  The thing that can happen is that students can be shortchanged in the classroom, but it depends on the instructor.  But I know that some of the classes, for example -  [End of Side One]

(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 2)

DO:      Even though it compresses what you’re trying to learn – and those of us who know a little bit about pedagogy know that that’s not the way for them to learn – so I think it can have an impact, but it depends on the researcher.  Some people do research, they use a lot of it in their classroom, and it’s very helpful to students.

MS:      Now since you taught and were disappointed where very often there is a skill to be picked up, and that skill level of expertise is measurable from the time they come in to the time they leave – how do you feel that teachers who teach where there is a measurable outcome should be treated, compared to those teacher who can hide behind their textbooks and their grade books, and never have to have their students demonstrate their expertise at the end of the course?

DO:      I don’t know that we ever have to demonstrate, either.  You know, you’re going to demonstrate to an employer, if they can do it or not.  And there’s certainly been a change over the years what employers accept, or don’t accept, and anymore there doesn’t seem to be this set of standards that we used to have years ago – typing so many words a minute.  They don’t even look at that, often, in word processing.  Just can they get the document out in a reasonable period of time.  And if we were grading them on the same kind of standards we used back about ’65 or ’66, our students now would be in tough shape, because they can’t begin to make those standards.

MS:      Is accuracy still of the greatest importance?

DO:      Actually, businesses often don’t look at that.  They look at the finished product, and  -

MS:      Hmmm.  I can’t imagine a world in which accuracy isn’t rewarded.

DO:      They found – correct the errors before they print it out, or whatever.

MS:      That’s one of my pet peeves with the modern newspaper.  I don’t see why a newspaper should come out full of typographical errors, or grammatical errors, either, when they’re so easy to correct on a computer now.

DO:      I still have students now and then – although I try to warn them at the beginning of class – if you make a correction, if you find a – especially in Business Communication – if you’re doing a letter and you’ve printed it out, and you find an error in your [document] don’t you dare write in a correction with pen.  You go put it back in, and print out another one.  Go and get it right.  But I know that the tendency is there to do that.

MS:      I was so relieved when I could throw away my typing eraser, because I’ve never, ever made a neat, unnoticeable erasure on the typewriter.  And boy, I love correcting on a computer.

DO:      It’s a lot easier.

MS:      Nobody would know I was there.

DO:      Well, I got pretty good at erasing with an eraser when I was in college.  I had a very strict couple of professors in the school where I went as an undergraduate, who really required that you do these things until you could do them well, and I really appreciate that.  At the time you’re not so sure, but you look back, and you’re [inaudible].

MS:      Now because you have gone to school and taught in states other than this one, and at schools other than this one, perhaps you are in a good position to make some judgment concerning the pre-college preparation and quality of students that we get here at Central.

DO:      I don’t – you know – intelligence level is probably about the same.  Sometimes I think students today are led to believe they’re smarter than – which is – [inaudible] as students have been in the past, which is not true.  They’re exposed to more, but whether they know as much, or less, is something else.  But they don’t seem to have the discipline, on the whole, that’s really required to be your better student.  Yeah, there are some who are quite good, and you know they’re going to be – it doesn’t take you very long in class to know who the good students are going to be, and once in a while you get one that shocks you – that turns to be a good student, and you didn’t anticipate it.  That’s great.  But on the whole they’re not willing to put forth as much effort – it seems to me – as we used to.  I – when I was teaching in high school I required things of my students that I didn’t require here of juniors.  They probably would have had a fit here.

MS:      Now do you have any opinions concerning the faculty organizations?  Certainly since I retired there has been a lot of fuss on campus about which of our two organizations is going to represent us, and so it looks to me now that both organizations are representing the faculty.

DO:      Can you talk about AFT and NSET as two separate groups?

MS:      No, there’s – AFT is one of them, and the other is what?  The National?

DO:      Oh.  But they don’t have that any more.

MS:      They don’t have that.  I thought recently in the paper it identified two organizations that were combining their efforts in gaining the faculty representation.

DO:      I don’t know.  I’ll tell you why I don’t know.  Because I’m not interested in unionizing, and because I had that basic premise, I wasn’t interested, really, in what was going on.  I’m – you know, personally I think there’s – this ability to sit down and to talk with faculty and administrators – to talk – is really good.  But again, who’s going to lead?  And I think some faculty – the majority of faculty voted for AFT.  I think they’re going to maybe be surprised in the future when they find some of the benefits we’ve had will disappear.  For example – and I’ve been a real recipient of this one, and that’s long-term – being off work for long term because of health, and having a quarter’s pay, I think twice, during the years I was here, I did that, and they hired somebody to take my place.  I don’t think that’s likely to happen continuously with the union, but I might be surprised.

MS:      Now Delores, were you the recipient of any awards or honors in these years at Central?

DO:      Not really.  The only thing I did [inaudible] students the last few years, and I did get co-op advisor of the year for it.  Way back, now – I loose track of time – ’79-80 I think I was the Washington State Business Ed President.  It was an honor to do that.

MS:      Is Business Education well organized within the state?

DO:      Within the state?  There’s very little of it within the state except the high school level.  Colleges – the only two programs that are remaining is the one we have here at Central, and a sparse one at Eastern, I understand.

MS:      Do I assume, then, that those of you who are involved in Business Education within the State of Washington do not get together once a year and compare notes?  Steal from each other?

DO:      University people – we just had a State meeting – the State organization has a conference once a year in the fall, and any level – any teacher, junior high through college level can go.  And of course you have an opportunity to get together with colleagues, but I find it more interesting, when I got to that, to see former students that we had – what they’re doing, and what their concerns are.  I’m not really in Business Education – or [inaudible] the last several years I was into more Administrative Management.

MS:      Now we come to that terrible question, Dolores – what specific contributions do you feel that you made to the progress of your department or school?

DO:      That’s a difficult question to answer.  I try to keep up to date, and to change courses – even courses that have been existing for a long time – as I was teaching them, to update them.  And worked a lot on curriculum development both in the department, and in the University, and tried to be supportive of the department and what was going on, and I think that was rather major.

MS:      Do you have any courses in Business Education that are acceptable as basic education courses that students can use to satisfy elective credits elsewhere?

DO:      Only as of this fall.

MS:      General Ed?

DO:      Yeah, this fall – the General Ed – the basic, where you have to have a computer either to pass a test or take the computer class which we have one that’s available and Computer Science has one that’s available.  We’ve not been involved in General [inaudible].

MS:      You know, I was so surprised many years ago when I was working on my PhD that I was faced with passing a reading exam on two languages, and since I did that, I find that now they’ve changed the requirements here to one language and a computer course.

DO:      That’s common, I believe.

MS:      That’s not fair!  Not when I struggled over German the way I struggled.

DO:      Of course I got a – I have an EdD, so I didn’t struggle over either of those, but had I waited three months to graduate I would have had a PhD because I would have had a year of Statistics, and they would count a year of Statistics in place.  But I wanted to get [inaudible].

MS:      I can’t imagine why.  What major campus committees did you have an opportunity to serve on?

DO:      Oh golly, well probably the biggest one was – or the one that I was most involved in was the Curriculum Committee, which no longer exists as it did at that time.  Because that committee handled all changes in curriculum, including additions, or changes to existing courses at both graduate and undergraduate level, and for programs, etc.  It needs to go through everything.  Now it doesn’t work the same way.  But I spent – I don’t know how many years I spent.  I spent quite a few years on that committee, and chaired it at least two years.  So that was probably the major one.  I’ve worked on Senate Budget Committee, limitedly.  Worked on department committees like Personnel.  I need my list in front of me, because it’s lengthy. 

MS:      Now your building has been considerably renovated since you first arrived on campus.  Did the faculty have an opportunity to feed in information that was considered in the decisions that were drawn up by architects?

DO:      Yes, we had an opportunity, but they weren’t all – nothing resulted from every one of them.  But some of the ideas were taken, but money became the problem – like always, you know – and some of the things that we had wanted just did not happen.  For example, in our building now the classrooms – we have some teacher workstations that have built-in – we have a computer station in each one, and – with a screen and the lights that will project through a system, and we can also do – use video tapes without having the video taping – call the library and have them put it on, and so forth.  So there are some really nice, up to date features, but there are some things that are missing that we really had wanted.  And then there weren’t enough to put them in every classroom.  But it’s my understanding that at least two of our classrooms are to be fitted with those.

MS:      You worked in Shaw-Smyser for several number of years, and suddenly you must have discovered that somebody decided to remove the asbestos.

DO:      Mm-hmm.

MS:      Do you know if any of the Business Ed faculty suffered from asbestos fiber?

DO:      No, not a one.

MS:      Good.

DO:      And I was there.  They were still – they were tearing it down, and we were still there.  They had plastic up, but they were still tearing down.

MS:      Okay, Dolores, we come to the grand end here.  Will you please close with a statement of your feelings about your career at Central?  Was it pleasant?  Collegial?  Challenging?  Whatever you feel.

DO:      I guess if I had to give it a word, I’d say it was a pleasant experience, but experience, as you know, with any job that you have there are days when things aren’t so pleasant.  But on the whole, it was a good experience.  I met lots of people from different areas, and that, by the way, is, I think, one of the big advantages to being on committees, is getting to meet people outside of your own area of – sort of stayed in your own center of the world.  And you have a chance to meet with those people, and to find out how they feel about things, which can be also vastly different from how you feel, but you get another viewpoint.  It’s been a happy time.

MS:      This it what part of the interview, normally, that I want to congratulate you, because I have, through the years, a number of advisees who had had you as instructor, and to a person they spoke well of you and your teaching.

DO:      Thank you.

MS:      And with that, we’ll close.