1 40 755 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/94967903d2e10a03e2bc41a3a8bdcba8.JPG 557e9c36b8075307bd8a780349f72913 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/219f5b65bcaf1712a078dc114ebdd8d7.m4a aa62e98961651e1775e1ce236415aff6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b7a5948f9c56bcd2e743ad2edd17cc06.pdf 6245248b8ce1b11dc5709cbec67ce2fb PDF Text Text Interview with Murray Levith by Susan Bender & Leslie Mechem (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, February 26, 2026 Sue Bender: This is Sue Bender, interviewing Murray Levith for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It's November 4th, 2025, and we are in the Lucy Scribner Library on the Skidmore campus. Welcome, Murray. Murray Levith: Thank you. Sue Bender: Let's start by reflecting on your formative years. Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? Murray Levith: I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I was a pretty serious musician from about age six. I played in many orchestras. I thought that I might want to go to a liberal arts college rather than, for example, the University of Pittsburgh in my hometown, which was then a private university. And I went to Washington & Jefferson College. Washington & Jefferson had about 900 male students only, and it was a liberal arts college. I think it was founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1790, even older than Union College. I had a very wonderful experience there. I encountered in my freshman composition course Edwin M. Moseley, who eventually became chair of the English Department at Skidmore, Dean of the Faculty, Provost, and for a time Acting President. He influenced my whole career. I wasn't a very intellectual high school student. I hadn't read all the books that I was supposed to have read, but Edwin made them so interesting when I was a freshman in college that I did read them all. I had a very interesting coming to Skidmore College. I did a master's degree at the University of Nebraska because I wanted to be a poet at that time. And I wanted to study with Karl Shapiro, who was eventually what amounted to be the Poet Laureate of the U.S. And he was called the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and eventually that became the poet laureate position. And I had a good and personal relationship with him as a graduate student. I did a master's degree there in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I played the violin in the Lincoln Symphony as a professional violinist.We had some interesting soloists. For example, just before she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera, Leontyne Price played or sang with the Lincoln Symphony, but we also had Bob Keeshan, Captain Kangaroo, who was another performer with the symphony. From Lincoln, I went on to Syracuse University to do a Ph.D. The reason I went to Syracuse was because Edwin went to Syracuse. And there was a group of us at Syracuse who would come to Saratoga Springs and visit with Edwin and Kay. And I have always been so impressed with Edwin, but I wanted to mention something about Kay. When we came to their home for dinner from Syracuse, there was this plush green carpet, and in a corner was a blonde harp. Kay played Page 1 of 15 �the harp, and I was so impressed with that. I guess I was pretty provincial, but I thought that was the ultimate of sophistication. Back to Edwin, I did a book of Festschrift for Edwin in 1978, I believe, and I wanted to read the first paragraph of the preface to the book because it was my impression of Edwin as a teacher, and he was a teacher at Skidmore, too, in addition to being the other things. "Edwin M. Moseley himself exhibited a few of those significant gestures he told us were characteristics of American writers in the '20s and '30s. He would enter class, place his folder of notes on the lectern, unbutton the pocket watch from his lapel. We wore church keys, dangling from a string, in imitation, church keys being can openers, and take attendance. The South Carolina dialect rolled out to us as cultured, worldly, and exotic as any from Oxford in England. During the lecture itself, he sallied back and forth in front of us, explaining, asking, analyzing, provoking. He punctuated insights by smoothing his tie, lightly clapping his hands together, adjusting his jacket. He dressed immaculately. And doing what we called deep knee bends, like a pious man at prayer, he invoked the muse of learning with his wise and knowing incantations. Everything, absolutely everything was written on the blackboard. Significant words were connected with magical arrows. Lines bisected circles. X's and O's were meaningfully juxtaposed. At the end of the class hour, when the writing and diagramming was complete and the blackboard was filled to the edges, as was his coat with chalk dust, Dr. Moseley, with open hands, slapped the board and declare, 'It's all here. It's all here. It's all here,’ he would say again. It was for us, for sure.” Sue Bender: Lovely, and did Edwin have a role in your coming to Skidmore, then? Murray Levith: Well, that's another storyMurray Levith: ... yes. Sue Bender: ... another story, thenMurray Levith: Okay. Sue Bender: ... how you came to Skidmore. Murray Levith: I came to Skidmore three weeks into the semester in 1967. My predecessor was a member of the International Explorers Club. He was an Australian, and he left to lead an expedition to the North Pole for Bulova Watches. This sounds like an unbelievable story, but my son, who has written a memoir, has actually talked to this man's son. The man's name was David Humphreys, and so Page 2 of 15 �here was the situation in 1967. Humphreys, three weeks into the semester, left Skidmore. Edwin was the Dean. There was a new chair of the English Department, Tom Goethals, who had come from Sarah Lawrence College, and at Columbia, one of his good friends was John Deal, who was on my dissertation committee at Syracuse. John called Tom Goethals, inviting him to a party at Syracuse, and Tom said, "Oh, I can't come. I have to find someone to plug into this person that left." So here is Murray Levith, whose mentor was Edwin Moseley as an undergraduate, who went to Syracuse University because Edwin Moseley made a call and I got a part-time instructorship. Back in those days, that's what happened. And so anyway, Edwin called and said, "Come over." This was on a Wednesday. I had a perfunctory interview with him on Thursday. On Monday, I was teaching The Faerie Queene, and the doors at the English Department at Regents Street were open. Miriam Benkovitz was in one room listening, Alberta Feynman was in the next room listening, and Julia Hysham was in the third office listening to me about The Faerie Queene. I guess I passed, and was at Skidmore for 41 years. Sue Bender: Can you describe what the college was like when you arrivedMurray Levith: Yes. Sue Bender: ... in 1967? Murray Levith: Yes. I think that Edwin was instrumental in trying to take the College from a, and I don't think the faculty would have said this, but from a finishing school for women to a real academic institution, a liberal arts college. And Tom Goethals was hired to make the English Department more academic. He had been at Harvard for his PhD. He was a novelist, he was a scholar, and although the women in the department then, I think, were good scholars, Miriam Benkovitz was a PhD from Yale, Alberta Feynman from Columbia, Julia Hysham from Columbia, the tone was not as academic as it might have been. And the first three young men that were hired by Tom Goethals were Mark Gelber, Don Stoddard, and Murray Levith. The town [Saratoga Springs] was a disaster. You could buy one of the mansions on Broadway for about $35,000. The best restaurants were The Golden Dragon and D'Andrea's downtown. There was also one strange one called Willie Rum's where the drinks were from Mason jars, water from Mason jars. So it was kind of, sort of, not so upscale as it is now. The College, for me, was wonderful. I was a very young man in a college that was all women. I had been to a college that was all men, and our dating college was at that time Chatham College, which was in Pittsburgh, 90 miles away. We used to drive back and forth on the weekends. It was kind of dangerous. So anyway, this was something that I had to ask Edwin about. And so I asked him, I said, "What's the policy on dating students?" And he said, "Don't make the front page of The Saratogian." Sue Bender: Page 3 of 15 �A different time. Murray Levith: A very different time. So I waited until she graduated, and then we started dating, and in December will have been married 53 years. Sue Bender: She being a Skidmore student? Murray Levith: She being a Skidmore student whose mother was a Skidmore graduate in the Class of 1940, and whose father was a Union College graduate. So there's a long tradition here. Sue Bender: And what was the physical campus like at that time? Murray Levith: There was one... I think the tower was up in the library. Sue Bender: On the North Broadway campus. Murray Levith: On North Broadway, but it was all downtown. Sue Bender: Okay. Murray Levith: I had an office at 43 Union Street, which for a 28-year-old assistant professor, or at that time I was an instructor, hadn't finished my PhD yet, was really amazing. And I could teach whatever I wanted to, and so I had done my dissertation in the 17th century and had studied English literature from what was called the Early Modern Period. And Shakespeare was a special interest of mine, and so I replaced, eventually in a year or two Alberta Feynman, who was the Shakespeare person. There was another woman, Deborah Kifer, whose husband was in the History Department, who was also a Early Modern specialist, and I don't know the background to this story, but somehow she either didn't get tenure or didn't get reappointed or something. So I was in that slot as a very young person, and I didn't finish my dissertation until 1970, January 1970, when I became an assistant professor. And then I got another contract and I got tenure and things went from there. In my first two years at Skidmore, I played the violin in the Albany Symphony, and Frank Carver, who was in the Music Department at that time, who was a flute player, we would go down to Albany for two rehearsals before the concert. But with a full Page 4 of 15 �load, and I should mention loads in a minute, but also these rehearsals in Albany, I played for two years and then I played in the Skidmore Orchestra for about 20 or 25 years. I also played in a trio with Dick Speers from the Math Department and Helga Doblin from the Language Department. And then, so everything was terrific for me, and then came Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Strike, Bobby Kennedy on campus, Bernadette Devlin, the troubles in Ireland, she came to campus, Kent State. A lot of big troubles in America as well as on campuses. Regis Brodie was a professor in the Theater Department, and he asked his studentsSue Bender: Wasn’t Regis in Art? Murray Levith: ... oh, I meant, no, Alan Brody, I'm sorry. Sue Bender: Alan Brody, okay. Murray Levith: Alan Brody, not Regis. Thank you. Regis was also from Pittsburgh. We had a contingent of Pittsburgh people at Skidmore, but Alan Brody asked his students to grade themselves. Michael London, who was in the English Department, gave everybody an A. This was during the strike. Sue Bender: And that was in support of the students? Murray Levith: Support of the students, yeah. Sue Bender: For striking? Murray Levith: For striking. They were in the Administration Building. There were all kinds of demonstrations on campus, and so on. It was a very volatile time, and the professors and instructors had to make decisions about how they were going to grade the students at the end, what the class policy was for coming to class, and so on. It was a very difficult time. Sue Bender: Who was the president then? Murray Levith: Page 5 of 15 �This was Joe Palamountain, and believe it or not, Joe Palamountain would come to me and ask me to write letters. Let me give you one example. There was an orchestra composed of people from the community, and Skidmore people from the Music Department and other departments. And a couple of these people from the community were kids who were serious musicians, and Frank Carver was the conductor. And he made some comment to one of the kids that, "You weren't playing on time," or, "You were out of tune," or something. And so this child's mother called Joe Palamountain and said, "You can't do this," and it really upset this little boy. Not so little, maybe 16 or 17. And so Joe came to me and said, "Write a letter to this lady and I'll sign it." And so I told the story of when I was in the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. Karl Kritz, who was the associate conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, was our conductor, and he had a cat. And he would bring the cat to rehearsals, and if we weren't playing just right, he would pick up the cat by the scruff of the neck and throw the cat against the wall. The cat loved it. And so I wrote the letter and never heard anything more, but that was just one letter. There were other letters that he asked me to write as well. Sue Bender: What kind of leadership did Edwin provide the faculty in those tumultuous times? Murray Levith: I was not... At that point, I was a very young professor, so I really didn't know. I wasn't on CAPT at that time or some of the major committees. And so I eventually was on CAPTS it was called. I was the chair of CAPTS, in fact, and I was on many committees. Sue Bender: Okay, and just for clarification, CAPT is the Committee on Appointment, PromotionsMurray Levith: Promotions and Tenure. Sue Bender: ... and Tenure and Sabbaticals. Murray Levith: ... and Sabbaticals, but it was CAPT first. No sabbaticals on the end of that, and I had... Well, I'm going off. I mean, bring me back, but I had wonderful sabbaticals. Sue Bender: We will talk about them. Murray Levith: Okay. So anyway, we're talking here about the difficult times, and also this was a time of coeducation at Skidmore, and that was difficult, too. We were on a 4-1-4 program with a winter term in the earliest days of co-education, and this was a way of bringing male students from Page 6 of 15 �Colgate and other places to intermix with the Skidmore students to do on-campus and offcampus things. Of course, I liked the winter term a lot because it gave me a chance, and this was in the very early days, to do foreign study courses. I was among the very first persons to take a group of students to England, and did that a number of times myself and also once with Mac Oswalt from the Psychology Department. We studied Freud in Vienna, and then applied Freud to the drama in London was that particular course. I also did a course in mysticism in literature for 4-1-4. That was an on-campus course. But what happened, and this often happens, I think, in newer programs, I think it happened also in the liberal studies program, is that people get tired of it, the new thing. And that happened with winter term, and my sense was that some professors and some students were taking advantage of winter terms that were not as academic as they might have been. Just as a little aside, when I went to college, the semesters were 16 weeks, and you could read a lot more books in 16 weeks than 13 weeks and get a lot more instruction. And I think that things have been, I don't know, shaved down too much. Tom Goethals turned the English Department into a more academic department, but Bud Foulke, who came in and stayed for a while, really shaped the English Department with its committee structure to be a happy place. I had I can't imagine a better career than at Skidmore College during those days. I think those days are over now, but the faculty really shaped things. They shaped the curriculum. They shaped the academic attitudes. All kinds of good things happened during the time that I was here. I was on the Presidential Search Committee, which found our first female president, Jamie Studley. People still come up to me and say, "What did you do? How did you do that and why did you do that?" And my answer to that, and it was a very good committee, I should say. Who was on that committee? Bill Dake. There were a whole bunch of people, including faculty people that were elected from the faculty. Tom Denny was the other faculty member. You can only hire what's in front of you, and what happened was she was the best, I thought, and the committee thought the best that was in front of us. She didn't turn out to be the best for Skidmore. However, to compensate, we got David Porter. I'll never forget going to Swarthmore College to look at Swarthmore College with my older son. And David had gone to Swarthmore, and following that I think he went to Princeton. So we're sitting there in the admissions office, and the person said, "Our college is often confused with a women's college in New York." I'll never forget that. Our son went to Haverford instead. But anyway, sabbaticals? Sue Bender: Sure. One thing before we leave sort of your early years here, if you could describe a little bit what it was like as the college moved and the faculty moved from the old campus downtown to the new campus, and also at the same time that the college was going co-ed, right? Murray Levith: Yes. Sue Bender: So two big changes happening at once. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how those things affected your work and the life of the students on campus? Page 7 of 15 �Murray Levith: Sure. We compared ourselves with Vassar, and we said that Vassar stooped to accept men that were not up to the women's standard. However, and I don't know where this claim came from, that we accepted men who were equal to the women. Now, I don't know if that's true, but that's what was said on campus. I found the men in my classes just as good as the women, some even better, and there were... The women in the early, well, in about 1970, '71, were terrific. In fact, the college's reputation was not as good as the students were. And I think that's happened all through Skidmore's history. You know, we're in a great town, we have a great, beautiful campus. We've had good leadership and we've had alums. We look at the Science Center, we look at the Wellness Center. We look at the buildings on campus, and there's no Porter building. There's a Porter Greek-style theater. Someone should do something about that. He was fabulous, and this is a nice segue into sabbaticals. Sue Bender: Okay. Murray Levith: My first sabbatical, I was newly married, and this was to Germany. The community at Skidmore was terrific. Helga Doblin and Rudy gave me their house in Germany rent-free, gave us their house rent-free in Grossweil, and their car, and their Fiat, which I immediately totaled in a special way by... They had a slope into the driveway and they had a metal garage door, and I managed to slide into the garage door, smashing the front of the car. But they forgave me, apparently, but other people have benefited from their house in Grossweil. For example, Paul Hockenos, who was just on campus, Warren and Ann and their family stayed in the same house. Dick Speers stayed in the same house. It was very interesting for me to be there, especially as a Jew in a place where Helga pointed out all the Nazis in the town. And I went to the Gartenschule and learned some German, enough German to converse, as did Tina. In fact, the teacher always said, "Frau, immer besser," always better. She passed back the exams. But anyway, it was a wonderful experience for us, a great experience. That was the first sabbatical. I produced a book, Shakespeare's Names. It's what's in Shakespeare's names, and the book was published both in England and America, and then 2021, it was republished and is currently available. Second sabbatical was to the People's Republic of China, and I think that my foreign study courses at Skidmore and the Germany experience allowed me to apply for positions to teach in India and China. India eventually came through, but they came through after China. And we were so fortunate. We had a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old, and I was a foreign expert and Tina was a foreign teacher. She had been a high school teacher. And we spent sabbatical there with our kids, and this was when China was opening up, Deng Xiaoping, and this was just before Tiananmen in 1989. Sue Bender: You were at Qufu University? Page 8 of 15 �Murray Levith: Qufu Normal University. Qufu, the city, was Confucius' hometown, so there was the Confucian Mansion, the Confucian Graveyard, and in the graveyard, we discovered that my 10-year-old was fluent in Mandarin because we went on a picnic to the graveyard. And there was this old guy in a kind of military kind of coat, and all of a sudden, they were having a conversation in Mandarin. We put both of our kids in the Chinese school, but we also took the textbooks from Lake Avenue, which was the elementary school then, and we sort of homeschooled them during the two-hour break during that period. And they had... They say... We thought our younger son had a terrible experience because he was shy and he was eight and they were fighting in school in between the classes. But he says now that it was a wonderful experience, and we knew that our older son, who now is in the government, in the Foreign Service, his... had a great experience, too. And we did, and I published my second book. I did the galley proof. This was Shakespeare's Italian settings and names, so it was published by Macmillan in England and St. Martin's in the U.S. And so I not only taught the students, who were wonderful students, some of them spoke English so well, never having been out of China. And so that was the second sabbatical. Sue Bender: One, before we talk about your other sabbatical, could we follow up on the Qufu University connectionMurray Levith: Sure. Sue Bender: ... [inaudible 00:37:39]? You were the first of the Skidmore professors to teach at Qufu, but didn't other folks follow you? Murray Levith: Yes, actually, Tina and I organized the programSue Bender: Right. Murray Levith: ... and it went on for 20 years. In the last few years, Sandy Welter took over. She had been there as a teacher, and so it was a program that was... I guess it was sort of official and nonofficial. It didn't seem to become an official program in the sense that other foreign programs were. But I thought that it really.... Well, I can give you a few examples of people who've gone on. Claude Brodesser became a journalist afterwards. He's married to Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the novelist, who writes for The New York Times. So students had an experience there that they otherwise wouldn't have had after graduating from Skidmore. And it was a good time in China. There were two universities we were affiliated with. One was Qufu Normal University, and the other was the University of Petroleum, which was a Page 9 of 15 �scientific university. But Dave Marcell, David Porter, and I went over to China, and the president of Qufu University came over here in a delegation both ways. David Porter was wonderful. I found out all kinds of things about David Porter on this trip. For example, he was an authority on Oriental rugs. Did you know that? Sue Bender: No. Murray Levith: In Hong Kong, we went from one rug place to another. But the thing that I remember there is I don't like heights very much. Is it acrophobia? Is that? Sue Bender: Mm-hmm. Murray Levith: Yeah, and one of the sacred mountains in China is Mount Tai, and you're supposed to go up to Mount Tai. And there's this big rock that leans over a gorge, and you're supposed to go over when the sun is coming up. And so we hiked up, we went to this big rock, and I was panicked. David Porter held my hand up there. And it was a good time to also be personal with Dave Marcell, who I had known, who I think was at Skidmore maybe in '66 or '65. I'm not exactly sure, but I think he was just before me. Bill Brynteson was another History Department person. But anyway, I got to know there was a real community, and I thought every place was like that, and soon found out no place was like that. But anyway, and along the way, and ISue Bender: Could I just have aMurray Levith: Sure. Sue Bender: ... quick follow-upMurray Levith: Sure. Sue Bender: ... question? And on the Qufu programMurray Levith: Okay. Page 10 of 15 �Sue Bender: ... now, faculty went to teach there, but you mentioned students. I didn't realize that students were... that that program created opportunities for the students. Murray Levith: For students. Yes. Sue Bender: How did that work? Did students go over to teach? Murray Levith: Yes. Sue Bender: Aah. Murray Levith: China was very interested in getting Native American speakersSue Bender: Okay. Murray Levith: ... and what they would teach, it was called Speaking and Listening. And we oriented them. Tina and I basically talked to them about what they were supposed to be doing, and they were getting teaching, actually, teaching experience when they were doing that. And faculty also went over, business faculty. I'm trying to think of... Oh yeah, education faculty, art faculty, and there were exchanges that were done because faculty from Qufu came to our place. And we also tried to get students from China to come, and at that time we couldn't do that. It wasn't allowed. And we had minders, people who were watching us to make sure we weren't doing the wrong thing. And I remember teaching Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and there was a knock at the door. And a student monitor, they had monitors there, they're sort of the head student, usually a Communist Party person, said, "We were upset when you mentioned something that was not quite polite." And it had something to do with Tess, if you know the novel. But anyway, and it was great fun. I mean, we played basketball, we had all kinds of interactions with students, and even interactions with students who eventually came to the U.S. to study. Sue Bender: Wonderful. Terrific experience sounds like. Murray Levith: It was. Page 11 of 15 �Sue Bender: Yeah. Did you have other sabbatical experiences that you wanted to share? Murray Levith: Well, I also went to Cape Cod for a year, and I was working on a book then as well that I could have done anywhere, but my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are in Cape Cod, and so we rented a house and... Sue Bender: So is that sort of all part of your sense of the way in which Skidmore was supporting faculty scholarship? Is thatMurray Levith: I would say this. My scholarly production would not have happened without my colleagues, my English Department, the happiness that was here at that time. You know Creative Thought Matters, that slogan, I was a provincial kid from Pittsburgh, and the world opened. It was, I couldn't have had a better... This is what I wanted to do. I mean, how many people get to do what they want to do? Sue Bender: That's wonderful. Well, those are all wonderful stories, and it sounds like a really productive, happy career here at Skidmore, but as we all know, life of a faculty member is never unidimensional. Murray Levith: That's right. Sue Bender: So are there any significant challenges that you experienced for the college, for teaching, sort of governance here at the college? What were some of the major challenges that you recall along the way? Murray Levith: Well, I mentioned one already, the presidential search. Also, the English Department had some flare-ups. We had times when there were a bunch of people up for tenure, and there was even someone who sued the English Department. Is that me? Sue Bender: Mm-mm. Murray Levith: But anyway, and I know that Ralph [Ciancio] and Bud Foulke were involved in things that were done outside of the college that they had to do and answer for. But I thought during... As much Page 12 of 15 �as I knew, I thought things were very fairly done, and I think that Bud Foulke deserves a lot of credit for this because of the Curriculum Committee, but especially the Personnel CommitteeSue Bender: Is that Departmental Curriculum [inaudible 00:48:28]? Murray Levith: ... Departmental, Curriculum, and Personnel Committee. But the thing, too, is we got to teach what we wanted to teach. I don't think people were forced into situations, except in one instance. We divided Composition into three parts, 103, 105, and 107. We gave a test right at the beginning, an essay test, and put some of the more giftedSue Bender: A test for the first-year students. Murray Levith: ... first... Yeah, first-year students to see the skills, the writing skills of the first-year incoming freshmen. And so we separated some out who were already good writers into one 107, and then people that needed extra help were in 103. Now, Bud's idea was that everyone in the department would teach 103. So this was an important kind of thing to do. So Mimi Ciancio and I were there in line, and we were teaching 103, and we looked behind us and there was no one in back of us. We were it for the first couple of years. No one wanted to teach the students that needed extra help, and most of the students in Composition were in 105. But we had some just excellent students, students that went to grad school, that became professors and so on. Yeah, so that was one of the downers, but I never was asked to teach anything that I didn't want to. Sue Bender: That's an important plus for a faculty member inMurray Levith: EspeciallySue Bender: ... [inaudible 00:50:48]. Murray Levith: ... in English. Yeah, I know that Ralph Ciancio taught at Carnegie Tech, which is now Carnegie Mellon, and it was the Service Department. There were no English majors there. Sue Bender: And English, how would you assess English's position among the departments at Skidmore? Page 13 of 15 �Murray Levith: Well, Edwin was hired as the chair of the English Department and quickly... I think it was Josephine Case decided that he should be Provost or a Dean of... No, Dean of the Faculty, and then he got to be Provost. And there was a dustup with Edwin because Joe Palamountain gave him tenure without going through the faculty. And it was a big, big, big to-do because at that time, the faculty, there weren't as many administrators, and the faculty were running things, you know? Sue Bender: Wouldn't happen today. Murray Levith: No. Sue Bender: So are there any other memories that you would like to share with us of your time at Skidmore? Have we covered all the topics you wanted to? Murray Levith: Right. Let's see. Yeah, the opportunities to teach in England, Richmond College, at ASE, where in addition to the two summers, I taught for a semester forSue Bender: And ASE is? Murray Levith: ... is Advanced Studies in England, the Bath program. Sue Bender: Mm-hmm. Murray Levith: And let's see, what else? That's about it. Sue Bender: It sounds like a very rich and rewarding career, Murray. Murray Levith: It was, and it goes on. I'm working on aSue Bender: That's what I wanted to ask you. Page 14 of 15 �Murray Levith: ... I'mSue Bender: Since retirement, what haveMurray Levith: ... right. Sue Bender: ... we been doing? Murray Levith: A long time ago, I started a book about two of my professors, one from Nebraska and one from Syracuse. Two poets, mid-Century American Jewish poets, Karl Shapiro and Delmore Schwartz. I started this book 35 years ago. I was in classes with both of them, and I'm now on the last draft chapter of the book, and I've also taught probably a dozen courses for ALL, which isSue Bender: Academy for Lifelong Learning. Murray Levith: ... and for lifelong learning. And I'll be teaching one this winter on John Steinbeck. Sue Bender: Lovely. So it sounds like your literary studies did not retire when you did. Murray Levith: Well, I really loved what I was doing. I loved the scholarship and I especially loved the teaching, and it's nice to teach senior students who read the material very carefully. Sue Bender: Absolutely. Well, this has been lovely. I really have enjoyed hearing your reminiscences and learning things that I didn't know about. We really appreciate your time with us. Thank you, Murray. Murray Levith: Oh, thank you. I enjoyed it, too. Page 15 of 15 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Susan Bender & Leslie Mechem Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Murray Levith Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview 54:49 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 20/04/2026 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Murray Levith Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 26, 2026 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Murray Levith joined Skidmore’s English Faculty in 1967, directly from his graduate studies at Syracuse University where he earned his Ph.D. In this interview, Levith describes the impact that Edwin Moseley had on his career, shaping his path to Skidmore, along with his scholarship and teaching. Levith’s experiences at Skidmore spanned the institution’s move to its “new” (North Broadway) campus as well as its transition to coeducation. He reflects here on the many opportunities that Skidmore afforded him throughout his career to conduct scholarship and teach in international settings. Chief among these was his was his pivotal role in nurturing and maintaining Skidmore’s affiliation with Qufu Normal University in China. Levith’s reflections provide perspective on the many changes that the College has undergone in the last 60 years. Since his retirement in 2008, Levith has continued teaching with the Academy for Lifelong Learning and maintained an active research agenda. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History 4-1-4 curriculum Advanced Studies in England (ASE) Bud Foulke coeducation David Porter Edwin Moseley Jamie Studley Joseph Palamountain Presidential Search Committee Qufu Normal University Richmond College https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c6481aebab3bbdc6cdbad093c22926a6.jpg bb7c69495b78e7c9cbbdb43d24aeaa76 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9ec4b56d077e8ef019909c791be626b5.jpg 551752e368bc362b59aa66d684de7483 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/63b1b175ea6ec3572af21106863e7175.jpg d5290fad13edf33d7cdb14d8e40616b7 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/aff588986571b8cf3fd63f49cf552578.jpg a170f2d0f66d855e09fdd4906f3a0794 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/636baa66050fc1545e0753213de551d4.jpg 8afb4f280088fe1fef76fed2ab26280c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bb3d220e304fdeec906fd726bc3d0c6a.jpg a84d80ab316606774a4a6d235feb0864 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/84be871ab13200162ef9a2be275c3b21.jpg 7e04c65621b59caef4ec82b081f6839a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7b3f51110f6a621f1b095fcd7dead90b.jpg 509b1d0a719160bf9a084a06b413247e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2bc9e9f5fde3aee897a558acb3ca758f.jpg d6633fb8e9cc7f44b6de7317637eda71 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Historical Photographs of Skidmore College https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c219154feb5ef622bc50ab096650be78.jpg 9c7cdd19a9f42ed5c860f6a7f44ce02d https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/038c4d722f3bf0fc54912435826f9ca6.pdf e65e2c91b406dd1f90c479a2077da2a7 PDF Text Text Interview with Roy Rotheim by Lynne Gelber & Susan Bender (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, February 26, 2026 Lynne Gelber: This is Lynne Gelber. I'm here with Susan Bender to interview Roy Rotheim. It is the 26th of February 2026. Lynne Gelber: And I'd like to begin, Roy, by asking you where you were born, where you grew up, what brought you to Skidmore. Roy Rotheim: Well, okay, like everyone else I thought, I was born in Brooklyn. Lived there for three years. My father was a dentist. He came back from the war, had no patients, so he went to the baseball game and got tired of that. So took advantage of the GI bill and bought a house in Levittown, Long Island. Hicksville, actually, and opened up shop. So, at the age of three, I grew up in Hicksville, Long Island. Lived there until I was 17 when I went off to college. Told my parents to change the locks, I wasn't coming back. Went off to college, went to graduate school. Lynne Gelber: What did you major in in college? Roy Rotheim: Well, I was a zoology major. And I had to take a social science, none of which sounded interesting to me. One sounded worse than the next. It's a true story. I was in the library the day before registration and there was this really cute girl sitting across from me and she was filling out here registration form and she wrote down, "Economics. Tuesday, Thursday, 3:00." So, I wrote down, "Economics. Tuesday, Thursday, 3:00." Never saw her again. She probably saw me do it. But I walked in and it was like ... remember that movie, what was it? Jerry Maguire? You know, “You had me at hello”. I walked in there and I said, "Oh my God." And I switched from zoology to economics and been doing it ever since. Went right on to graduate school. Lynne Gelber: Where? Roy Rotheim: Rutgers. Got my doctorate. At 25 I was professor at Bowling Green State University for two years. That was loathsome. You could still sell autographed copies of the Bible, so you knew it wasn't a good place to live. Page 1 of 18 �I get a phone call from one of my professors saying, "Hey, I just got a call from a friend at Harvard and they're looking for somebody to teach radical economics at Franklin and Marshall and so I gave them your name." So, I get a call from Franklin and Marshall, and they hired me and I taught there for four years. I wasn't very happy with it so I got out of academia and I became a magazine editor. Challenge Magazine ... It is to economics what Psychology Today is to psychology. I lived in White Plains, did that for a year. Hated that even worse than academia, and so I said, "I better go back to academia." I applied for a number of jobs and got offers at Khan College, this place, and University of Maine. We just fell in love with Saratoga. Never looked back. I've been here since 1980. Lynne Gelber: So, since 1980, what have you been teaching? What were you teaching, and ... Roy Rotheim: My primary fields are Monetary Economics and the History of Economic Thought. That's basically what I've been teaching. I got in early. I was on a lot of committees within my first two years. I don't know how I kept getting elected to committees. I was on a Curriculum Committee, I was on CEPP, I was on CAFR, all within three years. I was heavily involved with the liberal studies program at the onset. Lynne Gelber: I want to back up. You got called by Skidmore and then were you interviewed? Roy Rotheim: I came up here, had an interview and then got an offer. Lynne Gelber: With? Roy Rotheim: A guy named Ted Reagan. Lynne Gelber: Ah, yeah. Roy Rotheim: I don't know, you may have known Ted. Just the most… Matter of fact, he was one of the reasons I came here. He was just such a mensch and I really, really liked him. So, I got a job offer and came in September. He resigned and Eric Weller called me into his office and he says, "Okay. Make me an Economics Department." I said, "What do you mean?" Page 2 of 18 �He said, "I want you to be the chair." I said, "Well, uh, I'm the youngest person in the department, I'm not even in the Economics Department building because I'm over in a music studio in Filene. I don't know anybody in the department." Go over there and ... that's how it all began. I was chair of economics on and off for 25 years. Except for about five when I chaired the Business Department. So, I was in administration a lot. Lynne Gelber: Was that an attempt to do something to the Business Department? To upgrade it or ... Roy Rotheim: Oh, the Business Department? Yeah, yes. [Where are your words, Roy?] When I got there, it still was the “department of secretarial studies and counter dusting”. In fact, one of the Economics Department's alums is Arturo Peralta Ramos III. Arturo was an econ major, and he and I became very close. The reason why he became an economics major, he wanted to be a business major, but they would not waive the typing requirement. That's where the business department was. Then they brought on someone named Jim Biteman and Colleen Burke, and they introduced what is now Wmby 107 and also strategy. But still, most of the department were a lot of MBAs who were mostly practitioners, and were not academics. I think the department ... As Skidmore got better and better and better even, business did not. Lynne Gelber: So, what did Eric want you to do when you took over? Roy Rotheim: Well, no. Oh, no, no. Eric wanted me to ... Well, the Economics Department only had like three or four people and he wanted me to turn it into a real department. So, that was my job there. For better or for worse. The Business Department was different. I really had to be, Tim Harper calls it, a "Change agent," which means you come in, you completely turn it upside down and you run as quickly as possible before they can catch you. Lynne Gelber: And were there people who really helped in the administration? Roy Rotheim: Phyllis. Phyllis was incredible. Susan Bender: Phyllis? Roy Rotheim: Page 3 of 18 �Phyllis Roth. She was the one ... see I lived next door to Phyllis. Phyllis said, "Come on over, let's have coffee." I didn't know what she wanted. She starts bitching and moaning ... can I say, "bitching?" Bitching and moaning about the Business Department, "My God, it's terrible! And it's an embarrassment. What are we going to do?" I don't know where she was going with that. I thought maybe she was going to actually ask me if she could appoint Sandy Baum to be chair and what was my opinion. After about 45 minutes of a lot of talking on her part she said, "So, will you go chair it?" I said, "I never took a business course. I never owned a business. I didn't have a lemonade stand, or a paper route." She said, "No. We need an administrator." It wasn't an easy job because I had a ... I walked into the office and had to start letting people go. We euphonimize, we don't let them go. I had to hire real academics, which is what Phyllis wanted. Problem is, that's going to be the highest paying job on campus and they weren't used to that. She wouldn't pay it. I said, "Well, look. Think about this, someone has her daughter walking through the English department and the tour guide says, 'This is our English department. It's one of the preeminent English departments of small colleges in the country. Okay, now let's keep walking. Oh, here's the Business Department. Oh, this is a real embarrassment, I'm sorry.'. I said, "Phyllis, if you want the Business Department to be at the same level as the English Department, you're going to have to pay for it." It was really funny because I walked out my back door, and her back screen door used to creak, and I heard the creak. All I saw was the head go out and she said, "Okay!" Then I went on a buying spree. I mean, I hired Mark Youndt, Ela Lepkowska-White, Pushi Prasad, Tim Harper. It was fantastic. Then I ran, I just ran away as quickly as possible to get back to the Econ Department. Lynne Gelber: So how long were you doing that? Roy Rotheim: Five years. I was at ... you were Associate Dean when I was there. Susan Bender: I was, yes. Roy Rotheim: Yeah. Lynne Gelber: So, you keep pointing to Susan. Roy Rotheim: Page 4 of 18 �That one. Yeah. It was interesting because to this day I don't understand what that means to be a business department. Lynne Gelber: So, when you went back to the Economics Department, what was your role and ... Roy Rotheim: I went back to be chair again. Yeah. Lynne Gelber: And were you also teaching? Roy Rotheim: Oh, yeah. Well, yes, although by that time I was teaching, was it still LS1 or maybe it was Human Dilemmas by then? Susan Bender: Liberal studies. Roy Rotheim: I was still teaching that andLynne Gelber: So that was Liberal Studies 1? Roy Rotheim: That's right. Then, talk about chutzpah, I actually taught a course in the Business Department, knowing nothing about business, where I helped students learn how to be small business consultants. So, because I was chair of the Econ Department, I had a two-course reduction, and because I was teaching LS1 and the course in the business department, I only taught one econ course. Lynne Gelber: Which was? Roy Rotheim: Oh, God knows. Whatever I taught, History of Economic Thought, Monetary Economics, Intro to Economics. Lynne Gelber: Okay. Page 5 of 18 �Roy Rotheim: Yeah. Pretty much. By that time the department was up to 10. We really expanded. Lynne Gelber: And what year was that? Roy Rotheim: '93. That's when I came back to the department. I was there from '88-'89 to '93. Susan Bender: Roy, can you talk a little bit about your engagement in Liberal Studies curriculum? Roy Rotheim: Yeah. We got this big ... Was it a Mellon grant? I forget, it was in the early '80s. I was on CEPP and Eric WellerSusan Bender: CEPP being? Roy Rotheim: The Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, which I chaired and got rid of the Liberal Studies program. We had to come up with something. We really didn't know what to do. I remember Eric was on the committee, Tom Lewis was on the committee, Mott Green. I don't know if that name rings a bell. He got a MacArthur scholarship. Okay? I remember Tom Lewis made a big presentation he wanted the entire LS1 course to just be Homer's Odyssey. He made a great presentation, but he wasn't persuasive. They didn't know what to do, so Eric came up with a committee of maybe 15 people. I can remember meeting over in Palamountain and we couldn't agree on anything. That was broken down into three groups of five and each of us had to bang heads and they couldn't come up with anything. That eventually whittled down to a group of three. A guy named Evan Rivers who wasn't around very long in the English department, Ron Fiskus, and me. I spent the entire economics’ entertainment budget at Gaffney's. We drank beer and wrote the LS1 curriculum. Then we came back and had to present it. It was Jeff Seagrave, Sheldon (Solomon), Phil Boschoff, old names that ... Kate Berheide. It was a great group. It was really fun. So, we came up with that, and then, of course, we had LS2, LS3, LS4. Lynne Gelber: Could you talk a little bit about the concept behind the Liberal Studies 1 curriculum? What the overview for the course was? What you were trying to accomplish with it? Roy Rotheim: Page 6 of 18 �Yes. It was an idea that there needed to be a foundational course that every first-term student took that would then infuse the entire curriculum over the full length of the curriculum. No matter how disciplinary any course was, they always had to have in the back of their minds that there was this interdisciplinary component that they should bring in as often as possible. That was quintessentially a liberal arts. Lynne Gelber: So, was this organized around a presentation by some professor to the whole group and then broken down into individual discussion groups? Roy Rotheim: The way it worked ... First of all, we had a text that was this big. You can't see this on tape, it was about eight inches. It was a loose-leaf. Every student had to buy it, I guess. Then we would meet twice a week in Gannett for lectures and then twice a week in our small groups of about 20 students. It was a dog and pony show. You gaveLynne Gelber: Which involved a lot of the faculty. Roy Rotheim: I'm sorry. It may have been three times a week, I think, we met in big groups. Lynne Gelber: I think it wasRoy Rotheim: Was it two? Lynne Gelber: Yes. I was involved in it Roy Rotheim: It was a four-credit course. It was great. Well, for me, it was great because I got to hang out with people I normally wouldn't get to hang out with. At the same time, the level of embarrassment that all of us had when none of us could understand anything that anybody else asked us to read. I can remember we had to read something by Aristotle, and Darnell Rucker in the Philosophy Department suggested it, and it was like reading Greek to me. I read it and read it. I knew every word, but no two consecutively made any sense to me. I struggled and struggled and struggled and finally came in and said, "Darnell, I got it," and I told him what I thought it was, and he said, "No, that's not it." So, that's the way it went. Sheldon would always give the first lecture. Susan Bender: Page 7 of 18 �Sheldon Solomon. Roy Rotheim: Sheldon Solomon would give the first lecture and I loved it. Not for the reason you might think. Lynne Gelber: As did the students. Roy Rotheim: Well, that was the issue. It’s that he would come in and, of course, say, "Fuck" a lot and they would all love that and say, "Lower than whale shit." He had a whole ... What they didn't know was he had a script because I heard him give it over the years and I could take notes and they were exactly the same. They would come in after that lecture and they'd go, "Wow! That was the best thing we ever heard. I can't believe it!" And I would say, "What did he say?" And they had no idea. I said, "Okay, welcome to college." I said, "This is not Entertainment 101. You don't sit back and put your arms up and get entertained. Did you take any notes?" "No." I said, "Well, all that's going to change." I said, "From now on, you come to work and you sit there and you get ..." I made every one of them buy a sketchbook. A hard-bound sketchbook, unlined, where they would take notes. We would come into class, and it was all because of Sheldon. Because he entertained them so much. The biggest problem with it was, is that, particularly younger faculty, were intimidated by it. They said, "We're out of our league. We can't do this. We know what we know. We've just come out of graduate school, but we can't do all this other stuff." So, it became a problem. Lynne Gelber: Were there other significant curricular or other initiatives that you had experienced while you were still teaching? Roy Rotheim: Well, significant curricular experiences? Lynne Gelber: Yes. Roy Rotheim: Well, we had LS2, 3, and 4, when I chaired CEPP and which, I'm afraid, we got rid of. Just because we couldn't afford it. We couldn't staff it. We couldn't afford it. It was really a matter of affordability. Page 8 of 18 �Lynne Gelber: Are there changes at Skidmore that you experienced in the course of your career? Roy Rotheim: What? Curricularly? Lynne Gelber: Not necessarily curricular, but changes in the campus or anything thatRoy Rotheim: Sure, of course. Physical structure? Lynne Gelber: Could be. Roy Rotheim: I was on some committee. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! They were going to get a grant from, I forget which major foundation, to build two buildings. One behind the other. They were going to be academic buildings. It was going to be between Palamountain and Howe-Rounds. So, they got together a committee of all the departments whom they were going to move into that building. Psychology, History, it used to be, Chuck used to call it the Department of so-and-so Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology. What'd I leave out? History, American studies? Susan Bender: Right. Roy Rotheim: Okay. And Economics for some reason. So, we met. We never got the grant. There was one building that we were going to design. That was amazing because we had a deal with an unnamed business manager who came in and announced that, "Well, we're going to have to violate some fire rules." And you should have seen Dave Burrow's face. We walked out, I mean, we walked out, you know. So, they had to renege on that. They said, "Okay. To save on money we're going to have to build offices that are 125 square feet." I said, "You can't have an office that's 125 square feet. You won't fit in a desk and a file cabinet and chairs." So, what we did was, is that we found a space that was 125 square feet and sure enough, we couldn't fit in anything, so they increased it to 144. I remember they spent a lot of time talking about the HVAC system. I remember going back to the Econ Department and they said, "Well, can we open the windows?" I said, "No, you can just close them." Page 9 of 18 �But here was the best part ... Oh! Then the architects wanted the building to go right up to the walkway to made a quad. And we said, "What's going to happen to those trees?" You know the trees. They said, "Oh, we'll tear them down." We said, "Over our dead bodies." And, so we made them recede the building. It was like taking away their first-born child. Then we said, "Okay, and the building's going to have a pitched roof." They said, "None of the other buildings have pitched roofs." I said, "Well, that's why you spend so much money on snow removal." So, we did that. But this was the best part, it’s that we spent all of our time designing this building and talking about the details, but then it came time for the final meeting with the architects. Who showed up but Joe Palamountain. He looked at us and he said, "Shut up." And he sat down and he rolled up his sleeves and he negotiated with those architects. We just sat and watched and that's how he got the building. Susan Bender: This was Tisch, right? Roy Rotheim: This is now Tisch, yes. Oh, oh and then there was another building, which Tom Lewis and I designed on the other side of Bolton. Which they didn't know what to call it so they called it convertible classroom building, CCB. What they were going to do is that they were going to have offices on the second floor, mathematics and eventually economics. Eric allowed us to move in there. On the first floor there were going to be freshman. The freshman trashed that building. Thousands and thousands of dollars, do you remember that, of damages? Lynne Gelber: Yeah, it was dormitory space, in other words. Roy Rotheim: Yeah, of damages. So eventually they put the computer center down there. Then, I guess, Bill Harder came up with money, somebody got money from him, so it became Harder Hall. Now, it was only supposed to be there for a couple of years, which was what, '25? Susan Bender: [inaudible 00:24:04]. Roy Rotheim: So, they just tore it down. That's physical. Academically? It's hard to say. The quality of the education has changed significantly. Page 10 of 18 �Lynne Gelber: And the composition of the undergraduate population. Roy Rotheim: People ask me that. They must ask you that so often. I say, "I don't know, they're the same." I had Matt, her son. Lynne Gelber: Who was an economics major. Roy Rotheim: And Rich Harwood. I had really good students then, and I have really good students now. So, in terms of that, no. The only difference, and I think it made such an important difference, is that we got more and more of an international student base. I can remember when I was doing, I guess by that time it was Human Dilemmas, I had a number of African students in the class. I can remember one of them, but there was more than one, just letting some of the traditional students have it about what's going on in the world. One student I remember from Mozambique stood up and gave this lecture to these students on what happened in Rwanda. So, they opened up the world to our students. If I had to say what was the most important change, I would say it was that one. Just the internationalization, is that a word? Lynne Gelber: We had a significant number of students from China. Roy Rotheim: Students from China, when I had to go explain you don't eat pizza with chopsticks, I had wonderful students from China. I had wonderful students from China. Yeah. Because I would have them when they were freshman mostly in Intro to Economics and they were not used to the American system. Particularly, a Skidmore liberal arts [inaudible 00:26:33]. Yeah. They were fantastic. All of the international students, they just changed the ... I don't know whether you experienced that also, but I did to a tremendous extent. A lot of them wanted to major in economics. Lynne Gelber: Give the time frame for that influx. Do you have a sense of when that is? Of international students. Roy Rotheim: '90s? I would say in the '90s, yeah. '90s, late '90s. Lynne Gelber: Yeah, late '90s. Page 11 of 18 �Roy Rotheim: Late '90s, yeah, I don't remember exactly. That was the most significant change, and for the better. Lynne Gelber: Roy, tell me what year you retired and what you've been doing since you retired. Roy Rotheim: Well, I retired in June of '22, but something I didn't tell you, I taught in the Honors Forum for a very long time. There was this program here called College Upside Down. Did you know about that? No? Okay. I had nothing to do with it. Where it was student influenced to a great extent. It was a whole curriculum. Lynne Gelber: What faculty. Excuse me. Roy Rotheim: I have no idea. Lynne Gelber: Oh. Roy Rotheim: It was before me. I have no idea. But it was a '70s thing. '60s, '70s thing. I have no idea. But one of the courses, which was called Citizen Studentship HF203, Honors Forum 203, that was on the books. It was taught by somebody, who I think was in the English department, but he didn't get tenure. Then it was taken over by somebody in the government ... The purpose of the course was really interesting. It was Aristotelian in the sense that the community is prior to the individual and the individual means nothing independent of the community. Basically, the students had to learn how to educate each other. They therefore felt citizenship in the educational process. It was passed onto somebody in the government department who was a bit of an autocrat and so didn't understand the concept of participatory democracy. I used to do a course like that back in the '70s in one of my first jobs. I was actually mentoring this autocratic professor. He said, "I can't do it anymore," he said, "would you do it?" I said, "Sure." So, I did that for 25 years or something. Lynne Gelber: And again, the name of this program was? Roy Rotheim: Well, the Honors Forum, but it was Citizen Studentship, which even the directors called "Student Citizenship." Page 12 of 18 �I said, "No, that's Knitting for the Needy. It's Citizen Studentship, you're a citizen first." Even though I retired in June of '22, I continued to teach it every fall. That one course. I did that for a couple of years and I think this is the first year I didn't do it. So, what have I been doing? I still do my research. Still do my writing. Lynne Gelber: You research in what field? Roy Rotheim: Actually, in two fields. In monetary economics but also in economic philosophy. I'm part of a group at Cambridge University called the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. They actually meet at 10:00 AM on Tuesday mornings. 10:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time. Lynne Gelber: Greenwich Mean Time. Roy Rotheim: Which means I'm there at 5:00 on Tuesday mornings. I go to the gym and I have six grandchildren who all live in Saratoga. I have been a part of raising them. And traveling, the usual. So, I've had very little to do with Skidmore. Lynne Gelber: Anything else that we missed that we should include? Roy Rotheim: God, I don't know. See, I taught at Franklin and Marshall before I came to Skidmore. I took a year off because, I just, academia ... I said, "This is not for me." It was uptight, it was pretentious. I said, "This is not me. I'm from Levittown." But I came here and the atmosphere, the culture, the environment was just so comfortable. I felt like one could learn comfortably here without all of the pretense and without all of the pressure. That's why I stayed. Lynne Gelber: And yet, you have experienced a lot of challenges along the way. Roy Rotheim: Most of which I can't share with you, yes. Lynne Gelber: Okay. Anything else we should add? Page 13 of 18 �Roy Rotheim: You know, I can't think of anything. I've worked with some fascinating people. Oh! I was involved in ... there used to be, do they still have it? Writing Across the Curriculum? English department invited me, because I was a magazine editor, invited me to be a part of that, which I enjoyed. Lynne Gelber: Do you know who started that? Susan Bender: Phil Boschoff. Roy Rotheim: Yeah, prob- no. I think it was Ralph Ciancio. Pretty sure it was Ralph. Yeah, Phil had something to do with that. Susan Bender: Phil Boschoff? Roy Rotheim: Yeah, but I think it was Ralph who spearheaded that. I'm pretty sure it was Ralph. I chaired all the major committees exceptLynne Gelber: Major committee like CEPP? Roy Rotheim: Oh, CEPP. Susan Bender: CAFR? Roy Rotheim: CAFR. Lynne Gelber: That's the Committee on Academic Freedom and Rights? Roy Rotheim: Yeah. I did that one. We met one year 72 times. Oh, God! I felt like I wanted to go back to law school after that. Page 14 of 18 �I was on CEPP a couple of times and I was elected and before I got onto the committee, they made me chair for the following year because they knew they were going to have to revise the curriculum. John Ramsey said, "You're the biggest wise-ass we know and therefore you'll be able to stand in front of the faculty and push this thing through." So, we actually changed significantly the liberal studies program. We changed it significantly. Really cut it down. Lynne Gelber: And CAPT? Roy Rotheim: No. Gail said she'd divorce me if I ever was on CAPT. Susan Bender: That's the ... Lynne Gelber: Committee on Academic, Promotions & Tenure. Roy Rotheim: Academic whatever they call themselves. Lynne Gelber: Promotions and Tenure. CAPT. Susan Bender: Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure. Roy Rotheim: But yeah, I was on CAPT with you two times, but we never met. So, I always told people, "If I'm on CAPT review, you'll be fine because we'll never meet." I chaired the ... I remember. There used to be something on business, the budget ... I forget the name of it, but we met with David Porter and Carl Broekhuizen. Lynne Gelber: Oh, was it Budget Committee? Roy Rotheim: Something like that because I remember they were dealing with revenue issues. What was the guy's name who was the director of admissions? Kent something? Lynne Gelber: Page 15 of 18 �I can almost picture him. Roy Rotheim: Yes, very thin, or thin. Anyway, I said to David Porter, "Just raise tuition." Lynne Gelber: Kent Jones? Roy Rotheim: Kent Jones. And I said to David Porter, "Raise tuition." He said, "We can't do that! We'll lose students!" I said, "No, you don't understand. Yes, you will. But you don't understand. Skidmore is probably one of the top second-choice schools in the North East. And if you ask students, 'Where'd you apply?'. 'Well, I applied to Colgate.' 'Did you get in?'. 'No, so I came to Skidmore.'" I said, "So, what that means is that you have a corner on the market, which means if you raise your tuition, yeah you're going to lose some students, but not by as great an amount as you'd be able to raise tuition." I said, "It's called elasticity of demand." And Kent, I had to do it with a rubber band to explain to him how to do it, and I think they did raise tuition. Oh, and then I said, "Then take the money, the extra money you get, and subsidize low-income students. So, you'll actually change the composition of the student body." They did, they got the extra money and then they bought a bunch of computers! Working with the different presidents was ... Lynne Gelber: So which presidents did you work with? Roy Rotheim: PorterLynne Gelber: When you started with Palamountain. Roy Rotheim: I'm sorry, Palamountain. Then David Porter, I still remember when he first came. We had an academic staff meeting at a place called, was it Dippikill? Somewhere up, not too far. His first Page 16 of 18 �wife, who was also named Helen, had just died. I remember taking a walk in the woods with him. An amazing person. You know. He was amazing person. A polymath, a mensch. Then I remember Jaime Studley. It's funny because I remember making an appointment with her and I brought a pot of tea and a couple of cups and I sat down and I said, "Jaime, stop fighting the faculty. That's what you're doing!" I said, "They love to talk," I said, "Just rope-a-dope them. Let them talk themselves out. Don't fight back." I can remember Phil. Phil was interesting to work with. Lynne Gelber: Glotzbach. Roy Rotheim: Yeah, he took a more corporate perspective, I think. It was at least my understanding, on how to run ... and I'm not criticizing that, to any extent. I think he had a big responsibility. There was a lot of building going on and there were financial issues and fundraising. And yeah, he did it. Then there was Marc. Lynne Gelber: Marc? Roy Rotheim: Marc Conner came in just as I was leaving, and I just was in awe of him. Just in awe of him. We got to know each other really well in a very short time. Worked with a lot of Deans. Lynne Gelber: For example? Roy Rotheim: Including her. Deans of Faculty? Well, there was Eric Weller. There was Dave Burrows, there was Phyllis of course, Phyllis Roth. Oh, there was a woman, what was her name? She was a scientist. She was the only numerate dean we ever had. She was a scientist, she was from NSF or something like that. You remember her name? Yeah. Yeah. She was numerate. She was much more difficult to work with because she could count to 10. And the English fellow. Whom I really liked but I can't remember his name. He's an art historian. Susan Bender: Michael Ore. Roy Rotheim: Page 17 of 18 �Michael Ore. I remember we'd go ... Anytime I met with a dean I would always, went with an agenda and actually hand it to them. A written agenda, it just saved time. He was such a good listener. I liked working with him because he would listen and take notes and then ask questions. He wasn't a ready, fire, aim type of a person. And I liked that. Yeah, I worked with Dave Marcell. I guess I was there a lot. Skidmore was very good to me. I have no complaints. I was very lucky. Lynne Gelber: Okay, anything else that we should cover? Roy Rotheim: No, I can'tSusan Bender: I think we kind of covered a lot. Thank you. Roy Rotheim: Did we cover whatever you wanted? No? Yeah. I can tend to be a little loquacious at times. Lynne Gelber: No, that was good. Thank you. Roy Rotheim: Yeah, well, good luck. You know. Susan Bender: Thank you, Roy. Roy Rotheim: You can turn it off. Page 18 of 18 � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/992427ca36868a47b60ad80f2f3c297d.WAV 3991e65f7904ac2cf500983de149be83 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber & Susan Bender Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Roy Rotheim Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview 41:53 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit April 13, 2026 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Roy Rotheim Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 26, 2026 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Roy Rotheim came to Skidmore in 1980 and retired in 2022. In those years he served as member and then chair of the Economics Department and chair of the Business Department. He played a significant role in the reorganization of the Business Department, the development of the Liberal Studies, Honors Forum, and Writing Across the Curriculum programs. Roy served on several major college committees, including CEPP and CAPT. In this interview he discusses the growing international diversity of the student body. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Business Department College Governance Economics Department Harder Hall Honors Forum International Students Liberal Studies Writing Across the Curriculum https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a4febe7cf33f0191f03529ea0cdf7d03.jpg 4318979714898cb48f998e15135fb98b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/213943b67782ade09cc11ea0c2c24de5.m4a 26b87ee82076dd6456df1cd1bcabc569 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/60d15809ac8e1770c91d32041e20c132.pdf 8c3ed2b7813957838086febd1b325c34 PDF Text Text Interview with Sue Rosenberg by Susan Bender, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, February 11, 2025. SUSAN BENDER: This is Sue Bender interviewing Sue Rosenberg for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It's February 11th, 2025, and we are here in the Lucy Scribner Library. Hello, Sue. Glad to have you with us. SUE ROSENBERG: Hello there. SB: Sue, I wonder if we could begin with just talking about your childhood, where you grew up, what your early childhood memories are like. SR: I grew up, I was born in Manhattan, Kansas, because my dad worked at Kansas State. My dad was an academic. He was a playwright and taught drama and English. So, he was at K-State for 10 years or so. We lived for a year in New Orleans because he got a job at Tulane. We spent a summer in Vermont because he had a job at Burlington. We spent a year in Birmingham, England because he got a Fulbright scholarship and taught at Birmingham, directed some plays. So, I kind of grew up the academic brat. I mostly grew up in Pittsburgh, because he was at Carnegie Mellon for many, many years in the drama department there. So, I sort of liked academe, I liked school. My mom did a lot of working on and off. They had met, my folks, had met doing repertory theater in Massachusetts. So, they were just into that a lot. I did not care for theater, but I did like academics. So, I grew up mostly in Pittsburgh. I went to Kenyon College, where my dad had been. I asked my dad like, "What college should I apply to?" He said, "Kenyon's real pretty." Had to pass the Kenyon review. So what about that? So, I applied to like two colleges. Back in those days, you didn't get pounded with all those magazines from the colleges. So, I went to Kenyon. I spent a year abroad in Germany, in Tübingen, an old medieval town. It was beautiful. I ended up majoring in history, which I really liked in high school, European history, and I ended up with a double major in German just because I had done so much German. I thought I wanted to go to grad school and be a professor because I really liked the college life. Didn't want to do the corporate thing and wear pantyhose, and it just was not me. So, I went for a year to North Carolina in Chapel Hill, but I hated it. It was at a time, it was in the '80s, when there was a glut of historians. So, they kind of made it like boot camp, and I was going to have to spend five years to learn Latin as well as the French and German I knew, and I just thought it was just not fun. It's just the joy was sucked out of it, so I quit, and then I didn't know what to do. So, I was a secretary, because I could type. I was a secretary at Carnegie Mellon and other places, and I just kind of fell into a job editing the computing center newsletter at CMU, and we won some awards and it was just a fun thing to do, and I thought, "Magazines? I love magazines." So I ended up working at Carnegie Mellon at the computing center, and then back at Kenyon, where I hadn't been for 15 years, and I did some publications at Kenyon, and then I Page 1 of 16 �went to Binghamton, did the same sort of thing, publications at Binghamton. Did not love the public university union thing. Thought I might, but didn't, so I was looking again for a private school, and there was Skidmore, which I didn't know much about, but Upstate New York seemed nice. Yeah. So, I was at Skidmore for what, like 25 years, something like that? Yeah, yeah. SB: Do you remember what year, when you came? SR: It was '91. I want to say it was late in '91, I think. SB: Okay. SR: Yep, yep. SB: And just maybe talk a little bit about what Skidmore was like when you first got here in '91. SR: It was nice, I got to say. I liked all my colleagues. I got interviewed by like a hundred people. And it was just about to start the big campaign. SB: What campaign is that? Under which president? David? SR: Porter. SB: Okay. SR: It was David Porter's last campaign. I forget what it was called. But I liked David Porter. I liked the folks I worked with. Loved my boss, Bob Kimmerle. So, it was good. And I was hired this time to do just the magazine, not having to do all kinds of brochures and leaflets and other stuff. So I liked that. I could really focus on the magazine. And then it was a tabloid. It was... SB: The magazine being Scope? SR: Scope. Yep. It was called Scope for the longest time, and it was a six-times-a-year tabloid. Also, really good. The previous person, the previous editor, I think, had been really good, Jackie Page 2 of 16 �Donnelly. I read it when I applied and I thought, "Ooh, this is a fun little tabloid thing. It's literate and clever and interesting stories." So I thought, "Yeah, I'd like to take this on." And then Kent Jones was the VP, because we were under Admissions. The PR office was under Admissions at that time, and that was Kent Jones. And he somehow got some money from a bunch of trustees, or some trustees gave him money, whatever, to switch to a magazine. So that definitely costs more to print, but then went to a quarterly magazine. So, we got a better budget for photography and hiring freelancers, and we had a really good run. Had a really good run. I really liked doing the magazine. It was a great, great job. I used to get up in the morning and think, "Yeah, what am I going to do today? This is great." Not many people get to do that in their job. I realized how good that was. SB: So, what were your priorities for developing Scope then in the time that you were here? SR: Well, we wanted to make sure it got read, you know? That's really the main thing. So often it just goes into the bottom of the birdcage, you know? All those things do. And you know, people read Class Notes, but you don't know how much they read of the other stuff. So I wanted it to be a readable magazine that would be on your coffee table, that even if you weren't part of Skidmore, you might go, "Oh, this is an interesting little portrait of some person with an interesting job," or whatever. So, we just did a lot of interesting alumni interviews. When we had some money for budget, we did a lot of photography spreads. We did some that were very fun, maybe an eightpage spread with a big photo on each page and just a little paragraph. We did one about the people who have their kids at the daycare center with a picture of the mom or dad and the little kid. Adorable. We did one about staff. We did one with Larry Britt, the security guy, and the house cleaner, and somebody else, and somebody else, people you wouldn't know that are there to keep the lights on and shovel the walks and whatever, and a little portrait of them. We did one of people on the staff or faculty who had kids at the school at that time. So, you got a little student profile with their mom or dad (we did Una Bray and her daughter), and those were beautiful. We got nice photographers. We did one of dogs. The dogs really upset the vice president, who was by then Michael Casey. He thought that was a terrible idea, but about five years later, he admitted that it turned out to be a great idea. It was one of the magazines that most alum said, "Oh, I remember that issue." It was about people who bring their dogs to campus and who were kind of known on campus for having a dog. So I think it just really personalized Skidmore without beating people over the head. I fought very hard year after year after year not to have a donation envelope bound into the center, because, of course, the fundraisers always want that. But I was able to kind of convince or, I don't know, somehow I got away with not doing stories on things that weren't stories, but were ads. SB: Right. Page 3 of 16 �SR: Because the fundraisers want the magazine to be theirs, and they want it to be a brochure that says, "Now give to us," and I don't think the magazine works well that way, and all schools and all magazines do that little struggle, or dance, or whatever. The idea is for me, the magazine softens up the ground and then you can send the troops in and say, "Give me your damn money," but the magazine doesn't have to say that. The magazine has to say, "Remember Skidmore? Remember how you felt good at Skidmore?" or something vague and effective like that without saying, "Toss up some money." Yeah, and I think it did that, I think it served that. We did some surveys, we did a number of reader surveys, and they were always good. People read a lot of parts of it, not just the Class Notes, and we won some awards from CASE [Council for Advancement and Support of Education]. So yeah, I think we did pretty well. SB: So what were some of the awards? SR: Mostly the awards were for writing. They had an award for staff writing, because we had really great staff. We had Barbara Melville, and then the associate editor was Anne Hockenos, and then Marianne Snell, and then a couple other people in the department, Andrea Wise, who was the news person, she wrote occasionally. Peter MacDonald, who was the publications person, he wrote occasionally. Because they were all good writers. So we had some good features and good stories written by all those people. As a staff, we were, very small, it was one full-timer and a half-timer, and then a couple people who were just once or twice a year they would write. So, for a small school and a small staff, I think we had all good writers. Yeah, so they liked the writing, they liked the style. I wrote a little editor's essay that was kind of comedic, and they liked that. And at one point when we actually went to the magazine, we did get Most Improved from the tabloid. But we did not get a national. I don't think we even went for national awards, but regional. And we were going up against people in this region which were like Johns Hopkins and some really good magazines, some big schools and good magazines, so we felt pretty good about that. Yeah. SB: You should. So by implication, it sounds like your audience, the people that you're writing for, were mainly alumni. SR: Yep. SB: Were there folks, were there audiences outside of that that you tried to engage? Page 4 of 16 �SR: Not too much. Parents a little bit, because those are the other kind of donors, potential donors. But no, it was really, it's an alumni magazine. A lot of other colleges subscribed, and we subscribed to a lot of other colleges' magazines too just out of, I guess, professional interest. But no, it was mostly alumni. I think the fundraising side kind of felt like we needed to appeal to the board, the alumni board, the trustee board, but I really felt like we needed to appeal much more broadly. And appealing to alumni is tough. There are kids brand-new out of school and people 100 years old, and the school has changed so much over the past 100 years that there's people who remember it as a girl's school and people remember the old campus and not the new campus. So it was a little hard to appeal to absolutely everybody, but we tried to have something for everybody in each episode. SB: Right. SR: Yeah. SB: So how would you go about pulling together an episode? SR: It was really fun. We knew we had to give a certain number of pages to Class Notes. So it was kind of like in the newspapers, you'd know how much advertising you have and then how much space you have left. We'd figure out how many pages we had to give to Class Notes, and we’d figure out how many pages we had left, and we had certain departments, we had campus news, and we had a couple of alumni profiles usually each time. So we kind of figured out what was the campus news we would do, and then we tried to have some really fun feature. It was photos or whatever. We often did a feature, which I really enjoyed, of just getting a bunch of alumni who were experts in some field. We did one on water, we did one on some other environmental, I think we did one on land use. Just interesting issues. We did one on the Middle East, I think. And we just get a bunch of alumni all around the country who are academics, or in the government, or doing some local... We had somebody who was like the sewage overseer for LA. That's a pretty interesting, pretty interesting job. So we managed to get them maybe on the phone or I just get them on an email group and we just throw out questions and have kind of a Q&A among five or six people and have an argument, and then I could edit that all down and make kind of a discussion group out of it. So I really liked some of those. Sometimes we would make a feature out of something on campus if it was some really big event or maybe like the 25th anniversary of going co-ed, something like that. You could interview people from the past and currently. So we just kind of kicked it around. I had my office mostly for the longest time in Palamountain, right out in the middle where everybody crossed between classes, and so people would just stop by and go, "Oh, I have this kid who's doing this really great research." Or I'd stick my head out and go like, "What's happening lately?" And so I would just get some of the coolest tips for what Page 5 of 16 �kind of projects were being done or just check in with people about starting a new class and what that was like. So I just really felt like I had my finger on the pulse, kind of, what was going on everywhere, especially academically. It got worse when we moved into other corners and we're out of the academic world. I don't know how you could do a magazine that way, but I guess they're doing it. But I felt really, in the midst of things, we had for a while an editorial board kind of that we would call for each issue, and it included somebody from several departments, somebody from alumni, somebody from the sciences, somebody from the humanities, and just ask them what the stories were. So we had plenty. The main problem always was what we couldn't cover. We just didn't have space to cover all the great stories. It's a nice problem to have. SB: You've described in a very lively way several of the stories. Any others jump out at you, stories that you did that were particularly sort of engaging or successful or even strange? SR: Right, right. Well, we've done a few that worried the suits. There was one, we did a little interview of a woman who was a truck driver, and I remember Kent thinking, "That doesn't say much for a Skidmore education." But she was great. She'd listen to books on tape in her truck. She was great. There was nothing wrong with her. SB: That's wonderful. SR: A couple others. We did one who was a professional wrestler. Also raised some eyebrows. But again, he understood the performance aspect of it. He wasn't going to do it forever. He was a young guy. He thought it was a blast. It was all about improv, and he understood that. He was going to go on to something else. So we tried to find some of those oddball stories. We always used to joke, and so did, I think, people, editors at other colleges about Skiddies in jail or something like that, but we never did that. I think we probably had a couple maybe who were in jail, but we steered away from that. But yeah, we just did local people, people from far away. We just covered everything we possibly could. Because for the Class Notes, each class year has sort of a class secretary, and each time before the magazine, they would send out a little blurb saying, "What's your news? Do you have a new grandkid? Did you travel?" just to solicit Class Notes, and we would get so many good ideas from that. Just somebody would say, "Oh, I got a new job," and you're like, "Whoa, that's an interesting job. Let's go interview that person." So again, way too many to possibly cover. So we just had to try to choose what we thought were best or which ones were available. SB: Yeah. Page 6 of 16 �SR: Yep. SB: That's wonderful. What about on-campus stories, stories of campus events that... Do you have any recollections of some biggies that you covered? SR: Yes. Yes, I do. Some were not such good stories. We did one because there was a big... You may have to edit this. We did one, there was a big issue about sexual assault. I can't remember if it was one particular case, but at some point it seemed like we needed to do a story, and it was on every other campus too. So I interviewed a bunch of people and sat in on a hearing thing about some case, interviewed the security guys and the student affairs people. And I thought I wrote a really good intro, and it got so squashed. So that's the issue with magazines at colleges, is the VPs or the president want something covered, they don't really want it covered, because to cover it is too scary. So yeah, there've been a couple of cases like that where something somewhat untoward happens, the alumni hear about it, you think, "Okay, we need to make a statement about the magazine is the organ of the college." So of course it's going to make sort of an official statement, but even that is too scary. It's too scary for the suits. Yep. So navigating that is really tough. It's really hard. Yeah, yeah. And in the end, when they see it on paper, they're like, "No, no, no. You have to completely sanitize this," and then it's nothing you want to print. It does not serve the institution well to come across as a brochure, because then you're going to lose your credibility. So that was always the issue, is like, do you want to be credible and admit anything true, or do you want to just whitewash and no one will ever believe you again? But I think emotion grabs these people, or we can just see them just clutch up and go, "Oh my God, I can't say that," or, "The magazine can't say that." And the fact is, yes, it could, but they can't stand it. They just can't stand it. They're under so much pressure. It's really tough, it's really tough. So I feel for them, but it was impossible in some cases to do a magazine story that would work for everybody. SB: What about on the other end of the spectrum, a celebratory moment that everybody loved? SR: Yes. Right, yeah. We can do that. Yep. Again, you have to be careful with that though. You don't want to just say, "Skidmore's the greatest thing that ever happened in the world," because it's not, and everybody knows that. So it's hard to do the celebratory ones. We always did a big celebration at the end of a campaign or something like that. So unless you have something else of genuine kind of interest, like when we opened Zankel Music Center, that was a big celebration, and yet it was so gear-heady and nerdy because of the way they had built it, with the acoustics and the engineering of it, was actually so interesting for a certain group of people that we got our nerdiest writer to go cover it. And he had a great time doing it, and he didn't want to do most stories, but it was all about how the parts of the building were kind of separate so that one Page 7 of 16 �wouldn't vibrate against the other, and it was amazing, some of the stuff they had done and how they do the acoustics and how they do the soundboard. It was really interesting. So he wrote a really cool piece that involved a lot of celebration and how fabulous the place was, but also, look what's behind it. Really interesting stuff. So it may not have appealed to a lot of people, but it certainly appealed to some nerds out there and some of the younger folks who liked the technology. So that, I think, we successfully pulled it off. And we could say, "This is a great building," and say, "and here's why. We really mean it. Here's the interesting parts about it." SB: Well, in your retirement citation, you were credited for developing a voice for Scope. How would you describe the voice that you created? Because it sounds like it's a tricky thing to do that. SR: It is a tricky thing, and again, it's something that the suits often are a little afraid of because they want it to be sort of no voice because they don't want to turn anybody off, and of course, that's impossible. So, I guess it was kind of my voice, but I did it by having some of those photographic features that were kind of fun and a little sort of witty and not just, "Gee, these are the greatest people ever, and look at these wonderful students, and all the professors are fabulous." It was the personal side of them and the fact that some of them were a little quirky. They weren't all absolutely perfect, but they were humans. And I think I did it maybe with the little editorial, the little kind of editor's note that I did up front. It was sometimes just about me, and it was about things like going to the biology department, where they have the bird specimens and watching a kid who was learning to stuff the specimen. You gut the damn thing and stuff it with cotton wool. Yeah, it's a little disgusting, but really interesting, and that's what everybody does at every biology department, to have these specimens. So things like that. A little bit about my take on people like Jonathan Kingdon and... Who was the other one? Jonathan Miller, who came by for the Creative Genius Program, whatever that was. It was some great money that brought those kind of genius people to campus. SB: I think it was the Luce grant that did that for us. SR: Yeah. There were kind of arts and science mixes. SB: Exactly. Page 8 of 16 �SR: Yeah. So I think we put ourselves into the magazine a little bit. We did one where Paul Arciero in exercise science was doing a program about withdrawing from nicotine for smokers and one of our... Or no, it was caffeine, withdrawing from caffeine, and one of our writers, Barbara Melville, was a big coffeeholic, so she decided to try it and see what it would be like. So she went into his program, and then she wrote a first-person account of how horrible it was to quit caffeine suddenly, and how the students measured all your reactions and took blood. And so it was really interesting, and it sort of showed you this research going on and the students getting access to the research, but it was from a sort of personal point of view, like you could imagine yourself being part of that research, and probably 50% of the alumni out there went, "Oh, yeah, I went off caffeine once and it was horrible." So they could relate to it. SB: Yeah. And it sounds to me that, listening to your description, that the voice that you're after is sort of, "This is Skidmore in all of its variations," and allow people then to connect back to the college through these various lenses. SR: Yeah, right, right. So everything we wrote was not for everybody, but it was hopefully for a good number of them. And you figure you have like a house party, and there's people in this room talking about something, and then there's people in this room who are slamming beers, and then there's people in this room doing something else, and you can go from room to room. So you can turn the page and go, "I don't want to read about the science research, but here's something about the arts. I want to read about that." So we felt that in every magazine, we should kind of hit more or less all those interests at least once. SB: Well, given that the range of topics that you've described, it sounds to me that you may have been in a unique position, even at Skidmore, to really have your finger on the pulse of all of the things that go on on a campus, on a liberal arts campus. SR: I really felt that I did, yeah. I felt that I sort of knew Skidmore as well as almost anybody did. Yeah. And after 20 years, I had some historical institutional knowledge too. But yeah, I had met faculty in every department, staff in every department. Yeah, yeah. SB: So that leads directly into my next question, which is, you, in that 20-plus year time period, must have experienced a fair amount of change across campus. How would you describe the changes in Skidmore in the time that you're here? SR: I mean, this is where it gets tough. Right now, I don't think it has changed for the better necessarily. I think the kids are doing fine. I think academically it's fine. I don't know that there's any particular issues. There may be. But administratively, I think it got a lot more vice presidents, it got a lot more corporate, it got a lot more hierarchical, a lot less academic, a lot less Page 9 of 16 �collegial. And so it got much tougher to feel a part of the group. Part of it is that maybe it just got bigger, that might be part of it. But I think all of academe has had this, I've heard this from other editors as well, that just suddenly there's a vice president here and a vice president there and deputy vice president, and pretty soon you just have this huge amount of administration. They're like, "What happened to the faculty and the students?" And they kind of get a little bit lost by comparison. So I didn't care for that, because I grew up also in academe in the day, in my dad's day, when it wasn't about the administration. Faculty really did have some control, and faculty governance really was what it was about. So I missed that. And my job particularly just got really hard, it just got really impossible, which is partly why I was so ready to go. I might've stayed longer if things had not gone the way they did, but it was just a matter of bosses changing. As everyone says, the boss is what makes your job. It makes or breaks your job. So yeah, if you don't get along with your boss, you're done. SB: Yeah. So those early years, starting in the Porter presidency, how would you describe those then? SR: Those were great. I loved my job. I absolutely loved my job. I loved my job more than any other job I'd had. I liked Saratoga. So I liked everything about my job. The collegiality in my office was fabulous. I think we were like the model office for a long time, because we really respected each other, we all contributed to each other's jobs, but we never stepped on anybody's toes. So Mary Parliman, the designer, would say, "Can you step over here? And what do you think of that?" And I could say what I think of it, I'm not a designer, and then it was her decision. If I hated it, I could say I hated it and she could still go ahead with it because she was the designer. Or I could call somebody else in and say, "What about this word or this phrase?" and they'd go, "Oh, I'd do something else," and I could say, "Thank you, but no. I'm going to do what I want to do because it's my job." And everybody respected that. Bob Kimmerle was just the best of bosses. He would argue sometimes like, "Do you want to do this story or do you want to write this this way?" and we would just have an argument about it, and whoever won the argument won. I was always thinking I would accede to my boss if I possibly could, but if he didn't make the case for it, then I didn't accede to him, and he'd be like, "Okay, you're the editor. I hired you to do this." So we would have a really collegial argument. I really appreciated that. It was just very professional and also personally warm. At one point, I had been talking to folks about getting a dog. I'd had cats before and I wanted a dog now. I had bought a house, so I was going to have a dog. And one of my colleagues, Barbara Melville, went with me to pick up the puppy. And so everybody had kind of heard a little bit about me having this dog. And a secretary came down and said, "Oh, Bob needs to see you in his office." So I run upstairs to Bob's office, and there's a puppy shower that they have thrown for me. It was so cute, with little puppy toys and puppy accessories. It was crazy. I had no idea they were going to do something like that. Page 10 of 16 �So this was just, we used to go out together to student theater or student concerts or something. We'd make a little date and go out together. We still are the best friends, all of us. We get together every few weeks, every few months. Every one of us just, they were the ones who turned out when I got my cancer diagnosis. They're like, "What can we do?" They drove me to New York City, they drove me back, they got groceries for me. I mean, these guys were just the greatest. So we just really had that esprit de corps that you don't often get in an office. We had no toxic people in our office. We were very lucky for many years, and we all appreciated that. We all knew it. And I think the college kind of recognized that, that we were a very functional office. You could call us up and say, "We need a brochure," And we would crank that puppy out and it would be a good brochure, or, "We need a story about this in the magazine," and we'd figure out a way to do it, and it got done. So we were pretty pleased with that. Yeah, we thought we were doing pretty well. SB: Do you think that same positive energy permeated the campus in general in those years? SR: It did. I think it mostly did. I know there were some griping and problems and troubles in some offices and some departments. But yeah, in general, I think it did. I think that radiated from David as much as anything. He's such a performer, such a punster, you know? SB: David Porter, right? SR: Yeah, David Porter. It just it was hard not to be charmed by David. So that was kind of his role, I think. And he was just so academically strong too that you had to admire him and you had to be charmed by him. And I do think, from what I gather, he kind of let people do their jobs for the most part. And everybody wanted to work for him and work for his people. I think it was, at least in the administrative side, yeah, yeah, pretty good. There's tougher offices. The fundraising office is tough. You got to look at numbers at the end of each year and did you meet that number? Whereas what we look at is a physical magazine or a brochure and go, "Isn't that pretty?" Much easier to sort of see the result, you know? You never get a magazine and go, "Oh, that just really sucks." But if you're in fundraising, you're like, "Oh, damn, that sucks. We missed our number." The pressure must be terrible there. So we didn't feel quite as much pressure, although it was deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline. But in the end, you got something nice out of it, and most people would say, "Oh, that's great. Thanks." SB: That's wonderful. So looking back on your years at Skidmore, what are the major events, initiatives in which you take pride? Page 11 of 16 �SR: Well, mostly they're just the silly side stuff, you know? I really enjoyed being on the Campus Environment Committee. I chaired that for about maybe five years or so. And that was a really, again, kind of a collegial effort. Sue Van Hook from Biology was involved in that a lot too in those days. And we had maybe a student rep or two and a couple other reps and somebody from facilities, that was really good. We did some good stuff. We put up some signs in the north part of the North Woods, behind the Skidmore stables. We kind of liaised a little bit with the bike riders who used that area. We put on a little campus forum, which a fair number of people came to, 100 or so, just to talk about campus environment in general and what were the priorities. So that, I think, was really fun. Frustrating in a way because we had no power at all. All we could do was advise. But I enjoyed that a lot. Again, it got me sort of in touch with folks I wouldn't be in touch with otherwise, like the facilities guys. So that was interesting. I did a lot of reunions. I avoided commencement for the most part because commencement is not my thing, but one of our writers loved to go to commencement, thank God. Because after a while you've done like 20 reunions. You're like, "What can we do now?" But I got into video, which I really enjoyed. So I made a bunch of videos that once we had the news on the website so much, I made a video. I got a GoPro and made a video underwater of a student swimmer. That was really fun. I made a video about summer research involving frog eggs and microscopes and stuff. That was really cool. So I figured out how to get the microscope into the video and followed the kids as they did their work. So I liked all that. What else did I do? Oh, probably the funnest thing I ever did was just one night, which was the employee talent show that the kids put on. I don't know who did it. It was for charity. I don't remember what group of kids it was. But they really organized it well, and they put out a call for the employee talent show, and it was held at the dance theater, and at the time I had a second dog, standard poodle named Dinah, who everybody knew because she came to campus and she was this like the nicest dog. And I had done, along with trick training, doggy dancing with her, which is so embarrassing, but so much fun. So I said, "Well, Dinah and I will come and dance," and they said, "Oh, great." So they had probably 8 or 10 acts. They had like Bernie Possidente from Biology doing banjo. They had somebody who was sort of a singer-songwriter in her spare time who did some stuff. They had Mariel Martin, the diversity person, whose talent was she could tie a cherry stem with her tongue. So she gets up on stage, she's got a bowl of cherries, and there's a monitor with her to assure that it's actually tied, because she's so far away from the audience. So this monitor is watching that she ties and then holds up the tied cherry stem to great applause. It was hilarious. And then Dinah was the last act, and we did a dance to, “There she was just walking down the street, singing do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”. And she could walk backwards, and she could go between my legs, and she could spin backwards. The crowd went nuts. So that was hilarious, I got to say. And again, the crowd was faculty, staff, students, local folks. I had somebody, a friend of mine came from western Mass. just to see it. It was just such a great group, and the vibe was so good. That's a Skidmore-y thing to do, you know? Page 12 of 16 �SB: Do you remember approximately what year that might have been? Like late '90s, something like that? SR: It might've been, yeah, early 2000s. I could look it up because I think I have a video from it, and the video is probably dated. Oh, yeah, the video is hilarious. And the great thing about Dinah dancing was that it was Dinah and the Dinettes, because I didn't want to just be on the stage alone, so I recruited Kate Greenspan from English and Wendy Anthony from the archives in the library, both dog people, and they got all duded up like, I don't know, like the Ronettes or something, I guess. They had red lipstick, and Dinah wore a little red collar, and I was all in black, so I was kind of the puppeteer and not really seen, but I had a red tie to match Dinah. And so they come dancing in in their little skirts. And so they were doing all the little doo-wop dances behind me and Dinah. It was to die for, I got to say. So again, this mix of people, I don't think Kate and Wendy really knew each other that much, but we did like three rehearsals in the lobby of Palamountain or something and then we went on. They drank like a bottle of wine between them in the green room. So it was a good show. SB: Oh, that's a wonderful anecdote. SR: It was good. Yeah, it was really good. SB: So we probably have covered the question of some of the greatest challenges that you've experienced. That is one of our standard questions. Anything else you want to say? I think we've... SR: I mean, yeah, the challenges are just sort of personal - people who are crappy bosses. SB: Okay. SR: So, yeah. Don't necessarily want to go there. SB: Enough said. SR: Yeah, exactly. Page 13 of 16 �No, I think switching to the magazine was hard. It was a big deal. But we had a great designer, a freelance designer that we worked with for years. It all came together really nicely. Yeah, we had a good run. SB: Well, and it's still a successful publication. It's a wonderful publication. SR: Good, okay. I haven't seen that in ages. SB: Great legacy. SR: Okay. SB: So what have you been doing since retirement? SR: Retirement is the best. As much as I loved my job, retirement's even better. I thought I would do some freelancing, and I told folks at my office that I would do some freelancing. They called me up and I said, "Nope, don't want to." So much to my surprise, I just didn't want to. So the main thing I've been doing is training a donkey. I was always into horses, but my back is bad, so I haven't ridden or done horses for a long time. But I've stayed in touch with people, and Barbara Melville, the writer that I worked with, has a couple of horses at a nearby barn. So I was there a little bit visiting, and the manager of that barn has a couple of horses of her own and also got a donkey, because what they do there is clicker training, which is the all-positive way of training, and you can train a flatfish, you can train a human, you can train a cat, a dog, anything, because you click when they do the right thing, you give them a treat. So the click says that instant is when you did the right thing, and then quickly here's a treat, and you do nothing else pretty much. So you don't say, "No, that was wrong. Stop doing that." You just wait until they do the right thing, you click, and pretty soon, any animal, including humans, will learn, "I need to do more of this. I'll get the treats." So this donkey, she [Barbara] had trained to walk nicely, and she just thought it'd be fun to clicker train another species. But then she adopted a few race horses and got involved rehabbing them, and the donkey was getting bored. So the donkey, being a donkey, was breaking out of his stall, breaking out of the paddock. He'd run up and down the aisles of the barn and eat everybody's treats. He was just being a problem. So I thought, "Why don't I try? I've trained horses a little bit, I've trained dogs a lot. I'd love to train a donkey. I love donkeys." So I asked her if I could come and teach him some tricks, and she said, "Sure." And she said, "But first of all, don't get hurt." And I thought, "Oh, God, what am I doing?" Page 14 of 16 �But I started teaching him tricks, and he loved it, and we've been doing it three times a week ever since for like five years now. So he can do many fine tricks. He can stand on a pedestal and pirouette around it. He can push a baby carriage across the arena, and then he takes out of the baby carriage a toy donkey and walks up to the pedestal and waves the donkey up and down. He bops a great big beach ball all over the place. He can play all kinds of music. He can play the keyboard with his nose. Very horrible-sounding, but he loves it. He loves when he can discover that he makes a noise. He likes to knock things over and watch them fall, and he likes to make a noise. So he can play the keyboard, and then I taught him to play the high-hat cymbals by pressing on the pedal with his hoof. I actually went out to a garage sale and spent a hundred dollars on a drum set. And so he plays the high-hat cymbals, which he really likes because they go crash. At first, he was afraid of them, but with clicker training, you train them not to be afraid and gradually. So now he slams his foot on the cymbals, and he plays the bicycle horn, which he just bites the bulb of it. So he has quite the bandstand now all set up with music. So he's just great. I'm just constantly trying to think of new things to teach him. So now I'm teaching him colors. He can tell two colors apart. It's amazing what they can do. So that's been really fun, just being part of that barn and having not only Barbara Melville there with her horse and doing the training, but also Mary Parliman, the designer, who's still a friend. Both of us have come, and she's playing with horses, which she never used to do. So it kind of just continues. The office is not really broken up yet even though we're all retired. SB: That's a lovely story. It makes me think that we should consider having a retiree talent show. SR: There you go. That would be a hoot. Oh my God, that would be a hoot. Yeah. Some retirees are doing some really cool stuff. SB: So is there anything else we should talk about in terms of your years with us? SR: What else? I mean, I was there for so long. I think I've covered a lot of it. I mean, I would say I had so much interaction with so many different people, like we also had editorial boards that we put together with alumni like once or twice a year. And we had some alums in journalism and alums in other fields. We had one of the former editors of the Skidmore News when it was really, really good, Yenso Lin, who's now an international lawyer, I think. So we just had so many kind of fun, and collegial, and deeply professional, and also really fun interactions. It was great. One thing I didn't want to have to do as Campus Environment Committee chair was break up a student camp in the woods. That was kind of too bad, but it was sort of famous, Camp Nasty. It probably was pretty nasty. But it was because there was a kid named Nat who kind of started it, Page 15 of 16 �and they used to call him Nat Nasty or something, I guess. But yeah, we had to go and tell them like they really couldn't live in the North Woods for many reasons. But no, it was good. I think I covered everything. I mean, Skidmore helped, not just when I got sick, but they sent me to CASE conferences, which were really useful because there was not just the schmoozing of most CASE conferences. The editors of magazines had their own editors forum, and it was seminars and really picking the minds of other editors of other good magazines, and they were the ones who ran the magazine contests. And so those were really good. Went to several of those. Yeah, Skidmore let me take a video-making course in the summer along with students so that I could make the videos, let me buy a video camera for the office. So yeah, yeah, a lot of fun stuff. The fun just kept happening. SB: Wonderful. Well, this has been absolutely delightful. SR: Okay. Well, good. Me too. SB: Thanks much for being with us. SR: Of course, of course. Thank you. Page 16 of 16 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Susan Bender Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sue Rosenberg Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 49:27 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 23, 2026 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sue Rosenberg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 11, 2025 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Sue Rosenberg joined Skidmore’s Office of Communications & Marketing as a writer/editor in 1992, after having worked in publications at Kenyon College and SUNY Binghamton. Her major responsibility was to shape the publication of Scope, Skidmore’s alumni periodical, first as a six-times-a-year tabloid then a quarterly periodical. Rosenberg is credited with having developed a distinctive voice for Scope and, under her direction, the publication has earned national recognition.  Rosenberg’s enthusiasm for her work and enjoyment of collaborations with her colleagues shine through her tales of scouring the campus for interesting, engaging, and sometimes quirky stories for Scope.  She also describes some of her other contributions to the campus community, including chairing the Campus Environment Committee and starring in an employee talent show with her dog, Dinah. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Advancement Alumni Class Notes alumni interviews Bob Kimmerle Campus Environment Committee campus news features dogs on campus Kent Jones Public Relations Scope https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9534a0f26186987f52f37bd90cec75f0.JPG 8163c5de0429967e395497e7caf1648a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/455843183ad46b015a69d5207137ec7d.mp3 685e3c4f64179e380e1e7c26a076b200 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cd50e1083b7b86078f53e55d88fa4a4f.pdf 37ca0204ae59b643be97a37f55a10682 PDF Text Text Interview with Judy Halstead by Sue Bender & Leslie Meechem (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, October 17, 2025. SUE BENDER: This is Sue Bender interviewing Judy Halstead for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It's October 17, 2025 and we are in the Scribner Library on the Skidmore campus. Welcome, Judy. Glad to have you with us. JUDY HALSTEAD: Thank you, Sue. SB: Just for starters, could you just begin by telling us, if you would, when and where you were born and briefly describe your childhood? JH: Sure. They're sort of different questions. I was actually born in North Tonawanda, New York, but we left there when I was two, so I don't have any memory. It doesn't have anything to do with how I grew up, really. Then we moved to Schenectady, not a very good part of town. My dad was a janitor at the main plant in GE. Neither of my parents really went to college. One of my parents was definitely an orphan and the other one had, had one of her parents die young. They were married the day after my mother turned 18. I was born three years later. Anyway, then we moved to the village of Scotia, which was a delightful place. I really loved living in the village of Scotia. I played outside, played outside. I was a pretty freerange kid, played out, wandered around, played kick ball in the dead end. Then we moved, trying to do increasingly better schools, although I think Scotia was good, to the Glenville area, but it was Burnt Hills school district, and I had a dog by then. My dog and I really wandered around. I played with my dog a lot. We wandered around in the woods and one of the things we did a lot of was follow streams. One of the first days I was there, this actually could or could not turn up later, but I followed a stream a very, very long ways, till after dark, and we had not lived there very long, so that was kind of interesting. I think playing outside was most of it. Oh, I measured the stream behind my house for about at least a year. I have to find the records. I think I might still have them in the basement, about how deep the stream behind my house was, about once a month for a couple of years. SB: A scientist already. So, could you talk a little bit about your educational journey? JH: So, never got too far, graduating from Burnt Hills, never got too far from here. I went to SUNY Binghamton, raised more than half of the money for that myself, working both during summers and, two or three jobs sometimes, working at SUNY Binghamton. Then I went to RPI, graduate school at RPI, in physical chemistry. It was very unusual for there to be a woman there. There were hardly any women. There was one woman who was a year older than I. Well, she was a year ahead of me in class. She was actually three years older than I. At RPI, but it was pretty unusual to have women, I think even more so in physical chemistry than the other areas. Page 1 of 11 �So working in the lab, I didn't know things that I would be later teaching my students routinely in the labs and making sure that they knew clockwise is lockwise and all kinds of things about the physical world that, I used to take my soldering home in my purse because I didn't like it when the guys in lab made fun of me when I was soldering things. So, the physical chemistry is applications of physics and math to chemical systems. I was interested in small molecules and atoms, vacuum systems, electronic equipment to use to measure the spectroscopy and other factors dealing with reactions happening in gas phases. I actually ended up doing more with atoms, even than small molecules. That was pretty much my PhD work. Then I worked at the health department at long range transport of pollutants. SB: So how did you find your way to Skidmore? JH: Just a quick addition there in between after working at the Health Department, completely different stuff. It was still gas phase, but it was solids, long range transport of pollutants. I'd always been interested in teaching and there was an opening at Russell Sage. I worked at Russell Sage for two years and then I took a visiting assistant professorship at Williams for three years. Then I applied for the job at Skidmore. At the time that I was at Williams, I was married to my boy’s dad, who had started a company in Troy and had at least 30 or 40 employees and the employees had mortgages and things and I didn't think I could wander too far away if I wanted David to ever see his dad. So, I saw the job opening at Skidmore and I applied for it. When I applied for the Williams job, that was the only job I applied for. When I applied for the Skidmore job, it was absolutely the only job I applied for. If I hadn't been hired by January 15, I had applications ready for Ithaca College and Connecticut College, but I was hired by Skidmore. SB: And what year was that? Do you remember? JH: Yes, of course. I remember a lot of things. I was interviewed on December 2, 1986 and I started at Skidmore in August and/or September of '87. SB: So describe the position that you took at Skidmore and the work that you did. JH: I arrived, starting to set up my research lab in August 1987. Classes started in September 1987. I was a physical chemist. I taught Physical Chemistry 1, Physical Chemistry 2. There's labs with physical chemistry. I taught general chemistry. I also taught a Liberal Studies IV course, and I also had undergraduate research students. I'll tell you a little bit about both of those experiences. I had already worked at two small, liberal arts colleges at this point; Russell Sage for two years and Williams for three years. I thought that a lot of things that I brought to my own life and to Skidmore were really from, primarily from Williams. A lot of people, including me, thought that for many years. Thinking about this interview a little bit, I realize that there was a lot of things I was already doing. Undergraduate research for example, when I was at Russell Sage. I'm not 100% sure where I had the idea of what Page 2 of 11 �undergraduate research was or how I formed a very firm idea about that. Williams certainly had influence, but it wasn't always Williams. But I came to Skidmore with a pretty firm idea of what sort of institution I wanted to be at, a little curious about to what extent that was going to work for Skidmore because it was the only job I applied for. My husband at the time had a business in Troy, but he did agree to move to Saratoga, which was very important to me because he was out of town. When I was at Williams, I was commuting from Troy to Williams and that didn't work very well. It actually worked really well, but I didn't want to do it again, not for a tenure track position. Some of the things, just a quick little summary of some of the things that I envisioned for what I wanted in my life and what I envisioned for Skidmore's life were a strong student/faculty collaborative undergraduate research program, which included some very specific things. Rigor within physical chemistry and general chemistry was particularly interesting and I also taught analytical chemistry. In fact, in my first 27 years, I taught 27 different courses. Also, I had a very definite interest in environmental science, which I had come to understand recently, really what I needed to be interested in and knowledgeable about was environmental studies and I was starting to understand the difference between environmental studies and environmental science, and that a lot of other people didn't understand those things. Then I wanted Skidmore to have more, especially at that point, in the way of undergraduate, student/faculty collaborative undergraduate research, including and most especially full-time for students during the summers. One of the reasons that I wasn't trying to set up a lab during the summer was, I already had summer research students at Williams that were funded. I had a grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund that I got when I was at Williams, but grants, typically with the permission of both institutions, are transferrable. A lot of the equipment that I was bought at that grant that I was using at Williams was transferrable, so Williams' people signed off on all of that. But I had students for the summer at Williams, and also, the Skidmore daycare center opened the first day of classes or the day before the first day of classes or something like that, in '87. I hadn't even thought that a place could not have a childcare center honestly, because Williams had had a very old childcare center at that point. I'm not sure how old. My first year at Williams, my older child was born, and my first year at Skidmore, my second child was born. Anyway, they're wonderful. Tearful. Moving on. So, I was moving equipment into Skidmore and also moving our house from Troy to Saratoga Springs. So I worked with my students up to, I don't know, the first or second week of August and then I had a couple of weeks where I was moving things from Troy, I'm actually not remembering moving the house that much, but I'm remembering moving the lab. Maybe we got somebody to move us. That would be great. But my son and I would wake up in Troy and I would take him to daycare and I'd work with my Williams students. Then my Williams students would, in August, put things in my Subaru. Then I would pick David up at daycare around 3:00 or 3:30 and then we would drive to Skidmore and unload things and set up my lab. I already had gotten keys to my lab and keys to my office and I already knew where the chemistry department kept carts that I could move equipment on. But some of this was very heavy equipment and I Page 3 of 11 �had to move it from my car onto the cart and then from the cart onto the lab benches in my lab. There was absolutely nobody in Dana Science Center except my two-year-old, David, and me, and David Domozych. So, David Domozych was highly valued. I showed up maybe three times and knew that I could find David Domozych upstairs and we all moved my stuff into my lab. David, my son, was two. I had an ion chromatograph, which is pretty routine now, but was a bigger deal in '87. One of his early words as a two-year old was chromatograph. So, I discovered pretty early, there was a kind of a vibe during the interviews that there was hopefulness that this vision I had for someplace that I would work was consistent with what somebody, somewhere at Skidmore wanted. I didn't entirely get, it wasn't entirely clear that it was that many people in my department. Maybe Paul Walter, Vasantha Narisimahn had done a little bit, some undergraduate research, particularly during the academic year, but nobody'd ever done any research during the summer. Nobody had ever applied for grants. But I think that I started to really get the big picture better when I met David Porter [then Skidmore’s President] because David Porter definitely had this interdisciplinary vision, but also a very clear vision of what student/faculty collaborative research was going to mean for people in the natural sciences nationally in the coming years; at there was, everybody in the natural sciences in at least a three-year position, and that was one of the reasons I was a three-year position is, they weren't, Williams didn't think that they could really expect somebody to be doing really good quality research in less than three years. So they were hiring visiting professors at three-year shots. Everybody was doing undergraduate research with the expectation of publishing in the same sort of journal you would publish in at a university, which really requires a summer experience. That was the very beginning, the late '70s, early '80s, middle '80s was the beginning of an organization named Council on Undergraduate Research, which Stuart Crampton in physics at Williams was very instrumental in. Probably one of the other really big instrumental people, maybe more so probably, was a guy named Jerry Mohrig at Carleton, who was David Porter's next-door neighbor, I think. He was certainly his neighbor. I think he might have been his next-door neighbor. So David Porter was a musician and classics professor, but he had all kinds of visions for Skidmore. We all really liked David Porter a lot. But this vision of very rigorous, but truly collaborative research with students, but during the school year, keeping it going, but for the students to really understand the depth of what they were doing, that they had to be working summers. I came with a grant a year later. Ray Giguere came with a grant. Ray Giguere also already had, was the second person that had the kind of experience that I had already had in chemistry. David Domozych was already here. In '87-‘88, David Domozych and I, with the help or the guidance, or maybe they were doing it more, of somebody in the administration, and I'm not sure who it was, I think it might have been David Seligman, wrote a grant, Keck Foundation maybe, I'm not sure, for a student/faculty collaborative research to be funded by the college. So I had my ASC, PRF money. Ray had some external grant, but the college began to give grants for summer research to other people. I think that David Porter had an awful lot to do with that. I think David Porter also had a lot to do with just the nurturing of interdisciplinarity within the college. So, we had LS [Liberal Studies] I, II, III, and IV Page 4 of 11 �back then. At my interview, I was told that at some point, I was going to be expected to teach a LS IV course, which was, I can't remember exactly what the title was, but had something to do with sciences. It was supposed to be some sort of link between other disciplines and the sciences. At Williams, I was teaching a very upper-level quantum mechanics class, but I was also teaching an environmental science class. More importantly, there was a guy by the name of Tom Jorling, which you guys might never have heard of, but he had a bachelor's undergraduate degree in biology and a law degree, and he had worked quite a bit at different governmental positions as a lawyer, politician, administrator person. Then he worked, for several years, as a tenure track faculty member who got tenure at Williams in environmental studies. Then, I think it was Jimmy Carter who appointed him in a position at EPA and he was back to working in the government. Then he was back at Williams as a distinguished professor of environmental studies at Williams. When I was there, Tom Jorling was chair of environmental studies. I would go to environmental studies meetings that I didn't understand what they were completely. I linked it with science, environmental science because I'd been actually teaching an environmental science course collaboratively with somebody at Russell Sage already. And I was teaching an environmental science course at Williams. But I go to meetings and it's pretty dominated by philosophers, English professors, economists, and Tom Jorling, who's a lawyer. Well, one of the dominant scientists in the group was a guy by the name of Bill Moomaw, who was spending a few years at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he started a PhD program in environmental studies. That's who I was replacing. That's why I wasn't seeing a presence from chemistry. And there was one biologist and one geologist that were involved. I started going to Tom Jorling's course, which I think actually had the symbol ES100, and it was very law, politics, economics. I'm sure that's the first time I ever heard about the tragedy of the commons, would have been in Tom Jorling's course, sometime before '87. So spring of '87, I guess, while I was still at Williams, I wrote my Liberal Studies IV proposal based on partly what I was teaching in environmental science and partly what Tom Jorling was teaching in environmental studies. It flew through curriculum committee, which I'd been hearing about for many years, because that wasn't really typical. So when I came in, I already had that approved and I probably taught it that year. But I gave it the title of my environmental science course, which was “the environment and the physical sciences”. Students were very happy with it, but I didn't get great enrollment the first year or two. Then somebody in the administration said, "Course is great. You just need to change the title." The title of the book I was using was Environmental Concerns in Perspective. So, I changed the title to “Environmental Concerns in Perspective”. Environmental Concerns in Perspective has been full ever since, probably still is because ES100 has that title still, I think. Then John Thomas asked me if I'd be interested in teaching a course on Loughberry Lake, if I'm not getting too ahead of you. So, John Thomas and I invented what was really the first, before ES100, ES100 was my LS IV course. SB: ES meaning environmental studies? Page 5 of 11 �JH: Yeah, thank you very much, Sue. ES meaning environmental studies. So, we started an ES105 class, leaving space for something that might happen eventually below ES105, but that was primarily on the chemistry and geology of Loughberry Lake, the drinking water supply for Saratoga Springs. But we also had people from the city talking to us about its role in the life of the city and a little bit about politics and economics, but it was largely chemistry and geology. And then at some point, the students in my LS IV class asked for some sort of program that was environmental studies, so I started writing a proposal for the environmental studies major with Ken Johnson, the other senior person in the geology department. It actually went to the faculty floor while I was on pre-tenure sabbatical, but Ken and I met a lot about it and rewrote things a lot. Around, it was passed around '90, maybe '91, for the environmental studies minor. The first student that graduated with an environmental studies minor was a chemistry major by the name of Cheryl Silbert, who married another Skidmore alum Schnitzer, and Cheryl Silbert-Schnitzer has been a full professor at Stone Hill for quite a while. A really long time, actually. Then the self-determined majors started getting flooded by students who wanted to be environmental studies majors. I had a very significant teaching load. There were 105 kids in general chemistry. I just wasn't up, for a while, in trying to make an environmental studies major. I'm sure that some of you realize that to have a major, you also have to get it through the New York State Board of Regents. It's not just the faculty floor. So, I really wasn't up for that for a while, but the self-determined majors committee was really leaning on me for years to get an environmental studies major. At some point, there was an absolutely spectacular woman hired, really initially as a faculty spouse, late '90sish, Karen Kellogg. She was initially hired in biology. She was more interested in environmental studies. I was overwhelmingly swamped with environmental studies stuff. Also, Roy Ginsberg and I applied for a Department of Education grant for international affairs and environmental studies issues across the curriculum and I was managing that for a couple of years, also. I didn't have a teaching load reduction for being director of environmental studies for many, many years. I still had more teaching load than some of my male colleagues. So, Karen was a really big help. With Karen's help, we got out the proposal for the environmental studies major in, I think about 2001, roughly. Of course, it's environmental studies and sciences now. So, I continued to have undergraduate research all along the way. I was doing that initial lab I set up was gas phase kinetics and spectroscopy. Mostly all hand-built glass vacuum work, all entirely hand-built electronics that I designed. None of the chemistry majors were particularly interested in that, but some of the physics majors were sometimes. One summer, to be able to spend the money, I got other grants. I got two other grants, big, substantial grants just for my research, not counting the college student/faculty collaborative research one or the environmental studies student/faculty collaborative research one. So, one summer, I hired RPI students because I needed to spend the money and I needed to get work done and our chemistry students weren't really that interested. But I was having massive numbers of students come to me that wanted to do environmental fieldwork, which I'd done a little bit of. Not even counting the time that I Page 6 of 11 �took the measurements in the stream in the back of my yard, I had also done a little bit of fieldwork in other ways. So, for several years, I was doing both, but with the teaching load I had, I was a single parent. By '91 or '92, I was a single parent. It was actually easier, in my case, to be a single parent than to not be a single parent. The younger one had a lot of health problems. So, there was a variety of reasons why it was easier for me to supervise my environmental science students. I went out in the field with them. I learned, there's a lot of different reasons I knew how to do fieldwork, but I'd learned how to do the fieldwork. I'd learned how to treat samples when we got back to the lab, but I wasn't building equipment from scratch. I wasn't having to repair and maintain equipment that had all been electronics and vacuum gas work that was all built from scratch, either. Also, somewhere along the line, I'd have to think harder than I am right now about the date, the college started the Skidmore Analytical Instrumentation Lab (SAIL) and we hired Lisa Quimby. Anybody know Lisa Quimby? You guys don't know about Lisa Quimby? Well, initially, there was a big grant that I was not one of the ones that wrote, thank you. Appreciate that, that was great. The chemistry department, but there were some people in the social sciences that used it some and there were some other people in the natural sciences that used it some, too. When I use the word science, I'm using the word science that I understand natural science to be, and if you would like to give that whatever interpretation you would like, that's fine. I understand, lots of people could have long conversations on that, but I'm using the word science and the sciences as natural sciences. So, the SAIL lab, we got all sorts of analytical instrumentation. I was able to use a lot of the instrumentation I'd got for analyzing samples from my gas, that I took from my gas phase apparatus into analyzing liquids. Gradually, my research evolved from being gas phase kinetics and spectroscopy (where I got publications with student co-authors, but it was a really time-consuming and difficult process) to supervising students that were doing fieldwork. There's a little while in between there that we also were doing basic analytical chemistry research. Analytical chemistry is the science of how much of what is where basically. Almost everybody could use their own analytical chemist; physicians, lawyers, everybody. How much of what is where is a really important question. I also taught analytical chemistry in the long list of courses I taught. So, I had some basic analytical chemistry equipment in my research lab. I shut down the vacuum stuff. Lisa and other people started using some of my equipment. Some of my research students were using more of the SAIL equipment. If the students needed to have the mode that an instrument was changed in changed or they hadn't, I pretty much would train the students on the instruments. But if there was an issue, something needed to be changed, then Lisa Quimby is, was, and still is director of the, an employee of the college, a staff that's director of the Skidmore Analytical Instrumentation Lab, SAIL. Eventually, as I trained groups of students, they could go out into the field themselves. So that was great. I could actually accomplish something in my office. I had that transition. I had a bunch of papers on Journal of Chemical Education, including some that were pretty hard core physical chemistry, some that were about undergraduate research and how institutions can nurture undergraduate research. One that's kind of a basic quantum mechanics thing. But the last paper I published was about Page 7 of 11 �the relationship between 13 water chemistry variables in seven or eight different streams that are tributaries of the Kayaderosseras and land use patterns. I don't know anything about how to measure land use patterns, but again, the College is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. We had the GIS lab. A few of my students had taken GIS courses and were really good at it and could determine, sometimes with the professional's help a little bit, but generally from the courses that they had had, determine what the land use pattern was for the areas that we were doing our water sampling. SB: So all of your fieldwork was centered on water, right? JH: All of my fieldwork after I left the Health Department was centered on water, yeah. Which I was also a white-water paddler and a flat-water paddler and, for a while, a white-water instructor, American Canoe Association certified white water instructor. So really fond of water. SB: Well, Judy, in 2023, there was a symposium honoring you and your colleague, Ray Giguere. JH: That was really awesome. That was pretty cool. SB: Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of the symposium? JH: Sure. I'm just now thinking maybe that is one tiny silver lining on the cloud of COVID because we didn't have, when I actually retired June 1, 2020. So I taught that last semester, including a general chemistry lab that first COVID semester. I divided it up. I was in phased retirement, I'm sorry. I'll get back to your question, Sue, if that's okay. Just give me a minute or two here. It works into the genesis of that symposium. My general chemistry lab, I divided into three sections; the East Coast, the West Coast, and the middle. Because general chemistry lab met from 8:00 to 9:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I could not reasonably expect that California students were going to get up at 5:00 in the morning to come to a remote Zoom general chemistry lab. So I did everything three times that last half of that semester. But I retired June 2020, so there wasn't really, chemistry and environmental studies have been working together and have this awesome retirement party. I was really looking forward to it. Sometimes you can end up with two or three or more retirement parties, depending on the circumstances. I really wanted those retirement parties. Time passes. Oh, well. What happened? And then, I assume it was Juan Navea and/or Karen Kellogg's idea. I really have no idea. Probably Juan and then he talked to Karen or talked to somebody. Then, a couple of years after I retired, I have a hard time saying that I retired because I tend to say, "I graduated," rather than, "I retired." But a couple of years after I retired, Ray Giguere also retired. Ray and I were really, Vasantha Narasimhan had done a little bit of undergraduate research, but in terms of this idea, the students really need to be working 40 hours a week for at least 10 weeks during the summer really started that with Ray and I. Then you really, they have enough depth of understanding of what they're doing to be able to continue to do things for 10 hours a week during the school year and actually accomplish something, but it's very hard for them to get to that point without that. Page 8 of 11 �Because of the pandemic, it was seen that Ray and I were graduating or retiring or summarizing our careers somehow at around the same time. We both kept in touch with a lot of students. I probably didn't have as many students as he did. I'd had an awful lot of students that took ES100 from me. I didn't say, when I was saying that environmental studies program got approved as a minor that eventually, a core course for it was the LS IV course, but we had to un-LS IV it because there was waiting lists just from the ES students, but that became ES100. So, I taught a lot of students from ES100, but physical chemistry tends to not be that big a class. Analytical chemistry tends to not be that big a class. I taught environmental studies junior seminar and a few other things, but they tend to not be really huge classes, whereas, Ray was teaching organic chemistry, which is a much bigger class. But between the students that we had in classes and students that we had in our research program, we both had stayed in touch with a lot of students, and Juan and other people in the department were aware of that and they just wrote all these students and said, "Let's do this." It was really amazing. We had really, I'd have to look back and consult Juan or look at my notes or something, 60 or more students that came for the weekend. We had student presentations. We had presentations by other people on Friday, but student presentations all day on Saturday. The student presentations were awesome. They were all about the work that they were doing at that point in time in their careers. One person had been e-mailing me and emailing me and just couldn't get through to me, but he was one of my very first students and he was e-mailing me, Sue could probably appreciate this, maybe. He was e-mailing me at halstead@scott@skidmore.edu. Scott was a computer that was unplugged a very long time ago, so he wasn't getting through to me. He's at NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology, which I still sometimes think of as the National Bureau of Standards. But the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which he was great. Everybody was great. But they all tied their work back to things that they had done at Skidmore. That was really a terrific event. SB: I can imagine. JH: Yeah. SB: What have you been doing since you graduated from Skidmore? JH: Since I graduated from Skidmore? Do you have a minute for me to tell you something else interdisciplinary I think was important about Skidmore? SB: Sure. JH: So when the Scribner seminars started, I couldn't do my LS IV course, which a lot of people would, because my LS IV course was ES100 and was taught by a lot of people. So, I had to come up with something else. So, I did this course, and we all know by now that I really like water. So, I did a course that was Water: Society, Science, and the Arts. It would change from year to year. It really worked best if I had something else to tie it to that was within the college. Page 9 of 11 �So, the first one, which was awesome, it was so great, was Caroline Anderson was directing the play, Enemy of the People by Ibsen. We also went to, my class and I also went to a whole bunch of, oh, God. I can't think of his name. There was a Travolta movie about water pollution problem in Woburn, Massachusetts. I can't think of it, and Erin Brokovich, and there's all these other movies, too, but mainly the sort of scaffolding for that class was Caroline Anderson's working with her students presenting An Enemy of the People. My students were very familiar with the play before we saw the play. Then we had, it happens in a little town. There's a water pollution episode. There's the mayor and the doctor, and people have different opinions on it. My students became, chose to be different characters in the town that weren't in the play. They met a couple times with Caroline's students. Caroline must have directed that because I would have no idea how to do that, and had interaction between the characters that were in the play and the characters that were not in the play. And then all of their writing assignments were letters to the editor. And another, I'll just tell you about one other one. Another one was the 400th year that Hudson sailed up the Hudson the Tang had the exhibit on the Hudson River School and Ian Berry and Tom Lewis put together this book. The people who have chapters in that, who have little essays in that book were asked to comment on, to present an essay that somehow interacted with a particular piece of art. The piece of art that I had was Seneca Ray Stoddard's picture of Lake Tear of the Clouds, which is often thought of as the source of the Hudson. But, of course, now we know, I'm sure Sue knows that the source of the Hudson is the entire Hudson watershed, not just Lake Tear of the Clouds. So, my essay was about that. I had this one little story, which I'll tell you in a second, that Tom Lewis really wanted me to put in the beginning. I felt like it logically belonged someplace else, because I talked about the amount of flow of the Hudson as you came down the watershed, as all the tributaries came into the harbor. So, I wanted this little story to go in the flow as appropriate. Tom Lewis kept saying, "It's up to you, but I think the story should be moved up earlier." But it was, when I was nine and we had first moved to Scotia-Glenville, my dog and I followed the stream. I went to a stream, which I followed a stream. Then I get to a point where I got across Route 50, not too far from Mayfair Center, if you know where that is. I'm like, "What would my mother think about me and my dog crossing it?" There's no light here or anything. I'm nine years old and I just moved here, but we crossed it, and then all the different things that we found as we followed that stream. That's in that, but that tributary, that's a tributary of the Indian, which is a tributary of the Mohawk, which is a tributary of the Hudson. So that's in there, too. Oh, okay. I've been trying to paddle since I retired. SB: But I have one follow-up question about that. I believe I saw something on the Skidmore website that you did a dialog with an artist whose work was in the Hudson show. JH: Yes. I only vaguely remember that. That's true. SB: Okay. Page 10 of 11 �JH: I took my students. I had two or three different classes that I took kayaking on the upper Hudson also and I took some students to visit dams. They didn't enjoy the dams as much as they did Enemy of the People or the Tang. I don't understand that. My husband and I both really like dams. It's one of the things we have in common. SB: Okay. So anything else, looking back on your Skidmore career, that you'd like to touch on? JH: No, I'm willing to go on to retirement now. SB: Okay. JH: Yeah. I'm not doing white water paddling, sadly, because I really have a lot of arthritis. The hiking that I'm doing is not as aggressive, but I'm still doing more modest hikes. I got here in time today after biking. So hiking, biking. Both of my children, but especially the younger one that lives in Maine, really wanted me to move to Maine for quite a few years. I really love the Adirondacks. I think somebody one time said something about my spreading my love of the outdoors to other students and faculty and I hope that's true, but I do really love the outdoors. People think Maine's so great, but not like the Adirondacks. I really love the Adirondacks and the Saratoga area, but we did end up getting a condo in Maine and we have a threeand-a-half-year-old granddaughter and a six-month-old grandson, so we're spending maybe a third of the time there. Oh, I can't believe I left out another thing I've done is, I've spent a lot of time being involved in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, where I was a secretary for four and a half years. My husband, Johnathan Fieinberg and Dick Wilkinson and I spent an enormous amount of time over about five years redoing policy for the congregation. My husband and I are also somewhat involved in the Unitarian Universalist congregation first parish in Portland now, but hopefully more. The three-year-old, I think an important point you could make a conclusion on if you like is that our three-year-old granddaughter has now been canoeing with me three times this summer. SB: Thank you very much, Judy. This is delightful, to hear your recollections of your time at Skidmore. JH: It's delightful to see all of you. Page 11 of 11 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sue Bender & Leslie Meechem Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Judy Halstead Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 42:23 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Judy Halstead Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 17, 2025 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource After receiving her PhD in physical chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Judy Halstead taught at Russell Sage and Williams Colleges before joining Skidmore’s Chemistry Department in 1986.  In addition to teaching general and analytical chemistry within her department, Halstead was an active participant in interdisciplinary programs.  In this interview she recalls her pivotal work for two major College initiatives: the development of Environmental Studies and the Summer Collaborative Research Program.  Both of these undertakings have had a lasting effect at the College and on our students, as attested to by the alumni symposium held in her honor upon her retirement in 2020. Halstead also reflects on some of the obstacles faced by women in the STEM disciplines. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d79357abd9af0c713c86905dc01872ae.jpg a394ddbc145b020c3179df5c8d9d25dd https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1999f1e4d4727cb3d5d3850ca4c13a2c.m4a 8bcfb19901d5c16bdb6f23dc3e9f821a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/04ed63833a36ec48e543b05c8aa9f853.pdf 46c66e25a06169de0c568a41c888a376 PDF Text Text Interview with Michael Arnush by Lynne Gelber & Sue Bender (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, July 17, 2025. LYNNE GELBER: This is LG. I'm here with Sue Bender. It's the 17th of July 2025, and we're here to interview Michael Arnush. And Michael, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about where you grew up and some of your childhood and what brought you to Skidmore. MICHAEL ARNUSH: Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you, both of you, for having me here to do this. So I was born in New York City and spent half my childhood in Queens and Jackson Heights. And at the age of nine, my family was uprooted and we moved to Phoenix, Arizona, which was one heck of a cultural shock for all four of us. My father worked for Revlon, and Revlon decided to build a plant in Phoenix in the mid-sixties, so here was a New York family suddenly living in Phoenix. So I was there through high school. I focused largely on math and science in high school. I seemed to have some skill with that. So when I went to college, my plan was to be a pre-med, like so many students. And I did every pre-med class except the last one. And the last one was physical chemistry, the last one that was required for med school. I went the first dayLG: And where was this? MA: At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. I went the first day of class, and it was the last day I went to class. I had no idea why I was there any longer. So Stanford was on the quarter system, so that was fall quarter of my junior year. LG: What year was that? MA: '75... Fall of '77. So at this point, I should have a major, I should be well into the major, and I suddenly have nothing. So winter quarter, I just took courses across the board. I took a course in women's studies, a course in religious studies. I took Intro to sociology, Intro to anthropology, Intro to physical anthropology. I was searching. And I had a friend who is Greek American, she's still a friend all these years later, and she suggested to me, why don't you take a course in Greek history? So I went to the first day of class. I knew no one in the classroom. It was a tiered classroom, like a small version of Davis or Emerson at Skidmore. LG: Do you remember who was teaching it? MA: Dr. Antony Raubitschek, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, then went to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, and then ended up at Stanford. Four foot eight tall, four foot eight wide, thick German accent, and I was hooked the first day, the first five minutes. A Page 1 of 17 �And then I scrambled. I scrambled to try to get the classics education I needed to go on to go to a graduate school. So I squeezed in enough in that junior and senior year, and in the summer in between, to get into graduate school. But I knew I needed to work more on my languages, on Greek and Latin. I had an opportunity to go to Greece the summer after my senior year. I'll never forget the moment. I got on a bus at the old airport down by the water on the outskirts of Athens. And as the bus descended from this high road into the city, I caught glimpses of the Parthenon in between people's arms that they were holding on the straps,.. hooked, just completely hooked. I spent a fifth year doing Greek and Latin. The classics department let me audit Greek and Latin classes. And then I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And when I went on the job market the first year, I was very ABD, all but dissertation. And I ended up with a one-year sabbatical replacement at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which was a phenomenal experience. They taught me how to teach. The people in that department were just so kind to me. And then I went on the job market again, still ABD, and it came down to Skidmore and one other school. I interviewed with the dean of the faculty, Eric Weller, because Lynne, as you know, you were in the foreign language department, at that moment, classics had had a roller coaster relationship with the college and with the department. There had been a number of classicists before I was hired who, for one reason or another, had not succeeded. So I interviewed with Eric and then interviewed on campus, and I made the offer, and I chose it over Bowdoin. I thought that being a little closer to New York City might be a better option for us. And so I started Skidmore in the fall of '89 and retired a year ago. LG: So you came to Skidmore in '89, and what was your first position? What were you doing and what department were you in? MA: Okay. Well, I was hired as the director of classical studies, and I was still ABD, so I didn't have my dissertation in hand, which means that your department, Lynne, then called the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, was taking a gamble on me because I did not yet have my PhD. LG: I never took a gamble. MA: Well, thank you, Lynne. Some people certainly did. So I was hired to direct a program that had had a real life through the seventies and eighties from people like Helga Doblin, who taught Greek on the side when she was told by Sonya Karsen that she wasn't allowed to. To the Ecclesia, which was this gathering of non-classicists. Plus, if there was a classicist in the department, that person would be part of it. A Page 2 of 17 �I did lectures, got an NEH grant, fostered the study of antiquity. There was someone in the history department, Bill Brynteson, someone in art history, Harry Gaugh, Tom Lewis in English, Phil West in English, and a bunch of other people who believed that the delivery of a classics curriculum was of value, but the college had not made the kind of investment it needed to really build the program. And probably the hiring of David Porter in the second half of the eighties made a difference. He was my second to last interview when I came in the spring of '89. Scared the dickens out of me. I had never met a college president before. So I was hired as the director of a program. There was one other person who was teaching part-time. LG: Who was that? MA: Michael Moore. And the idea was to build a classics program from ground zero. I discovered, among other things, that the students who were in intermediate Latin knew no Latin. So I had to teach intermediate Latin students elementary Latin and cram it into as few weeks as possible. Within, oh, I don't know, maybe four years, there were three of us, including my wife, Leslie Mechem. I did not hire her. Phyllis Roth, the dean, hired her. Within, oh, 12 years there were, at one point there were five of us. There are now four classicists at Skidmore. LG: Who are they? MA: Currently, Ben Abbott is the ancient historian. Janelle Sadarananda is the archaeologist. Amy Oh is primarily a Latinist, but also a Hellenist. And Dan Curley, who is the department chair, focused on Ovid, but now works primarily on the reception of classics in film. So we started from nothing, and that was quite a challenge, not only to build the resources from the college, but to demonstrate the need for those resources, which means getting students into the classroom. The easy classes were things like Greek art, Roman art, Greek history, Roman history, Greek philosophy. That has been offered by someone in the philosophy department for longer than I've been at the college. Classical mythology, a big draw. But getting students into Greek and Latin, even with a language requirement, was a real challenge. LG: So when you first came, what courses did you teach? MA: I did not teach any ancient history. So my degree is actually in ancient history. I was trained in Greek and Roman history, but the history department hadLG: Is that Bill Brynteson? A Page 3 of 17 �MA: That was Bill Brynteson who was a Renaissance historian, but he had been teaching Greek and Roman history for years. He taught it as intellectual history, so I knew that was off limits. When Leslie was first hired, and she's an archeologist, Harry Gaugh was still teaching ancient art for the art history department, so that wasn't available to him either. So I focused primarily on just teaching Greek and Latin, just getting those languages off the ground and getting students into the sequence and holding onto them. LG: Was that because Helga also was retired or hadMA: Helga retired nine years before I arrived. So she retired in '80, and she was a great resource initially. I mean, she was very kind to me, but she was also hands-off. She was done. She was finished with the college. So yeah, when Bill Brynteson retired, the history department offered me the opportunity to teach, frankly, as many ancient history courses as I wanted. So I took over and revamped that sequence and turned it into a four-course sequence, two on Greek history, two on Roman history, and then a bunch of seminars over the years. LG: So this became a full-blown department at some point. MA: Less for Phyllis Roth. So I was recommended for tenure in, what would that be, ‘94? And Phyllis and I, at that point, would have lunches. So many people did once a semester, over Kendall-Jackson wine at Sperry's. And I had run afoul with Phyllis. I got to tell this story. This is like '90, and you'll remember this. You both will. This is, oh, probably '92. So David Porter is the president of the college. Phyllis Roth, English department, is the dean of the faculty, and they needed to cut the budget. And this is years after David had commissioned something from all the Commission on the Nineties, and they wanted to cut the budget. And the theory, and I never asked Phyllis or David to assert that this is true, the theory is that they were looking for the quickest way to cut as large a number of faculty as possible. And the language department had grown, and you know better than I, Lynne, from something like seven lines to 16 lines in a very short period after the faculty approved an intermediate competency language requirement. And so the notion is get rid of the requirement. You can get rid of a lot of faculty really quickly and close the budget. So John Anzalone, retired professor of French, who's a dear friendLG: Was he the chair at that point? MA: No, I don't think he was. You had been. Maybe John was chair at that point because he was chair when I stood for tenure. So we put together some data to demonstrate the value of a language requirement. And we knew that secretly David Porter, who knew more languages than I do, believed in the teaching and learning of languages. And for all I know, Phyllis did as well, but this was an expedient, I think, way for them to take care of the budget. So John and I put together a PowerPoint before there was a PowerPoint and a handout that was printed out and in color, which was given to every person who came to the A Page 4 of 17 �faculty meeting. It was like 200 copies. John gave the prologue. I ran the faculty through the data. John did the epilogue. I'll never forget. I'm doing the data and it's time to turn to page two. So I said to the assembled, "Please turn over to page two." You couldn't hear anything except the turning of a page. It was amazing. Faculty voted to retain the requirement. Phyllis was pissed. She called John and me into her office the following week. Now, I'm untenured. I think I'd gotten my PhD maybe a year or two before. I'm untenured, John is my chair. We staged a coup. We defeated the Dean and the President, and you don't do that lightly. She calls us into her office and reads us the riot act, and John is taking the brunt of her criticism. 20 minutes in, John announces, "I have to leave. I have to go pick up Becca from school." Now I'm sitting alone with the Dean of the Faculty. And for about the next, it seemed like hours, probably another 15, 20 minutes, I caught Phyllis's wrath. To her credit, in my 10th year, she gave us the department. Phyllis did not hold a grudge. She gave us an additional line, so we grew from two people to three people. LG: Why do you think that it became a separate department? MA: I think there were a lot of reasons. One, I think for some faculty they had to approve it, of course. For some faculty from their own home institutions when they were undergraduates or graduates, it was customary to have a classics or classical studies department. I think for the language department, I was an anomaly because I really was an historian in a language department. And that's not unusual for classics at some small institutions where the institution doesn't create a department, but the classicists are housed in a language department. But typically if they're historians, they're housed in the history department. It was unusual for Skidmore to have someone trained as an historian, but teaching the languages, because I was also trained in the languages, to be housed in the department. So I think there was no opposition, really, from the language department for us to go our separate way. There was nothing, I think, politically positive or negative about it in terms of the relationship of those of us in classics to the department. It didn't cost the college much more money. We continued to share an administrative assistant as the Classics Department does today, so there was really no additional cost. Phyllis granted the line before, yes, before classics became a department. Lynne, you tell me. You were there. LG: Well, I didn't see it quite in the same way, obviously, because I think so many of the survey courses really were in the languages or in the literature, part of it, history of, so it wasn't so strange to have somebody in history doing Latin or Greek. A Page 5 of 17 �MA: And an archaeologist, right? So it was not an unusual fit, but it felt like we were ready to have independence to be able to make our own decisions about especially personnel. LG: So what other major contributions do you think you made at Skidmore? MA: A menu of items. Let me first talk about just for classics. So I think Leslie and I were the first faculty to do a study abroad program with students during the summer for two weeks abroad. Before the current director of Off-Campus Study and Exchange, OCSE, which many just call Study Abroad, but it's OCSE, before the current director, Cori Filson, was in the position, there was someone else who was there, who was hired by John Ramsey, who was the Dean of Studies. And Jon used to oversee Study Abroad. And that first director, her name was Kara Sheldon, approved for us to take students to Greece for two weeks. And that became a standard. Leslie and I, over the course of however many years that was, took students four or five times in the summer. We took alums once in '98, including a couple of future board of trustee chairs, Sue Thomas and Janet Whitman. And we took faculty, not from Skidmore. We had a grant from something called the Associated Colleges of the South and took about 20 faculty to Greece as well. So that became a standard. Now the Classics Department takes students either to Rome, that's Dan Curley in classics and Greg Spinner in religious studies, or to Greece,- Amy Oh and Janelle Sadarananda, every other year, so it's now become a regular feature of the curriculum. And that's great. That's really wonderful. It's wonderful for the students to get the field experience. I stepped out of classics. I still kept a foot in the department. I was chair more than once. When we became a department, it was no longer program director. It was chair. The first thing I was asked to do was the Honors Forum. So John Ramsey, bless his soul. A quick story about John. My very first day on campus, there was a reception after the first day of orientation for new faculty, and it was out on the patio outside the old Scribner Library. John probably had come to the orientation, so we probably had recognized each other. He came over and introduced himself. We chatted for a few moments, and then he said, "Would you like to meet former President Joe Palamountain?" I said, "I'd be delighted." I had met David during the interview. He takes me over to the tree below the president's office outside of Palamountain, points to the plaque in the ground and says, "Joe's six feet under." I have told that to every president because almost none of them, including the current president, Marc Conner, knew that Joe's ashes are down there. Anne's are not. Anne's buried, I think, in the family plot, Connecticut, something like that. But yeah, there's Joe Palamountain. LG: Oh, dear. MA: So John Ramsey, as the Dean of Studies, and John, as you both will recall, was involved in so many different things in support of the administration and a close ally of Phyllis'. So A Page 6 of 17 �John reported to the faculty that retention of first-year students had become increasingly problematic and that they wanted retention to be someplace in the 90s, 93, 94, 95%, if possible, and it slipped to 89%. And his concern was that students were transferring after the first year. LG: Because? MA: The report was, and this is anecdotal, the report was that students did not feel they were sufficiently challenged. Now, I don't know what that means. The Skidmore faculty are rigorous, probably always have been, probably are more rigorous today than when you arrived or when I arrived. But that was at least what John reported to us. So he proposed to the faculty something called the Honors Forum. Sue, you were involved with it very early on. You were a great ally in that. The faculty approved it. The idea was to offer courses that any student could take, but they would be designated as Honors Forum courses, and the idea was that they would be a bit more rigorous. They would raise the bar. And the theory was that by raising the bar in certain courses seeded across the curriculum, a rising tide would lift all boats. That's John's phrase. And so after the faculty approved it, I think Phyllis asked me to be the director. LG: And that was what year? MA: '97, maybe. LG: Okay. MA: I think that's about right. And so the first challenge was to build an Honors Forum curriculum. And so I think the first thing I did with John was to build an Honors Forum council. So there was a collection of faculty, administrators and staff that included res life, included John's area, included other areas, and some faculty who eventually were elected through the governance system to build a program. And so that took a couple of years to get off the ground. And I'm thrilled that here we are, well, almost 30 years later, the program still exists. It's gone through a lot of changes. I think it's still trying to figure out what its role is at the college. LG: What did that consist of when you started? MA: Initially, we invited entering students to join the Honors Forum. That eventually shifted under subsequent directors to wait until students arrived on campus and give them a chance to apply. We did both initially, invite entering students and offer students the chance to apply after a semester. Initially, there was a course only for the entering class, Sue, Jon Ramsey and I team-taught that class. It had mixed results, but it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And then recruiting faculty to offer courses in their areas. So these were not courses that were designed necessarily to be different from the curriculum, but to be more rigorous. And so that meant, for me, reaching out to every department chair and program director, A Page 7 of 17 �making announcements on the floor of the faculty, inviting faculty to workshops. We had a little seed money from the Dean's office to build a curriculum. In the early stages, not only did we have the course for the entering students, but when we had a senior class, John and I team-taught a course open to the seniors in the Honors Forum. LG: Which was what? MA: It was to give them a chance to reflect on their academic experience. If they're doing a thesis or an art project or some other kind of senior lab project, to share that with the group. Again, it was a mixed bag. It was an experiment. We were looking to find the footing for how the Honors Forum would work. So that was the first. Want to hear about the next one? LG: Yep. MA: That was really hard. So now it's, I think it's maybe 2004. Chuck Joseph, professor of music, is the VPAA/DOF. Sue, I don't recall if you were associateSUE BENDER: VP? MA: I'm sorry, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty. And at that point, the position had been consolidated, yet again, into one person. Sue, were you still Associate Dean of the Faculty at this point in '04? SB: No. MA: Okay. So, as we all know, faculty had been delivering the liberal studies curriculum for a long, long time, developed in the mid-eighties. I think Terry Diggory was on the Committee on Educational Policy and Planning (CEPP) when it was first proposed. An LS, Liberal Studies, program consisted of LS 1, Liberal Studies 1, and then three groups of courses, LS 2, LS 3 and LS 4, each of which were themed. And faculty offered courses in LS 2, 3 or 4, or taught as part of the team-teaching effort in LS 1. Wildly successful probably for its first 10 to 15 years. Eventually, faculty started to drift away from LS 2, 3, and 4, so those were consolidated into LS 2. LS 1 continued, and I remember... Oh, I know. It was Sarah Goodwin, professor of English was Associate Dean, and she was struggling to get faculty to teach LS 1, this jewel of a class, teamtaught by 40-something faculty who met weekly to discuss the curriculum, to plan events, and then various faculty would come in and give lectures. You did that. I never taught in LS 1, but I did observe David Porter teaching LS 1, teaching prepared piano, which was a hoot. So the dean's office was saying, we can't deliver this course any longer. And even the new LS 2 was becoming increasingly difficult to deliver. So the faculty had, I don't know A Page 8 of 17 �how long it lasted, probably most of the year, a discussion about the curriculum and what to do. In the end, the faculty approved something called the first year experience, the FYE. It wasn't that controversial, but you can appreciate that those who taught in LS 1 for a long time, and still taught, especially the LS 1 course, were resentful that was being taken away. And so we knew, all of us, that it was going to be a landmine to get things off the ground. Chuck Joseph, VPAA/DOF, asked me if I would direct the program. And then Chris McGill, who at the time was working in the dean's office, would join me as the administrative arm, and I would do the faculty arm. And here the task was to recruit sufficient faculty to offer 45 to 48, we called them Scribner Seminars after Lucy, the founder, because everything is named Skidmore and nothing was named Scribner except the library, 45 to 48 seminars every fall, plus two in London. So the continuation of the London program, but now it would be two faculty, two Skidmore each teaching one Scribner seminar. And we needed to get 135 courses on the books pretty quickly because we needed to plan the next three years. Phil Glotzbach had just become president. Mellon Foundation likes to support new presidents, so the Mellon Foundation gave Phil $250,000, which he handed over to the FYE and gave us $100,000 out of his presidential discretionary funds. So we had $350,000. Chris and I were throwing money at the faculty offering workshops, summer, spring, winter, whenever we could, to help faculty develop courses. Then we had to vet the courses. Then they had to go to the curriculum committee. This was a haul. By the second year that I was director, and this would probably be around 2005 or so, which means 20 years ago, we offered the first slate of courses. We're still doing it. The courses were meant to be a couple of things. Number one, interdisciplinary at the heart of the Skidmore academic experience. Two, taught by faculty in their disciplines, but to teach whatever they wanted to give them the freedom with few constraints, except the course was supposed to be rigorous, include a good amount of writing, interdisciplinary, but we tried not to tell the faculty what to teach. We tried to kick themSB: So what kinds of courses came out of that? MA: Oh, my gosh, pick your favorite discipline. I can talk about my own classes. I remember I used to have to speak to, or I was asked to speak to prospective Skidmore students and accepted Skidmore students. And I would go through the litany of courses on the cosmos, to courses on poetry, to courses on immigration, to courses on history. Pick your favorite time period and the location. A Page 9 of 17 �Tillman Nechtman, in the history department, still does this. He teaches a Skidmore seminar on Captain Cook's voyages, and each student is assigned a role on Captain Cook's ship. I mean, it's so cool. And when the weather is good, he teaches it down by the pond, which always seems appropriate. So it was like that. It adds a spirit of fun and adventure. Some faculty taught it every three years, which was really the goal. We wanted, ideally, for the tenure line faculty to teach it, not to ask new faculty to teach it right away, to give them a couple of years to get their feet wet and figure themselves out as a member of their department and program and the faculty, but try to have a course on the books before they stand for tenure. We welcomed non-tenure track faculty as long as they were full-time. My goal had been a first year experience, and we failed in that regard. It really has been a first semester experience. When Muriel Poston, the Professor of Biology, came to Skidmore from outside and became the Dean of the Faculty under Chuck Joseph, who then became VPAA, and then Susan Kress English department replaced Chuck, I went to Muriel and asked for the resources to develop a spring experience for the students. John Anzalone and I team-taught one course, and that was the extent of it. We teamtaught a course on the Grateful Dead. We got away with teaching a course on the Grateful Dead, and then finished the course with a concert in Albany by the Grateful Dead. But Muriel said, we just don't have the money to even do a one-credit course for the spring. It would've cost about $50,000 a year. I think we could have found the money, but we didn't have the will. So it continues to this day. Faculty teach Scribner Seminars, and maybe it'll continue to last longer, I don't know. But it really is a first semester experience. LG: So what would you consider your biggest challenge in all the years that youMA: Well, something I haven't mentioned, and that was serving on committees. I served on the Committee on Educational Policy and Planning a couple of times, set up and chaired it a couple of times. That's always hard because it brings together the Dean of the Faculty and/or the Vice President for Academic Affairs, maybe in the same person, a bunch of elected faculty, some administrators trying to plan the future of the curricular experience of the college. Always a challenge. I always wanted to serve on CAPT, the Committee on Appointments, Promotions and Tenure. It went by CAPTS, with an S at the end, before I came to the college. LG: It was sabbaticals. MA: Oh, it was sabbaticals. Okay. It had to be approved by the faculty, a faculty of six elected in staggered terms. I knew it was a responsibility to serve on it. I just wanted to wait for the right moment, and it ended up coming towards the end of my time as a faculty member. So I was elected to CAPT. And in my first year, we had a couple of real serious challenges and some very difficult tenure cases, promotion cases. And as well, that was A Page 10 of 17 �the year that we, as a committee, in consultation with the faculty, broke the committee in two and created ATC, the Appointments and Tenure Committee, and separately the PC, the Promotions Committee. And so that happened my second year on what was CAPT, now ATC. And then I served one more year on ATC as its chair. It's the hardest work I ever did at the college. You're reading the scholarship, the teaching and the evaluation of your colleagues. You're reading amazing work. You read everything. If the colleague has written a book, you read the book. If the colleague has written 37 articles as a psychologist, you read 37 articles. You read every student evaluation. It's a lot of work. It's a serious commitment that the faculty take very seriously. I loved it. It was some of the hardest work I ever did. Really challenging. At the end of that, for a couple of reasons, I was looking at retirement. It was coming up pretty soon. Leslie was looking at retirement after one more year. I was going to stay two years past her time on the faculty, and I got an opportunity to join the Dean of Faculty's Office as an Associate Dean of the Faculty for student academic affairs. I said, yes, the first week of March of 2020. The second week of March, the country and the world shut down due to COVID. So one of the greatest challenges was the summer of 2020, working with Michael Orr, dean of the faculty and VPAA, Janet Casey, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Academic Affairs, and Pat Fehling, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Academic Affairs and Infrastructure, figuring out what to do. From the academic side, do we have a college? Will students come in the fall? Will the faculty teach in the fall? Will we be teaching outside, inside, remotely? All of us who were teaching in the spring of 2020 were given an extra week to learn Zoom. No one knew Zoom. So that first summer, that first year, working with, not just the dean's office, but the president's office, the registrar's office, the study abroad office, which had to bring every student home from abroad in the spring of 2020, academic advising, counseling center, health services, the whole gamut of the college working together to figure out how to manage this and how to keep the college afloat. And we did it. And I give tremendous credit to so many people. Great leadership from Michael Orr, DOF/EPAA, but heavy lifting by Pat and Janet and so many folks in Starbuck, so many folks in student affairs. And my three years in that job, I got a chance to work with people I never really had a chance to work with before. Everyone in Starbuck, so registrar's office, academic advising, study abroad, career services, the folks downstairs under Jamin Totino in supporting students in and outside the classroom. Working with a lot of folks in student affairs and res life, and that was a great experience. I got to see the other side. Many faculty might have a brief experience on a committee with colleagues in other parts of the college, but rarely get to work with them so intensely, and I got that opportunity, and that was great. LG: So would you mark that as among your fondest memories? A Page 11 of 17 �MA: Yeah, I would. I would say meeting John Ramsey and meeting Joe Palamountain my first day at the college. I would say the language requirement issues with Phyllis, that was a highlight. Phyllis's retirement was also a hoot. I don't know if you remember this, but we did a skit. Shame on us. Jon Ramsey in a wig played Phyllis, and I sat on his knee, and I was Jon Ramsey. That was a good one. Highlights, the holiday party, which used to fall in December. It was the last day, the last Friday of the semester, last Friday maybe before exams or maybe of exams. And I just remember the year I was recommended for tenure fell on that day as well, David Porter on the stage in his red and green Christmas vest. Those were great fun. I really enjoyed those. And I haven't talked about something else, but I can't not talk about it, and that's the classroom. I spent almost all of my 35 years, one way or another, in the classroom, department chair, program director, Honors Forum, FYE. And my last semesterLG: What FYE is? MA: First Year Experience, Honors Forum. And then my last year as an Associate Dean of the Faculty, Michael gave me room to teach one course in the spring. I taught a lot of classes. I love to teach. I still miss that part of the job a lot. I tried to be innovative. I think I built the first academic web page at the college. I know I taught the first team-taught online course that wasn't part of UWW. I taught with a colleague at Miami University. LG: University, well, that was UWW? MA: Right, UWW. But I didn't teach in that. I taught with this colleague I met at a conference. We team-taught a course on ancient Athens. She was in Ohio, and I was at Skidmore in the library. And we used rudimentary computer hookups and a speakerphone, which never worked, and it crashed almost every time. I brought a lot of role-playing into my classes, and I enjoyed that. I also liked the rigor of reading ancient Greek with students, reading ancient Latin with students, of teaching a seminar on the Medea by Euripides or a seminar on powerful women in the ancient world. I love doing that, and I miss that. LG: So what have you been doing since you retired, and what year was that that you retired due to changes at the college? SB: Michael, could you talk a little bit about some of the things that you were (changed)MA: Oh, changes at the college? Oh, sure. Across the board, the physical nature of the college. I, of course, wasn't here when the college moved from downtown Saratoga Springs to the current location on campus. But the addition of, first, the Dana wing that was urged by Phyllis Roth, Dean of the Faculty, and David Porter, college president. Which eventually led to the CIS, the Center for Integrated Sciences, dedicated in honor of Billie Tisch, a A Page 12 of 17 �long-standing supporter, she and her family of the college, a spectacular building for teaching and for scholarship and for research. That whole part of the college has changed. The building of Zankel, the music center with a glorious hall that holds over 600 people, fantastic acoustics and great places for students to work on their musical skills. Housing for students has changed so much. I think the college still needs more spaces and needs more classrooms, but housing has improved a lot. Now there's a new space for health and wellness, the Wagman Center. That's great. LG: How has the housing for students changed? MA: Tore down housing that used to be devoted to juniors and built apartments for them that are really first class. And then there's a second set of apartments in North Woods that are for seniors. I toured all of that when I became the first-year experience director. I wanted to see what the student experience was like because we had hoped to link some seminars to the housing experience, and we did that for a couple of years. I think the faculty are more rigorous, more diverse in what they offer, more diverse as to who they are and where they come from and what their backgrounds are. The student body is certainly much more diverse. I remember early on, David Porter was still president, Phyllis Roth was the dean, and a student I'd had, his name is Scott, was a senior, a Black male student. And it's a faculty meeting Friday afternoon, Gannett Auditorium, and Scott and a bunch of students, students of color, people of color walk into the room and ask if they can take the microphone. LG: And what year was this? Do you remember? MA: No, I don't. LG: Okay. MA: But it had to be before '98, when David stepped down. David graciously allowed Scott to interrupt the meeting, and Scott's comments were both a plea and an urging. He essentially said to the president, look around the room at the faculty. Almost everyone is white. You need to diversify the faculty. Now years later, the college has done a pretty good job of doing that. And the student body is much more diverse, both in terms of having people of color in the student body, international students as well, but also from more diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. I think at one point Skidmore was viewed by other institutions, people at other institutions, maybe people outside of the academy as a finishing school. It's no longer an institution like that at all. When I came, maybe it was in the top 50 of liberal arts colleges by the dubious rankings of things like US News and World Report. Now it's in the mid-thirties every year. Maybe it'll go higher. I'm not sure how important that is, but it’s certainly, parents do look at it. High school students looking at college do look at it. I think it's not insignificant. A Page 13 of 17 �Everyone wants to downplay it, but it's important. The college has risen in the estimation of others. LG: So what have you been doing since retirement? MA: So in 2017, there was a scholar by the name of el-Abbadi. I forget his first name at the moment. So el-Abbadi was an Egyptian scholar. His obituary appeared in The New York Times. He wrote what was, at the time, the definitive study of the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt, published by UNESCO, which I thought was an odd publisher for a scholarly study. And I read it with interest because the story went as follows. The Egyptian government decided to build a brand new library in the city of Alexandria, glass and steel, high-tech, not necessarily with books on the shelves, but to be a digital hub. el-Abbadi was old school, and believed in having books on the shelves. And so they had a parting of the ways, and so he was not involved ultimately in the planning of the library. LG: And this library was where? MA: In Alexandria, in Egypt. And when the grand opening was held, he was not invited, but they handed out copies of his book to everybody who came to the grand opening, including the president of Egypt. I thought there's a story there. I put it away. And then in my last spring in the dean's office, which would be, would that be '23, I guess spring of 2023, I went back to it thinking about what I'm going to do in retirement. And I thought, well, I'm going to tell his story. And I reread the obituary, and I remembered that he has a surviving daughter, a homeopathic physician in Germany, and a surviving son who is a professor of mathematics in California. I thought I can't write anything without their approval. That got me onto the Library of Alexandria, which got me onto the ancient philosopher, Hypatia, and I decided to write a novel. So for the last two years I've been working on a novel. Today is Thursday. On Monday, I met with the writer, courtesy of the summer Writers Institute with the help of Bob Boyers in the English department, Marc Woodworth in the English department, and Adam Braver, who is the co-director of the Writers Institute. They put me in touch with a writer who lives in Florida who's working on her second novel. I sent her my 300-page manuscript about a month or so ago. She read it with great care and gave me an hour and a half phenomenal feedback. So now I need to go back and make some changes. AndLG: And what are you going to call this? MA: Well, right now it's called the Tattered Satchel. We'll see if the title holds, but she seemed to think it works. It's a story of two women, Hypatia, this ancient philosopher, mathematician, teacher, the daughter of a philosopher, scholar, editor of texts whose A Page 14 of 17 �editions of the texts of Euclid and others survive to this day. She was murdered by a Christian mob in Alexandria in 415 CE. But the other half of the novel is about a liberal arts college professor, by the name of Margaret, who is going to be standing for tenure. So it's two very different stories and eventually their stories, not their lives, but their stories intersect. Margaret turns to Hypatia to help her get tenure, but she does so in a way that would be called devious, if nothing else, deceitful, unethical, and amoral. So that's what I'm working on. LG: It sounds fantastic. MA: It's been fun. I never thought I could write a novel. LG: Did you have to get an agent? MA: That's next. When I'm done with this version, I still want to show it to a couple of people, I gave it, for example, to Steve Stern who used to teach in the English department at Skidmore. Acclaimed novelist, I think has written 16 novels. He read it about a year and a half ago. He was enormously helpful in helping me think about... Because I'm no novelist. I'm an historian, so he really helped me think about the tools that you need to write a novel. I shared a reading with Sue and Leslie and some other friends. I've had a couple of other people read it. Leslie has read it a couple of times. I think it's better. I don't know that it rises to the level of something that ought to be published. I hope it will be. We'll find out. LG: Good luck. MA: Thank you. LG: Anything else we should cover? MA: Just one small thing. It's not small. It was significant. It was the morning of 9/11, and my office was in Ladd Hall, which is attached to the center of campus, the Student Union Case Center. And I was walking to the library, to library 203 where I was teaching a Latin class. That was the very beginning of the fall semester. And there used to be a TV downstairs in the spa, the cafeteria. And so the TV was on, and I saw a friend and colleague, Reg Lilly, in the philosophy department standing in front of the TV. Now I happen to know that Reg is a basketball fan and a Chicago Bulls fan, and I happened to know that that day Michael Jordan was announcing he was leaving Major League Baseball and coming back to basketball. I had a few minutes. I thought I'd go grab a cup of coffee, say hi to Reg, and go to class. A Page 15 of 17 �I saw the aftermath of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. I went to my class, and I told the students what had happened. I asked them if they want to cancel class, and they said, no, please teach. And so we stayed together for, it was probably 80 minutes. And when I left the library, I ran to a bunch of librarians. They were hearing various rumors. They heard the State Department had been hit. They heard that the White House had been hit. We didn't know yet the full extent. At that point, the second tower had been hit, and I ran into Pat Oles back in Case Center. Pat, at the time, was the Dean of Students. I'll never forget this. He had a stack of paper printed out with the names of every student who had a parent or family member who worked in the World Trade Center. We lost no parent or family member. We did lose one alumnus whose name is commemorated on a plaque outside of a classroom in I think on the first floor of Bolton Hall. LG: And who was that, do you remember? MA: I forget his name, but he's there. But I remember the students and how they responded later in the day. So we went back to the department not knowing what to do. And one of the students said, let's go give blood. So a bunch of classics faculty and a bunch of our students who are majors who used to hang out and I think really wanted to be with somebody, we drove downtown. I forget exactly where it was, but it was in one of the buildings that used to be part of Skidmore. And we got in line and offered to give blood and they said, we're overwhelmed. We can't take anymore. But I just remember how the students responded. So I'll never forget that moment. However awful it was, the students' desire to contribute. It says something about our students. LG: Good. Anything else that you want to include? MA: No, that's it. Just, thank you. Thank you for doing this project. It's important, I think, for not just the retirees who get a chance to talk about their experience at a place like Skidmore College. But if anyone is listening, if anyone is reading the transcripts, and I hope they are, to learn something about the place where they work or worked. I wish I had had this. I've always wanted to write volume two of Mary Lynn's “Make No Small Plans”. LG: Good. MA: But my volume two was not going to be what Mary wrote. It was going to be the scandals of Skidmore. I just don't think I have the nerve at this point to do it. I don't know that any of these transcripts reveal any of the scandals. You would know better than I. But I think someone needs to write that and circulate it anonymously. LG: Okay. We'll wait for edition number two. MA: Okay, deal. Thank you. LG: Thank you, Michael. A Page 16 of 17 �MA: Thank you. SB: Thanks, Michael. LG: This has been wonderful. A Page 17 of 17 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Arnush Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 48:52 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Michael Arnush Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 17, 2025 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Michael Arnush came to Skidmore in 1989 as Director of Classical Studies, after receiving his PhD in classics and ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. He served many roles during his tenure at the College: he taught Greek and Latin languages and history; developed the first summer program abroad which included students, alums and Skidmore board members; built the Honors Forum; developed and directed the First Year Experience, and developed and taught in the Scribner Seminars Program. Michael served on several college committees and in 2020 became Associate Dean of the Faculty for Student Affairs. He retired in 2023. Since retirement he has been writing a novel, “The Tattered Satchel.” Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cookbooks Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Official Guinness Cookbook Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/26/2021 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Insight Editions Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Raoul Goff Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Caroline Hennesy Subject The topic of the resource Cooking with Guinness beer Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Insight Editions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Hardcover, 143 pages Type The nature or genre of the resource Cookbook Abstract A summary of the resource. This cookbook includes over 70 recipes, including the iconic stouts, ales, and lagers of Guinness beer. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Introduction All about Guinness Guinness and food The recipes Appetizers and shareables On the side Entrées Desserts and baking Cocktails Glossary Measurement conversion tables Index Acknowledgments About the author Date Available Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available. 10/26/2021 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 10/26/2021 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2021 Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Hennessy, Caroline, and Evi Abeler. The official Guinness Cookbook: Over 70 recipes for cooking and baking from Ireland’s famous brewery. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2021. Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Insight Editions https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a94a6b52dba861e38d21200a9ff821cd.jpg b16952b837c938bc6258324460d3c5c2 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/aa42f7ef04c9373d8aef8fdb8fafd7e0.jpg 7dd47f64677c23d88422c9077e941b04 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/516854983351c1fdd59db29e87c61e71.jpg 2316b7fa16f00cb03910636f18374731 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/12a97f31ea93e1640d4794e1f5874504.jpg cff05b834a75b0b9fcfff79c8dcc59df Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J. Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 4/10/2025 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Around the World Cookbooks https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/217d36134dbea1b97ea2af7423af7501.jpg e51c7e7c1b8f06bf0e972f87ba00e878 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/6f4b28b630b5366a2f27c08c7569d5dd.png f8027bcaea5e2acd0b807be2826a0ee2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cookbooks Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Composite image Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image N/A Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J. Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 3/10/2025 Subject - Organization Names of individuals associated with the item. Please put "Tje" at the end: University of Chicago Press, The Cookbook Logo Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cooking the Past Logo https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fadc6814c60d9b12ae48a4c0ed08b915.jpg 55f9b3a27cbd19ff9de267b75eccce7a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cookbooks Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print advertising Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Unk Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 3/10/2025 Date Depicted (Display) Text version of the date field -- can handle non-numeric characters (ca. 1850s, [1844]). This is the content date field that will display. [1947] Date Depicted (Numeric) Date that the information on the item depicts. In many cases, this will be the same date as that in the date field, but there will be exceptions. For example, a historical map drawnin 1890 might show Saratoga Springs as it was in 1820. Or, the information on the map itself might include detailed information that enables us to extrapolate a date, for example, "based on a survey done in 1841." Many State Archives map catalog records refer to this as the "situation date." [1947] Date Published (Display) Text version of the date field -- can handle non-numeric characters (ca. 1850s, [1844]). This is the date field that will display. [1947] Abstract (& Historical Note) Natural language description of the map itself, providing a general summary of the map and noting significant features. This is the place to introduce keywords and proper names that might be of interest to researchers, but do not warrant a separate subject heading of their own. Inset maps should also be described here, with their full titles given. Whenever historical or explanatory information is available, it should be included here as well. This includes information about items or events that are larger than just the map itself; for example, information about cartographers, a description of the map's historical significance (for example, "This is the first printed map of Saratoga Springs"), notes on the laws leading to a map's creation, descriptions of changes in state or county lines, information about the organization that created the map, how often maps were updated, and information about the map's creation and publication. Many State Archives maps have historical information in the catalog record -- that should be captured in this field. An advertising image promoting the reach of NBC Affiliate KFYR of Bismarck, No. Dakota uses a cartoon style showing a radio tower over an outline map of North Dakota and surrounding states, with cartoon figures. The station broadcast at 550 KC and 5000 watts. The ad claims (with an asterisk) that the station 'comes in loud and clear in a larger area than any other station in the U.S.A.'. According to the website Faded Signals, the station came on the air in 1925, founded by Phillip and Etta Meyer. From a golden era 1930s-1950s, the station carried NBC programming, swithcing to Top 40 in the 1960s. In 1966, KFYR-FM launched, switching up music genres until rturning to Top 40 in 2012. The Meyers sold the radio station -- and its sister TV station, on the air since 1953--and in 2014 Clear Channel Owned it by 2014. (https://fadedsignals.com/post/85072189542/kfyr-signed-on-the-air-from-bismarck-nd-in) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource KFYR Comes in Loud and Clear out Here Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1947] https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/5ac6823845c8d9e4be81c9da2409ebdc.pdf 20bdefc633e3fc8711ccc957e85336ab PDF Text Text ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7dc4b8551b4910900e80f0c0693f21b6.png 44d9316c882152b110bff2a6ee7d8e3e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4610b34a0fa031c18edb0d97f1bb3b78.png d9fc84cf90bec006e6a14f6daa752aea https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bbaabd06ff5d60e6b414f487dd2dc165.png 87849a88b7270d4fd9992e6a38938958 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fcb3716827fe52cb02799d5eaf3cbe58.png 8e4589c6ccc6913f216e7066eac27b5a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/206f6244d600219d340dc714aa95283c.png 710b22e1b13a3e4e614ffe9da8d41378 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1375af5363d013d78448fc3b8a225287.png a99b5bc589bb3334f1d9f188c92c6af0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1861f035ec94b35d1d4973d1f189644d.png 688634f8b70ea6c576327546207f60d3 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/02ea45dc0ef0e30f29801564a869a7e3.png 587504137ca3a13ddfd5834a9d552e92 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/468b7b0a1b3e89bd16f838b249c9c168.png 29b30b53559400be7c5d937edb5a1ab4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cookbooks Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Repository Name of the repository that holds the original item. Internet Archive (archive.org) Creator - Individual Name of the person or people responsible for creating the item. Barr, Tom Creator - Organization Company, government agency, or other organization responsible for creating the item (the publisher should not be listed again here unless the same organization had a role other than that of publisher in sponsoring or creating the map). KFYR Subject - Details This subject field describes the amount of detail in a map. For maps: (or layers) included on the map itself. This field might denote that the map includes information about, for example, Mountains, Railroads, Soundings, Elevation, or Population. These are controlled-vocabulary terms developed locally. The cataloger should be generous in assigning these terms -- even if only one canal is visible on the map, it should receive a "Canals" subject in this layer. Some of these terms are less specific than others and may warrant expansion in the Abstract field. For example, the "Businesses" term might be included here while the Abstract notes that the map shows mills and stores. Multiple terms can be used in this field. Community Cookbooks Cuisine--United States Cuisine--International North Dakota Subject - Geographic Library of Congress subject headings. For maps: for major geographic locations depicted on the map, followed, in nearly every case, by the "Maps" genre subheading. (For example, "Saratoga Springs (N.Y.) -- Maps.") This field will be especially important when the records from this collection are incorporated into larger databases and catalogs. United States--North Dakota--Bismarck Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J. Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 3/10/2025 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource KFYR Radio "Around The World" Cookbook Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [KFYR] Language A language of the resource en Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource KFYR Radio Subject The topic of the resource Community cookbooks--United States--North Dakota Cooking--North Dakota Cooking, American Cooking, International Radio Stations Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Barr, Tom (Station Manager) Type The nature or genre of the resource cookbook Abstract A summary of the resource. This cookbook from the AM/FM station <a href="https://kfyr.iheart.com/" title="KFYR Radio">KFYR</a> offers, in the words of station manager Tom Barr, recipes from 'over 40 different lands... supplied by listeners from KFYRLAND.' Luella Travel of Linton, North Dakota won the 'name the cookbook' contest. In 1969, the station was AM/FM. In 2025, it's still on the air (AM only) and online, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFYR_(AM)">celebrating its centennial</a>, on AM, playing music, presenting the news and sports, and sponsoring an Agricultural Show in Bismarck with over 7500 expected in February 2026. <br /><br />The world in 1969, at least as represented in the cookbook, was largely European (at least as far as the Table of Contents was concerned). The first section of American Recipes was about 20% of the book, with only "Oriental Recipes" (pp 84-87) and Mexican Recipes (pp 74-76) named. "Misc. Recipes from Many Different Countries" at the end (pp 97-110) was still largely European recipes, with a few less-familiar cuisines from Armenia and Bulgaria, as well as some from the Middle East and Australia. For the home cook, a few pages for "Personal Recipes" concluded the volume. <br /><br />Who were the listeners who wrote in? In large part they were women, identified as wives rather than individuals, primarily by their husband's name (Scones, Australia - Mrs. Merton Lenihan, Baldwin, N. Dak), and more rarely their own Chicken and Equsi (Africa) - Mrs. Beulah M. Hill, Turtle Lake, N. Dak.,) A very few (presumably) unmarried women wrote in (Savory Rice (Brazil) - Cheryl Petryzak, Grassy Butte, N. Dak.) and the occasional man (Green Beans &amp; Rice (Lebanese) - Ed George, P.O. Box 216, Ft. Yates, N. Dak. and Fouja Djedjad (Persia) - Arthur Anderson, Carrington, N. Dak.) (all pp. 96-106). <br /><br />Regardless of who they were, few names seem to correlate directly with the cuisine in the recipe. So how did these recipes make it to North Dakota? Did a soldier bring a recipe back from deployment? Did a curious home cook test out and then adopt and adapt another culture's recipe and so decide to recommend it? <br /><br />Over fifty years later, it might take some serious sleuthing to find an answer. What is clear is that KFYR hoped readers would use the recipes. Before the first recipe, a table of equivalents offered cooks guidance on converting volumes (cups, squares) to other units -- numbers of egg whites or egg yolks, chocolate squares, to cups and ounces.<br /><br />Tom Barr received the North Dakota Broadcast Assocation "Pioneer" award in 2001, when he was station manager of KFYR-TV. (<a href="https://www.ndba.org/files/pioneers/">NDBA.org</a>) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Unknown Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 110 pages, self-published book Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1969 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. Unk. Audience A class of entity for whom the resource is intended or useful. general public North Dakota Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. <a href="https://archive.org/details/kfyrradio550bismarckaroundtheworldcookbook1969/mode/2up">Internet Archive</a>. <br /><a href="https://archive.org/details/kfyrradio550bismarckaroundtheworldcookbook1969/mode/2up">https://archive.org/details/kfyrradio550bismarckaroundtheworldcookbook1969/mode/2up</a><br />Uploaded to the Internet Archive by member '<a href="https://archive.org/details/@scearley">scearley</a>,' who has uploaded multiple cookbooks to the archive. Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. unk. Description An account of the resource Bismarck, N.D. radio station KFYR has published what seems to be an annual collection of listener-provided recipes as a cookbook, each with a different theme. Worldcat gives a flavor of some other years' tastes: KFYR Cookbook: Way to a man's heart (1968), KFYR radio cookbook (1970) with "favorite recipes of government, industry, and entertainment leaders from North and South Dakota, plus recipes from the white house." The 75h anniversary cookbook appeared in 2000. community cookbook KFYR North Dakota radio station https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/63bc23ca3c9ae2c738f513d9b74290d4.jpg 6031e036c7a68a7dff3c78593160bdf6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7e9f83af0743394092555795b2b9abb2.mp3 ba23b51c4ea659f8925eaf6008973129 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b21e48258a6c4da901ceebf6144e85bc.pdf 9a4548b0009fcd18bbc5d42ff97b15d5 PDF Text Text Tim McGuiggan Interview Conducted By: Isabel Kroeger and Nate Meyers Recorded: 3/22/2024 at 1:30 on Skidmore Campus Nate M. [00:00:01] Alright, so we just wanted to ask basic information to start off with like your name and where you grew up and also what growing up in said place was like. Tim McGuiggan [00:00:17] So my name is Tim McGuiggan. I grew up in a town called Whitesboro, New York, which is just outside of Utica. Utica was an old mill town that kind of fell on hard times while I was growing up. It was one of those towns that was built around, a company, it was built around General Electric, and General Electric pulled out, which made it really diminish the city quite a bit. But when I was younger, and still to this day, I still consider myself a Central New Yorker. It was a great place to grow up. The food is incredible, still is incredible. But you could go into one town, New York Mills, people were speaking Polish, South Utica people speaking Italian, Northern Utica, people speaking Spanish. It was incredibly ethnic. It was great place grow up, great, great place to grow up. That's it for now. Izzy K. [00:01:19] Um, so I know you talked about how your mother and your grandfather were in unions. Tim McGuiggan [00:01:25] Yes. Izzy K. [00:01:26] Um, and did that, um, affect you growing up? Did you know about it growing up. Tim McGuiggan [00:01:31] Oh, absolutely. Some of my first memories actually with my grandfather, he was, when I was younger, preschool age, like four or five, he was retired from the railroad, he was a railroad worker. And one of my fondest memories of him was my mother and I would pick him up and we'd go to the Union Hall for Friday fish fries or whatever the meal was. And it was, it was his social club, his... That's where he met up with all the old retired union guys, and they tell stories and things. So unions have been a part of my life going back there, not just the labor aspect of unions, but the social aspect of the unions as well. So earliest memories there, I remember also as a adolescent, early teen, my mother's union going through some fights. I also had an aunt who was a president of a teacher's union. That was back in the days when you could strike as a teacher and she actually led one of the first strikes in Central New York. So it was all around me as a child. Nate M. [00:02:37] Can you not go on strike as a teacher? Tim McGuiggan [00:02:38] In New York State, you are not allowed to actually strike. There's something that's called the Taylor Law in New York State, which makes it illegal for us to strike. There are some other components of it that give the union benefits as to offset the fact that we can't strike. Nate M. [00:03:00] Is there, do you think it like, is it equal payout for the benefits of not being able to strike? Tim McGuiggan [00:03:11] It's situational depending upon where you are, so the main payoff is this, teachers in New York State work on a salary schedule, so we're guaranteed a raise every year. We know, I can tell you what my raise is going to be for the next three �years, right? If that contract expires, then the salary schedule stays in place. So, in other words, even though our contract is over, I continue to get raises year to year to year. So that's the guarantee that we got in exchange for giving up the right to strike. I think it's good because I don't think, especially now, public employees striking gets the positive response from the community that it used to. So I don't think we would strike anyways. Nate M. [00:04:06] Um, was your grandpa still involved with the union even after he retired, like more than just meeting him? Tim McGuiggan [00:04:12] Yes. He wasn't an active officer or anything, but everything from community service projects he was involved in, but if they had labor rallies, he was always there for those. He still, even though he was retired, had a vote in the union, so he would always be there to vote. And they were the labor unions in Utica, but I think just about anywhere back in the 70s. They were very connected, so if the pipe fitters needed support in action, the railroad workers went there and he was there with those too. There was a social aspect to that too as well, but he was definitely still active in the labor movement even after he retired. Nate M. [00:05:04] I'm sorry, these are kind of choppy. That's OK. We had to cut it down from how many we originally had. What exactly do you do for the union, and how long have you been doing it? Tim McGuiggan [00:05:15] Okay, so currently I am the president of the Saratoga Springs Teachers Association. That's the teachers union for the Sarotoga Springs City School District. We have 548 members. I am elected to a two-year term. I'm serving in my third two- year term right now, so I've been in this position for six years. Previous to that I was, I think the best term to equate it would be a shop steward. I was a head building rep in our high school which was our largest building for five years previous to being that. Previous to that I was also a vice president. I got involved in our union 21 years ago when I got laid off by the school district and as it turned out the president of our union at that Struck kind of a backroom deal with the district that would benefit her personally in exchange for not putting up a fight to lay off 13 turned out to be 13 people of which I was one so that outraged me quite a bit and prompted me to say okay well we need a new direction and you can't do that from the outside so if you're going to complain you got to get involved so that's how I got involved. Wasn't the best reason to involved or or situation that got me involved, but it's good for some fun. Yeah, but that's where I got in. Nate M. [00:06:48] Are there any current issues the union is focused on that you can talk about? Tim McGuiggan [00:06:56] The school safety is a huge issue for us. Not just where you're seeing, you know, active shooters, things like that, but we have a lot of very volatile students in our schools now. And this is not just us here at Saratoga, this is country-wide and my knowledge is mainly statewide. That's kind of whammy going on of we have a tremendous amount of teacher burnout happening, so we have a lot of people leaving the profession, and at the same time we don't have anybody entering the profession. So it's causing a tremendous of shortage of teachers, which does not, it certainly hurts the districts and it hurts our students, but it also hurts us as an association. We don't want to see that either. So we're very involved in recruitment right now as well. I would say those are probably the two biggest issues facing. Izzy K. [00:07:57] And how do you deal with those issues of the union? �Tim McGuiggan [00:08:01] Well, we have a lot of art, so we're associated with the New York State United teachers, NYSUT. They run a lot on the recruitment side. They're doing a lot there in terms of working with colleges. We actually started a program this year in our high school to try and recruit students to start thinking about possibly education. So we're running a couple classes. My internship program that I run actually places students as teachers, kind of as... Kind of a modified student-teacher situation, so to try and get people interested. So we're going down into even the high school level to try to get students interested and carry them through there for that. On the burnout side, that's not as easily done because the demands on teachers has changed a lot in the past three years and you're always balancing. What's good for, as a union leader, what's good for teachers with your primary focus, which is always what's best for students. So that balance is difficult. On the school safety side, that is a hot button issue in our community, especially if you guys, I don't know if you follow anything that's going on in our communities, but you have a very divided community about school safety. You have a large group of people who want a very upfront police presence, armed police presence in buildings, and then you have a very large group of people who see it the exact opposite way and don't see that as a good environment for students. And both sides are constantly trying to get the teachers to chime in on their side. So for as a union leader I have to be very careful how I address that issue. One, make sure, my primary job is to represent my members. I can't state my own personal opinions. I have to state the opinion of the membership. But there's times where I have to be careful how that's said so it doesn't get misconstrued or we don't pull ourselves into a place, into a conversation that we don't really have a place in. So it's a difficult balance, very difficult balance right now. Nate M. [00:10:21] How does the union handle internal... conflicts or just differing ideas. Is there like a place to debate? Tim McGuiggan [00:10:31] Yeah, we have a representative government built within our union. So our school district has eight buildings, right? Six elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. In every building there are elected representatives and those positions are a one-year term so every june we have an election and each building picks who they want to be their representatives who are their voice basically they're they're congress people right. And then we have what's the next level up is what's called our executive council our executive counsel would equate to congress They are the decisionmaking. Group for our union. They then, whatever that group decides, gives the officers, myself and my vice presidents, okay, this is the direction we want you to go. Now it's my job to see that through, right? I don't have executive power like a president does. I don't sign off on things or whatever. I'm involved in the debate. I provide information in the but but they are the decision-making party. So, and even though it's those people with the vote have been elected, anybody can come to our Executive Council meeting so you don't have to be a representative to speak at one of our meetings. And oftentimes that's usually what happens. Someone will come bring a concern or an issue to the executive council, make their case like hey I think we should start pushing for this and then we'll debate it and then the council will make a vote and decide which direction they want to go. Izzy K. [00:12:16] Are there, like, what percentage of teachers are in the teachers' union? Tim McGuiggan [00:12:20] We, so this, I don't know if you guys may not know this, there was a huge shift in the labor movement for public employees recently. It was called the Janus decision. It went to the Supreme Court decision. It used to be we were a closed shop, which meant if you were a teacher in Serratory Springs, you belong to the union. �You didn't have a choice. Now everybody has a choice, so when people get hired by the school district, we meet with them and try and convince them to join the union we right now have 500, I think our exact number is 518 members. We have two teachers who are not numbers. That's it. The average in New York State right now is running somewhere around 90 percent. So we're well above the average. But it has changed how we deal with things quite a bit because it used to be just, you're a member of the union, you don't have a choice. Now we actually have to, which I think is a good thing, kind of an unintended consequence. It's made us actually stronger because it has the executive committees and the officers to be much more focused on talking and listening to every member rather than just you know, kind of the people who are involved. We do a thing in our union where we call it a one-to-one where we take that executive council and we divide up all our membership so every member in our association gets a one on one conversation with one of those executives council members, one of those building reps. And we basically, we don't ask them, we basically ask them three questions every year. Number one, how are we doing as a union representing you? What do you think we could do better? And are there any specific issues that we're not addressing that you think need to? And those, that came straight from, out of that Janus case where we decided we needed to make sure our members see us every year, hear from us. We're a big district. We are spread out over eight buildings. It's very easy for someone to get lost. So we make sure that we're in touch with everybody. And a lot of great ideas have come out of those conversations. A lot of good ideas. Nate M. [00:14:38] Do you guys ever collaborate with other unions? Tim McGuiggan [00:14:41] Constantly. Constantly, other teachers unions primarily. So, we are We have all different types of committees and associations. There is, in this area, there's something called the suburban council, which is very similar schools from Albany up to here that we work with. I'm also on the Saratoga County Labor Council. So on that council is people from aluminum workers, steam fitters. Uh... There's railroad there's communications union there are other teachers unions that are there professor university professors have representation there so it's it's it's a constant you're constantly communicating because you if you if you just to isolate to what's going on in your place you're not seeing what's goin on there's so many different resources out there for everybody so we're constantly talking. Izzy K. [00:15:46] In a slightly different direction. Can you talk about kind of everything that you do? I know you do a lot So not just Tim McGuiggan [00:15:54] Not just union? Okay. So all of my different roles, are you ready? Okay, so my primary job is I am a high school teacher in our business department. So within that I teach a college-level business law class, a 200 level business law class. I teach data design class, which is primarily an advanced Microsoft Excel class and I run our internship program. I am our union president. I run our business club, DECA club. I run a community service club that's through the Saratoga Lions as well. I am the lead of our mock trial team. I also teach, I'm adjunct professor with SUNY Adirondack up at Comstock Prison, which is a medium security prison. And I teach the law class and also the data class up there as well. Trying to think of what else I do. I am a member of the board of directors of the Saratoga's Community Federal Credit Union. So I sit on their board of Directors. I am husband, father of three adult children and also a brand new puppy. Nate M. [00:17:12] What type of dog? �[00:17:13] Yellow Lab Golden Mix. So we had two dogs. We have, we have not had a puppy in over 20 years. We're dog people. I met my wife 37 years ago, right. And we got our first dog when we were in college and we counted this from that point till our two dogs passed away in September. We have been without a dog in our life for seven days. And then there was another 10 days till we got this puppy. So, so we are definitely dog people, but one of the dogs that we just had to put down was a yellow. Lab golden mix and we thought he was just the sweetest thing so we said you know what let's give it a shot again so my wife is retired so she's home all day so she is actually dealing with the puppy which is nice i just come home and play. Nate M. [00:17:58] Was she at all involved in the union? Tim McGuiggan [00:18:00] She was a teacher for 34 years at saratoga springs schools she she was involved in the union as a member but never enough in an official capacity she was not a building rep or anything like that, but she was involved in a lot of our committees and things. Nate M. [00:18:18] Um, so you said you work with the prison a bit to teach. Have you had any, is there anything like prison unions? Tim McGuiggan [00:18:26] Yeah, as a matter of fact, I was there last night and I was having a conversation with one of the corrections officers. They all belong to a union called NYSCOBA, the New York State Correctional Officers and something or other association. And they are a very, very strong active union in New York state. Uh... So i was uh... One of them was talking about an issue so i introduce myself and told them what my role was we just kind of uh... As i have to i have a pretty long walk down to where the school area is in the jail and he walked with me and we just talked about the different issues that they're dealing with versus what we're dealing you know it's completely different world what they're doing with so but they are a very very strong union uh... And uh... They are uh... They have to be because, you know, I'm dealing with things like, you know, when my people get in trouble, it's because they show up late to work, or they leave early, or, you know, kind of somewhat minor things. When their people get more get in trouble, It's usually because they got involved in some kind of a physical altercation with an incarcerated individual, you can't use prisoner anymore. So. It's a much higher level than what I'm dealing with in a lot of ways. It's a fascinating part of my... I got involved in it two years ago. I wouldn't tell you it's the best part of my work week, but it is fascinating. It's definitely fascinating. Nate M. [00:20:06] Do you believe the work makes an impact? Tim McGuiggan [00:20:08] Oh absolutely, I can give you a can because of confidentiality, but I know of four of my students who have graduated with an associate's degree and have used that to either enroll in a four year program or used it to get a job. So we know for a fact that it works. Absolutely do. Izzy K. [00:20:28] So you're involved in, really involved in the community. Tim McGuiggan [00:20:32] Yes, very much so. Izzy K. [00:20:34] What's your motivation? �Tim McGuiggan [00:20:36] I love this place. I really do. I mean, you guys are here. It's not a normal little city, right? It's pretty amazing, everything that we have for the size we have in Sarasota Springs. And I firmly believe and have always believed that the school district is the center of the community just because we deal with everybody. We deal with everyone who has a kid. In a lot of different ways. So yeah, it's it's I benefit a great deal from living here. So the more I give, the more I benefit, quite frankly, it is a little bit of a selfish thing as well. So but yeah, I do. I've lived here for 36 years. I still do consider myself a from New Yorker just because I grew up there, but... It's it's been a wonderful place that I have never thought of leaving here at any point at any Izzy K. [00:21:38] Mm-hmm. Nate M. [00:21:48] What was the original purpose of the teacher's union? Tim McGuiggan [00:21:52] So teachers unions didn't really start until the early 70s. And in New York State, there was kind of the grandfather of teachers union was a guy by the name of Al Shanker, who organized the first unions down in the New York City area and started the New York State United teachers. And it centered 100% around pay. I remember when my wife started teaching, my wife started before I did. She knew people that were teachers. Getting a full teacher's salary, who were also collecting food stamps. Because the salary was just nothing. Our salary is still not, in comparison to other people, we're required to have a master's degree. In comparison to people with master's, we're still not on the same level. Yes, we do get six weeks off in the summer, which we get that. Trust me, no one takes that for granted. But that was the center of it. But from that also were things such as our health benefits, which are good in comparison to anybody right now, and also our retirement system were things that were built in to compensate for the salary discrepancies that we had. So that was the center of the teachers unions. That was the main purpose of where they came from, at least in New York State. Nate M. [00:23:19] Do you think like paying salary are still one of the main goals? Tim McGuiggan [00:23:21] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We are currently negotiating. I'm negotiating our contract, our new contract right now, and they're the number one and two issues. The cost of insurance is just, it's incredible. So, you know, you're talking real dollars out of people's pockets when you're talking insurance right now. So they are the main issues. We have other issues about work that we're dealing with about, you know, that you normally deal with in your contract language, trying to, you know how our work day goes and things like that. But the main things are always paying insurance. Always paying insurance, our retirement system is not, that's regulated by law so you don't negotiate anything when it comes to retirement. Nate M. [00:24:10] How long do contracts normally last? [00:24:12] Anywhere from three to five years, I would say the average is three years, but we are just, we came to the end of a five-year contract because we had a lot that we wanted to structurally do within our contract. So it took us five years to, you can't just, you can't, just come up with a completely new concept and say, okay, we're starting that next month. You've got to build to it. So we did a five year contract because we had things that we want it to build. Um, but on the average, they're three years. Most, most are three year deals. Nate M. [00:24:43] Is that, is that an average, like, for here specifically, or is that? �Tim McGuiggan [00:24:48] Again, New York State, I would say, the average is three years. Definitely. Izzy K. [00:24:55] When you're negotiating, who exactly are you negotiating? Tim McGuiggan [00:25:00] We are negotiating with the school district administration, so the superintendent of schools and anybody else he designates. Usually, every school has a finance officer. They're part of the negotiations. And usually, the school's counsel, their lawyer. They are technically negotiating on behalf of the school board, which oversees everything. The school board is basically the board of directors of the School District. They're technically negotiating for them on behalf of them, but the reality is the school board is going to approve whatever the administration, in most situations, it's rare that they would not support their administration. So that's who's on their side. On our side it's teachers, it's our officers, but then also NYSUT, our parent union, provides someone who's called the labor relations specialist, and they help us in our negotiations as well. But we do, and this is not normal, we as an association that serves the SSTA, we contract out with an actuarial service, we contact out with a couple of other services to help us because we're not professional negotiators, right, we don't, but we're not stupid, so we know to go to people who know what they're doing. Nate M. [00:26:22] While you've been president, have there been any particular issues you can talk about that have stood in the way of the union? Tim McGuiggan [00:26:31] In terms of getting it stood in the way of getting a contract or it stood in the away of us just as an association things that we wanted that we weren't able to accomplish? Nate M. [00:26:40] Either, whichever one is easier to talk about. Tim McGuiggan [00:26:42] Well, I cannot talk about our current negotiations as to what we're talking about and things. But in years past, the length of the workday and the amount of contact time with students has been something that we as a district, that was that five years that we had to work on and change because, again, this goes back to when I said earlier, as we're in a different situation in that. We're also worrying about students, right? That's, we didn't, like you'll hear people say all the time, you didn't become a teacher to get rich, right. You became a teacher because you love working with students and that's your goal. So there are times when you give things up for the students that may not be in your best interest as an individual and time is usually the thing. So, structuring your day is a very, very important part of any teacher's contract. And again, how many students do you see in a day? How many classes do you teach in a today? What are the responsibilities you have outside of just teaching and, again, what's the overall length of the instructional day? Those are big big hurdles that that are there. As far as negotiating a contract, that was our last one. We dealt with that a lot. Outside of negotiating issues that we come across in in for us is the entire COVID situation. I can't I can tell you how many hours I put in. So when that hit in March. No one knew what to do. So we scrambled, we went online. You guys were all a part of that, right? It stunk, it was terrible. Everybody knew it was horrible, right. So we spent that entire summer trying to come up with something that was better than that. But it's also, again, that balance. As representing the teachers, I had to make sure that what we came up with wasn't so oppressive to us that it just burned everybody out. But you also wanted to make it was a valuable instructional model for the students. So we spent, I mean, I think I worked seven days a week through �that summer just trying to come up with stuff. We're working with the district trying to come up the plan we were going to use when students returned that first year. So, and that still didn't work that well. But it was the best we could do, but it still wasn't good. Still wasn't. Nate M. [00:29:24] Um, do you feel like, I guess, did COVID have any impact on union meetings? Tim McGuiggan [00:29:31] Yeah, we had to go Zoom, and they stink. We went to Zoom meetings throughout there. Our executive council meets once a month. But here's the thing, they stink in the sense that for me, as president, I need to, it's not just hearing somebody say something. I need judge how important is this issue to everybody? It's not by just what people say, it's... You've got to look around the room. Who's uncomfortable? Who's comfortable? Who's getting agitated? Who is not? I'm constantly dealing with the different worlds of elementary versus secondary. Elementary teachers are nothing like secondary teachers. The secondary day is nothing like the elementary day. So I'm almost, I feel at times like I'm the president of two unions. So having everybody in the room is really good. Having everybody on Zoom takes away a lot of that interaction, but it's really convenient. So my members right now, I'm struggling right now getting members to come back in person, not because they're afraid of COVID or getting sick. It's just a heck of a lot easier, especially if you're an elementary teacher and your day ends at 3.30 and our meeting starts at four. Where we try to have it in a central location so they've got to pack up, get out of the school, come to the meeting, versus just flicking on their computer in their classroom where they can sit in great papers while they're listening to the meetings. So it's been a challenge getting everybody to come back in, but it's just so valuable that you can't not do in-person meetings. You know, I mean, again, picture Congress not in person. It's not the same. Not the same. Do you have any other? Tim McGuiggan [00:31:23] Have you taught anywhere else besides here? Tim McGuiggan [00:31:25] I taught, I started teaching at Ballston Spa. I taught there for two years before I came here. Prior to that, I went to, my undergrad degree is in hotel restaurant management. That's what I went school for. And I went, when I graduated college, I went straight to work for Marriott Hotels and I loved it, it was great. But I had an aha moment where I was working, I had worked a wedding, got out at 2.30, that was a Saturday night. I went as I was leaving, I made the mistake of looking in my mailbox and there was notice saying that Sunday morning, which was my day off, 7:30 cabinet meeting, which I was a member of the cabinet, I was the catering director. And so I had to get home, I got home about 3 o'clock, get back up at 7, come back down for the meeting. As we were waiting for the general manager, everyone was talking and it dawned on me that 12 of the 13 people sitting in the room were divorced. And I was fairly newly married, I think the third year of marriage. My wife was pregnant with our first child and I just thought this isn't a good lifestyle for a family. So I then, me and my brother who was a stockbroker, he was burning out of that job. We bought a bread distribution company. We delivered Thomas's English muffins in the local area so that I could go and get my masters at night. And he just needed a break. And we were gonna do that for, the plan there was to do that for two years, sell the business, and go our separate ways. And we ended up doing it for six years because it was a bit of a racket and we made a bunch of money doing it. So once that, and then it kinda came to an end and that's when I moved into teaching. Nate M. [00:33:17] I've gotta get into the bread industry. Tim McGuiggan [00:33:18] Not anymore. It's no good anymore. �Nate M. [00:33:20] Oh, really? [00:33:20] No, it's only a 2% margin now and they have a much stricter control over the distribution of it. Because they only have a 2% margin, so it's not the racket that it used to be. That's why we got out. We saw it changing. So we sold it. We started out where I think we owned the distribution rights to Colony, Latham, and a part of Albany. By the time we were done, we owned all the way from Clifton Park down to Cogleskill. We just kept buying up routes, buying up roads from different people because we kind of, we understood the system better than other people. So we were making money, making money. And then it got to the point where, well, Thomas got sold to another company and that another company came in and went, oh, wait a second here, what's going on? And we knew at that point, we were like, okay. So we sold the company, got out. It was a good deal, it's definitely a good deal. Helped compensate for the low teacher salary I was taking on. So yeah, so and then I started out, I started out in special education as a behavior specialist. So I took, I had my first program at Balston Spa, I had kids coming out of juvenile hall. So I've kind of come full circle. I started teaching kids coming to juvenile hall and now I'm winding up my career up at a prison. So That's how I started and then I moved over to Saratoga to start that similar type of program. Then I got laid off That whole story and then because my degree was in business They had a retirement in the business department. So I applied for it and I got it Nate M. [00:34:58] What were you teaching before business? Tim McGuiggan [00:35:00] Special education. So I was teaching those students earth science, algebra, English, and global studies. They were in my room all at the same time. Izzy K [00:35:11] Are there different issues that are important to special education? Tim McGuiggan [00:35:16] Absolutely. The laws regulating special education are very specific and difficult for a school district to follow. They're very labor-intensive. It's so special that it is very expensive, so it makes it difficult for districts. So one of our jobs, prior to me coming, I had a special ed teacher come over to come and see me because they're not staffing her room properly. She's supposed to she has a very intensive need students. Physical intensive needs, emotional intensive needs and academic intensive needs. She's supposed to have three people in her room with her at all times. In case one student kind of flares up, you need to have others in the room. Well, we're having difficulty filling those positions the district is. So it's causing issues where she's in a room with all these intensive need students and it's her and maybe one other person when she's supposed to have three other people. So they come to me to say hey they're not following the regulations so then my job is to go to the Director of Special Ed and point out the fact that they're not and I kinda tell them if you don't these are the options that I have to follow to force you to. Kind of thing and we don't you always you always want to come to an agreement rather than force a decision so you always I at least I find I always offer like how can I help in any way there's times where you can't do that there's just times where it's just listen you and I are at loggerheads and we need to force an action of some kind but you try to avoid those at all costs. You absolutely try to avoid this at all cost. It doesn't benefit you ever to go in and pound down the desk. I don't believe it. Izzy K [00:37:14] How can you force it? �Tim McGuiggan [00:37:16] You have, you have, so we have different procedures built into New York State law. So, or into our contract. So, within our contract, we have a very specific grievance process spelled out. So, if we feel the district is not following the contract, and that means any part of the district. So, let's say we have principal that is telling teachers, New York state laws. I'll give you a simple example that happened at the beginning of the year. New York State law says teachers must get a minimum of a half hour uninterrupted lunch, right? It's simple and basic, everyone knows it, it's been that way since I can ever remember. Well we have a new principal hired who came in from outside the state, doesn't know that law, and they started handing out 20 minute lunches. So I call up and I say politely, you need to give them 30 minute lunch. And the principal's response was, well, I can't, I need him to do this, this, and this, too bad. So then I go to the superintendent and say, okay, we're going to start our grievance process. They're violating the contract. We gave them a chance to fix it. They didn't fix it, so now there's a process we file. We write a formal letter, they have 10 days to respond to that letter in writing. Either one, they're gonna stop the practice, or two, they are going to say, no, we don't think we're violating the contract. Then from that point, it then goes to arbitration in our grievance process. We then go to arbitraion, and the third party comes in, it's just like a court hearing. We make the case, they make the case. Nate M. [00:39:02] So since you can no longer strike, what's a way you can put pressure onto the school district or like whoever you're trying to get adjustments to be made with in a way that isn't striking? Tim McGuiggan [00:39:21] Um You can, there's a couple different ways. If you feel like you can't, you can no longer work with the administration. They're just not hearing you. Then you start working with the school board and you start communicating with the School Board. That's a tactic that you use very sparingly because you don't want to go to the well too many times and you don't want to get the School board involved in minor things, right? It's got to be something big. So that's one that you can do. The other is, is you can force, you have the legal recourse through grievance if you have to, and you can follow that process. The problem with grievance is it takes a very long time. So let's say, again, the lunch thing. If we, we did not end up going to grievance on that one. We wrote the letter, the district responded saying we understand that the law says 30 minutes and and they fixed it right away. But let's say they didn't do that. It would probably take two to three months for them for us to have an arbitration hearing. And then it takes two to 3 months for that arbiter to come back with a ruling. And that entire time, whatever we're saying is wrong, is still going on because they're not changing it. So members get frustrated because they feel like nothing's happening and their problem is still there. But it's the process that we have. So, and then the other is, and again, this is one of those you have to be very careful how you use it, is collective voices, and sometimes involving the community, if need be. I haven't done that in as long as I've been around because we haven't felt the need to. We have an incredibly supportive community. Our school budgets pass on average a 80 to 20 vote, which is almost unheard of. So you don't want to play that card. By involving the community too much because you can come across as, sometimes you come across as whining, sometimes they don't understand the inner workings of a school, so they may not, it may be difficult to explain it to them, so you don't actually get the point that you want to make. So that's a difficult thing to do as well. So primarily your best option is always sit down with the district administration and come to some kind of a resolution. It may be everything you want. It's enough. Nate M. [00:41:56] For legal recourse, do you have any, like, it doesn't have to be realistic, but any ideas you would- in a perfect world like to expedite the process. �Tim McGuiggan [00:42:11] Well, I would love for there to be, we have an arbitration process, but I would like another step in there, which is a mediation process. I would, like, because it's usually quicker, it's not binding, right? So both parties can walk away from it if they want, but if we had a mediatation step in, I'd like that. That's a third party sitting down and trying to help us negotiate the situation before we go to an arbitrations situation. I have In six years, we've gone to arbitration two times, right? Only two times. We've, we, the SSTA have won both times, fortunately. One was over an individual teacher and their performance. And then the other was in regards to our contract and the time of day or the amount of teaching time, right. You go through that process and there's no way you walk away from that process without somebody, and in that case both sides on it, feeling kind of some animosity towards each other. It's just, it's the nature of the beast. I would have preferred that there would be a mediation step in there, a third party to come in and kind of go, all right, one side. You're really not on base here. You might want to think about coming to a resolution or to say that to the same side, or say to both of them, you guys are both nuts. Here's in, but offer up some solutions that I would definitely prefer to see. I would prefer to see, but it's just not part of the normal practice. It really isn't. So that's one aspect legally I would like to see Nate M. [00:43:57] Oh, I have one more question that I was wondering. I know union busting was definitely a thing a little while back. Is there any modern versions of that? Tim McGuiggan [00:44:10] Yes, absolutely. And in this town, actually, fairly recently, so I referenced the Janus decision, which I believe is five years old now. Right after that decision, there were groups who were trying to lure teachers out of the union, telling them, you know, because your union dues, you know save yourself, our union dues are $700 a year. Save yourself the $700, the union doesn't do anything for you stuff like that. They actually, locally try to have a I think it was a, the primary purpose was a fundraising dinner, but they invited a bunch of teachers to come and they had a guest speaker who was going to, who was one of the parties in the lawsuit, who was a factory worker and wasn't a teacher, to again try to recruit people, not just Saratoga Springs, but in the area to try and get teachers to start leaving. They set it all up. Rented out a restaurant. When the restaurant owner found out what it was, he canceled it. And his response was he did not want to do anything that would be disrespectful to the teachers in the community. His kids came through our school. We all know them. So it built a tremendous amount of you know, respect from us. I promised you that we made sure that that business stayed in place during COVID and we rewarded him with a lot of appreciation for that just in bringing them business. But so for the year after that Janice decision there was a lot of that going on. It wasn't effective. They were not able to peel away a lot teachers, like, for example, us with only two. So it has died down again, but that was it was definitely. That was the attempt of the lawsuit that got brought to the Supreme Court, and they tried to use it, but they did not use it successfully. At least in New York State, they haven't used it successfully, our NYCIP was the state union was projecting that we were going to lose 15, that across the state we were gonna end up losing somewhere around 15% of our membership. And I think we ended up, like I said, I think the average we ended up losing is somewhere between 4 and 5% tops. And the majority of that was in New York City, not here. So it is very good. It's very very good and then the charter schools Was another attempt at union busting and then if that didn't work as well, so then they turned into a profit motivated industry. Nate M. [00:47:12] Did charter schools come into conflict with public schools a lot? �[00:47:15] Not here, but in mainly urban areas. Albany, they have two or three, but they failed. And then the school district actually took them over, and now they're successful. The concept, the actual concept of a charter school, you gotta, I don't know if you remember, I mentioned the guy who started teacher's unions, Al Shanker, that was his idea. He actually started the charter concept in New York State, but then it got stolen and the meaning and everything was changed. So in Albany, the district has actually taken those school districts over because they were failing financially, but they've kept in place a lot of the concepts of a charter school, a nontraditional school, and they're doing quite well, right? But now those teachers who were previously not unionized. They're now part of the teachers union, they're now getting paid because the phrase that you always heard was churn and burn. They'd bring in teachers, they'd burn them out, and then see you later, and they'd bring in more, burn them up, and throw them out and it just, it didn't work. Nate M. [00:48:26] Is there a union in the general area of upstate New York? Yeah, I know that's kind of a mystery. But that you think is the ideal for what a teacher's union should look like. Tim McGuiggan [00:48:42] I would say there is a union that I look to a lot for guidance and that's the AFL-CIO of New York State. The president of the AFL-CIA right now is a very dynamic person but even though they weren't faced with, because they're not public employees, the face with the same issues that we were with the Janus decision. He actually made that shift earlier. He's the one that I stole the one-to-one idea from. He's one that has talked about the idea of we have to accept the fact that unions got off the rails for a while. We need to get back to serving each individual member and connecting with each individual number. So, so. [00:49:30] Also, what does that stand for? [00:49:32] The AFL-CIO? If you go back way into the very beginnings of unionization the AFL was the American Federation of Laborers. That's one of the first ever labor unions there. I'm not 100% sure what the CIO stands for, but it is I think one of the largest. Izzy K [00:49:53] Something industrial organization? Tim McGuiggan [00:49:57] Yeah. They're one of the largest unions out there. And they have many different affiliations. Just like we as, so our structure is, so Saratoga Springs is the local association. We are a member of New York State United Teachers, who is a member of the American Federation of Teachers. So there's, and usually that's how unions run now. There's the local, the state level, and the federal, and the national level. So He's the director of the New York State AFL-CIO. There is a national level there, too. You will, again, probably not in your interest area, but recently, so the president of the AFT is a woman by the name of Randy Weingarten, who was a teacher in New York City, now she's the national president. She was just identified by somebody who's, Mike Pompeo was looking to run for president in 2024, as the most dangerous person in the world. More dangerous than Vladimir Putin, more dangerous than Kim Jong-un, more dangerous then anybody else she is because she's the president of the teachers union and his take was the teachers are going to ruin the world So we face some of that as well. We are definitely. Recently the CRT, have you heard that phrase. Critical race theory. There are many people out there who believe that teachers are pushing critical race theory and I can tell you with absolute certainty that of my 518 members, I would be willing to bet you that 500 of them don't know what critical race is because we don't have time to worry about that stuff. �Izzy K [00:51:54] Is that an issue that you face in the communities, like, has the community talked about that? Tim McGuiggan [00:51:58] Our most recent school board election, which was back in May, was very heated and very abrasive and just like everywhere else in the country, it became very political. And a lot of people targeted school boards to be kind of the ground level of where So we had people at our school board meetings, because at the beginning of every school board meeting there's an incredibly fascinating moment where anybody can get up and speak. And we were accused of everything from promoting gender conversion to critical race theory. We were promoting a people accused us of not letting teachers carry guns, even though teachers want to carry guns. I don't know one teacher that wants to carry a gun in school, flat out don't. So we got accused of a lot of things during those open forum sessions. And I met every school board meeting and I just sit there and listen to it. There's nothing you can do to convince some people. Izzy K [00:53:21] Yeah, we should probably wrap up soon. Just gonna ask like two more questions. So what's your perfect ideal world as a teacher union? Tim McGuiggan [00:53:38] So can I tell you, I was up in Lake Placid two weeks ago at a conference, and there is one of those stores on the main drag, had one of the stores that sells like funny signs. And their sign was, I wish to live in a world where a chicken can cross the road without someone questioning their motives. And I thought to myself, and I laughed, ha ha ha, and I kept thinking about that. And I'm like, you know what? That to me is what I want. A perfect world to me is a world where nobody passes judgment on somebody else. We're gonna have all different types of people in the world. Just let them be, long as they don't harm somebody else, but I feel way too much. I see it, I'll be honest, it's a concern that I have seeing students in our schools. Way too much, I'm right, you're wrong. Far less of... Any type of willingness to either work together or understand somebody else's perspective. It's not, it's not there. So yeah, a place where we don't have judgment is my perfect world, absolutely. And a lot of hot dogs because that's the perfect food. Nate M. [00:55:00] Based on that, would you say that you think the community is becoming more polarized down to, like, the students? Tim McGuiggan [00:55:08] I mean you watch, watch, well, so a phrase I use all the time and I've actually gotten some people actually reached out to me to ask me because they heard me quote it is, I have always believed that public schools are a reflection of a society, not a driver of society. Public schools are never going to push an agenda on society. We are an exact reflection of it. My membership is a reflection of society. I have people on all areas of the political spectrum, and that's just because that's who we are, our students. Are a reflection of their parents or their or their home lives. I should not say their parents because many of them aren't living with their parents, but they are a reflection of the homes. So what we're seeing in school is just a reflection about the community and absolutely yes we are polarized. There's very clearly polarized. Yeah. Where I don't see polarization, quite frankly, is up at the prison. Feel it. Yeah, I feel like prison is prison to me is like teaching 15 years ago. There's a higher level of intellectual curiosity For them, it's not a necessity quite honestly There they are a much more thoughtful and tolerant group that I see in my high school right now. �Nate M. [00:56:35] Do you think a large community, a large diverse community that's forced to live together is part of that reason? Tim McGuiggan [00:56:43] Yes. I mean, you guys walk around town, we're not exactly diverse in Saratoga Springs, right? I mean this is one you may probably edit out, but I mean the running joke about Skidmore was your bus that used to drive around was white, and the joke was even the busses are white in Skidmore, right? So we are not diverse. My membership is not diverse, our faculty, I have no control over who they hire. Our faculty is is not diverse. My membership is not. We are not a diverse community So I think that unfortunately adds to some of the polarization. Growing up in Utica again all of the different cultures that blended together That's I think what made me love Utica so much was you had to like I'm picture now There's a market in New York Mills called Hapanowitz's market You walk in, they all speak Polish, right? I picture now someone walking into that market, it's still there and they still speak Polish. Somebody like pounding on the counter saying, speak English. Like, no, you'll get what you want to get. Like, if you have to point to it, who cares? But instead of embracing those different cultures, we are kind of pushing away. So, yes, I would say more diversity means more tolerance. Unfortunately, that's one of the only things about Saratoga I'm not the most proud of. Nate M. [00:58:15] Any other questions? Tim McGuiggan [00:58:16] Yeah, you said you had two. Izzy K [00:58:17] Yeah, just final question. Is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you want to talk about or anything we did ask you about, that you wanna expand on? Tim McGuiggan [00:58:28] The only thing I guess I would say is the future of the labor movement or unionists is the phrase you hear a lot as people use as unionists. I think what you're seeing is the pendulum is swinging back. Unions used to be very powerful, then unions got corrupt. There's all kinds of evidence of it, right? They got corrupt and corporations in particular were able to use that to diminish unions but you're seeing laborers start to see the value again in unions there's strength in unity you can't fight starbucks alone but if you're the entire store you can. So you're seeing that growth in retail places that you'd never seen it before. So Amazon, Starbucks are kind of big name ones. You're starting to see the labor movement grow again because of the necessity and this campus is a classic example. Your professors just went through a massive fight. Massive fight. My daughter is a doctor. She just left Albany Med. But she was down there, their nurses, I personally marched with them, I think, five times. They went through a three-year battle to unionize, and then after they unionized, the hospital still wouldn't give them the respect that they were asking for. They weren't asking to get rich, they were just asking for decent working conditions. And then COVID hit, and then all of a sudden the hospital's like, you guys are heroes, you're wonderful, yeah, yeah. But what were we six months ago, kind of thing. So I do think you're seeing a growth, definite growth, which that would be my question. Did you guys actually, as students, see, hear, or get any feeling about what was going on with the professors here? Was it pretty much a catalyst. Under the Izzy K [01:00:30] Um, I, there was a table outside the Tang Museum, um, where they had, they were giving out pins and that sort of thing. So I have a couple pins for that. I accidentally grabbed one that said, I'm voting for the union. And then I was like, oh wait, I know. So I had to, one of them says I'm voting and then one of the says I like for, um �teachers union or something like that. So there was that and we talked about it a little bit in our class because it's a labor class. Nate M. [01:00:58] Yeah, we did bring it up. It was also, some of the teachers who are not even sure now, because it's been a little while and they don't have the best memory. But they put up some posters on the entrance to the dining hall. I don't know, that was last semester, right? [01:01:21] Yeah, pretty much came to, Well, it was resolved in the spring. Nate M. [01:01:27] Yeah, so it was either the end of last semester or the start of this semester, but they put up flyers on the door basically listing for all the students their reasons for being unhappy. Izzy K [01:01:38] And last year, now I'm remembering, they sent out Skidmore News or something sent out an email to basically everyone that you could sign a form that said that you were for unionization. Tim McGuiggan [01:01:58] Yeah, so that would be the only thing that I think we didn't cover was what I think is going to happen in the future and that is I think you're going to see more and more of a resurgence of labor unions, especially in the non-traditional areas such as you're seeing like retail. Retail was never really a union stronghold service. Hotels have always been a pretty strong union area, but restaurants not necessarily, but you're starting to see that more and more Nate M. [01:02:32] Have you seen the news about the railroad union? Do you have any thoughts about that, that you're willing to share? Tim McGuiggan [01:02:40] It's interesting, I mean what jumps off the page is a 24% pay increase. I did not, I was not aware of the ability of the federal government to impose a contract on them, but I had to read up on that a little bit and where that came from. In essence, if the railroad shut down it would be a national emergency, so that gives them the ability to do that. So, yes, but look at what they were fighting over. They were fighting over salary, paid family leave, which is a real interesting topic, paid family leave medical benefits. And that's what everybody fights over, right? So, private, the law of the New York State says you can get paid family medical leave. If you're a private employer, you... You have to provide that, but it doesn't come off like it sounds. You have provide it, but public employees like us, they don't have to provide it to public employees. So, so if we want it, we have to negotiate it into our contract. And then the question becomes at what cost? Cause what are we going to give up? What's interesting about it is it's the, it's all insurance. So it sounds like the employers are paying. For their employees to go on medical leave. What actually, it's the employees are paying for an insurance policy that pays for them to go out. Money doesn't come out of the employers, not at all. They have to manage it. It doesn't cost anybody a dime other than the employees. So it's a question of do you want to pay for that or do you not? We do, we have a lot of very young, and my membership of all of New York teachers in general, it's very heavily female-dominated, right? Teachers are predominantly women. So maternity is a huge issue that we deal with. And fairness in using family medical leave or paid family medical leaves is something I have had to study and study and study to be up on it, so yeah. So that's, the railroad is like everyone else, money, benefits, health insurance. But trust me, the next time we go sit down with our district and we talk about our contract, I'm going to be throwing out 24%, 24% increase, you know. I'd be derelict if I didn't. �Nate M. [01:05:23] Well, thank you so much for doing this with us. Thank you. Tim McGuiggan [01:05:28] Yeah, I hope it works out well � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Isabel Kroeger, Nate Meyers Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tim McGuiggan Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:05:30 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit Septermber 22nd, 2025 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Tim McGuiggan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource December 2nd, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource I have been an active member in our labor union for 28 years. I am currently a teacher at Saratoga Springs High School and adjunct professor at SUNY Adirondack. My most recent position within The Saratoga Springs Teachers Association was as President and served in that role for seven years. I have also served as a delegate to the New York State United Teachers Association ED10 committee. Currently I serve as lead negotiator for the SSTA along with Head Building Representative on our Executive Committee. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3ab7aabaebe7e5b21ba948a33bd78eac.png b449f1adbf78665e1ba29712e9fa58d0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fa9ea7a6aff0d419f1d5c078c840b07a.wav c10c119ea0b5fda02eff80ce9f8a0545 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4ff84dee8e99c720c48f4b99835c8647.pdf c305531d9962f05245011b904418ef4c PDF Text Text Marah_Evan_ALH.wav Marah Frese-Despins [00:00:05] I'm Marah Frese-Despins. Evan Forrest [00:00:08] I'm Evan Forrest. Todd Shapiro [00:00:10] I'm Todd Shapiro. Marah Frese-Despins [00:00:12] The date is April 15th, 2024. Evan Forrest [00:00:16] All right. So we're going to start with a couple questions about your childhood. So let's start with an easy one. Where did you grow up? Todd Shapiro [00:00:25] I grew up in a town called Newington, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. Evan Forrest [00:00:29] And what was your family like? Todd Shapiro [00:00:32] I am an only child. My father, Norm, was an industrial engineer. And my mother, Barbara, was a, dental hygienist. And I had a great childhood. No complaints. Evan Forrest [00:00:45] Nice. So what was your early education like? Middle school. High school? And did you like school? Todd Shapiro [00:00:53] Yes. Liked school very much. Liked elementary. Middle school. Went to an interesting, I don't know if it was experimental, but it was a middle school that, had, like, a team structure. So it wasn't the traditional, like, you're in one classroom the whole day. It was sort of almost like a college campus kind of thing where you change, I mean, in middle school, we were in sort of, each, each grade was a wing. And you would you would move between classes. And it was sort of cutting edge for the time in the late 70s, early 80s. Evan Forrest [00:01:35] That's interesting. So do you remember your first job? What was that like? Todd Shapiro [00:01:40] My first and only job. I worked at Newington Bicycle for over ten years. I started at 15. State of Connecticut said that 15 year olds could work like a certain amount of limited hours after school. So before I was even 16, I was working in the bike shop. I'm an avid cyclist. I've been racing since I was, I don't know, 12 years old and started at this job as a stock stock boy, you know, stocking shelves, sweeping floors and then eventually worked my way up to be, manager of the store. Evan Forrest [00:02:15] Nice so you're kind of mixing pleasure with work. Todd Shapiro [00:02:17] That's right, that's right. Evan Forrest [00:02:18] Find something you're interested in. Todd Shapiro [00:02:20] Exactly. �Marah Frese-Despins [00:02:23] Do you want to tell us about your time in college? What undergrad school you went to. Graduate? Todd Shapiro [00:02:28] Sure. Undergraduate, I went to University of Vermont. I did not go to Brandeis because that's where my daughter is going in the fall. So, undergraduate was University of Vermont in Burlington. I was a business major with a focus on productions and operations. So that's everything from, like, statistical process control, industrial engineering. So, yes, I was in the business school, but it had a sort of an engineering bend. And while in school, my, Italian teacher mentioned that I wanted to get into, you know, working in a bike shop and being very into, like, bikes and gear and outdoor things. I wanted to work in manufacturing for an outdoor company. And in a conversation with my Italian teacher, my Italian professor, she mentioned that her husband was the CEO of Nordica, which was the ski company. You know, they made, boots and bindings and and she could get me a meeting with him. So I met this, head of Nordica, US in Burlington, Vermont, and I told him, “Hey, I want to work in manufacturing in the gear industry.” And he was like, “you're not going to do that in the United States.” Like, very little is manufactured here. It's all distribution. So everything is made overseas, imported into the U.S.. And then there's these advanced distribution networks that distribute the products, whether it's bikes or skis or mountain climbing, whatever your hobby is. And he's like, you should look into operations and start to understand the distribution and how it works. And that completely changed my trajectory. I went from focusing on like engineering and manufacturing to, you know, business and operations, and that changed my, my whole course, changed classes. I took, and then, even after college, what I, what I ended up doing. Marah Frese-Despins [00:04:31] Did that affect where you chose to go to grad school? Todd Shapiro [00:04:35] I moved to Boston after undergraduate. I worked for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. And the Museum of Fine Arts had the largest museum catalog in the world. And what that means is all these museums sell product, right? They have gift shops and they sell products. But the MFA had a catalog. We would mail them. This is in the days of the days of old. You would mail catalogs, paper catalogs. People would read them. They'd find. Something they liked. They write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it up, put it in an envelope and mail it to you. To the catalog center. We had banks and banks of people opening these things. They'd take out your order, they'd enter it. Then it would go to the fulfillment center, and we'd pick, pack and ship and send it out. And that's how I started. It was distribution. So I worked there for about six years. I'm in Boston, and I realize, you know, I want more than just I mean, it was very big operation, but it wasn't like an L.L. Bean or, you know, a massive cataloger, so I decided to go to grad school. I'm in Boston. I mean, you got 62 schools to choose from. So I ended up going to Boston University for an MBA. Evan Forrest [00:05:51] Were you, part of any clubs or any other organizations where your time at UVM or in Boston? Todd Shapiro [00:05:58] Yeah, I was on the rowing team at UVM, so I got to travel all over the country racing. That was a fantastic experience. And I also got into logistics with that. I got trained to drive the trailer, so I would drive an 80-foot long trailer CDL, and, yeah, we would caravan all over the country racing, which was fantastic. And then, I was also in the Outing Club, got trained as a first responder, wilderness first responder. So I would drag people off mountains that were injured or hurt. And, my specialty was winter �camping. I actually love the cold. So. Yeah. So you can see where my love of gear and, and outdoor stuff, came from. Evan Forrest [00:06:46] Vermont's a good place to, to do it at. Yeah. Marah Frese-Despins [00:06:52] Do you think any of those experiences helped prepare you for your roles in management? Todd Shapiro [00:06:56] Absolutely. No question. Rowing. You're, you know, one cog in a, in a massive machine. So you've got to, you got to work to get. I mean, it's all the classic, clichés. You got to work together. You've got, you know, you're only as fast as the weakest link. And there's a tremendous amount of finesse and technique in the sport of rowing. There's, there's, you're so reliant on your equipment, right? So it's not just your fitness and your, strategy, but it's, you know, does your equipment work? Is it, you know, is, is the, the machine that you're moving gonna operate efficiently? Is your technique good? Right? Or is, are your oars going to go too deep or are you not, are you going to catch a crab and slow the whole boat down? So, I mean, you can start to see how that translates to a team you're working with, right? If you're on a production line, if you're working on a conveyor belt and you got multiple people and moving parts, you have to coordinate all that. And then in the Outing Club, you know, learning to be a wilderness first responder was just tremendous. I mean, you learn how to not only help people but lead, right? How do you motivate? And, you know, if you're on a hike and someone is injured, I mean, you got to get them out of the woods. So you have to encourage and motivate and, and think creatively of how you're gonna, you know, get this group of people with someone that's wounded out safely. So yeah, it absolutely applies to day-to-day work. Evan Forrest [00:08:35] Team player. Todd Shapiro [00:08:36] There you go. Evan Forrest [00:08:37] Yeah. So you mentioned starting off after college in kind of a smaller, less, I don't know, multinational kind of job. Was it your goal to kind of transition into a larger company with larger duties or. Todd Shapiro [00:08:56] No, there was never a goal. Like, I never was, like, I want to work in a catalog. I mean, when I was looking for a job after school, I mean, you went to the newspaper, you literally opened the newspaper. You looked at the classifieds and you would circle ads that sounded interesting, and you would write a cover letter in an envelope. Snail mail, send it. I sent out hundreds of, of letters, and the one that came back said, “Hey, we'd love to interview you” was the Museum of Fine Arts, and it was a distribution center for product. And I was like, this is fantastic. So yeah, there was no goal of like, oh, I want to, I want to work in a catalog center or I want to do this. So that first step, like each step, whether you're in school or you're playing a sport or you're in a club, right? These are all things that kind of build your, your background and your experiences. And they can each send you down a different path. So once I started working at the Museum of Fine Arts, I was involved in a very large catalog center, and I was like, this is pretty cool. Maybe I want to, you know, see where this could take me. So I worked there for many years. And then it started to feel small. I mean, it's 100,000ft², which is a very big building. There were, I don't know, 5 to 10,000 SKUs which are stock keeping units. So when you go into a store like Target, you know, there's probably 100,000 to 200,000 SKUs in that store. Everything from a pen to a razor to a toothbrush that's each got a unique identifier. So we had about 5000 SKUs at the MFA. And when I started as a recent college �graduate, I was like, this is unbelievable. How am I ever going to keep track of this? Well, by the end of a few years, I was like, this place feels small. I know where everything is. I know how the place runs. So I'm like, what's next? What's next? So that's, that's what got me thinking. And then I started to look for the next, the next big thing. And I, and I just kind of progressed. I went from there. I went to Aramark, which was a very large distribution center, and we did uniforms for every major company. UPS drivers, FedEx drivers, CocaCola drivers, all, you know, every driver needs a shirt, pants, jacket, belt, shoes, socks, hat, company hat with their logo. We did the embroidery. We would do about 60,000 shipments a day. The MFA was 3 to 5 thousand a day. Aramark was about 30,000 to 60,000 a day. And so, yeah, I started, you know, I wanted bigger, bigger. You know, it was it wasn't, “I want to go to a multinational. I want to go to something big.” I just I wanted the next challenge because you start to get stagnant. You start to get comfortable, and you're like, you know, I gotta. I want to grow. I want to grow. I want to do more. Evan Forrest [00:11:55] What did your day to day look like? I know you said your you're shipping off in this specific example uniforms, but what does that mean. So you go into work and you're just boxing up uniforms and selling them out? Like I can't visualize it right now. Todd Shapiro [00:12:08] Sure, sure. So the way I like to describe it is, if you order something online. So I don't know if you guys ever ordered from L.L.Bean or, let's use L.L.Bean. That's the best example in the world. So you you go online and you order a pair of the famous L.L.Bean boots, right? You and 100,000 other people are all ordering this stuff. So in the morning, when a worker in a distribution center shows up, you have to, like, start the system up. Right? And so you print the orders and it's called induction. And you induct this work into the system. So there's stacks and stacks of orders. That are the picklist. So when you are at home and you go, oh, I ordered these boots, and you open up your box and there's a sheet in there and it says, you know, size ten duck boots. And if you look closely, there's probably a little code it could say like, you know, PX-24. Well, that's a location. It's all done with coordinates. You know, these buildings are like 1,000,000ft². That could have a couple hundred thousand locations. It's essentially shelves. It's like the library. You've got shelves with books on them. But imagine you're like, okay, there's a section of all of shoes. There's a section of all the shirts, is a section of all the tents or whatever that these retailers sell. So you will literally grab a stack of orders that are printed in by walk pattern. So there's a tremendous amount of math and like choreography because you have to say, “Okay, Evan, we're going to give you this stack of orders.” You don't want to walk to the back of the building and grab, you know, a hat, and then you got to walk all the way up and grab some shoes and then go over it. Now, you want it efficient so you're assigned a section. You're like, okay, you're going to be in, you know, section P out of, you know, 100 rows or 100 aisles. And each sheet that you take is guiding you on a walk pattern, an efficient walk pattern. And so you'll go and just say, okay, there's a size ten shoes. Maybe for that day you're assigned to the shoe area. So all you’re picking is shoes. Then your racks are profiled. So yes, you're in the correct aisle. But the companies do analysis and they forecast what is going to sell the best. And it's loaded on the shelves in the most ergonomic position. So right here your top selling item is going to be in a very easy to reach place. The thing you sell like two of a year. That's going to be up high because you got to get a ladder to get it. So you're not going to make those picks very frequently. And then what you do is you do reprofiling. So after a couple of weeks of fulfilling, because these websites are, you know, they have the new spring lineup. So you reprofile your racks, you load them from the back with this spring's offering in very efficient locations. Then let's say spring is done and now it's the fall. And it's a whole different thing. Now coats are popular or whatever, you know, outcome the bathing �suits are off the shelf. And now the hooded, you know, sweatshirts are in that key location. So you're constantly reprofiling and readjusting so that you can have efficient pick runs. And you can, you can, you can get this stuff processed quickly. So you, you pick it all, you put it in containers and they're on an automated conveyor belt. That conveyor belt will take it around the building. Then it's got to go to a packing station. So now okay, you pick the shoes, you threw them in a box, they go down the conveyor. Then there's a station that might have to put some what's called dunnage or void fill, like bubble wrap or some crumbled up paper to kind of brace it. Maybe that person request some gift wrap, or maybe they requested a gift message, or maybe there's a second pick. So you put the boots in the box. The box heads down the conveyor belt to your area and you're picking, you know, I don't know, first aid kits, right. You know, L.L. Bean sells everything. So you're like, okay, “they bought boots. I'm going to put the first aid kit, I'm going to put some sunscreen in there.” And then it goes down the conveyor to the next area, to the final station that seals it, puts a label on it, overhead scanner reads it and routes it to one of 50, 60 tractor trailers that are there. So there's some going to the West Coast, there's some going to the Midwest, there's some going East Coast, South, Southwest, and then they route them and they drive them deeper into the mail stream to a USPS or UPS distribution center. So your morning literally starts with, “what am I picking?” Like that's how the whole process starts. Johnny Jones placed an order online, and that order becomes like a pick ticket of what you've got to put in the box. I mean, people don't realize this. They're online. They have no idea what entering that order does and like what that sets into motion to do. Evan Forrest [00:17:24] It's interesting hearing the other side, logistically, because the consumer just sees the computer screen and orders that, and then there's just so much more that goes on to it. Todd Shapiro [00:17:34] Oh yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Marah Frese-Despins [00:17:37] What was the working environment like? There was, was it, were people happy working there? Were you receiving good benefits? That kind of thing. Todd Shapiro [00:17:43] Thing? Well, I'll start with the MFA and then I'll go to Target. So when I was at the MFA, it was a small catalog operation. We probably had 25 to 50 people in the distribution center. And it was sort of a feeling of like, you're working for a good cause, like you're supporting a museum and the artwork. And what we sold was supporting the artwork, right? You would sell prints of Monet or whatever, and the pay was alright, and the environment was not crushing, meaning you didn't have production standards. You know, it was look if, if somebody ordered some note cards or a vase, right? You know, you're not shipping body parts, you're not shipping medical supplies. So, you know, it wasn't like this huge sense of urgency. I also worked at Target. And Target is another world that is backbreaking. There are production standards. The pay is not great. Benefits are okay. And Target distribution centers ship 100,000 packages per shift. So you could be doing 100,000 to 300,000 or more packages a day in the yard where the tractor trailers are, there's 4 million cartons that have to be backed up to the doors and unloaded. And when I got to Target, I thought I made the show. I thought I was in the major leagues. That's what brought me to this area. I was recruited by Target and I was living in Boston, and they said, we're opening a new distribution center in Amsterdam. And I thought Target was going to the Netherlands. And then I learned that it's, depressed factory town west of Saratoga, where all this industry went out of business in the 1960s, and 30 to 50 thousand people lost their jobs. However, it's right on Interstate 90. So big distribution centers, 2,000,000ft² can get their goods and trucks right on the highway. So I was recruited to �open a distribution center that would serve 80 Target stores, came up here and moved up here with my family, started at the Amsterdam facility. And that's when the fun ended. It was soul crushing. And this is why your professor probably asked me to come here. So there's production standards you have to produce. Now I'm in this situation. I'm a manager. I have a team of people who are pick packing, just as I described, like at the MFA or at Aramark. But every quarter you have to pick a certain amount per hour. So let's just say, you've got to do 35 picks an hour this quarter. Every move you make. You are scanning everything. You scan the shelf, you're going to pick some boots, right? Just like in our other example, you scan the shelf, you scan the product, and it'll, it'll be, it'll, it'll give you a confirmation like that's the right thing. If it, if it gives you an error message, it's like, “hey, you just scanned, you know, a bottle of tide detergent, and you're supposed to be picking boots.” So you can see how it starts to take the humanness out of it. It's all like, it's all fed to you. So you have to pick 35 an hour. You got to hustle next quarter, the new production standards. You got to do 40 an hour. You gotta do like 20% more. So that works when you're doing like toothbrushes and boots. But what happens when it's grill season and you got to move a gas grill barbecue? It is. I would literally be going up to people. I'm like, “hey Tony, you know, it's you got to do 40, 40 an hour.” And he's like, “I couldn't even do 30. How am I going to do this?” He's like, “it's grill season.” These things weigh 150 pounds. So, you know, you have to also think of the type of product like someone could be stationed in, like the dental area where it's toothbrushes and toothpaste. Easy. But somebody that's over in grills or tool chests or bunk beds, I mean, you know, think about it like Ikea. I mean, that stuff is just killer. And it was just it, it killed me to press my staff to hit these production numbers. And if they didn't do it, I'd have to write them up. So I'd have to say, “you know, Marah. Hey, you know, this week, you know, you've only been doing 26 an hour, and you've got to get to 35 an hour.” And you'd say, okay, we're going to give it, you know, the rest of this week, I need to see some improvement. And off you go. And you do it. Now, what happens if you're rushing and you damage product? What if you're using a forklift and you take down the pallet of goods to pick and you dump it and you just dumped, you know, however many grills or whatever, and they're damaged. Now that comes off of a your, off your, you know, productivity report. And I would just watch us break people, literally break people. And then we would track their whereabouts during the day. So you'd say, okay, “you did. You did 26 an hour. You have to do 35. But I've noticed, you know, every day around 11, you're missing for 12 minutes” and you're like, “oh, I, you know, I had to go to the bathroom” and it's like, well, we've tracked this and it should take, you know, an average person about 3 to 4 minutes to go to the bathroom. You know what I mean? It's this unbelievable, like the conversations you have to have with people. And the only thing I can think of is if you want to walk into a Target or a Walmart or Amazon and you want to spend $4 for, for a shirt or a product like you, you know, the American consumer says, “I want this for five bucks.” Well, where are you going to get that margin? You're going to squeeze it out of your staff, right? You're going to get more efficient. You're going to get faster. You're going to hire less people. You're going to automate. And that was the only thing I could reason with myself to be like, “this is why we're pushing people.” But I eventually left. I could not stand it. I could not stand seeing what we did to people and how we broke them. And I mean, can you imagine having a conversation with someone about how long they spent in the bathroom? Marah Frese-Despins [00:24:21] It'd be horrible. Todd Shapiro [00:24:22] It's horrible. It's horrible. And, you know, here at the time, I have a master's degree, and I'm like, I'm walking around this thing just, like beating people over the head. Yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible. And, yeah, I left. �Evan Forrest [00:24:38] Were you, I assume, perceived as the bad guy or was it like a don't shoot the messenger type thing? Like did they understand that you were just the manager, and... Todd Shapiro [00:24:48] I mean, it's very interesting. Target and Walmart and all these places tend to hire in these roles people that are fresh out of college, fresh out of the military, where they can be molded. Right. I had already been in the in the workforce for 12 or 15 years, kind of running facilities and learning how to manage people. So I developed a very good relationship with my staff, and they realized, “hey, Todd's just doing his job and we get it.” But a lot of the new people that did not have real world experience just drank the Kool-Aid, delivered these terrible messages, and were perceived as the bad guy. They were like, “wow, this this kid's rotten. Like, this is awful.” You know, I had a little more empathy for these people. Like, these people had families, these people, you know, this was a good job for these people in this area. And, yeah, it was, it was tough. It was tough. Evan Forrest [00:25:54] And I assume that there's just managers that were just like you. All over the country as well. Todd Shapiro [00:26:01] There were 26 distribution centers. Target runs 26 distribution centers. Each distribution center employs a thousand people. So there's 26,000 employees just in product distribution. And the facility is run with about 30 managers. So I was in charge of warehousing and distribution. Somebody might be in charge of inbound freight. Somebody might be in charge of outbound freight. Somebody might be in charge of like high value. So about 30 managers in the building runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I worked Thanksgiving. I worked Christmas, I worked, you name the holiday I have worked it, and I would do 80 hours a week. And it was, yeah, it was, It was soul crushing. It was awful. Awful. Evan Forrest [00:26:48] Were there ever talks with your employees about unionizing or things to increase their happiness? Todd Shapiro [00:26:57] I was trained, Target trained all of us in union busting. So here these people would start to organize, and we were trained as management on how to dissuade them and sort of scuttle it. You know, you couldn't say the word union, but there were techniques and phrases that we were trained to use to sort, you know, change the topic, change the, the thing. And Target was very successful. Very, very successful in, in squashing and, you know, union votes and that kind of thing. I mean, it was, it was eye opening, eye opening for me and it, yeah, yeah. It's, and Target is one of the more progressive companies. I mean, if you look at Walmart or Amazon, I mean, these places are brutal. Brutal. Marah Frese-Despins [00:27:56] How did working at Target and having those tough experiences, affect, like, your family life and personal life? Todd Shapiro [00:28:04] It was extremely difficult. My wife and I were newly married, and I was working 80 hours a week. I never saw her. And to this day, we refer to that as the Dark Ages. Target sold me on, they said you're going to work four days on, three days off. You'll work four, ten-hour days, and then you'll get three days off. I was like, “this is unbelievable.” They said, “you'll start at like seven. You'll get out at three.” And that's awesome. That never happened. I worked, pretty much every day I would start, I would get up at 3:30 in the morning to be at the facility at 5 a.m. to do production control. So that description of the pick tickets and everything, you have to sort of orchestrate the printing �and the dissemination of all of that. So you have to kind of figure out your pick runs and things. It's called production control. So, in a facility like a Target, because they have Sunday fliers or they have TV ads, that product has to get to the front of the line so it can get in the stores. Right. Like, imagine they do a big ad campaign and the distribution center forgets to, like, send something. So I was getting up at 3:30 in the morning to drive to Amsterdam, 45 minutes, to do production control at 5 a.m., and I'd work 12 hours. I'd be home at 5 or 6 and I would just, I was a zombie, I would collapse. And then, my wife was pregnant with our daughter, and my daughter, Zoe, was born. And I remember taking off two weeks from work. It took, like, an act of Congress for me to get time off. And I remember holding her. She's an infant, and I'm like, I am leaving this job. I'm never going to see her. Because you work all day getting up at 3:00 in the morning. You can't do anything when you get home. You know, you can't see your family. You can't. You don't even have energy to make dinner. So it was just get up, work, come home, collapse, do it again, do it again. And then having these horrible experiences at work, you would bring all that home. So the conversation was just like, this is, this is ridiculous. So yeah, it really affected, you know, and at least in my experience at Target, extremely high divorce rate, extremely high depression rates in management. I mean, these people are just, everyone is broken. Yeah. Evan Forrest [00:30:39] You mentioned a little bit the comparison between MFA, and Target and that there were production... what did you call it, production... Todd Shapiro [00:30:50] Production control or production standards. Evan Forrest [00:30:54] Standards. Is that what, that's what made the difference between Target and MFA, why Target was so much more soul crushing than MFA? Todd Shapiro [00:31:01] Yeah. Yeah. MFA was more of a familial or, I guess you could call it kind of a family atmosphere because the volumes were lower. It wasn't a Fortune 500 retailer, you know, it's this little museum in Boston. It's a big museum, but there wasthe pressure was not there. You know, there weren't shareholders. There wasn't, you know, there weren't Sunday fliers. There weren't, you know, because we were a cataloger. That's the other thing is you sort of launch these catalogs into the mail or nowadays on the internet, and you just pack your warehouses with the product for that season. So you're kind of like, all right, we're good. We got everything in the shelves are loaded. Let's just fill the orders. But at a Target, it is like 24 hours a day inbound and outbound. And so it's like, it's like sweeping the ocean. It's just, you are never going to catch up. And they know that. And that's on purpose. And it's just to keep you under the, under the thumb and you can never catch up. So you're always like going, going, going, going, going. And that also does not allow you time to think and unionize because you are so slammed. It's, I really feel, it's very strategic in how they build and designed and, and kind of feed these places, so, you know. Marah Frese-Despins [00:32:41] Where did you move next? Like, how did it get better? Todd Shapiro [00:32:45] Great question. So, I was hating Target, and, my wife was on Craigslist. That shows how long ago it was, 20 years ago. So I come home one day and she's like, “hey, I saw this ad in Craigslist. There's a little software company in Saratoga, started at the RPI incubator, and they're looking for people that have retail supply chain experience.” I was like, “huh?” So in all of my jobs, from the MFA, actually going back to the bike shop, to Target, I was always very involved in systems. You cannot run a facility of this magnitude without software and systems to, to manage it and track it. And I mean, it �is, it's mind boggling how much. So when I was at Target, they were installing $80 million worth of equipment and software to take the people out of unloading trucks. And so I started to become a super user. Right. You know, think of any jobs you've had or, you know, whether you're working at a grocery store or you're working at a bike shop or whatever, like there's, there's always a system, right? And you've got to get good at using that system. So in all of my jobs, I tried to become a subject matter expert to like, understand, I would train others and I would learn how they work. So my wife found this thing. She's like, yeah, “this little software company started in some kids dorm room. They built multi-channel retail software.” And so what it is, is it I mean, today you could laugh at it, but 20 years ago it was, “hey, we can run your inventory for your website, for eBay, for Amazon, for take your pick of a couple others.” But it's centralized inventory and it's all done online because years ago you'd have a website, you'd have a brick and mortar store, you'd have everything. Each one of those held the inventory differently. So if you sell hats, maybe you have ten in stock. Well, what if there was a run on them and the store sold them all? The website still thinks there's ten, eBay still thinks there's ten, Amazon still thinks there's ten. But the store sold them all. What these kids did is they centralized it in one single database and did it online, which people weren't doing at that time, so that the store, the website, eBay, whatever your channels were, they could draw on one central inventory master so that if you ran out of stock, it would automatically take it down from the other sites. Conversely, what if a shipment of more hats came in - automatically push them up. So I went to this interview and I had no idea what to expect, and I met with this software team over on High Rock near the farmers market, and they explained that they have built a multi-channel retail system, but they don't know retail. And, you know, do I know how retail works in the backend? And I was like, “wow, this is a match made in heaven.” And so I ended up working for them for three years. It's called Core Sense. They're down on High Rock still. And I learned how to implement software, and I brought my retail expertise. So I became sort of a product manager slash consultant. I helped them build out the system, improve it so the real world could use it. What they built in their dorm room was good, but it wasn't ready for prime time. And then we started to install it. And so I would go to a client site. I could speak the language of retail, at least backend retail, like how do you fill and operate? And I would consult, I would gather requirements. And then these guys taught me about software, I taught them retail, they taught me software, and we went and installed systems all over for this, this new multi-channel retail system. And that's what got me into software. So I've been doing software for 20 years now. Evan Forrest [00:36:52] That's awesome how you could use your, all of your experience to kind of transform yourself into a different role. Todd Shapiro [00:36:58] Yep, yep. Evan Forrest [00:37:01] So going back to kind of, management, we talked about a couple of the bad effects and some of the more unpleasurable experiences. Do you have any, rewarding parts of working in management and having a team that you kind of work with closely? Todd Shapiro [00:37:23] Oh, yeah. When you can manage and create a well-run machine of people, there's no better experience. It's fantastic. Like where I am now. I mean, I consider this group I work with, I've been there for ten years, like close friends, which is extremely rare in the working world. We are such a tight unit. We know each other's roles so well that you almost don't have to talk sometimes. And you can figure things out, get through problems. Solving work problems efficiently and with, with a great team is just an extremely rewarding experience. Yeah. Not having drama like, when you guys get into the �work world, you'll realize, like, there's politics and there's backstabbing, you know, all that, all the stuff you read about. But when you can find yourself working with a team that supports each other, has each other's back, is challenging work, rewarding work. There is no better experience than that. And it's, it's rare, you know, you may only find it once or twice in your career. But when you do, you know, you realize how special it is and how much, dare I say, fun, it can be to, you know, work on this stuff. Evan Forrest [00:38:47] So in an ideal world, if you're working at Target, how could you make that environment better? Todd Shapiro [00:38:57] You can't, you can't, you can't. The machine is too big. At one point, I thought I could, I was like, “oh, I can bring my experience from the working world to Target.” And, you know, I was, I was squashed essentially, like upper, upper, upper management, you know. You know, they're, they're controlling the managers too. Like, it's not just me as a manager controlling the front-line staff, but the executive team is putting the kibosh on the managers because they dangle the carrot for us. So they say, “okay, there's 26 distribution centers. Let's say there's 30 managers. You know, it's like 500, 600 people. We've only got ten slots at corporate in Minneapolis.” These are coveted, coveted roles to run a department in Minneapolis. And they're like, “okay, we're going to, we're, you're all competing with each other.” So no longer are you this unified team to like, improve the distribution center and make it better. It's like, “oh, my coworker, now I'm competing with you because there's only ten slots. There's 500 of us. There's only ten slots. I got to show my stuff, and I got to step on anybody I can to get that.” You know, it's not we rise or fall together. That's how it is with a good team. But in Target, it's step on your coworker to get, to get your opportunity. And, yeah, it's no way you cannot change it, it is too big. There's too much money involved. And, yeah, it's, it's, it's not for me. It's not for me. Some people might like it, but, yeah, you can't change it. Evan Forrest [00:40:50] It almost sounds like there's just so many levels. And then at the bottom, all the levels are kind of just weighing down and creates kind of that toxic work environment where you really just can't be successful or happy. Todd Shapiro [00:41:06] No, no, you can't, you can't. And everyone. So I had like a cohort when I started at Target, and 16 of us had previous real-world experience in that field. The other half were fresh out of military, fresh out of college, and all 16 of us left within three years because we knew life is much better on the outside. And since many of those that stayed have also left and, yeah, it's, yeah. But you know, when you read about Amazon or you read about Walmart, I mean, the stories are true. It's really like, to give you an idea, when we opened the facility, we needed to open with a thousand workers, the building's 2,000,000ft². You need a thousand workers to run it 24 hours a day, 365. Guess how many people we interviewed for those slots? Marah Frese-Despins [00:42:09] Like 5,000, I don't know. Todd Shapiro [00:42:12] Close. Evan Forrest [00:42:13] Well, I was going to say way less. Todd Shapiro [00:42:15] Okay. 8,000. We interviewed 8,000 people. So we opened the back of the building. It was like an airplane hangar, and we would assign people a slot 24 hours a day. We flew in Target. People from all over the country put them up, and we had teams of two and long lanes of, of interviews. And so you'd have a table with two people. �One person would ask questions, the other would notate. Then you'd switch off. 8,000 people and we only hired 700. We didn't even hit the thousand. So what does that tell you? Yeah, you can have a crushing work environment. That guy falls down. You can't hit the production standards. There's 8,000 more willing to come in right behind them. And, uh yeah, it's just it's just an ocean of people. People need jobs, and it's like we'll just churn and burn. And. Yeah, it's awful. It's awful. Evan Forrest [00:43:20] How did those teams of two, like, adequately, evaluate a candidate when there's so many different teams? Todd Shapiro [00:43:31] You have a set list of questions. Again, it's highly organized and choreographed. You have a set list of questions, and, you know, they're leading questions like, you know, if you're, if you're a good worker and you're, you know, trustworthy and all of this, you know, you can sorta tell by the answers. That's why it's two people. Because while you're asking, the other person is taking notes, but they are watching for, like, a tell. You know, could they be lying? Could they, did they get the dates wrong? Like, did they mess up, you know, and then you're like, “okay, this is a, this is a made up resume.” And yeah, it, it's got to be in teams because you're going to miss something like, you know, I could be reading the sheet asking the question, and he's like, you know, they're spacing out, doing something else, or, and then it's all noted. It's stapled in a box and then the next one, and then you got to process 8,000 applications and answers. So there's two boxes. There's like, you know, call them back for a second. Don't call ‘em. So you're sort of making a split-second decision on that. But you can tell I mean, you know, a lot of times it's, it's very apparent. But if you're, if you're not sure, if you're like, hey, maybe, call back for a second, let another team evaluate it and, and do it. Evan Forrest [00:44:56] Sounds like you've gotten pretty good at reading people throughout your years. Todd Shapiro [00:44:59] Yes, yes. Yeah. When you're managing people in, in, in a very physical environment, you really get, you learn people, you can read them. You know if they're having a bad day. You know if they're having a good day. You know what motivates them. You know what de-motivates them. Yeah. It's, it's the only way to survive and get better is to really learn how to work with people. Which is why in this new world of ours, you know, everything is remote. And, I mean, I work in a remote world now. I mean, I implement software at some of the largest retailers in the world, and we do it with teams all over the world, and we've never met in person. I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. And I feel that somebody knew, like, for example, the two of you, once you graduate, if you were to go to a software development firm, you gotta go to an office. Like, how on earth are you going to learn or whatever your field is. If you're at home staring at a monitor like you need mentoring and you need like, interaction. I mean, I really feel for, for younger people that are starting jobs, like, during Covid or soon after. It is hard. Like you've got to do it in person, learn how to work, learn how to interact with people, and then when you become more senior in your positions, then go remote. But to start off that way is, that's crazy. Marah Frese-Despins [00:46:28] Overall, are you happy to have had that experience at Target, even if it wasn't always great or happy to bring those experiences in the future? Todd Shapiro [00:46:36] Yeah, it's, it's I'm definitely glad I went through it. And look, having that logo on your resume, that opens doors, there's no question. I mean, I could have been a janitor, but people see the red thing on my resume and they're like, oh, you worked at Target. And it's like, yeah. And it's unbelievable how that alone can open doors �and, and change the conversation. And I'm glad I went through it. I mean, I, I would have always wondered, right, like, what is it like on the inside because you think, wow, this is a big, amazing company, you know, everybody loves going into a Target. But had I not done it, I always would have wondered, and I'm very glad I did. Evan Forrest [00:47:20] So going back into time, if you could go back, would you change anything about the way you approached college? Your field of study, knowing what you know now? Or if you could give advice, what would you what would you say? I know you gave the advice of going to an office and getting that human relation, and, but, would you go back and change anything about the way you approached it? Todd Shapiro [00:47:46] No, I, I thought I had a fantastic undergrad experience. I'm super happy I studied business, and I didn't, you know, I didn't go, like, the finance track. I didn't go, you know, the accounting, you know, the classic business stuff. You know, I stuck to what I enjoyed which was operations. And I'm super glad I did. But I will say you can always change. And a quick story. So in the 1990s, right. That's when startups and the internet and all of this was starting to take off. And here I am, an operations guy. Right. Physical product, kind of like a factory. And I remember, starting graduate school, going into the career office, like my first week and saying, hey, “I want to get into IT.” And they laughed at me. They laughed at me. Can you believe that? The career office at BU was like, “what is your background? No! You can't. You're ,you're in like, operations. Yeah. You can't.” And I was just like, “oh my God, I have to get into IT.” And so I graduated in 2002. So 20-something years later, I am so deep in IT, it's not even funny. So I would say, don't ever think you can't change or maneuver. You just got to kind of take stock of what you've been working on and say, “oh wow, what I'm doing now, could I apply this to the area of interest that I've got?” And, and you can do it just because I'm like, “wow, we use systems every day in product distribution. So why couldn't I be on the other side of that?” So whatever your interest is or whatever, there is always a way to figure out how to, how to get to what you want to do. And don't let anybody tell you, you know or laugh at you that you know, you can't make that change. So. Yeah. Evan Forrest [00:49:55] What does the future look like for you in your work environment? Do you just continue to do the same thing or... Todd Shapiro [00:50:02] Good question. That's a good question. I work in a very stressful environment, now, if you must know. Big websites, very big budgets, and very tight deadlines. Our projects run from a year to 18 months to spin up a, you know, a big website. We can have anywhere from 20 to 50 people working on it, developing it, integrating it. I enjoy the work. I enjoy my team. But. Yeah, I'm curious what's next? It's like, okay, you know, am I just going to keep building these things? And, yeah, I almost want to go smaller again. I almost want to get back to that, like MFA bike shop kind of thing. Like more entrepreneurial, you know. It doesn't always have to be big and fast and, multinational, multi-bazillion dollars, you know. It's like maybe do something a little smaller that, you know, a little slower pace where you can have more creativity. Because when you implement these big things, whether you're at Target or you're implementing a website for a major, major retailer, like, you have to fit their standards, right. You know, there's, there's margins. It's nice when you can put your own creativity and spin on something. So if you're doing your own thing, if it's entrepreneurial or it's a smaller company, you can wear a lot of hats and you can try different things and you can make suggestions and get creative. Right. And that, that is where I think it's going for me, is trying to get back to that entrepreneurial, a little more creativity, not pedal to the metal all day long, every day. �Marah Frese-Despins [00:51:47] I think we're about done. Unless you have any more questions, Evan? If there's anything you want to add. Evan Forrest [00:51:54] Not for me. Todd Shapiro [00:51:55] Okay. That was. Evan Forrest [00:51:56] Great. Marah Frese-Despins [00:51:58] See? Other. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Evan Forrest, Marah Frese-Despins Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Todd Shapiro Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 51:49 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit September 22nd, 2025 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Todd Shapiro Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 15th, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Todd Shapiro brings 30 years of experience in the retail supply chain, blending expertise in both e-commerce systems and retail distribution operations. Currently serving as the Sr. Director of PMO at DMI, he leads the Program Management Office overseeing large-scale e-commerce platform implementations. Todd and his team work closely with some of the world's largest retailers to build and enhance their online storefronts, integrating new features and driving operational improvements. Prior to his current role, Todd spent over a decade managing retail distribution centers for major companies such as Target, Aramark, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, refining his skills in logistics, supply chain optimization, and operations management. His extensive career allows him to seamlessly bridge the gap between traditional retail logistics and the growing demands of digital commerce. Todd holds a BSBA from the University of Vermont and an MBA from Boston University. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1385cad585f8c181f726de64d2303fb1.jpg 9a634b74fd20f1319774267f2ef741ce https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2574e5d65743f1eb45b5ef784b9cc07c.mp3 27783708d2cfe3268a42a6521156944e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/722b095771a49c864ef56616c9961079.pdf 358442d5d406a30425fbc753a0e6399d PDF Text Text Narrator: Natalya Lakhtakia Interviewers: Cal Rogers, Zain Sundaram, and Hope Wahrman Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs Date of Interview: April 7th, 2024 Hope Wahrman [00:00:00] So, today is Sunday, April 7th. Um, It's around 10 a.m. This is American Labor History, Oral History Project. I'm Hope Wahrman, I'm a sophomore. Other group members... Cal Rogers [00:00:16] I'm Cal Rogers, I'm a junior. Zain Sundaram [00:00:19] I am Zain Sundaram, I'm also a junior. Hope Wahrman [00:00:23] And our interviewee... Natalya Lakhtakia [00:00:26] I'm Natalya Lakhtakia. I am a speech language pathologist, who lives here in Saratoga Springs! Hope Wahrman [00:00:32] Awesome. Okay so, um I think a good... or the perfect place to sort of begin this interview um is asking or starting from the beginning. Asking about your childhood, where are you from? Sort of, what was that like a little bit. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:00:49] Sure. So I am from State College, Pennsylvania. It's where Penn State is, its what it's known for. Um, I am the daughter of two immigrants. So, my Dad moved to the United States from India. My Mom moved to the United States from Argentina, both to go to graduate school in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah, which is where they met. And about a year after, well not even a year after they met, my dad got offered a job at Penn State University as a postdoc and they moved to State College. And I was born a few years later. So I grew up with two parents working at the university. And unlike Skidmore, Penn State is very very large. When the students are there, it's doubling the population of our community. So, the community is large. You know, the city itself is larger than Saratoga, and then the population of students is very big. So the community is very university centered. And so because of that, I think I got a really, I got an excellent education. I had a lot of opportunities. I had, um a lot of chances to do things with the university that you know, really enriched my life. And then my parents, who are both academics and both from countries where the focus on education I think is a lot better than the United States. I mean more complex, but there's a bigger focus on education than there is in the United States. I had them also supplementing you know, my upbringing. So in third grade my parents said, "Hey, this isn't meeting our child's needs. She is bored at school." And the school is starting to blame me for being bored. And so they moved me to a private school, which is complex as a person who as an adult only supports public education. You know, that's a complex decision. And then when my private school didn't have the resources to do certain things, my parents would fill in. So in sixth grade, you know the sixth graders in public school got to dissect, um animal hearts. And so my mom bought animal hearts for my private school. And so they were really focused on that. They gave me a lot of chances to do things. I got to go to space camp, I got to go to journalism camp, I got to do all sorts of really amazing things. Um, and then I went to Penn State for my undergraduate degree with every intention of becoming an engineer. And after, uh the first year I thought "that's not the right path for me." And, I decided to major in psychology. As a junior in psychology I took psycholinguistics, and I was really, really, really excited about it. And I talked to my professor and I said, "How do I do this as a job?" And she said, "Well why don't you go to the Communication Sciences department and like see what you �could do?" And so she connected me with Doctor Katherine Drager who said "Hey, come work in my lab, do undergraduate research," and I did. So I did my research on, so autistic children who are three and four years old who are using a communication device. I did my research on how the other children were able to understand them, communicate with them, play with them, etc. And so within you know, a few months I said I'm gonna apply to grad school and I'm gonna go to grad school to become a speech language pathologist. I didn't want to go into research, I wanted to do work. And so I wanted to do therapy. And so when I did that and I applied, I thought that I was going to work at a veteran's hospital. I said, "I'm going to work at a VA. It's a guaranteed job for life. There will always be people who need you." Um, and I thought I was going to help people with swallowing and with their voice disorders. So those are two really common things that you're seeing at a veteran's hospital. Because, like war is really really hard on your body. And so those are two things that will come from that: trouble eating and trouble speaking. And then I, as a graduate student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City which is where my parents went too, I had to do two externships. And I did one in a public school, and I did one in a skilled nursing facility. And I said, "That is not for me." I'm gonna work in a public school. I had an idea of what swallowing disorders were like, but it's actually really really terrible when someone tells you you can't eat. And so I put up with a lot of um, I don't want to say it was abuse because it wasn't like... I understand it, I guess. Um, but people were really really upset to not be able to eat. And I said this is not, I don't want to be the person who's telling them they can't eat. Um, I want to be the person who's playing with kids and helping them communicate. Um, and so I applied with the school district where I had done my internship and they hired me. I did two years there before I said "I actually want to move back to the East Coast." So I moved back here, and I had started dating a guy that I actually went to preschool and also elementary school and also high school and also college. So he was living in Massachusetts, so I moved there. And I ended up getting a job doing early intervention in Rhode Island. So just like for the context of this interview: being a union employee in Utah to being nonunion in Rhode Island. And then a couple of years later, he got a job offer here in New York. So we moved here and I didn't work for almost two years because I got pregnant very, very, very soon after we moved here and I had a really sick pregnancy. And then I had a baby, and I didn't really know how to go back to work. Um, the other thing that was complicated was moving to New York. It is really, really, really hard to get licensed here. It is a lot of work. So in Rhode Island I was able to like get my photograph taken at AAA, and fill out a sheet of paper and go to like the local like state police department and and get fingerprinted. And I handed it all in and I had a license. Here it was an enormous process including, like additional classes. I had to like, call my high school to get specific dates of things like it was a really involved process. But when my son was about eight months old, I got a call from a recruiter saying "Hey, the Santa Fe Public Schools are looking for someone to do teletherapy. Would you want to do that?" And I said "Yeah, that's great." And I will say at that time I didn't really understand a lot of things about employment. And so I started as a contractor with them. So I was not a direct employee of the schools, I had a contract with a company that had a contract with the schools. I was essentially self-employed. But, and it being paid pretty badly I would say, but it was worth it to me because then I could start work at 10 AM because of the time difference. And so I did that for seven school years. And then just this past August, I got a call from the head of special education where he was crying and said "The district has made the decision to end all teletherapy. I have fought, I had even fought for it to just be you who stays, like we don't want to lose you. But we don't have an option, you're out. We're ending all teletherapy." And so um, that was horrible. I will say like, I was really really upset. I didn't get to say goodbye to my students. Like, when you work in a school you're really bonded with kids. But it's also the nature of being a contractor. Like, they can just end your contract. And if you aren't even within the dates of a contract, which I �technically wasn't because they called me a week before school started, they don't even owe you anything. Like, I didn't get paid out a month. I didn't get anything. It was just your contract's... not starting. And so, I took a little bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do. I'm really actively involved in politics here, and I thought "Like I'm good at this. I could do this as my job and I could, you know, continue to have kind of an easier job until my son starts middle school." Um, and I found really quickly that it wasn't the right fit for me. I'm a person who really needs structure, and needs to have a solid work day to stay happy. And so I in December, applied to some local school districts and I got hired at Fort Edward Schools. It's about 30 minutes from Saratoga Springs. It's a very, very, very small community. Um of about 3000 people, there are fewer than 400 students in the pre-K through 12 school. And I'm one of their two speech therapists. And I'm back to being in a union and I'm a member of NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and then a member of my local, which is the Fort Edward Teachers Association. And I'm really, really excited about that. So that's my history! Cal Rogers [00:09:51] Yeah, awesome thank you. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:09:51] Sorry. Hope Wahrman [00:09:53] (Laughs) No no, that was perfect. Um, yeah. There's so much now that I want to like, ask you about from from that alone so that's great. Hope Wahrman [00:10:03] Also I wanted to just say our professor, Professor Morser sent us like your Linkedin. And so I'd seen that you went to Penn State, and I'm from Philadelphia. There's like a map of Philly in my dorm. And like literally, I'm more like...because I'm closer to Philly than like "state" like a lot of people end up going to like Drexel or Temple. But like at least like 20% of my graduating class goes to Penn State. So. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:10:31] Yes! I'm sure. Hope Wahrman [00:10:31] Love Pennsylvania, love that. Yeah. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:10:35] I know, me too. Hope Wahrman [00:10:37] So yeah, just wanted to. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:10:39] Awesome, no I love that. Hope Wahrman [00:10:40] To make you feel more comfortable, with this. But okay, so sort of talking about, um keeping on track with like your earlier experiences and how that shaped your involvement today. Um, what was your first job? And that can be... You can talk about like your first I guess like quote unquote, like "professional job." Maybe like right out of grad school, but also maybe like your first job as a young adult as well. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:11:09] Sure, yeah. So as a young adult I, well, if you set aside things like babysitting my freshman year of college I actually was a nanny for a cardiologist in town. And I made so much money just from nannying during football games that I didn't do anything else. Like that paid my, that paid for all the things I wanted it to pay for. But, I want to say I was a sophomore in college when I got a job with what was then called MBNA. I don't know what MBNA is now, but it's essentially a bank that gives out credit cards. And I was sitting in like a big room really close to actually my parents house, and I �was making phone calls basically trying to get people to accept a credit card. And, also sometimes calling people who already had credit cards with us and upgrading them. And like thinking about it in this context, so there was another... I think she was a junior who worked with me, her name was Ellen. I don't know Ellen anymore. Like, we only worked together for five months? Maybe. But Ellen and I did not smoke, like I don't smoke cigarettes. And Ellen did not smoke cigarettes. But if you worked at MBNA, you got a 15 minute cigarette break every two hours. And Ellen and I were like, "But how come people who smoke get to leave this like weird like warehouse of desks that we're in and go outside for 15 minutes?! And we don't get to, just because we don't smoke?" And, I probably at that time would not have been the person to push it. I was the person to complain about it. Just to like, Ellen. Who was at the desk next to me! But Ellen was like, "They can't stop us." We went outside one day and our you know, manager was like "You guys aren't going outside to smoke, you can't smoke." And Ellen was like "Okay, I'll start smoking cigarettes if that will let you, if that will make you let me go outside." And our manager, like that was enough for our manager to be like,"Huh, yeah okay. Go outside." And so it was a really interesting thing where like after a month, all of a sudden we had our 15 minute breaks the same as smokers did. Um, but I didn't stay there for very long. It wasn't, um it was like the kind of job that I could do when the semester wasn't going on. When the semester was going on, they didn't have any real trouble with like pushing and pushing and pushing to take over more of my time. And I just was privileged enough to be able to say "Like sorry, I actually don't need you." Um, and so I stopped working there. I started working at Panera. Um, and then I left Panera for a local place a very Pennsylvania place called the Carnegie House, where I was a server. And so, I did that. And I worked at the Carnegie House up until I graduated and moved to Salt Lake City. Hope Wahrman [00:13:58] Cool. Yeah, that definitely answers that question. And then I also just had one other question, kind of based on what you had said earlier. And it's just, so you grew up in a house that really like supported education and self-sufficiency. And like it sounds like every opportunity your parents had to make your education better, they took. And that's really awesome. And they themselves were educators. And so it's it's funny that you you had no idea that that's kind of what you were really interested in like that you went to college for engineering, um and all of that. And so I guess my question maybe is like, do you take anything from your childhood and the way your parents raised you and educate into your work today? Natalya Lakhtakia [00:14:46] So I will say, like I doubt this is what you meant by "selfsufficiency." But I would actually say that both my parents are from very very communityminded societies compared to the United States, which is a very individualist society. And so I think that the biggest thing that I have taken from them and like that upbringing is my dad constantly saying like at least once a week, "No man is an island." Like you're not doing anything by yourself, you're doing everything in the context of the people around you. You are not like, if you do well in life you're not "self-made" like you're community made and all of that. And so to me, that kind of a mindset is what leads you to understand... unions. Because like, I cannot go to a school and do speech therapy by myself. It doesn't exist like that. Like I'm only seeing kids for 30 to 90 minutes a week, right? Like they're spending time with other people who are shaping them. We're not doing it away from their parents, even if their parents never set foot in the school. Which is the case sometimes, that parents are completely they feel disconnected from the schools and they are disconnected from the schools. But we're not doing anything by ourselves. And so I think that um...First of all, it wasn't until I was much older that I recognized that my dad views himself first and foremost as a teacher. Um, because I would recognize him as a researcher. And same thing with my mom. So my mom wasn't an instructor until I was in �high school, my mom was doing research. And so, that's kind of how I viewed academia just from like that perspective. And then my dad started to win teaching awards, and I was like "oh huh...he is a teacher." But my dad's also a professor of engineering. So I would say like my like, I was going to be an engineer like my dad. And so that's kind of how I was viewing what he was doing. Um but again my parents are very focused on like, "everything is in the context of community." And that's really difficult I will say. Like I don't know if you have parents who are from other cultures, but like it is really difficult to be an American student and especially at that time, and to have parents with that mindset when we are in such like a rugged individualist society. And when my friends who were like American with American parents, were living lives that felt very very different from mine. And I also did have a lot of Indian friends who had Indian parents, but most of them had two Indian parents then I didn't. And so that was also another thing where it was like I couldn't really... It was hard to find out my place between these two worlds. And then I don't even know that there was anybody in State College from Argentina at the time. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's I would say that's the biggest thing that I took from them. And something I think about a lot and something that I actually tell people a lot like when I'm talking about, um the labor movement or when I'm talking about socialism. Just these are things that like you don't have to be like outright saying like "Hey, like I personally think that socialism is a better way to do things than capitalism." You can talk about things in that context of like nobody is self-made, everyone is community made. And, I think that that's a way to kind of contextualize the world in a way that helps people see the things that American education is kind of hiding from us. Hope Wahrman [00:18:19] Yeah, that's awesome (laughs). Thank you. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:18:23] Sure. Zain Sundaram [00:18:23] How did you end up working in the Saratoga area? Natalya Lakhtakia [00:18:30] So, um we were living... My husband was working at um... I think it was...I don't remember it went through a bunch of different names. I think it was "Schneider Electric" at the time, in Massachusetts. And... But it had been like different iterations. But they had taken a project that my husband was like, "something's going to go wrong here. Like, we're not going to be able to finish this project, and I'm going to lose my job." And, I was working in early intervention. Rhode Island early intervention is very different from New York early intervention. Here you're a contractor, and you're working with the counties. In Rhode Island, you're a direct employee of a company that's managing all of that. And so, I was working for a company where I would say I was definitely being exploited. I was being held to a different standard than my fellow speech therapists for a couple reasons. I mean the first is that I'm bilingual, and the second is that I didn't live physically on that island where our company was located. And so, I was doing a lot more work than everybody else and I was really tired. And my husband said, "What if we start looking for jobs in other areas?" And so he took a job in Clifton Park. And his boss told him like, "You definitely want to live in Saratoga. It's such a great place to live, you'll love it, etc. etc." We looked at a couple places to rent in Saratoga and could not afford them. And it's obviously only gotten worse. So we took... we found an apartment in Ballston Lake, which is like Exit 11. And we lived there for two years. And then actually... So I'm here in my house in Saratoga, the house across the street...the dad I will say...so the dad grew up with me and my husband in State College, he actually lived in the same neighborhood as my husband. And then his wife went to Penn State, which is where they met. So when we moved here, we like reconnected with them. And so she called me one day and said, "The house across the street is going to go on the market tomorrow. You need to buy it. This is �an affordable neighborhood in Saratoga, and it would be so great." I already had a baby. She was pregnant. And she was like, "It would be so good. None of us have family here. We could be each other's family and support. It's like you have to move there." And so, that's what I did. Like I came here...my mom was visiting, we came, we toured the house. I said, "This house is disgusting." And my mom said, "Nope, this is a good house and you can paint it, like it'll be good." And we bought the house and we moved in. And I will say again like going back to this community idea, like my parents live six hours away. My extended family doesn't live in this country. Their families live more than six hours away. I mean, I think everybody lives in Ohio basically, or DC. And, they don't have other family that's here. But we get to be each other's families like our children are, and I understand that they're not like siblings to each other, but they are. They have this really intense family relationship where like for February break, like I took their daughter with us and we went to go stay with my parents. Like we're doing these things together all the time. And so we got to build our own little community. And I will say, having that kind of community in Saratoga Springs is what keeps me here. Because I don't enjoy living in Saratoga Springs at least 80% of the time. It is a really really tough place to live. And I understand why my husband's wealthy white boss was like, "Hey you should live in Saratoga Springs." But for me it is, it is rough to live here. And so what keeps me here is my neighborhood, and having that kind of a community. Hope Wahrman [00:22:05] Um...really quickly, would you mind kind of talking a little bit about like some of the difficulties in terms of living in Saratoga Springs? Natalya Lakhtakia [00:22:37] So Saratoga is... It is a unique community in many ways. So one of the ways that it is, is that unlike most municipalities in the United States it is getting whiter. And so that is unlike the majority of the United States. So it's getting whiter, the schools themselves are not getting whiter. The schools are actually getting less white pretty, steadily. But there's such an influx here of older white people who do not have children, and so there's that. Our county is one of 3% of counties in the United States that votes in line with the winner of the presidential election. And so like, and I think that that's been happening since George W Bush. But I might be wrong on that. But it's many many years of like, "this county voted George W Bush and they voted for Obama and they voted for Obama, and they voted for Trump, and they voted for Biden." And it is very likely that however this county votes in the next election will also be the winner of the next presidential election. And so what that has led to, is to our county being a kind of testing ground. And with us being kind of the focal point of the county, a lot of that testing happens here. And this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but like we can track like this is something I'm really interested in. And so, you can track that this is happening and you can see. Like if you remember a few years ago, there was a big focus on critical race theory. Not actual critical race theory but like what you know, conservatives were calling "critical race theory" and how that was going to take over the schools. That entire cycle played through in Saratoga Springs before it became a national news story. We had already had an entire school board election here that was focused on critical race theory and it played out in a way that was really interesting. I mean, that was three years ago. And so the people that were elected through that election are now up for reelection here. And so being a testing ground means that there is kind of a constant attack on the left, and that's really tough. I would say that I do not view myself as liberal, because I view liberalism as being very conservative. I am, you know, I'm a leftist. I view myself as being very far to the left. And then because I'm not white and because I am a public figure here, I get to be the target of things. I get to have different things -- I don't know if they're tested on me or if people are just saying them. But there's kind of this like, regular attack on me as a person. And that's really really tough. So it's not only tough to recognize that I'm �raising my son, who I don't think you can see him, but and by all appearances is white. Um, like gets to live in the world as a white child. And like as a tall, fairly well-off, very cute white child which comes with a lot of privileges. So not only am I raising my kid in this very homogenous society or homogenous community but also like... so there's like this, like structural thing that's really tough for me and there's also the personal attacks that are really tough for me. And then there's the other specific level of um, we are one of the we are one of two communities in the entire state of New York that has our particular form of government. Which is called the "commission form of government." The commission form of government is literally illegal in some states. Like it is such a horrible form of government, it was created immediately after... I think after Juneteenth, I think I think it was like 1867ish. It was created to ensure that formerly enslaved people couldn't have the same like ability to be in charge of their municipalities, as like wealthy white landowners. And we still have it here in Saratoga Springs. Since I moved here, there have been a lot of attempts to change that and they both failed. One of them failed by only ten votes, though. Like I mean, there are some pretty close things that are happening. But so because of this form of government, we just have kind of "rule by a specific mindset of person," Which has been led to like very very blatant civil rights violations, specifically against Black people. But also poor people, brown people, etc. And I think that that is something that our community doesn't even really recognize. You know, I would consider myself to be a police abolitionist. Like, I don't think that societies need policing the way that it exists right now in the United States at all. But I think that specifically in Saratoga Springs, the form of policing that we end up having here as a result of the commission form of government, and as a result of the whiteness, and as a result of the wealth here has led to us just being in a really dangerous situation. And again, I feel like a lot of the people around me don't recognize that. And that's because of...and this is the last thing I'll say about Saratoga Springs. I think that Saratoga Springs, being raised here from people who were also raised here, leads to a lack of curiosity. And so there are a lot of people who are like "Why would I leave Saratoga Springs when this is the best place to live? It's so good." Like it's... And it is a good place to live, right? Like there's a lot of stuff to do. It's really beautiful. You're close to things. In general, like your kids' needs are met. Like, there's a lot of good stuff here. And so, I think that there's just these people who aren't leaving this community. Who also have this particular type of like nativism where they're like, "If you're not from Saratoga, then you're not a true Saratogian." Which I'm like, "Okay well, I don't really want to be. I don't care about that." But I think that this has led to people having a very skewed perspective of their community. And therefore, not standing up against the really concerning parts of our community. And again I will say like, I'm making generalizations here. And there are a lot of amazing people here who are standing up to that and who are doing work, and who are trying to make it better. And I'm trying to do that too. But, it it is a very particular type of community that kind of has all these different things going on. And they do add up to being a hard place for me to live like, conceptually. Like I'm like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I live in Saratoga Springs, New York." And also just in terms of like my actual existence here like, "Natalya Lakhtakia living in Saratoga Springs" is having a really really hard time because I am a focus. And, we have considered moving. Like we have talked about it. Not this past December but the December before, somebody posted under a fake name on Facebook. Like, they posted this thing about how like, I'm vermin and "we need to bring out the big guns against Natalya and blah, blah, blah." And that, I will say like having had so many things be said about me over the last five years...that particular like dehumanization like using literal Nazi language against me was enough that I was like "we need to move, like we need to go somewhere else." And my husband was like, "Great, let's figure it out." But at the end of the day like many Americans, we are in some ways stuck here because my husband's job is really really good. And like so we could move to Niskayuna if we wanted to. Or we could move to Clifton Park if we wanted to. But we're �really just staying within the area because my husband's job is so good. And a lot of millennials don't get to have the kind of job that he has, and it's not worth it to give it up. Because he gets raises every year, he's really protected, he gets time off, he gets PTO and medical time off. He gets all these things that like millennials are getting less and less of, and Gen Z is potentially not even getting at all. And it's really really hard to give that up and if we're just going to move within the area, then we are giving up the benefits of our neighborhood community. And I would rather that my son had that neighborhood community and just like, look at social media a little bit less. Hope Wahrman [00:31:04] Thank you. And also like I mean, of course it's difficult living in Saratoga Springs. But yeah, this community really needs people like you. And the work that you do makes Saratoga better. So, thank you... Natalya Lakhtakia [00:31:17] Thank you. Hope Wahrman [00:31:18] ...For staying in spite of all those things. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:31:20] I will also say like, the students in this community are super rad. And, there are things happening in this community that I sometimes I'm like, "Oh my God, like there's really, really good stuff here." So like this is just one thing, I really love musical theater. But our high school just put on Head Over Heels. And, Head Over Heels is a really in your face musical that is like very very blatantly spelling it out for anybody who might not get it: pro-trans. And to have like our high school students put that on, and to see essentially no pushback. No pushback that I saw as a school board member and as a member of the community. And as the friend of parents of a lot of kids in the musical, there was like one parent that was like. And all the other parents were like "Nope, the kids are doing it." And that was the end of that. And I was like okay, that makes me feel good because for us to be so far on the right side of that in terms of protecting trans students and uplifting their stories... Like that to me, I'm like "okay, they're good things in Saratoga too." So I can talk about the bad things all day long but there are a lot of good things here too and I will say that. Cal Rogers [00:32:33] I want to transition a little bit. I want to hear about what your work looks like and your interactions with kids and like...just tell me about it. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:32:44] Yeah. So I'm a speech language pathologist and again, I started this job um... Tuesday will be three months of me working in this particular school district. So I am still learning a lot about it. But I work in a pre-K through 12 school building. And then my particular caseload is grades one through six. And the other speech therapist is doing pre-K, kindergarten, and then like seven through 12. And so my day generally looks like most of the time pulling kids into my room, either individually or in small groups, to do speech and language therapy with them. So it's two different things: either working on their sounds, or working on the actual content of what they're saying or what they're understanding. And then we have a really awesome, strong union and so I have a lot of stuff built into my day that I didn't really realize I guess, what an awesome day I had, I could have, until I started working here. So there are 30 kids on my caseload, that is extremely low. In Santa Fe where I was a contractor, at one point I had 47 kids on my caseload and I was like, "Oh my God, they're going to make me go to another school because this is too low." So I usually had around 60 kids on my caseload. So here we're at about half of that. I do see these kids more often than I saw kids before because I work on a six day cycle. So like when I go back to work on Tuesday, I think it'll be day three. And so I have like my day three schedule that I follow. But the following Tuesday will not be day �three, right? It'll be like day one or whatever, I don't know what it is. So I follow that and sometimes I'm going into classrooms, sometimes I'm pulling kids for testing. And then also under our contract, I can sub for people that are absent for a period. So I can sub for a teaching assistant, or a teaching aide, or I can sub for a teacher. And I get paid different rates for that. And so sometimes I'm doing that as well. And then I have a lot of prep time. But I am so used to not having prep time that I think that I've developed the skills that I don't really need to prepare during that time, like I'll do some prep. A lot of my prep is transitioning things that I previously had that were electronic to now being like printed out and laminated so that we can reuse them over and over again. But usually I'm using that prep time to do billing or to type reports. Then also right now we're in what they call CSE seasons. So CSE is Committee for Special Education. And so I'll have meetings with parents to go over our plans for next year. And then also as we get to like, you know, the different marking period, and I'm typing up progress notes to let parents know how their kids are doing. But the majority of my time is doing therapy, it's doing testing, it's doing billing. There's a lot of billing to do in New York compared to Santa Fe. And the system that we use is actually really inferior to the system we were using in Santa Fe. And I think that's because New York kind of has, maybe because of the BOCES, I don't know. But everybody's using the same system, so it doesn't have to get better because there's no competition. So it's a really time consuming system to do all of my billing. My work day is from 7:55 to 3:00 pm, except for on Fridays when I'm out at 2:45. And because I have a little kid and because of my husband's work day, I get to work at like 7:54. I mean, I'm not getting there before my contract time at all. In general, I'm not staying after my contract time either. And part of that is because the other speech therapist, her husband is such like a strong union guy that he's like "if you can't get your work done during your contract hours, then they need to change how they're giving you work. It's not up to you to figure it out outside of your contract hours. It's up to the district to give you an appropriate work level." And if we stay after he will like jokingly, but also like it's only kind of a joke be like "you guys are being union busters, like you're scabbing." And it's such a good perspective to have from this like really strong union guy of like, "Yeah, why am I staying after? If I didn't get my work done, I got to do it tomorrow." But like my contract hours are from 7:55 to 3. I'm not, I don't need to stay later. And I actually recently went through this, where I contacted the Special Ed director and I said "Hey, I have three IEPs due, those are the individualized education plans that we're writing for students who are in special education. And I have to do all of my progress notes. I don't have time to do this and see my students. What do I do?" And she said, "Oh, actually you get three days that you can request like as time off, but it's only time off from therapy. You're still here doing your paperwork." And she was like, "Why don't you put in for you know, two half days so you can do that?" And that's what I did. And they got my stuff done. So, there's a lot of stuff in place to make sure that I can do stuff. In terms of actually being with kids, we do a lot of "play therapy." So communication in general, as I'm just like making a speech right here. But in general, it's a turn taking exercise, right? Like you take a turn you say something, I take a turn and I say something. And so because of that, it allows us to play a lot of turn taking games while we do our work. And I do have a surprising number of students who need support with turntaking. I actually was not expecting how many of my kids would be in like third and fourth grade and not know how to take communication turns. They know how to take turns on a game, but they don't know how to translate that into their communication. So there are a lot of times where I'm walking down the hallway and three children are talking to me all at the same time. And I'm like, "oh my gosh like this is what we really need to focus on." So a lot of times we're sitting there, we're playing a game, and we're working on whatever their skill is. Sometimes we're reading, I'm reading or they're reading. And then we're you know, working on vocabulary through that. We're working on using context clues to build their inferencing skills. Or we're just working on sounds. There are a lot of kids who are making �speech-sound errors, and I just do therapeutic work with them to help them be able to develop those sounds. Because it's important that they be able to be understood. Cal Rogers [00:39:29] Awesome, thank you. So what are, following up with that, what are some advantages or disadvantages of your job? Natalya Lakhtakia [00:39:40] Um, the work hours are really good. The only thing I would change is if I could start work at like, 8:15. That would just give me a little bit more time with my kid in the morning before I like, send him over to my neighbor's house. And I would be happy to stay until 3:20 for that. But I would say when you work in education, especially right now, you're really bonding experience with your coworkers. I mean, you're responsible for children and there are a lot of families that are really really struggling. Fort Edwards is a really depressed community. I'm still learning about it, but it's my understanding that they used to have a really successful factory there. And when the factory shut down, that really just impacted the community. So I have a lot of students that don't just need to come to school to get an education and to learn how to be like humans in the world and learn how to interact with each other, but they also need like love and support because their parents are really really struggling. They you know... I think a lot of times they think my son gets to like, enjoy breaks. I have kids on my caseload and I'm sure this is the case everywhere, but kids on my caseload that break is like a daunting time for them, and they're really relieved to come back to the structure of a school day. So I didn't really understand it when I interviewed. And they were like, you will get so much love working here. But it is definitely true. And I would call that both a benefit to my job which is that like, my kids are really really sweet and loving and we have such a nice time together and I just, I mean I love children in general. And also just a really sad part of my job, which is to know that like they need love from me because their parents are in such a bad position that they literally cannot meet the needs of their children the way that I can meet the needs of my child. And so that's both good and bad. I really like my coworkers. I like my school building. I like that I get to move around a lot. I spent a lot of time just sitting literally here at this desk, for seven years doing work at this computer. And so it's really nice to get to move around. You get to see, kids are so creative. You get to see what they're creating. You get to create things with them. Like my big thing is if I go into a classroom and they're doing an art project, me too. Like I want to do it as well. And to you know, to do that you get to what my kids think. Kids are really radical. I always love to say that "kids are the truest comrades." Because they are very very cool. And they're living in this very specific way when they're attending public school that just really builds their community ties. And then like as adults, we just don't get to have that in the same way. Especially without having like community centers, the way that I think that we should have them. And so I get to hear like a lot of really radical stuff from kids, and I love that. I get to read books with them, like it's just it's really nice to work in a school. And I had think forgotten that, working from home. Because working from home was fulfilling for me, and it was easy for me. And I still got to see my kids, and it was really fun. But working in a school, you just are in this very specific type of community that I think I wish could be expanded out more. I think that there are education reforms that are needed, for sure. It's not that I think public education is perfect, it's not. But I do think it is much better than just our general communities and existing in that is really amazing, I love that. And then also I will say, New York pays me really well. And I'm not saying that teachers don't deserve to get paid more like, we do. Like I think that my job is a lot more valuable than someone who plays basketball, for example. But I'm not a sports person in general but like I think like what I do, like I love Taylor Swift. But I think that her writing beautiful music maybe doesn't mean that she needs to be a billionaire when teachers should definitely get paid more for the work that we do. But that said like I also get paid significantly better than I got paid �before, in Utah and in New Mexico. Rhode Island was different because I worked you know, 40 hours a week year round. But I get like, the pay is really good. Cal Rogers [00:44:04] So going on to the Utah topic, my dad worked for a trucking company called "Driver Tech" out of Salt Lake City. So uh... Natalya Lakhtakia [00:44:11] That's cool. Cal Rogers [00:44:11] The University of Utah was my first choice for school, but I didn't get in. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:44:19] Well, that's their loss I'm sorry. Cal Rogers [00:44:21] It's okay. So you kind of answered all of my questions, so I'm gonna... Natalya Lakhtakia [00:44:26] Oh, okay! Cal Rogers [00:44:26] I'm gonna put it on the rest of the group, thank you. Zain Sundaram [00:44:35] What would you say is, some of the current local union issues? Natalya Lakhtakia [00:44:41] I mean Skidmore, honestly. It's really exciting that the nontenure track professors are, I guess instructors, are very close to getting you know their collective bargaining agreement done... Is what I was recently reading. I know the RAs were working on unionizing. Although I will admit that I lost track of where that was and what was happening. I also know you know, we had an attempt at unionizing the ALB1 Amazon warehouse. Which is in, I still don't know how to say it. If its Schodack or Shodack I forget. I think it's Schodack, about an hour away from here. But, you know people here work there. We did a really awesome job with unionizing Starbucks. Although, I'm now boycotting Starbucks. So for a while I was like, "I'm gonna go to the union ones." And now I'm like, "I don't need to go to Starbucks at all." So there's that kind of stuff happening. I know that there were some attempts at unionizing Spot Coffee, which was really exciting. But I think that what I appreciate about the area is that there is a lot of just solidarity between the unions. And I don't know how this compares to other places because I was not involved in this stuff before I moved to New York. And I moved to New York in like December 2014. So it hasn't even been you know, a decade yet. But here at least there's a lot of solidarity in the entire region, and the capital region is huge. But there's a lot of work that's being done to take care of each other. There's a lot of collaboration to like, support each other. There's some big union only projects coming up. So when there's a construction project there can be something called the PLA, a Project Labor Agreement. Which means that all of the labor will be union. And also all of the materials will be from union places like unionized...I don't know what the word is...industry? And so there's going to be a few of those. I think that the airport is one of them. And then there's some other bigger projects going on in terms of like the infrastructure in the area so like that's happening. But I think also, there's a lot of discussion going on. And there's a lot of solidarity when there are unions that don't have contracts. So, this is one thing that I can't talk a ton about because I'm on the school board. But the Saratoga Springs Teachers Association did not have a contract for two years. And, well that's misleading. They didn't have a contract for a year and a half. But negotiations are usually about six months. So for about two years they were working on a contract before they got one. And that included a contract that was voted down at the end of last school year. And it was really amazing to �me to watch the solidarity that was happening there and the work that they did. I mean, at one point we had a school board meeting with like 250 teachers at it, all in their union tshirts to show up with signs to basically be like "make this happen." And I thought that that was really amazing. I didn't really expect it I guess, even though I know that we have a strong union. The other thing that I think is really amazing is that. Um, well okay. So actually I will say the same thing happened at SUNY Empire where they didn't have a contract, so they did picketing. And people from different unions are coming. And so what I think is really amazing about unionizing is that you don't have to know the other people, and you don't have to work with the other people to show up and support them. Right? We're all in the working class, we're all together in this. Like the solidarity is so strong. And so I think that that's really amazing to see. I know that like the head of our teachers union was writing letters to Skidmore in support of the unionizing that was happening there. And the head of our CSEA, which is like the staff members of the district, did the same thing. And so they're showing up at pickets together. I think that's really incredible to see. And I will say like even when I feel really, really, really down about the current state of things in our country and world and like what I perceive to be the future. Or like what I'm worried will be the future, seeing like this kind of renewed sense of like labor and like that the working classes hold the tools to the future and the ruling classes clearly don't. I think that that's what really gives me hope. So, yeah. There's also some concerning labor stuff happening in the area, which I think is really interesting. And it gets back to kind of my view of liberalism. Which is that, liberalism is nice as a concept but in practice kind of falls apart. And so in Troy, we saw Capital Roots try to unionize. And they were like, "we're going to unionize." I had a couple friends who work there, and they were like "we're so excited to announce that we're going to do this work." And right away, the executive director and the board were like "Nope we'll just we'll recognize your union. You guys are unionized now. That's great. Like, you don't have to do all of the work. We'll just recognize it." And so everyone was like "Cool, this is great!" And then Capital Roots is basically going to be destroyed because of this. Because while they recognized the union, they then started to actively target different people and fire people. And there was like a lot of retaliation. So they like, recognize the union in concept because they knew that not doing that wouldn't be good. But then they have like many active National Labor Review Board violations that like they're found in the wrong. Capital Roots is falling apart. This is a group, I don't really know enough about what they do but they do like community gardening. And then they provide food to people in the area. So they're doing work that we can all agree is good. But they went on this kind of retaliation spree. My husband and I got to go and like be there to help picket with like Scabby the Rat and whatnot, which was really cool. My husband took off work to do that. But it's a reminder of like, unions aren't a nice idea. Unions are an ongoing, powerful practice. And so I think that sometimes in a place like New York where we are very liberal, we are very blue. Even in you know, like "Red Saratoga County." But like, it's not really right? Like Saratoga is very purple, that we can kind of recognize these good things, but then not actually support the practice. And so Capital Roots is now falling apart. And I think that that's really interesting. I also just like... This is weird to say because I assume that you're all in Gen Z. But I just like Gen Z gives me, like endless hope. Because I'm like. Gen Z with generally Gen X parents know so much and can see what these practices should look like. And I'm really excited for that, because I do think that we're going to see just kind of like a renewal of labor work. Hope Wahrman [00:51:57] Um, Yeah. And I kind of like to that vein of talking about like Gen Z and like their kind of hope for the future... Like what are what are some ways I mean, on Skidmore's campus is like one thing, but what are some ways that you think Skidmore students can sort of get involved in these unions? �Natalya Lakhtakia [00:52:21] So I think that the best way for any Skidmore student to get involved unfortunately costs money. But going to the labor breakfast. So the most recent one was just two days ago, and unfortunately I couldn't be there. But the first Friday of every month with a couple exceptions, I think May and September and July can kind of be iffy for them. But in general, the first Friday of the month there is a labor breakfast that happens at the Desmond Hotel. It's that hotel that's right off of Exit 4, so it's really close to the airport. And, it's a Union hotel. And so there's this labor breakfast where labor leaders and labor like union members and then also like electeds will all get together and talk about what's going on in the area. Because I think that what's going on in the area changes really rapidly from month to month. And so, you can learn about what's going on there. That's actually where I met Eric (Morser). Because I was going there with Minita, who is one of the city council members. And she was like "I'm going to bring my friend Eric from work." And I was like "cool!" And so he came to see it, and so he came to a really interesting one. Where we you know, we really just were talking about Palestine. And it was really interesting to see some of the leaders of the group try to shut down that conversation. And also really interesting to see one of the like, big labor leaders who the executive director... um and what is he? Yeah, he's the executive director of PEF, which is the Public Employees Federation. Get so angry about it, with him being in support of Israel. That he like threatened a woman who is Israeli, and like told her that her baby would be beheaded. Like it was really intense. So Eric got a very intense view of the labor breakfast. But that said, like it is a really awesome way to learn what's going on it is generally a really positive experience and the only reason why I can't go right now is because I have a job that's in-person and doesn't start at 10AM. But it's kind of your chance to learn what's going on in the area. And I think that that's really amazing. What I do know is going on right now close to here, is that the county workers are saying that they don't have a fair contract. And so there's some of the people who work for Saratoga County, I think they're CSEA, and so I know that they're doing pickets around the area. So I think that there's a way for students to get involved and to learn about that. I think it's really interesting that we're a very politically divided society. But when we're talking about the labor movement, that kind of doesn't matter as much, I guess. And I think that is because again, like the solidarity of the working class is so strong when you're unionized that views of like electoral politics just matter less. And I say that as somebody who like I would generally identify electoral politics as like my sports. Like I love to follow it, I love to be involved, I love to do my work, I love to know what's going on worldwide. But it's just you can set that aside when you're doing labor work. And so I think that that's really incredible to see. Because it doesn't really matter who's president. If you can't, like pay your bills and if you can't eat. Like, what matters is that you do the work to be able to do that with your one job. I also saw today that in Europe, something like 37% of people can identify that their job serves no purpose. Like they're not doing anything that's like, important to the continuing efforts of society. So I also know that, Bernie Sanders just introduced like a four-day work week bill into Congress. And I think that that's something that students should actively be involved in supporting. Because, like everybody could go do a four-day work week and our society would continue and people would have better lives and be happier and have more time for like, the joys of life. Without really very much changing. Hope Wahrman [00:56:28] Yeah. And I have one more, like our last question. But I also... It was interesting because during the pandemic, my high school had like a four day workweek. Like, the Friday of the week was "office hours." So like, you could go if you needed help, but like if you didn't have anything you needed help with and you were ahead on all your work like there was no class that day. And I think obviously there were some discrepancies with just working online, but in general like we were able to finish like �everything we had to for each unit. And like, learn the best that we could under those conditions. So, I definitely think a 4 day work week is a super cool thing that we could see in the future. That would work. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:57:11] And it's I mean, it's popular, right? Hope Wahrman [00:57:14] Yeah. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:57:14] Like my dad talks about it. And my dad is in his late 60s and is a professor. Like he's not working like in industry, right? Like he's he has like "a make your own hours" type of a job. And even he has like "yeah, people should have a four day workweek." Hope Wahrman [00:57:29] Yeah. And so thank you so much for meeting with us and talking to us. I could talk to you about this kind of thing for hours! Natalya Lakhtakia [00:57:38] Yes, me too. I love labor. Hope Wahrman [00:57:40] So I guess the final question is... Maybe it's a cheesy one I don't know. But I guess what is your advice to younger labor union organizers. Younger people just entering the workforce in general? Um, trying to kind of navigate their rights and their workplaces. Natalya Lakhtakia [00:58:04] Um...well. I don't think that I'm old, but I didn't know anything about this when I started working. So like when I started working, when I started working after grad school. When I started working in my school, they said "Check this box if you want to pay your union dues." And I turned to the person next to me and said, "Why wouldn't I pay my union dues?" And she was like, "There's no reason to not pay your union dues, like the pay off is much more like just pay them." And I said "Okay," and I checked that box. And that was like my total understanding of unions, was that my coworker said to check the box. And so because it is an option to not pay your dues which really sucks, to not pay into your society I guess into your community. But, so I would say like learning about this understanding that like basically all the good things that we have in terms of like the structures of society or because of the labor movement. And then also I will tell you, I get a lot of recruiting calls. And so, I do think that you have to balance like being able to live with having ideals. Like I strongly feel that. Like I have a lot of ideals, and I have a lot of beliefs for how things should be, and I also know how things are. And so I think that there needs to be a balance there where you can work for better, but also like you have to be able to eat. And you have to be able to pay your bills and you have to also like, not be just laying in bed in the dark because you don't have a job, right? Like so like there's all these things going on. But what I do now is even though I'm not looking for a job, I think I'm probably in it at Fort Edward for the long haul. I really like it, and I am happy there. After three months but, still. Even though I'm not looking for a job, every single time that a recruiter calls me, every single time I get an email or a text or a message on LinkedIn I respond and I say "Is this a union job? Because I will only take a union job." And, it's really interesting because some of the recruiters are not unionized either, they're doing their jobs. And so it's one of those things where it opens up a conversation. And I've started to kind of push for that. And what I'll tell people is "I will not take a job if it's not union." And I encourage other people to do the same, because I'm certainly not the only one getting these calls. And so I think that if you have the ability to do that, just getting out that kind of a message matters. I also think even if you get a job that's not union like my last one, and you have the ability to support union work in your area. Like being aware of what's going �on and showing up to support is worth it every single time. And so... um well with one exception, which is that I will say. Police say that they have unions, but they don't. Because unions are for workers and police are not workers. And so what they have are whatever they are called, um the...what are they called? Police Benevolence Associations. And they can have solidarity with other workers when they want to have that like public relations view. Of like, "Look, we stand with the teachers" or whatever. But I will never, ever stand with them because that kind like police come from Pinkertons like they're union breakers. They're not union supporters. But all of that aside, I think that any time you're showing up for actual workers like you're making the world better. I'm a firm believer, as even as somebody who doesn't who loves electoral work, that if you are organizing your own community you are doing something that is vastly more important than any sort of electoral work is. And there are times where I like...I will say, I do think that being on the school board can at times put me at odds with my view of the working class. And I also still think it's worthwhile to do it, because I think that having my viewpoint on the board is important, and I'm not the only one with my viewpoint. But I think that if you are doing the work to try to get a union job, getting your job and then doing the work to unionize it while knowing your rights. I think if you are connecting with other unions to support them. And then I just think in general,like even just setting union work aside, doing the work to support the working class. Which is like, all of us. And not doing the work to support the ruling class, gives you... It builds class consciousness. And understanding class, and how this division of the classes and dividing us into different groups only supports the ruling class, helps you navigate the world. And helps you have, I guess strong principles to follow. And so even if you're not in a union job, and even if you feel like you're being mistreated at work, it will help you move forward to something better. And I think that having solidarity with your fellow workers is the only way we're going to move forward as a society. Stay in New York! Because New York is like, I think the second most unionized state. Hope Wahrman [01:03:04] Wow. That's very impressive. And it's the second most? Natalya Lakhtakia [01:03:08] I think so. I think I saw Hawaii is higher? Something like that, I don't remember right now. But New York is like around 20%? This is...I actually might be remembering this wrong. We're definitely second, though. So you may want to look this up. But, if you stay in New York you have a higher chance of being in a union if you work in public education or any sort of public office. Like if you're working for the governor's office, or the state, or the federal government like you have a higher chance of being in a union.... If you're a postal worker. And then you can work for better for you and your fellow workers. But also you can unionize where you're at, my husband has looked into it for his job. Hope Wahrman [01:03:43] Yeah. Well yes, thank you so much again. Natalya Lakhtakia [01:03:46] Yeah! Zain Sundaram [01:03:46] Yeah, thank you. Hope Wahrman [01:03:46] I like really appreciate you coming in and taking the time to meet with us. Um, yeah. This was a wonderful interview. � Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Cal Rogers, Zain Sundaram, Hope Wahrman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Natalya Lakhtakia Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:03:54 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit September 8th, 2025 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Natalya Lakhtakia Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 7th, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Natalya Lakhtakia is a speech-language pathologist in the Fort Edward School District and a proud NYSUT member. The daughter of immigrants and from a family of educators, she has been on the Saratoga Springs Board of Education since 2019 and has served as board vice-president, and on the finance, audit, policy, superintendent evaluation, DEI, and counseling committees. She is currently serving as board president. She lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and son. She is active with Capital District DSA, NYS Break the Bonds, and does work with Skidmore’s Education Department to support future educators. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/20b4356ddb31d61267bc20b9db06995b.jpg 201e52299e4c82d158c6e8afd5304c89 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/40b6cb648f66188f8d3cdb667ca5d6ca.mp3 5a4eced625c9a1350c9d1a723b0739c0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d607a01f4caed999b18b6b0d2275cfbb.pdf 300b139eaedd8f69656c5aafb0c5bbe5 PDF Text Text Narrator: Melissa Deutsch Interviewers: Charlie Movius and Ben Nathan Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs Date of Interview: March 19th, 2024 Charlie Movius [00:00:00] My name is Charlie Movius. Ben Nathan [00:00:02] And I'm Ben Nathan. Melissa Deutsch [00:00:03] I'm Melissa Deutsch. Charlie Movius [00:00:05] Today is March 26th, 2024, and this is an interview on labor organizing in the Saratoga Springs area for Professor Eric Morser's American labor history class at Skidmore College. Ben Nathan [00:00:19] Mrs. Deutsch, you are a teacher at maple Avenue middle school. What attracted you to that job? Melissa Deutsch [00:00:28] That particular job or teaching in general? Ben Nathan [00:00:31] That particular job. Melissa Deutsch [00:00:32] Well, I got laid off from Niskayuna, and that job opened up. And I was teaching a student, a sixth grader in Niskayuna, and I was laid off when the, the tax cap went into effect. And, districts were laying off people everywhere and I just happened to get lucky and get up in Saratoga. Ben Nathan [00:01:03] Follow up - why did you decide to become a grade school teacher? Melissa Deutsch [00:01:11] I think part of it is my upbringing in a household - I think I was attracted to politics and this topic because my father was a Republican and my mother was a Democrat. And, so our household was very active in discussing issues. And they would always say, there they go to the polls and cancel out each other's votes. So I think that attracted me to this subject matter. And I just loved history and politics in general. And I also had some influential teachers as I was coming up as a young person. Then I came to Skidmore and, Tad Kuroda - I mean, these are names that the old timers would know was one of my favorite - I think he's not alive anymore, but - one of my favorite professors here. And, I just sort of gravitated into, my mother always wanted me to become a teacher. She wanted to become a teacher because, that's summers off, you know, that kind of thing. And great to have a family, and so that's kind of how I got into teaching. When I came here, I was the only person, only one, in my class doing secondary ed. They did not have a program for me. They had elementary ed, so they hired a man at Shen to be sort of my adjunct professor, for lack of a better word. And, that's history. That's where I did my student teaching, and, yeah. Charlie Movius [00:02:56] So thinking about being a teacher, as you were growing up and as you were in school, how is that different from actually being a teacher? Melissa Deutsch [00:03:11] It's intense to be a teacher. When you look at teachers you think, "Oh, I could do that, that's easy." And then you do it. And doing it well, because I've seen it done poorly in many cases. But doing it well takes a ton of work. And, how you �present things to a variety of learners is time consuming and takes a lot of energy. And, I gravitated towards middle school for some crazy reason. I think it was because I enjoyed my student teaching in seventh grade more than I enjoyed the older students. So that's, I've been a middle school teacher for over 25 years, so I have never done anything else. I've taught sixth and seventh and eighth grade and that's it. And I think that that's where I belong. So. Charlie Movius [00:04:12] Do you think, would you say that being part of a union is a way to help you be a better teacher and to help you teach well? Melissa Deutsch [00:04:23] Sometimes. I do, I do believe in unions. It's funny, because my dad was a small business owner and was always complaining about painters unions. He had a, construction business, and my mother was opposite. I see definitely the benefits of unions, but I also have seen the decisions that unions make sometimes the nitty, the small decisions and how they impact me in the classroom, I don't always agree. Mostly scheduling. It's the way that, I know this is already nitty gritty, but the way that our contract, we have 144 minutes of student free time, but that really stifles our schedule. So sometimes it doesn't allow us to do what we need to do for kids. And that's when I struggle with union organizing. And not organizing, but just sometimes the decisions are made and they don't realize how they impact the kids. And, and scheduling is a big issue for me. Ben Nathan [00:05:44] You said that you were in a very political household, did that make it easier to to become a voice in the union? Because you already had some experience in the political world? Melissa Deutsch [00:06:03] Well, I've never been really shy. Right. So that's... and I've always, been taught to voice my opinions, which sometimes get you in trouble, obviously. I think growing up where my parents were like, well, tell us what you think, you know, and I did and, and it was I wasn't like debate club or anything like that, but I always was sort of, like when I was going through school, I wasn't part of a group, you know, have the the nerds and the athletes and the potheads, whatever. I went from place to place and I felt like I didn't, I didn't... I felt like I could create coalitions and for lack of a better word, in my high school with different groups. So I think that was I didn't even think of that before. But I think that's kind of how I was in high school. And and when I got to college, I wasn't as active. I was just so busy working and trying to survive academics here. I don't know if that answers your question, but. Ben Nathan [00:07:26] It does. Thank you. Charlie Movius [00:07:28] So did that influence, did that upbringing and attitude influence your decision to be so involved with the union? And in addition to that, could you speak a little bit about the structure of the Saratoga Teachers Union? Is it mandatory for all new hires? Is it a voluntary situation? Melissa Deutsch [00:07:47] So I for a start, I taught ten years at, North Colonie at the beginning of my career, and I was not very involved. I think when you're beginning as a young person - well, I wish more young people would get involved. And I wish I did get more involved when I was younger, in retrospect. And then, I think when I got to Niskayuna, that was my second job after I stayed home with my children for a little while, and then I went back and, I wasn't as involved there either, which is interesting. And then when I got laid off I think that was an indicator to me, like, I should. And and as you get older and you start looking at a contract and how it impacts your retirement and things like �that, I think that's when a lot of people get more involved. Unfortunately, I wish people younger would get more involved at the beginning. Because we need young people at the negotiating table, honestly. But, and was the second part of the question? I can't remember. Sorry. Charlie Movius [00:08:53] Yeah. No worries. If you could just, speak a little bit on the structure of the Saratoga Teachers Union. And also any differences with other teachers unions that you know of or that you were a part of. Melissa Deutsch [00:09:06] Yeah. So that's an interesting question. And you should look in the contract that I'll leave with you with as long as I get back. But, we changed our structure, that's part of the Constitution, which I'll leave with you, during Covid, that changed everything, honestly. We used to have, you know, the leader, the vice president, and then everybody else kind of thing. That led committees. And, I can show you who they are, what those committees are. And during Covid the job of the union president exploded like you can't even imagine. When I first started, it was 2019, when I first got really involved and I was vice president. And it was, you know, we went to conferences and we learned and we went to the Capitol and we, lobbied. And it was all good times, and then Covid hit and people were freaking out, right. They wanted the union to solve everything, including the pandemic, and the president, that's when he couldn't do it anymore. You know, it just became too big. And he needed a break, which is totally valid. And then I was elevated to president for four months, which was pretty stressful. But it was an interesting time because we became more partners with the human beings on the other side of the table that you're usually contentious with. Just trying to figure out with district leaders how we were going to do it, how we were going to educate kids. So after Covid and things settled down, the president realized he came back and he realized, I need a structure where, it's not all on me. It's a big district. And I mean, there's 500 of us, and that's a lot of - you can't even imagine the types of emails that I would get as union president just from almost like "I have a hangnail, solve that," you know what I mean? And then, or big problems, you know. So now our structure is the president two first vice presidents, one from elementary level and one from [secondary] that's how we start to organize it. So now elementary, there's two elementary vice presidents and two secondary vice presidents underneath the president. So that helped because I think the biggest bear is the elementary schools, because there's six of them and there's lots of things going on. And so we restructured and you'll see that in the Constitution that I can leave with you. But, in order to, to make it more, equitable in terms of the workload involved with, with this particular union. Ben Nathan [00:12:09] Actually. Yeah, this was when you were a vice president. It was in the fall 2019 newsletter for the Saratoga Springs Teachers Association. It says, quote, "One topic at our meeting will be specific roles of special education teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, OTPT, speech providers, and social school social workers. The board is seeking information about our programs that are designed to meet the needs of our students." And that last part caught my attention because it doesn't say anything about, "oh, these people [need a] raise, or state of the art facilities and equipment," highlights about how these programs should, these people, should make the students better. That's the priority. Why did you focus on the students as your as the number one priority in specifically that and other times? Melissa Deutsch [00:13:12] Right. So I think, one board member in particular was very interested in finding out what the roles of each of those people - what they're supposed to do within the district. Right. So, because we kept asking for more mental health help, �right? Even before Covid. And so they wanted to kind of see. The board was starting to get a little more active, and it takes a long time for a board member to start asking the right questions of district leaders. And once they have a few years under their belt, this is not having much to do with - quick, like, let me give you an example. So we cut music positions, right? That that was one. And then, it was now we had like hundreds of kids in study halls because they couldn't go to general music because that wasn't an option anymore. And the board went, "What do you mean, they're in study halls?" Well, you cut the music position. And so people, they they didn't understand the repercussions of a cut, you know, and when you cut human beings how it impacts the other human beings in the building, whether it be other teachers or students. So that was, you know, that didn't didn't answer your question, but that the board members were starting to ask the right questions. And, "here is your position, what are you doing?" Right. What is your role in the school? And, who do you help? How many do you help? Because they were trying to figure out where the need was. We could tell them where the need was, but they had learned the impact of their decisions. So they were asking smarter questions. So I think we were already noticing that our kids were in crisis, for a variety of reasons. Well, the phone, social media, you know, those are my reasons. But, and I think that's - and then Covid hit and, you know, we were even more desperate for those services, so. Charlie Movius [00:15:48] I think it's fair to say that it's a tough time to be a teacher - I think it's fair to say that it's a tough time to be a teacher right now. And, asking the right questions is an important part of both making it easier on students and improving the situation for teachers. And so, in your opinion, what are some of the right questions that people should be asking? That teachers should be asking that, board members should be asking, or parents or students, or anyone. Melissa Deutsch [00:16:23] Well, I don't know if you have been watching recently, but we're $7 million in debt. We're in trouble, the district. And there's a variety of reasons. We're going to have to explain those reasons to the public. And right now, they're not they're going to cut people through attrition. So that means we lose positions, right? So, and what I was just saying, when you lose human beings in the building, it makes my life a lot harder. Like, I can't get a teacher's assistant in a classroom that I desperately need one. We can't attract people. And so what ends up happening, a special ed issue is people get pulled to to go in to go in other places, like a reading teacher might get pulled or a teacher's assistant might get pulled to cover someone else. Right. Because we don't have the bodies anymore. And then we're out of compliance for special ed kids, which is, they should start asking those questions. On a daily basis, we're out of compliance. We're doing things illegally because we don't have people to give the services to the kids that need them. So that is a big bee in my bonnet right now. Because that really makes my life harder. So they need to start really thinking about those cuts. And they don't consider them cuts because they're not firing anybody. They're not giving anyone a pink slip, which we're thankful for. As a union, we're like, okay, great. We're not losing any jobs. We're not firing anybody. But when you lose human beings, it puts pressure on everybody else. And it makes teaching much harder. Ben Nathan [00:18:47] How is Saratoga Springs in that much debt? Melissa Deutsch [00:18:51] Okay. So you need to go to the city of Saratoga Springs, and ask them when the last time they were assessed, and it was, 2005, I believe. Let that sink in, because Wilton people and Greenfield people should be angry. And I've spoken, look it up, I spoke in the fall about this very issue to the board, and one of their goals, I researched, and one of their goals was to seek new streams of revenue. And I said, how �about you start with pushing a citywide reassessment because you have people whose homes are worth $2 million and they're paying $300,000 on a $300,000 house. That's what they're paying in taxes. So to me, that is a crime and a disservice to our students. I've also advocated for overriding the tax cap, which is extremely radical. But that law was put into effect by Governor Cuomo as revenge against the teachers union for not giving him an endorsement. And it forces districts to choose between programing and staff. And it's very bad policy, in my opinion. Ben Nathan [00:20:24] In that October meeting, you also talked about not having a, quote, "true raise," in eight years. Can you explain what you meant by that? Melissa Deutsch [00:20:38] Yeah. Well, part of it is because I made a choice to pay up on my insurance. Because I want the best possible health insurance I can get. They lure us into a cheaper plan, and I refused to do that. They would like to eliminate that expensive plan. So that's part of the reason. Because when I get a raise, it's wiped out by higher health insurance costs. So that's pretty much why I haven't had a true raise in a long time. And that's my decision. I get that. But I think, I don't know if you listened to me about 3 to 1. I talked about 3 to 1 in that speech. So when I came to Saratoga Springs, I had 15 years of experience, and I, they put me on step five. So I'm constantly trying to make up that difference. And I took that job because of the reason I told you, was there was a shortage of jobs because of the tax cap, and I got laid off. And I work very, very hard. And I, I just feel like I've been working so hard and not getting ahead for a long time. Charlie Movius [00:22:18] You've talked about the tax cap and the role of the state government in school affairs. And you've also talked about the need to explain the debt to the public, and relationships with school board members. Could you talk a little bit more on your perception of the current balance of power between all of these different actors who have, maybe different, objectives when it comes to schools? Melissa Deutsch [00:22:54] Hm. You mean the the players like the district leaders, and the board, and the union? Charlie Movius [00:23:01] Yeah. District leaders, the board, the union, parents, state government. And I know that that's a really broad question. Melissa Deutsch [00:23:12] Our superintendent is a very good advocate at the state. He doesn't like it when I talk about the tax cut. I know that he doesn't like that. Because it's so risky for a district to try to go against the state. It's an interesting, delicate balancing act between the union, the district leaders and the board. Our union right now has a very tight relationship with the Board of Education. To be brutally honest. And our district leaders don't like that, as you can imagine. When we were in mediation at the end of this last contract, the board members came to the mediation, which is unheard of because they had had it. They had had it with the lack of movement. And then after that meeting, we settled. So, you know, I mean, it's because we go back to the importance of that committee that I was heading about who is on the board. That is very important. And I still continue to, I don't run that committee anymore, but I show up for those interviews. I'm asked to. And the people there that come that are from that organization that you spoke of, that are trying to get on the board. We can see right through them. They are trying to kiss up to that committee. It's really ugly to watch. But, I gotta admit that they came, you know, to talk to us, so. But anyway. I don't know if I answered that question, but it is a delicate balance between the three groups. I feel like the parents, they didn't know we didn't have a contract for two years. Well, almost all of them. You know, a small percentage. [They] �didn't know. Because we're quiet until we can't be quiet anymore. We're really unlike other both Nisky and North Colonie were noisy. So Saratoga Teachers Association has been really under the radar. [...] That's why I think when we got active in the fall, people were like, "what?" Because we use that power sparingly. We use it to get people on the board for sure. But in terms of, you know, marches and screaming and signs, parents, the people were like, shocked, I think, when they realized what were the teacher screaming about? Charlie Movius [00:26:33] So, you touched on a lot in that answer Melissa Deutsch [00:26:37] [Laughing] I'm sure I did. Charlie Movius [00:26:39] Can you, as a follow up, can you talk about, why it was that you needed to get loud in the fall and what it was that you were getting loud about? Melissa Deutsch [00:26:47] Right. So, I think when we came to the realization it's been two years, right? And we went through this, we went through Covid with our students, with our parents. And we felt like we deserved a decent contract after what we've been through. And I might get teary because it was hard. It was really hard. And, you know, we were angry at the district because they were disrespecting that. And they've been through the same thing. We were like, "you know what we just went through!" And the administrators got their contract, you know, and we were like, this is so... And then we there was a lot of pushing, the the union president got a lot of criticism because he didn't move fast enough. He didn't say enough. You know, he didn't get angry enough. His answers were too politically correct and too siding with the district and blah, blah, blah. So I was kind of in that camp. You know, I was like, "start screaming." And but then when NYSUT came in and kind of explained to us what I was talking about earlier. You can't start off here [gestures towards ceiling]. You have to build a coalition first among other union people. Get your parents on your side. I mean, I brought the notes that I was taking that day. Of how first you build a coalition behind you, and then you start screaming, right? And then there's a, you know, a gradual increase of activity. When we started that training, we didn't have to scream too long until the board got involved and they came to the table. So I think it was like, let's see, in the fall, we were screaming about it. When did we settle? November. End of November. Ben Nathan [00:28:50] Are you happy with the contract that came out of the negotiation? Melissa Deutsch [00:28:59] Uh.. I voted yes. I'll tell you that. But begrudgingly, a little bit, being a 3 to 1 person, I wanted them to do something for those people because it's 68% of teachers, suffered from 3 to 1. And that's a unique thing in our contract. There's no other district does that. And we kept telling the district, if you keep doing that, you're never going to attract people that have any experience. Because if you have 15 years of experience, you start on step five. And we said to the district, "that's hurting you." And the district kind of threw their hands up and said, "well, what do you want us to do? 68% of you were hired under this. You want us to give you all 100 steps or whatever?" And, so they just put that aside again, you know, so they're not going to help those people. And I didn't expect it, but it would have been nice to throw us a bone, give us two steps or something. Something to repair the damage of the people that have suffered from 3 to 1. But then I look at, I'm a union [sic] and the ugly language was removed and the raise was okay, 4.5 [%] per year for the rest of the contract. So it was okay. And as our leader said, it's - we're not going to get any better. So when we understood, he said that the first time when we voted no. But it was better than the first round that we voted no on. �Charlie Movius [00:30:41] For those unfamiliar, could you talk a little bit more about how payment and salary works? In terms of steps and years of experience? Melissa Deutsch [00:30:53] Yeah. So, that's in the contract and you can take a look at that. So you get an incremental raise every year. Right? So, and it varies. In our pay schedule, it varies because - some people got a little bigger of a raise, like, I got a little bigger of a raise because our salary schedule was sort of like this [gestures]. And in the middle steps it took a big dip. So what we've been trying to do for the last few contracts is raise that dip. And I'm in it. I'm in the middle of the salary schedule. I'm in step 17. Not quite the middle, a little up. So we've some of us got a little bigger [raise] than others. Which is hard to explain, but yeah. It passed overwhelmingly the second time around because we were just so angry about the language. And once the language was removed and we got an okay raise and we're still paying less - we went up to 18, I think, percent, you might have to look at that - for our health contributions, which is still lower than surrounding districts. And, you know, I mean, the district is like, "you're in the middle of the Suburban Council," and we're like, "well, why aren't we first? You know, you're Saratoga. Can't we be first paid in the Suburban Council?" So that kind of irks me too. That, they're all proud. "Oh, you're in the middle of the salaries." Well, why can't we be number one in salaries? Like, Ballston Spa makes more than we do, Schuylerville makes makes more than what we do. And look at our community compared to those communities. Ben Nathan [00:32:50] And by more you mean pure salary number? You don't mean like the percentage of Melissa Deutsch [00:32:57] I'd have to take a look at all that. That's true. I think both those districts probably pay a little bit more in their contributions for health insurance. But when you're looking at salaries I think, yes. Ben Nathan [00:33:11] Roughly, what was the percentage of the union who agreed in the second round of voting? Melissa Deutsch [00:33:19] Oh, it was very high. I'd have to look. It was. It was over 70, maybe 80. It was high. Yeah. It was very, Yeah, it was lots of support for the second round. Yes. Charlie Movius [00:33:38] Do you think that the increase in mobilization and vocalization of the concerns of the teachers, how do you think that that played the role not just reaching a new agreement, but having such, a high percentage of teachers vote yes on the contract? Melissa Deutsch [00:34:00] I just think that, yes. A resounding yes. I mean, I just think that people didn't know. People didn't know that we hadn't had a contract for two years. People didn't know. They just didn't know what was happening. So once people started talking about it, and the signs, and we came in force to the board meetings, and we got press, and things like that. I think people started saying things like, "We're Saratoga, you know, how come our teachers are angry and upset?" And they had to stop because it's not good attention to this community. Ben Nathan [00:34:50] What were the vulnerabilities of not being in a contract for two years? For you, for the union and union members? �Melissa Deutsch [00:35:00] So. The Taylor Law, I think if I'm correct, that's the law that you go by your previous contract, right? So that wasn't so horrible for us. That's why we could wait it out. Because in our previous contract, we paid 15% of our insurance. And that's what the district wanted to stop. They wanted that to go because other districts around us pay 22%. Right? And as health insurance costs rise, you know, it just costs the district more. They needed to come to the table for that particular reason. And we could wait. We could wait because 15% is pretty good. And then we still get our step increase every year. It's not a lot, but we would still get a tiny little raise because of our steps. So, you know that. So we could wait, and the district had to finally come to the table because they couldn't sustain that in, in the rising cost of health care. Charlie Movius [00:36:14] How much internal disagreement is there within the Saratoga Teachers Union? You spoke earlier about sort of, opposing poles, of we should be more vocal versus, we should try to smooth everything out, if that's a fair way to characterize it. Are there teachers who are, oppositional to certain approaches or teachers who are even oppositional to the idea of a union? Melissa Deutsch [00:36:49] So I think, previous question was, do you have to join? Right. So the answer is no now, because of the Janice ruling. Right. I'll get back to your question, but what we what we've been trained more so since Janice came out is we need to be a full service organization. Right. So we really need to show our members, you know, why they're paying their dues. One thing that we've really, we really have embraced is 1 to 1. Now 1 to 1 is physically speaking to a person. Not an email, not a text. Physically going to their classroom and saying, how are you doing? What do you think we should should our priorities be? And I brought some of that if you want to look at that. The variety of answers that you get is unbelievable because you talk to a music teacher, the tech teachers got something. The Spanish teacher's got something else, the guidance counselor, so there's such a variety in our jobs. You'd be surprised how many teachers begrudgingly pay their union dues. Because they're not big believers in a union. We only have, honestly, two people that don't pay their dues. And two out of 500 is pretty damn good. That's strong. Right? I mean, there's definitely a variety of opinions when you have 500 people and you've got Republicans, Democrats, you know, people who comment on that website who agree with teachers are on there too. But you've got to try, and I think the best way to do that is 1 to 1, honestly. It is really effective. And it shows your membership that you're listening and that's really what people want, to be listened to. And they want to be heard and they want not everything to be solved. But, you know, they want their union to, to, respond in some kind of way. We have a variety of people out there and a variety of needs. And 1 to 1 is really educational for me because I get in my little bubble and when I go out there and actually talk to people, I learn a lot. I learn. And then I can bring that to my executive council meetings and just be more knowledgeable about music positions and what their gripes are and things like that. So, I don't know if that answers that question, but that's a very long answer. Charlie Movius [00:40:07] I want to return to something that you just mentioned and that you mentioned earlier. Is that schools and teachers across the country have had some problems with, groups that have organized many times in the name of parents rights. But that their main goal is to keep things like DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, or racial justice initiatives, to keep those initiatives out of schools. And you can be as specific or non specific as you like in this question. But I would love to hear if you could talk a little bit more on the challenges that you faced from those people in that movement, as well as how the union can be a tool in addressing those issues. �Melissa Deutsch [00:41:03] Yeah. So, you know, I've gotten myself online before. And I was a target of the group, I think it was them. It was an assignment that I've been doing a long time about, you know, where you stand in terms of issues. And I was trying to get them to understand, maybe Ben did this with me, but trying to get them to understand are you more conservative or are you more liberal kind of thing? Where where were you on the continuum kind of thing? And that ended up, that assignment ended up featured in social media. But the good thing about our district is the leadership is hugely supportive of DEI. Hugely. And because we have such a small pocket of students, we have such a small percentage of black students, and, it's not all about race, obviously. And with what we were talking about before, the perceived acceptance of these hateful things makes the district even more supportive. Right. So, that I'm really thankful for. Because I teach history and my main subjects are the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of 4 million people. So, I'm very sensitive to that. Right? I'm also sensitive to my students who are gay, and figuring that out, because that is middle schools. Welcome to middle school. I'm very sensitive to that. And I want every kid to feel welcome in their school. I think that the district ignores the noise, and they do a good job at that. And the people that come forward at those board meetings, ugh. I just feel like there's so many more people in our community that can shut that down. And they do. And I don't know if you've seen that in those board meetings. People shut that stuff down. And I'm thankful for a community that does that. I've had a couple, occasionally, someone criticize, I did an assignment on "the six truths about slavery," right? It is an assignment. And it was a Junior Scholastic Magazine article. And one of the quotes was from the woman who did the 1619 project. And the parent went after me because of that one quote. Right. So, you know, I mean, when you're a teacher, you don't want to get that kind of attention. Right? So in retrospect, we made some concessions so we aren't targeted, which makes me want to be sick. Right? Because that's not my natural inclination. But as I get older, I don't want to be a target of social media. I really don't. That will make my life miserable. So to tweak something, to make it a little more acceptable to someone like that, I don't like doing that, but that's kind of what can happen. but, I mean, I'm not going to stop teaching about enslavement and genocide. So it's not going to stop me. Because it's right. Ben Nathan [00:45:14] You just talked about this, but Saratoga Springs and the school district is very purple. There are a lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats. Melissa Deutsch [00:45:26] I live in Greenfield. It's pretty red [laughing]. Ben Nathan [00:45:27] Greenfield? And the area around the racetrack is extremely blue, so it evens out. Melissa Deutsch [00:45:36] Yeah Ben Nathan [00:45:37] You talked about this a little bit, but when it comes to slavery and people pushing back, has there ever been the opposite, where you don't talk about something enough and people push back on that as well? Melissa Deutsch [00:45:48] No, no, it it's usually the other way around. Because if you remember, I tackle those things with kids. We unpack these issues in my classroom. As long as I'm not, you know, I don't know, indoctrinating kids. If I could indoctrinate kids, they bring me Dunkin Donuts every day, right? I don't think that's a thing. And I don't tell them my opinion, I'm like, here's the information. You figure it out for yourself. Ben Nathan [00:46:30] For the record, that is true. At least when I had her. �Charlie Movius [00:46:37] I think to, wrap up, I want to ask about going forward, what are the biggest challenges? What do you anticipate from the biggest challenges, to be for for teachers, for the school districts, for the union? Melissa Deutsch [00:46:54] Well, I tell you what we are really working on right now. Workplace violence. Right? We are, using, New York State Law and Workplace Violence Act to our advantage. Niset's advice, because, whether it's, a parent going after and threatening a teacher, or going after them in the parking lot, which has happened. Or students getting violent in the classroom, there's a real uptick in that. That's no joke. And, so now with the law on our side, we are going to utilize that law. So right now we are in the process of revamping our code of conduct with the Workplace Violence Act in our minds. And, hopefully those two things will kind of merge into a document. Because the district wants specifics, like, "what do you teachers think is unsafe?" So right now the we're making a big spreadsheet, people are adding things of what is unsafe. I mean, we've had teachers with in the elementary school with broken noses. I'm I'm not joking here. And, there's just been - look, parents, no offense, are not as good as they used to be. It's really frustrating that kids are so, they come to us with so many issues. Our jobs are, are so much more now than just teaching. There's so many facets of our jobs now that are, you know, you gotta know what triggers a kid. I don't want to be responsible for that kid because I don't know what triggers them, you know, that kind of thing. Like, what's going to get them upset? These are things we now have to consider that, I've done this a long time. I never considered that 20 years ago ever, you know? So, I know I'm old and I blame phones and social media, but I really think there's something to that. With the change of the disrespect, and maybe it's too. They're hearing it at home. Oh, you know, those teachers, they they're lazy, they get the summers off, and, you know, the kids come into us, and "my mom thinks you're lazy." You know what I mean? There used to be a lot more respect for the person in front of the classroom, parents and and students. And that has changed. And that is hard. Because I feel like I've never worked harder. And, I think I do demand respect from my students for sure. And I think when the kids and I also, and Ben can attest to this, I really work hard at rapport and reaching each kid so that they go home and they say, you know, I think this teacher might like me. And that helps, obviously, with public relations. So I really try to be kind to my students and teach them in a humorous way. And work hard on presenting it in a way that's fun. And they go home and they like history. That's all I care about. I don't care if you get a D in my class, if you walk out and you are positive about the subject matter, I've done my job. Hopefully you'll go off and you'll be a good citizen and vote and and be part of the solution. Ben Nathan [00:50:55] One more question before you head out. Do you think in the next contract, with a aging union, if there's no younger teachers coming in, do you think the union and the district will, try to put that in the contract to try to attract them? Melissa Deutsch [00:51:18] I don't know how they're going to attract people in our particular district. As I said, 3 to 1 hurts the district. I don't know how they're going to attract young people to teaching right now in general. I think people know it's grueling work and teachers are less respected than ever before. And why would you do that? You know, when I can work at home and in my pajamas. Because you can't do that. That doesn't work. Let me just say that we tried that for a year and a half. That doesn't work. So attracting people, I don't know. I mean, President Biden says, well, we need to give teachers a raise, then nothing happens, right? Governor Hochul has got no spine, right? You know, not even to go after the task because that would help. We deserve more. We deserve to make a living and not have to work a second job. Right. And young people, the �salaries aren't there for them. In some districts. they're getting a little better at the bottom. But, I don't know what would attract, young person to this occupation right now. My son who was a chemistry graduate, he's like, "maybe I'll be a teacher." I was like, "no!" And that's not good. I love teaching, I should promote it, but but I can't do that right now. I don't know if that answers your question, because I don't think I can answer that one. I don't know how they're going to do it. Ben Nathan [00:53:09] You did answer it. Melissa Deutsch [00:53:11] We're going to be in trouble in five years. I will just say that, the district just offered us today, I was at a meeting at 7 a.m., a retirement incentive. Because they want to get rid of old people like me. Right? And hire someone for half the cost. The retirement incentive was terrible, right? And there were 68 of us that could potentially do it. And they need ten to make it worth their while. I don't think they're going to get ten. We'll see. But, it's not going to be me because it was pretty lame. But that that's their solution, right. To get rid of the old guard and the people who are at the top steps and replace them with people at step one. Which is, you can look for yourself where step one is, see if you'd be attracted to the job at that salary rate. So I'll leave you with the salaries, if you want. Charlie Movius [00:54:11] With that, I want to Ben Nathan [00:54:16] Seriously, yes. Melissa Deutsch [00:54:18] I gotta get to Cantina! Charlie Movius [00:54:20] Yeah. So with that, I want to thank you so much for allowing us to interview you. Melissa Deutsch [00:54:24] Well, if you have more questions, you know how to get me. You can text me or, you know, reach out if you have a follow up things. I'm happy to oblige. Or if you need to do this more, right. Because this was pretty good. Ben Nathan [00:54:38] Yeah. And thank you for spending your evening with us. And thank you for allowing the American labor history class at Skidmore College to interview and talk about your experience and your union, and the teachers union that you're involved in. Melissa Deutsch [00:55:02] Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me, ben and Charlie. Charlie Movius [00:55:05] Thank you,. Ben Nathan [00:55:06] Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Charlie Movius, Ben Nathan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Melissa Deutsch Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 55:07 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 26th, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Melissa Deutsch Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 19th, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Melissa Deutsch is a veteran middle school social studies educator with over 28 years of experience in the Suburban Council schools. She currently teaches 7th grade at Maple Avenue Middle School in the Saratoga Springs City School District. Melissa holds a Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree from SUNY Albany. Beyond the classroom, she has been a passionate advocate for educators through her extensive involvement in the Saratoga Springs Teachers Association (SSTA). Over the past thirteen years, she has served in numerous leadership roles including union representative, chair of the Educational Concerns Committee, NYSUT representative, contract negotiations team member, ED 10 representative, vice president, and president. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Benno Greene Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/83bbceda3128c631dce036c738827465.jpg d861c33a11264d44c82182f190b5eb21 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/021239f9f5a34591e5b61bad217e7731.m4a a6d67ffc78eb6eabac60a75a977cf170 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8f03630b1b60a2ff74c6a0e4597b8e40.pdf 42e33348c84c7342dc2dcc74b9f42748 PDF Text Text Interview with Mark Hofmann by Leslie Mechem, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, August 13, 2024. LESLIE MECHEM: This is Leslie Mechem interviewing Mark Hofmann for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project on August 13, 2024 in the Skidmore Library. Good morning, Mark, and welcome. MARK HOFMANN: Good morning. Thank you. LM: Where did you grow up? Can you tell us briefly about your childhood? MH: Sure. I grew up in Pattersonville, New York, which is a little village halfway between Schenectady and Amsterdam. I was the youngest of four boys. My father worked for Knolls Atomic Power Lab as a project manager for nuclear power plants for aircraft carriers and submarines. But Pattersonville is very out in the middle of nowhere, very rural. It was ideal for a kid at that time. We spent a lot of time outside, spent a lot of time in the woods, running around. In the summer times, we spent every summer on Canada Lake in the Adirondacks, which was really idyllic and I feel very privileged that that occurred. I mean, we would go up right after school started and we would come back Labor Day. We were in a place where the only access to it was by boat or walking in. We spent all summer outside, barefoot, and just enjoyed it. I feel very privileged. LM: Great. When and how did you first come to Skidmore? MH: When I graduated from graduate school, I was looking for small liberal arts college jobs, because I went to Bates College, and it was a really good experience for me, so I knew that's what I wanted to teach at. I didn't want to teach at a big university. So I applied to what was available at the time, and it came down to St. Lawrence or Hamilton. I really wanted the job at Hamilton, but they didn't give it to me, so I took a job at St. Lawrence, and St. Lawrence is a very nice school. Canton, New York is a little isolated. After three years there, our discussion was if I get tenure here, is that a blessing, or, is it a sentence? So I started looking for other jobs and I applied to, at that point, maybe three or four, one of which was Skidmore, one of which was Bates. Both Skidmore and Bates offered me jobs. If you have ever been to Lewiston, Maine, it's Saratoga, Lewiston, Saratoga, Lewiston, and particularly, we decided we didn't want to be in Lewiston even though Bates was, at that time, a much more established school with a much better reputation. So in 1985, we moved to Saratoga and I started at Skidmore. LM: So what made the Skidmore offer so appealing? Was it primarily Saratoga or... MH: Yes, yeah, yeah. It was location. LM: Okay. Could you describe for us your position at Skidmore and the work that you did? MH: Well, I was a professor in the Math Department, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor, whatever, and did the usual teaching. I did very much enjoy service and Page 1 of 8 �got involved with a lot of different committees. Eventually, I became department Chair. I was department Chair for five years. During that time... Maybe it was during that time, maybe it was before then, I was on the Search Committee for Phil Glotzbach. Prior to that, I had been on CAPT, and I think that's why I was chosen to be on the Search Committee, because when I was on CAPT, the College was searching for a president, and the candidate was Jamie Studley. CAPT didn't really like the process. We objected to the fact that there was only one candidate. And so we were asked to endorse the candidate, and we refused to do that. We said, "No, you haven't given us enough information." So when I was interviewed for Phil's search committee, I talked about this, and I think that's why they said, "Oh, okay. We'd like you to be on the committee." And I was very much the junior member of the committee at the time. It was Terry Diggory, Caroline Anderson, Jeff Segrave, and me. So it was like, I'm the little guy. And then after that, I was actually Co-Chair of the Search Committee that hired Muriel Poston. And after Muriel was hired, she asked me to be her Associate Dean and I was not really wanting to do that, but I really felt that I couldn't say no if we're asking her to come here and she was asking for help, then I couldn't say, "I'm sorry, I'm not going to help you." So I agreed to be Associate Dean. But I agreed to be Associate Dean for two years, because at the end of those two years, I was scheduled to teach in London, and there was no way I was giving that up. LM: What do you consider significant initiatives that you were involved in? MH: Certainly the most significant was building up the sciences at Skidmore. And when Muriel asked me to be Associate Dean, she was a scientist, she was hired primarily to build up the sciences. That was what we were looking for in an Associate Dean at the time... Or, I'm sorry, in a Dean of the Faculty at the time. But when I became Associate Dean, she said, "I want you to handle the science side of it." So I said, "Okay." And during my tenure as department Chair, there was this group that was established by Bob DeSieno. I beg your pardon, that's not correct. There was this group established by Barry Pritzker called the Science Planning Group. And he established that primarily to look for common grant opportunities, but as department Chair, we'd go to this meeting once a month, and I used to call it the Science Moaning Group because essentially what happened was all the Chairs would complain about not enough resources, da, da, da, da, and they would significantly complain about each other, and the sciences were very un-unified in the sense that some of the sciences felt that they were the Natural Sciences, and then there were the unnatural sciences, primarily Psychology, Exercise Science, and whatever. So when I was Dean, I was initially in charge of Science Planning Group, and then we created a Science Task Force, and the biggest challenge was to get the science people to talk to each other and realize that we weren't going to get anywhere until we started working together. And that was the biggest challenge. Eventually, they came around. We wrote a working paper that went to the Board, and eventually, the Board agreed after many, many years. Actually, after I came out of the Dean's Office, I went to London. When I came back, Muriel asked me again to lead the science initiative, and I agreed. Page 2 of 8 �And it took us maybe four or five years to get the Board to agree that, "Oh, yeah, we should build another building." And that was the biggest step and hurdle. LM: Other initiatives that you were involved in? MH: Apart from... I mean, nothing major. I mean, there was a lot of different committees. I was on CEPP, I was on CAPT twice. I was on Porter Scholar Selection Committee for 20 years, and that was extremely rewarding. One other thing that gets lost is that Skidmore had a Prison Program, and I taught in the Prison Program for 10 years, and that was one of the most rewarding things in my career. LM: What was rewarding about that? MH: The difference in classroom attitude, particularly at the time because Skidmore went through this period in, say, the '80s when student attitudes weren't as strong as they are now, and there was some question about student motivation. But you'd go to the prison and you'd walk in the room and they were motivated. I mean, you went in, when you came out, you were just energized by the classroom experience. LM: Weren't you also involved in the Engineering Program? MH: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was head of the Engineering Advisory Committee for five, six years or so. Well, one of the things we did there was we had a articulation agreement with Dartmouth and with Clarkson, and we formed one with RPI. And as I left, we were trying to form one with Columbia, and I'm hoping that that's something that happened with that, but maybe not yet. LM: Mark, could you describe the Porter Scholar Program a little bit? MH: Sure. Porter Scholars were established in honor of David Porter to increase students in science. Initially, students were awarded $10,000 a year for their four years. It started off pretty slowly. One of the issues was we had a committee who would sit down and just look at applications and decide these students we want to be Porter Scholars. We'd award them Porter Scholarships and they get this letter and they'd say, "What's that?" Which makes me... Don't forget to talk about S3M. LM: Okay. MH: Yeah. Eventually what we did was require the students to write an essay. So they had to indicate that they wanted to apply for the scholarship, and that really helped a lot. Over the years, you could always tell the Porter Scholar in your class because you'd have a class of students and there would be one or two really shining lights and you'd find out afterwards they were Porter Scholars and you'd say, "Oh, of course." And one of the best classes I ever had was in 19... No, it wasn't. It was in 2018, Honors Calc III, and I think I had four Porter Scholars in it, including David Porter's granddaughter. But it was just a wonderful class because age of cellphones, you go out of Page 3 of 8 �the class, you come back in, and what are students doing? They're all scrolling through their phones and whatever. I'd go out of the class and I'd come back in, and they'd be talking about math and science and whatever, they'd got together and had integral solving contests amongst themselves. LM: Great. MH: Yeah. So S3M when Muriel was Dean, we were looking for ways to increase diversity in the sciences. And so there was a National Science Foundation Initiative for grants in that direction, so we wrote... Actually, she wrote a proposal prior to my being in the Dean's Office for the scholarships and the NSF turned us down. So when I was in the Dean's Office, I rewrote the proposal and we submitted it again and we were approved. And so that awarded money for students from diverse backgrounds, non-traditional in the sciences, and it was like six to eight a year. The NSF funding ran out after four years. They reapplied, and they said, "No," which I thought was understandable because the program was to help you to establish a program, not to... So we convinced the board... I beg your pardon, we convinced the President's Office to continue to fund it without the NSF funding, and it's still going. LM: How much was that? MH: That's a little bit different in that it was much more need-based, and the first thing we did was eliminate all Student Loans, and then they would up the other components. But the other aspect about that, too was it was also a summer program where the students in their second year, or between the first and second year, are invited on campus in the summer to do research, and they form these different teams and hook up with different science research experience. LM: Yeah. That makes an important connectionMH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. LM: ... among students and faculty. Yeah. What were the major changes that you experienced at the college? MH: I just think from 1985 and on, Skidmore's just been going up and up and up and up. I mean, just a gradual increase in quality in students, increase student engagement, and it's not one single event. It's just this rise that made it fun and made teaching very fun. LM: So a little different from when you first came? MH: Yes. Yes, quite different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you remember this term, the smart slacker. I think admissions at one point recognized that Skidmore had a reputation for recruiting the smart slacker. So it would be a student who did okay in high school but didn't really push themselves and perhaps had ISAT scores, and that they were recruited and they would come and they would be smart slackers. Then admissions at one point Page 4 of 8 �started emphasizing high school performance over SAT score to the extent that now, as far as I know, SAT scores are no longer required. LM: I think that'sMH: I'm positive that that's trueLM: Yeah. MH: Yeah. From looking at Porter Scholar stuff. LM: What were the greatest challenges you faced during your time at Skidmore? MH: Well, again, pushing the sciences, getting higher administration to recognize the importance of the sciences, getting development to recognize the importance of the sciences. At one point, I was chair of the Review Committee for the VP for Finance, rest his soul. But there were a lot of people in... Not VP for Finance. VP for Advancement. A lot of people thought, "Well, what we're doing for the sciences is enough," and that we shouldn't be asking for more. "We don't need to advance the sciences at Skidmore." And there were other people that recognized that it was the only way that we're really going to survive, and I think that's one of the biggest changes is that now sciences are front and center, and I think that's a good thing. Of course, I'm a little prejudiced. LM: Were you involved in the planning of the science building? MH: Not the science building. Once the board agreed to fund the thing, I said, "Okay, I'm done." Because I had been working at it for eight years or so, and at that point some really smart and ambitious people like Corey Freeman-Gallant and Karen Kellogg kind of took over. And I said, "All right. I don't... Yeah, that's enough for me." LM: Okay. What are your fondest memories of your time at Skidmore? MH: Students primarily but also faculty colleagues, just it was a great place to work. And up through the pandemic, I never ever felt like I didn't want to come to work. I mean, the pandemic changed things a little bit, but I was kind of on my way out at that point anyway. But working with faculty colleagues on various committees was very rewarding. It was just a really great experience. Riding up to the prison with a car full of your fellow faculty was also very interesting and rewarding. It was a great program for you to get to know faculty from other departments. LM: With whom did you ride and connect? MH: Gerry Erchak, Jeffrey Segrave, Pat Oles, Rudy Sturm. LM: Oh, wow. Page 5 of 8 �MH: Just lots of different people. LM: What activities have you been engaged in since retirement? MH: Well, the primary thing is we sold our house. My wife, Linda's from Wales. We got married in Wales in 1975. I lived over there for a couple of years before I came back to go to graduate school because the UK government didn't want to fund me anymore. So we spend a lot of time traveling to Wales. We bought a house in Wales in 2021, so we could travel back and forth. We sold our house in Saratoga shortly after I retired, which was a big project, and we bought a place in Ballston Spa, and we're kind of trying to sort our lives out, and what does retirement mean, since then, and we're kind of getting there, but I don't think we're quite there yet. LM: Takes time. MH: Yeah. LM: Okay, Mark, that's great. Anything else you'd like to tell us about? MH: Well, yeah, one of the things that was really great was teaching in London. I was able to do that twice. Once in 2008, and once in 2014. Then after 2014, I applied every year and I was told, "You'll never do it again." And unfortunately, I was not able to do it again. But they were both great experiences. It was nice living in London at Skidmore's expense, and Skidmore gave you enough funds to rent a place. The first time, we rented a terraced house right near Waterloo Station, which was fantastic. The center for London at that point was right next to the British Museum just a couple two or 300 yards down from the British Museum. It was great walking in every morning, crossing over the Thames. The foot traffic was amazing. I mean, there was this kind of rush-hour commute of people walking to work. And it was a great experience. I mean, the idea was you were asked to teach something that involves London. And my LS course, which eventually became my First-year Seminar course at Skidmore, was Math and the Art of Escher, which is not very Londoncentric. So I had read a book called Longitude by Dava Sobel, which is all about... if I can remember his first name correctly, I think it's John Harrison's quest to find a working ship clock, which he did manage to do, he did manage to successfully construct one, and it's the key to finding one's longitude at sea. All of Harrison's clocks were at the British Mu-... Oh, not the British Museum, at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and so, that was the natural connection. That was a great and fun course to teach. I would start with Harrison's clocks, and then we'd go through modern GPS, which allowed you to talk about the Theory of Relativity because if relativity's not taken into account, the GPS clocks or GPS bearings would be accurate for about five seconds and then they're no good anymore. So, each of these GPS satellites has an Atomic Clock in it, which they use to set things correctly. So I did that in 2008, and that was a fun experience. My classroom experience was a little challenging at that time. At that time, the way that London worked was students didn't apply to London, they were offered a position to London, and they would say, "Okay, Page 6 of 8 �you can come to Skidmore but you've got to agree to go to London first." And the kids that went had a great experience. Some of them resented that, though. And when I did it in 2014, they changed that and said, okay, they would ask, "Would you like to go to London?" It was almost exclusively students who wanted to go, and that made a huge difference. One of the best classes I ever had was that 2014 class, and they became your advisees as First-Year Experience students did. I really, really enjoyed that cohort of students through their four years at Skidmore. LM: So that program was designed for First-year students, right? MH: Yes. Yes, it was. Yeah. The London courses you taught a First-Year Experience class over there. Again, you had to come up with a class that involvedLM: London. MH: ... London in some way or the UK. LM: So you taught the same course? MH: I taught the same course. I taught it once over there. I taught it a second time on campus with the theory that, in the past, my experience with the Escher course and other things like that is it was never any good until at least the third iteration. And I taught it in 2014 and it was a much better experience. LM: Any other things you'd like to tell us about? MH: No. I mean, the other thing, it was very rewarding, speaking of First-Year Experience, was teaching math and Escher, and I learned a lot from that. I think that whole continuum of Liberal Studies through First-Year Experience requiring faculty to get out of their comfort zone and teach something they weren't really that experienced with was a great experience and something that I learned a lot from. I taught my Escher course first as an LS II course. No, I beg your pardon, first as an LS III course. When it was LS I, II, III, IV, LS III was art and critical thinking, almost all the science people were doing LS IV, which is Science and Society, and universally, they hated it. But, when we transitioned to LS II, I moved my course to LS II. When we transitioned to First-Year Experience, I taught it as a First-Year Experience course. The last time that I taught it, I taught the Senior Seminar for the Senior class, and I taught the same subject. And that was a lot of fun because in the course, what I tried to do as a first-year course, tried to introduce students to complex mathematical ideas without getting their hands too dirty. And you can do that with Escher because you can visualize a lot of things, and he has a lot of visual representations of mathematical ideas. So when I taught it as a senior seminar, I went back and did the same thing but got into the nitty-gritty math of it. And I had three or four students who were in my LS, in my First-Year Experience class as Seniors, and they really enjoyed that, and I enjoyed that. LM: Well, thank you very much. Page 7 of 8 �MH: You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Page 8 of 8 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Leslie Mechem Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mark Hofmann Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 28:14 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Mark Hofmann Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 13, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Mark Hofmann came to Skidmore in 1985 as Assistant Professor in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department. He served as Chair of the department, became a Full Professor and from 2005-2008 served as an Associate Dean of the Faculty. In this interview Mark discusses his role in promoting the sciences through his work as Chair of the Science Task Force which proved instrumental in realizing the Tisch Center for Integrated Sciences. Furthermore, he details his part in choosing Porter Scholars and his joy in teaching those students. As a participant in the London FYE Program he relates his excitement about teaching his course "Escher and the Art of Math" in London in 2008 and again in 2014. He also speaks with affection about his time teaching in the prison program. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cee189904012d42e913f65260b369648.jpg 12c2ff1f54a09d28b3f5bebca2e6083c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/adfda45e41a9a3c311b8a807e679b3b9.m4a c987731829282452fc46442e1ce99718 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/872359a985b9a0d63dc4cb09b7140db2.pdf ebc7a69f2a478f5fd4cd2f4cefca500f PDF Text Text Interview with Deb Fernandez by Lynne Gelber & Sue Bender (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, May 28, 2024. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. It's the 28th of May, 2024, and I'm here with Sue Bender, and we're wanting to interview Debra Fernandez. Debra? DEB FERNANDEZ: Hi Lynne. LG: Welcome. DF: Thank you. LG: Why don't you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what brought you to Skidmore? DF: Great. I grew up in Tampa, Florida, and this is an interesting, winding story to Skidmore. And I was thinking about this. Probably not something that would happen now, with the current more strictness in hiring, everything that you have to go through. So, I trained with my teacher in Tampa. In about 1980, I moved to New York City, and I got a call from her that said the Brianskys, Oleg and Mireille, who you probably remember, had a ballet summer camp, one of the first people who did that kind of thing, now they're everywhere, at Skidmore. Her name was Haydee Gutierrez, an incredible teacher, and she called and said they need a jazz teacher for their summer program. So, I came up here. I promptly fell in love with Saratoga Springs, which you guys remember in the '80s, what a place. A bunch of characters living here. And I worked for the Brianskys. It went really well, so I spent seven summers coming here to work with them. So, by this point, I got to know the Skidmore faculty. And, lo and behold, I was living in New York, I was a teaching adjunct but (had) a really fun teaching job at Marymount, and I got a call that said there is an opening. And here's the other strange part, I was both a ballet dancer and a jazz dancer, and in those days, that was not common. In those days, you were one or the other, you know? And the two didn't mix. So, I believe it was Elisabeth Carroll's husband, Felix, was leaving, and he was a jazz and a ballet dancer. So, again, back then, they sought to replace what he was doing. Now when we hire somebody new, we don't necessarily try to replace the previous tenured track person. So, I came up and interviewed, and I was driving back to Albany to stay with my friends in Albany, and I got the call as soon as I got back to Albany, offered the job. It was crazy. And I was like, "Oh my gosh." LG: Who interviewed you? DF: The dean was Dean Weller. LG: Oh, Eric. DF: Eric Weller. And here's the other... I hope I can say this on the oral history. Felix did not get tenure, and that's why they were hiring me. Who took me out to my interview dinner? Page 1 of 14 �Felix and Elisabeth. I'm like, "Okay." That's a typical dance department faux pas. But I must say, they were so incredibly gracious. They never mentioned anything. You know, they treated me so beautifully. We went, it was either Eartha's or Court Bistro, and it was the most wonderful meal. And I taught I think it was maybe three different classes. I met with the students, it was great. LG: Okay and what year again? DF: That was 19... I started in the fall of 1990. So, I probably came up that spring, I'm imagining. LG: Good. And you were brought onto teach what? DF: Ballet, jazz. I believe in my first year I taught a lot of different levels of ballet. I definitely taught jazz. That was very popular. My classes were packed that year. I taught jazz 6:30 to 8:30 at night. Now, I'm in bed by 8:00. And they were just packed with all levels. I didn't care who it was, you know, it was just so much fun. It was really great. LG: Now, the dance program was part ofDF: It was part of athletics at that time. So, we were athletics. Were they called exercise science? They've had so many different names. LG: Not yet, I don't think. DF: Not yet. But it was definitely dance and athletics. But I know whatever exercise science was, they were there, because Denise Smith came in the same year with me and we used to be at the meetings. That was a whole process of extricating ourselves and finally becoming a department, which I don't remember what year that was. LG: What was the process of extricating yourself? DF: First, we... Mary DiSanto knows this, or remembers this a lot better than I do. First we just went away from athletics, and it was exercise science and dance. And then we also split and finally became separate departments. But those meetings in the early days were pretty hilarious, you know? Tim Brown was chair of... But you know what's so interesting? It’s that we all went to Tim's Christmas party. All three departments, we were all friends. But at the meetings, we had absolutely nothing in common. So, we knew that we needed to pull away if we were really going to hone the department. LG: Who initiated that? DF: I think Mary and Bea. Isabel Brown. They started to really see, and probably bringing me in too and seeing that I wanted to do much more with performance. And I started choreography. I don't believe choreography was being... That there was a choreography program when I first got here. Most of the performances, as I recall, were parents' Page 2 of 14 �weekend, and they would be during the day. And I know that I was encouraging the department to up the performance to evenings and to do more performances than just parents' weekend. We started the fall, the winter concert, the spring concert. Little by little, I think we became a department very known for performance, but it took a while. LG: Did you work with other departments too? Like theater, for example? DF: I did, because I knew some of the directors. But in those days I remember dancers being pretty isolated to themselves. Not Mary, they did... And Bea, too. LG: Mary DiSanto-Rose? DF: Yeah. They both did, what was it called? What was the first... Where you worked with other departments? The freshman, now it's seniorLG: Oh, liberal studies? DF: Liberal studies. Both Mary and Bea were very active in that. I wasn't. Well, I did teach a Stravinsky Balanchine with Chuck Joseph's, and let me tell you, I was terrible. I had never taught an academic class, I was strictly an artist, but I knew a lot about Balanchine. But I did not know how to teach that kind of a class. Thank god for Chuck, because he was incredible. LG: So, you're starting to touch on work within the interdisciplinary programs. So, what other programs? DF: We really didn't start to work with too many other departments, I'd say, until later, with the exception of LS, because Mary always did that. And I believe I started in the '90s. I worked with Phil Soltanoff, with Carolyn Anderson, and I did a lot of works for the theater. LG: AnythingDF: But other than theater, I didn't work with any other department. LG: Anything that stands out? DF: Yeah, a lot of them. For Carolyn, I actuallyLG: Carolyn Anderson? DF: Carolyn Anderson, I actually wrote the music, the scoreLG: Did you? Page 3 of 14 �DF: ... for the Caucasian Chalk Circle, because I was also a composer, but of course I had to not focus on that, because you have to pick something to put your energy into, but I loved doing it. And Carolyn let me do that, and it was wonderful. Machinal with Phil Soltanoff was terrific, In the Boom Boom Room. We did a lot of shows together. And that led to Phil inviting me to the Williamstown Theatre Festival to work with him, and that was a whole other piece that was really important for me. That was in my 40s, and that was in the '90s. LG: So, there was a building. Most of your performances were either in the danceDF: Either in the studios or in our little theater, which was a temporary facility originally for the theater department. We took it over and it remained, and it still is, our humble little theater. But it was really a very temporary type of building. But, you know what? We grew to love it and it still works. LG: What were the advantages or disadvantages of that building? DF: It's weirdly configured. There's a lot that's not ideal about it, as a theater, but what we did love about it is that it was ours. I liked to teach my classes in there. I did not like to teach choreography in the studio where there was a mirror. So, I liked to teach in the theater. And we could use it whenever we wanted. We started, as we upped our performance schedule, that would've been really complicated to share with another department. Which a lot of colleges have to do, dance and theater share. LG: Right. So, as buildings got built, how did that affect your program? DF: The one thing that I think about, and I wonder what it would be like now, had we made a different decision, when President Glotzbach had his eyes on the Arts Quad, you know the theater, the Zankel, they invited dance to be part of that, and I believe they were going to redo Filene. Well, after a lot of conversation, it would've been wonderful to be over there with everybody, but we were just a little bit afraid that whatever got built would also not be ideal, maybe in a different way, or that we'd have to share that. So, we just decided to stay put. And our concerts sell out, probably we could have a bigger house, but it's fine. It's a college dance program, and the students get to use the theater. I think we probably did the right thing. What we have been gunning for, for as long as I was chair, and I was chair for 11 years and, I believe, they're still gunning forLG: Do you remember what years those were, that you were chairing the department? DF: Well, let's see. I retired in '21, and I was chair for 11 years, so probably I took over around 2009 or '10? Something like that. And we really wanted to get that intermural gym, because it's the crossing point from the theater to the two studios. We've never been able to swing it, but I think if we could get that intermural gym and divide it up into more studios with offices, it would be much more cohesive. But at this point, what I've heard is that now that exercise science or health... Their new name, health and exercise science, I think? They're moving to the new science building. Page 4 of 14 �Finally, our dance faculty are going to go into the offices where Jeff and Denise Smith and Jeff Segrave, the main offices. So, we were always in these little closets. They're going to have windows, finally! After 40 years! LG: So, did the Tang have any influence on the programs that you did? DF: Huge, I would say, and the Tang was another interesting timing, because up till that point, I was not chair yet, and I still had a working relationship with Phil Soltanoff, and he had a company in New York. So, I would go to New York almost every weekend, so I still had a place there. So, I was always kind of back and forth. It wasn't that I wasn't giving my all to Skidmore, I was, but I was still very professionally motivated to be in New York. Then 9/11 happened, and I was living in a loft, I had a part-time share in a loft, downtown New York, and I thought, "This is it. It's time to go." And then the Tang opened. So, it was so perfectly aligned for me. And I met Ian, and we did the first opening with David Porter, the wonderful David Porter. Mary, it wasLG: Mary? DF: DiSanto-Rose. Yeah, it was Mary and I. She did a piece, Erik Satie, David played, of course, and then I did the John Cage piece. So, Ian and I hit it off right away, and the Tang just became a second home to me. So, that was very beautifully timed, because I had now this incredible new venue. Not only a venue, but the amazing artists that Ian linked me up with to collaborate. So, it was great. It was like, "Well, I can't go to New York anymore." But, in a lot of ways, New York is coming to me. LG: Came to you. DF: Yeah, or coming to the Tang. LG: What space did you use? SUE BENDER: Could you describe one of those collaborations? LG: Yes, that's what I was getting at. DF: Yes, absolutely. The Cage piece, I have such a funny story about the Cage piece. And for anybody that will listen to this that doesn't know who John Cage is, he was very much the creator of... I'm sure everybody does at Skidmore but, you know, the whole... The happenings, the spontaneity, the crazy throwing things together and seeing what happens. So, we did the Sonatas and Interludes, Margo Mensing was my visual collaborator, and she just did an incredible job. She made these nine, I believe it was nine-sided maps that people would open when they came to the performance, so they would know where they could go. So, in the map, we also copied things from John Cage's book, Silence. And there was this one sheet that said, you know I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like, "Three minutes, cough. 20 minutes, stomp on the floor." So, we're in the performance, and all of the sudden we hear all of this coughing, and then later we hear all this Page 5 of 14 �stomping, and Margo and I are looking at each other like, in a panic, and David's playing this very quiet music. LG: David Porter? DF: Porter. And we're like, "What is going on?" Suddenly we remember that that's part of the map. So, after the show, let me just say that President Porter was not happy. So, we had this big collaborative talk in the room, and I said, "You know, you guys, it strikes me that I can understand why David is upset, because he's in the middle of playing, but this is about as John Cage as you could get. This thing we never knew would happen that became actually kind of a riot." And I'll give it to David, he was like, "You know what? You're right. Let's stick with it." LG: Whose ideaDF: It was amazing. LG: So, who was directing that? DF: I would say that I was the director for the most part. Margo was too. Not of the people, we collaborated on the ideas. As far as the actors, because I brought in actors from New York too, and this very funny kid, Phil Restino, he's walking around, mopping. He's one of those people that, you don't know why, but when you look at him you start laughing. You know, that kind of thing? So, he's just in the background mopping, and people are laughing. It just was so free, and so delightfully fun. Ian's little girl, now she's a grown woman, I think she's a doctor, there was kind of a... And we had flower pots everywhere, and there was this kind of very quiet... I think she was three years old. And all of a sudden, Fiona walks out with a little watering can, and she waters the flower. And everyone in the audience just went, "Aww." So, there was all this... Margo had toasters everywhere and she'd put bread in. People started taking the toast out and trying to feed the dancers. It was wild, but also very beautiful. So, I fell in love with the freedom that came. And I will say one thing for Ian, not one thing, I could say many things about Ian, but he is an amazing producer. He gives the artist so much leeway. Everything is a yes until it can't be, but he doesn't start with a no. A yes, it was just a great amount of creative leeway. It was wonderful. LG: So, what space in the Tang were you using? DF: We used, for the Cage piece, we used almost everywhere. Downstairs, we used the vestibules, the glass... Those were beautiful. We used the upstairs. That's why we knew we needed that map, because otherwise people would just feel too lost. The map gave them a little bit of instruction, but they could unwind the map and that's where the chance came in. They didn't have to follow a strict... Margo was very brilliant too with that creation. Page 6 of 14 �Then, I ended up doing, I was counting, I think it was either six or seven full length works for the Tang from that time till when I retired. The last one being, I think, maybe 2014, which was called Doubling, and that was with David, the composer David Lang's show. And So Percussion came to play. I believe that was the last one. LG: Did you work with any other departments? DF: Let me think about that for a second. No, I don't think so. I think it was usually just the artists that I was assigned at the Tang. I worked with a painter, Paul Henry Ramirez. We did Balls, that was also another one. That was a lot of fun, and also kind of wild. Yeah, So Percussion was David Lang. Partying I did all on my own, although I did use a lot of actors in that piece. So, it wasn't a collaboration with the faculty, but with the kids. I used a lot of actors from theater. LG: And the actors that youLG: ... were able to call on? DF: From the theater department? Oh, what I liked to do when I did the shows at the Tang, I would do my top group of students, and then I would bring in professionals, like maybe two dancers and maybe a few actors. I always peppered it with people that I had been working with in New York. LG: Okay, that's what I was thinking. DF: Yeah, and it was great for the students, because they got a big boost from that. LG: So, what were your biggest challenges? DF: From the get go or just throughout the whole... I don't know how much time we have. LG: Just go for it. DF: Maybe I'm being rose-colored glasses looking at the past, but there were not a lot of challenges. What I also want to say, Bea was my chair for quite a while, and then it was Mary. Mary was the program director and then later chair for like 25 years. You know, she really did her service. What I loved about the department, and I'm sure a lot of other departments might have seen it as way too loosey-goosey, but I always felt that Mary and the entire department supported me in whatever changes I wanted to make in my approach or my career, or the things I was teaching. And it was really quite a freeing atmosphere, you know? Because I started out as more technique. And then as I grew older, and I grew more into my creative work, I was much more involved in the choreography process, in more experimental things. And I was just supported, 100%. I'm a huge Skidmore fan. My department supported me, the administration supported me. LG: Had you been doing choreography before you came to Skidmore? Page 7 of 14 �DF: Yes, yes. So, I'm sure there's some challenges in there, but to me, it was a very stable time. As I were telling you guys before the tape started rolling, we all got there in the '90s, and we all just retired. So, the original crew of Denise Limoli, Mary DiSanto-Rose, Isabel was the first one to retire, Mary Harney, Lori Dawson, our tech director, Carl Landa, our musician. We were there for so long that it provided such a stability for the students, that that's something that I don't think is probably happening right now. I think it will, but right now it's more in flux since all the, as I call it, the old ladies have exited the building. But it was a very family atmosphere, and that can be good and bad. And that's what I think the younger group, that has come in now, has cleaned that up a lot. So, again, there's always a good side to something, and there's always something that could be improved. But it was quite a family atmosphere. SB: Can you describe a little bit more what you mean by a family atmosphere? DF: Yes. And I'm sure this happened in the past, before things became so much stricter in many other departments, but we would hang out with the students. We were not only their teachers, we were their mentors, in some cases friends. I still have those friends. Some people have said to me, "Yes, I go to all my students' weddings." And I said, "Yeah, and I've also now gone through all my students' divorces." That's how long I've been friends with them. They write me and I find out they're turning 50 and I'm like, "Oh my god." We're still close. LG: Are any of them professional dancers? DF: Yes, and doing very well. They're professional choreographers. LG: Who? DF: Emily Pacilio, Emily Craver. These aren't names that everybody will know, but Caitlin Trainor's doing beautifully as a choreographer in New York. Alana Jacobs is in New Orleans doing great stuff. Kaitlin Guerin lives in New Orleans, she's a dancer and has started her own... What is it when you make the desserts? Oh my god, senior moment. LG: Pastry chef? DF: Yes, she's a pastry chef, thank you. And she's in New Orleans, she's got her own business. And so she was later than Alana, so I got them together. They now work together. It's just great. And there was also a family feeling in the department, too, among the faculty. And again, that doesn't, as you know very well with families, that doesn't mean you're always getting along. There's problems with that too, but I do think that we felt that way. If that answers your question, Sue. LG: Yeah, what were some of the disputes, though? DF: The disputes? They weren't so much about policy or the program. I think it would mostly just be the petty, annoying, personal stuff. Page 8 of 14 �LG: Oh, okay. DF: Because really we didn't have that many disputes about the policy until our two new colleagues came in and said, "Hey, okay, you guys, we got to tighten this ship up a little bit." And they've been wonderful. That's Jason Ohlberg and Sarah DiPasquale. I hired them, I think it must've been four years before I retired, so I had some good time to mentor them and they're incredible, and they've taught me a lot, and they've been fabulous at redoing some of the work that we needed to do. SB: What hiring process did you use when you were hiring? DF: You mean in terms of how did we advertise it or how did weSB: Yeah. DF: We went through pretty much the normal channels, and then I think it was a pretty normal hiring process. Probably... I don't know if... Let me think. I'm thinking about Jason. Sarah was already on our faculty, and she was one of those people that was adjunct and I'm like, "This one is a winner. She's great, she's going definitely be in administration some day." I could see that in her. She's a physical therapist so, at that moment, dance science, it was called, which I kind of have a problem with that term, but what I saw was that in universities and in academia, they were really starting to bring in research, more anatomical, and we were not really like that. We were more about creativity and music and events. So, I said, "We really need to focus on Sarah and bringing that out of her." So, she applied. She was perfect for the job. But at the same time, Jason Ohlberg showed up, and I could see that he was incredible, and I did not want to lose him. And I'll give Beau Breslin credit for this. I begged Beau to let me hire both, and he could see that, eventually, the rest of the ladies were going to retire too. He said, "Let's get them both now." So, it worked so well because, sure enough, we all left within... I think Mary, maybe Denise was first, then Mary, then myself, then Mary Harney, and then this year Lori Dawson left. So, it was very good of Beau. LG: Do you want to talk about what you've been doing since you retired? DF: Yes, and it's really been amazing. Last August, I think, I started just working with tracing. Those pandemic years, where we just stayed home so much, and we were looking for stuff to do. It was post-pandemic but I still was staying at home. I'm like, "Okay, what's wrong with this picture?" But I started tracing just to give my... I missed choreography, in terms of just that wonderful play of moving people around, and spending a few hours just playing with form, and I didn't have that in my life anymore. I was still teaching online. I'm teaching a yoga class online, and I've done Motion is Lotion for the retirees, I think, three or four times, but I wasn't choreographing. So, I started doing... I'm not a visual artist, I started just tracing just to get my hands to draw shapes. LG: When you say tracing, explain that a little bit. Page 9 of 14 �DF: Tracing, I just had like tracing paper and a book of leaves, and I would just take a pencil and trace them. And then one day, I don't even know why, I just cut them out and started pasting them on paper, and this collage work started to blossom. And I actually brought some stuff to show you guys. And they were pretty bad at first, but they just kept pouring out. And everybody that's seen them, (I post them on Facebook, I haven't had an exhibition yet, but I'm going to work on that,) have said, especially my former students, "Deb, it's so funny how this looks so much like your dances." So, that was nice. I recognize that I was able to sort of substitute something that was filling that need for shapes, to move shapes around. And it's really fun, because I cut them out and I just lay them on the table. There's no prethought about what the image is going to be, which is what reminds me of the choreography. And so I just start taking them and moving the shapes around, just like I would make a dance. So, it's also a lot easier than working with dancers. That paper does not argue with you. LG: At the point where COVID came in, you then began to teach dance on Zoom. Talk about that a little bit. DF: Yes. LG: Very interesting problems that occur, and have youDF: I'm so glad you reminded me of that, because I was going to do phased retirement. And my last semester I was on sabbatical, spring of 2020, so my last semester, I didn't know it was my last, because I decided suddenly to retire, but fall of 2019... No, fall of '20, sorry. I was on sabbatical in '21. Fall of '20, when COVID was around, they're like, "You're teaching choreography and you're teaching it online." And I'm like, "What? How's that going to work?" I was so used to my methods that I used in the theater and working right there in the moment. It turned out to be such a learning experience for me. And I'm sure it's part of what has influenced this visual art, because I started to separate myself from that density of the bodies, in close proximity. We had a camera in each studio, because I didn't want too many people being around each other, so we had both studios, we had a camera. And it was like The Wizard of Oz, there I was, up on the big screen, in both studios, giving them instructions. And I would watch them work, so it really wasn't that different. And then what they did was they had to film, instead of doing dance in the theater, they did everything outside and they filmed it, and we ended up having a film on Zoom, our showing was on Zoom, they showed their films, their films were beautiful. We used the Tang, we used all sorts of site-specific locations which, by that point, having done so much site-specific work, thank goodness, I felt very comfortable with that, and I knew how to instruct them. And I would just do these very simple... I would start with these basic compositional kind of fundamentals, like make 10 shapes with your hands. Now, put that in your feet. It all had to be from the intellect but they would transfer it through their bodies. So, it was really fascinating for me. Page 10 of 14 �So, that was my last semester teaching. '21 came around, I was on sabbatical, and I thought, "You know what? I think I just did phased retirement." And I decided, there's no reason, I'm done. So, I let the department know, and then I left at the end of '21. But I'm so glad I got that opportunity to do the teaching during COVID. It was fascinating. SB: When you're teaching people that you don't see in adjoiningDF: Spaces? SB: ... spaces, what's that like? Is that different? DF: It was very different, and it was different... I'm sure it was more challenging for the students than it was for me, because I kind of, like I said, I was kind of the overseer, just watching everything. But it was hard for them to ask me a question. You know, there were those little technical glitches. But we would always, I said, you know, "Come on Zoom anytime and we'll talk one-on-one." It worked out. But it was very different. Again, I think it was good training for everyone, because there was much more of an independence that had to be owned, rather than me always in the theater right on top of them, and I could be very, shall we say bossy? So, I stepped away a little bit. SB: It may have, I'm just speaking from personal experience, made the person on the other side listening to you be more aware of the space between him or herself and the screen. DF: Yes. SB: And be more interactive, and moving forward and moving around. DF: Yes, absolutely. And also they couldn't be too close to each otherSB: Right. DF: ... because they were still masked. So, it was almost like, I don't know, one of these COVID sayings, "alone together", comes to mind. That's kind of how it was. They were in the room, but more alone, but they could look around and see the other people. It was challenging, there's a challenge. But we did it. And my biggest concern was that they... Or, not my concern, the biggest, most important thing for me is that they did good work. Not now in Skidmore necessarily, but I think there's much more of a hand-holding mentality. I grew up with teachers that it was all about doing good work, they didn't really care if you were nurtured. And that's kind of how it felt. LG: Do you want to talk a little bit about the changes that you saw in the college itself in the time that you were at Skidmore? DF: Mm-hmm. The great changes, as I mentioned earlier to you, Lynne, I think that the Tang Museum, and I don't know if all faculty members share my... I'm sure they don't. The Tang Museum and the Zankel, I think, just upped Skidmore's game tremendously. I Page 11 of 14 �always respected Skidmore. I thought it was a great school, every professor that I came in contact with I learned so much from, I thought they were wonderful. But I think the Tang and the Zankel really were just phenomenal additions. On a personal note, and I'm sure a lot of this is nostalgiaLG: Excuse me, butDF: Yeah? LG: ... did you use the Zankel at all? DF: I sure did. I was the inaugural performance in the Zankel through Marie Glotzbach. It was Arts Fest, and it was the collaboration I did with Richard Danielpour, “Swan Song”. And I'll never forget that; sitting in the Zankel, watching a music concert, the curtains were open so you could see outside, and it was one of those moments where it was the lightning bolt. I'm like, "That's the piece. It's going to be outside and inside." And it was just such a beautiful event. And then I repeated the “Sonatas and Interludes”, the Cage piece with David Porter and Margo, in the Zankel. A whole different thing. It was a stage piece, not a happening, but that was the last piece that I did there. The changes, Lynne, that... And my point about nostalgia, and I'm sure everybody feels this, because I remember Jeff Segrave used to talk about his friend, I can't remember his name, who left and how they used to always go out on Fridays. There was a very collegial feeling, which I'm sure you guys remember, you probably... I'm seeing you agree with me. I don't see... I went to every person who retired, I went to that at the Tang to hear them be toasted. I don't think that kind of... I'll just say it, I don't think the collegiality is necessarily the same anymore. It might be different, and I'm not part of it, so it might have taken on a different kind, but collegiality as I know it, you know? That kind of we all went to meetings in person, you know? So, I see that not as a great change. But again, I'm not there, I can't really say. It might be just fine for the people who are there now. It is what it is for them. LG: What about the composition of the undergraduate population? DF: That I don't know. I don't know. Can you tell me more about what you're getting at? LG: Well, it just seems a very diverse population now, in comparison to decades ago. DF: That is probably true. Although, it's very interesting, because I was looking back at some of my older pieces. I had a lot of students of color in my original jazz works. LG: Right. DF: A lot. And again, those are people that I'm still dear friends with to this day. So, for me, in the dance department, it didn't feel that different. LG: Okay, that's quite helpful. Page 12 of 14 �DF: The students thought it was, but I kept trying to tell them, "You don't know enough about the history of the department." We did get thrown under the bus. We had a pretty contentious, before I left, there was a pretty contentious period with the students. But, again, I said, "I don't think you guys did your homework." Because I went back and showed them the list of faculty of color that we hired for sabbatical, guest artists. We constantly had that going on. But there was a lot of anger in that. I guess it wasLG: Coming from the students? DF: Yeah. But, you know, it went through the whole campus. It was probably couple of years b efore I retired, so it probably started, I don't know, 2017 it seemed to start heating up? LG: Okay. DF: I could be wrong about that. LG: And the basic problem was? DF: They were complaining that there wasn't enough diversity, which I agree with, but we had had that, they just weren't aware of it. It was just kind of this weird lull. So, I think that's been addressed, thankfully. I also think, in general, the students were just angry and frustrated, and especially during COVID. There were a lot of emotions that probably got dispensed into areas... I don't know. I do know that it was a hard time for me because I was chair, and that was difficult. And that's part of why I think I was like, "I think it's time for the youngsters to take over. It's time for me to go." It's nice to know when to exit the party. I love it that Sarah DiPasquale, who's been an amazing chair, she took the job after me and she said, when I told her I was leaving, she thought about it for a few days, and she called back, she said, "Okay Deb, you're like Seinfeld. You're going out on top." So, now she calls me Jerry. LG: Is there anything else that we should cover that we haven't? DF: Let me think. Well, you know, I guess the one thing I want to say is that everything ebbs and flows and changes depending on who's in the department. It is a very different department now. Now, unfortunately, I'm now... Fortunately, I'm a snowbird; unfortunately, I can't get to all the concerts because I'm not here. But I'm still very close to Jason and Sarah, and I hear everything. And Erika Pujic, who's wonderful. It's just very different, and I have really let go. And I think that that was something that Jason said to me, he's like, "I've been very surprised, Deb, at how you've been able to just walk away." And I said, "Hey, it's your show now. You get to do what you believe in." LG: And when you say it's different, what do you mean? DF: I think it's less... I was always very performance-driven. And I think that the students learned a lot from me if they wanted to watch me do what I wanted to do. You know? Page 13 of 14 �They came along and they learned because I always felt we teach what we want to learn. Because if you're passionate about what you're learning, you're going to be passionate about teaching it. So, it was very performance-driven and very artistically... Now there's... And I knew we needed this, that's why I wanted Sarah, why we all wanted Sarah, not just me, the whole department, it's very research-driven. There's a lot of dance science going on, anatomy, Jason is amazing in the dance history classes. I would say it's more well-rounded, I think, but I don't think it has the same performance drive. Maybe they'll get there. LG: Good. DF: Yeah, but they're doing a great job, and like I said, I'm not going to have the ridiculous job of trying to compare it, because it can't. Department is who's in the room, who's in the building. And it has to be, we're human beings. So, I just wish them all the best, and I love the department, I still love Skidmore, and I hope it's still a good place. LG: I think it is. DF: Okay, good. LG: Thank you. DF: Thank you, guys. This was fun. Page 14 of 14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Deborah Fernandez Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 43:22 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Deborah Fernandez Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 28, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Debra Fernandez began at Skidmore in 1990 after working in dance and theater in New York City and, for many years, at the Briansky summer dance program in Saratoga. She served as teacher, choreographer, performance director and Dance Department Chair. In this interview she discusses collegiality, diversity, dance science and development of the dance program into a department. Deb also explores her experience teaching dance during COVID, the influence of the Tang and Zankel on her work at Skidmore as well as some of the performances she directed. She retired in 2021. https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/021dc1b39de2d620b04982b05470b5a0.jpg be1e85aa1eec54050c9a5c0040ee3def https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c848b93c188138981c4e52bf31672b5f.m4a d76b150479d05d6a31538feaeb31dfe7 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4ac52cf5a10c10aa0efd7ad0152c4a47.pdf 4eaefd00ff67e99f4ccc557f82f59d76 PDF Text Text Interview with Penny Jolly by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, January 17th, 2025. LYNNE GELBER: It's January 17th, 2025, and I'm here with Sue Bender to interview Penny Jolly. SUE BENDER: Your name. LG: This is Lynne Gelber. And Penny, why don't we start by asking you where you grew up and a little bit about your background. PENNY JOLLY: Well, I grew up in Larchmont/Mamaroneck, New York, which is part of the suburbs of New York City. My dad was an American history teacher at the Mamaroneck High School. So, I grew up in a very nice environment. I would have to say a good school system. We lived in a small apartment. We didn't have a house, unfortunately. But it was a very, very good childhood. And my parents would take me down to New York City. I also had a sister, Susan. Or have a sister, Susan. And we would all go down to the Museum of Natural History. And I remember saying to my dad, "No, no, I want to go to the Museum of Natural History," on a day when he wanted to go the art museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I said, "No, no. I don't want to go see art. I want to go to the Museum of Natural History, and I want to go see Egypt." And he said, "Oh, Egypt is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." So that convinced me to go. And that was a formative visit, I have to say. I'm not sure how old I was. I would guess 12, 11, something like that. But that was wonderful. And then I started going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I would take the train down into New York City, in high school and things like that. So that presaged my future. LG: What was it about Egypt that drew you? PJ: I'm not sure. I just think I found it so interesting. It was so different. And of course, there were mummies. I was a kid. That certainly drew me in. But I have to say, what finally drew me in even further was the Cloisters Museum, which is the medieval branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My parents and I had tried to get there several times and, I don't know, I don't know if we couldn't find parking or it was closed and we thought it was open. There were several problems. And finally, my French, my AP French class, when I was a senior in high school, was doing a trip there because we'd been reading some medieval French writing, and I just loved the Cloisters. I just felt so at home in those cavernous halls and the artwork and everything. So, I remember when I was being interviewed to go to college, I went to Oberlin College, he asked me, "Well, what are you really interested in?" I remember saying, "The ancient classical world, ancient Egypt, medieval..." So, all this old stuff. And he was sort of startled. He said, "People don't usually say that. That's an unusual answer." And sure enough, I got into Oberlin and I couldn't believe it. They had a course in ancient architecture. They had a course, two semesters of medieval sculpture. And I was in heaven. So, I was headed on my pathway to become an art historian, clearly. Page 1 of 17 �LG: Early on. PJ: Yeah, and it was museums that did it. LG: And then you went on for graduate work? PJ: Yes. After graduating from Oberlin in 1969 with an art history major, honors in art history, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. They had given me a full scholarship and I was thrilled because at that point I was married and had a husband who needed to go to med school. So that was the other thing. We had to balance off the big cities where both of us got in with a reasonable amount of money or something. So, Penn was the clear place to go and it was a good choice. So, I went there and I got my master's and I got my PhD and I continued to work in medieval and Renaissance art, as well as early Christian art. It was terrific. Grad school always has its problems, so I probably won't mutter too much about them. Other than things like, on Friday afternoons, the all-male faculty, which of course it was all male, would go to this bar on the corner. I forget what it was called. And they would invite the male students to go with them and we females were never invited. So, the males would come out of the meeting calling everybody by their first names and we would be saying, "Dr. Mynot, Dr. Watson." And they'd be Paul and stuff to them. So, I won't grouse about that, but there was lots of gender stuff that was really irritating. On the other hand, I think I finished my dissertation and got a job before anybody else. LG: Where? PJ: At Skidmore. Yeah. I applied for a variety of jobs and I actually had several offers. But George and I... George came up with me to Saratoga Springs. We had to drive from Philadelphia. And he came with me. Let me think for a second. Yeah. At that point, I was pregnant. LG: What year was this now? PJ: Maybe … This would have been right after 1969... Oh, wait. For Skidmore, it would have been 1976. 1976, right, I started at Skidmore. So anyway, he came with me to the interview just to see what was going on and help with the driving and stuff. We had a daughter already at that point, and so he took care of her while I was doing the whole interview process. And when we finished the interview, we just looked at each other and said, yeah, this is the kind of environment we wanted. A Liberal Arts college, not a big bustling city university. We loved the idea that the Adirondacks are there. We loved the idea of bringing children up in a town like this. And I never thought I'd live on a street like this with interesting, different, lovely houses lined up with a yard. We were able to buy a house, and I think that was not because of my salary which was nothing. $11,000 was my salary at that point. But I think the promise of him being a doctor, the bank was very happy to finance our mortgage. I'm sure if he hadn't been a doctor, they never would have, because we had no money, or very little money at that point. Page 2 of 17 �So, George was done with his residency, internship and residency, and it was a perfect moment for us to come. And we both have loved living in Saratoga Springs. Yeah. Been a great place. And Skidmore's been a great place. LG: So, when you first came, what were you teaching? PJ: Do you mean in terms of courses? LG: Yes. PJ: Let's see. My first semester, I taught Romanesque Gothic art. Art and architecture. No. Maybe I started with Early Christian. Well, it's hard to know. One semester or the other. Otherwise, it was Byzantine, Early Christian art. I think it was Byzantine and Early Christian art. And I was teaching the Survey of Art History, where we shared giving the lectures over two semesters, and then had six discussion groups, three each semester. And then I was teaching, I think, a Renaissance course. It was a lot. I'd never taught any of those courses, except, I had participated in a survey with other people. So, there was a lot of prep that year. LG: Was the art history department a separate department at that point? PJ: No. And that was certainly a point of friction for us, the art historians. We were the Art Department, but that included about, I'd say, 16 tenure lines in studio art, plus quite a few part-timers, and included five art historians. So, we felt very outvoted about things. Our department meetings were all about studio art. Everything was about studio art. So, there were hostilities, but on the other hand, they were very good friends too, among the art people, and some wonderful artists who were good to see. But that was a struggle for a number of years, and we finally, gosh, I don't remember what year it was, but we finally were able to establish our own Department of Art History, separate from the Department of Art. We got a name change. First, it was the Department of Art and Art History. So, we had that for a while as a compromise: but then we really got to be our own department. LG: And who was the chair at the time? PJ: When I came, it was Earl Pardon and then it was Peter Baruzzi. And that took up quite a few of the early years. LG: And as a separate art history department, who was the chair? PJ: The first chair was Katie Hauser. I was Director of Art History. That was another thing, a job they established back when we were complaining about things and still all together. So, I was Director of Art History for nine years or something, which was very chair-like, but not with all the authority of the chair. Page 3 of 17 �LG: So, what were the responsibilities? PJ: Well, setting up the schedule, dealing with students, giving permissions, running hiring. It was a lot of the tasks of the chair, but I wasn't the one who went to the dean, necessarily, and said, "We want to hire so-and-so," and negotiate a salary. The chair negotiated the salary and stuff. LG: Were you the one who reached out to other groups outside of the department to work with them? PJ: I think I really did a lot in that sense. My colleagues in art history tended to be, I wouldn't say exactly a shyer bunch, but they stuck to their own stuff a lot more. And that's not a 100% true. But I was interested in reaching out to the other medievalists, the other people who taught Renaissance courses. For a while we were interested in setting up a Renaissance studies program. And that eventually did not happen, but that was, again, an interdisciplinary reach. Right from the beginning, I was involved in LS, liberal studies program. Not the initialLG: With your own course, or? PJ: In several ways. I wasn't in the summer group that I believe basically put LS1 and the LS program together, but I joined them in the fall. So I was on the committee that was creating LS, and then I taught in LS1 for quite a few years. I also had an LS2 course on Italy. Art and Italy, Art and Culture in Italy. I don't remember what I called it. And then, later, I had other LS courses about gender in the Renaissance and different things. So, I was very supportive. I was the first chair... When we had a committee, an LS committee, I was on it and I was the first chair of it. So that was a lot of engagement. LG: So as an LS participant, liberal studies participant, you had your own section, discussion section, plus youPJ: Yes. We had two, at least. Maybe even three. LG: You individually? PJ: Yeah. Yeah, I think two discussion groups. LG: And then you would be a lecturer for the general? PJ: Not everybody got to lecture, but I did. In fact, a number of years, I did two lectures. One on history because I guess we didn't have a historian, or the historian didn't want to do it or something. So, I did a lecture about history. I did another one about art... Creativity, I think it was called. I think every year I taught in it, I gave at least one lecture. Now, the lectures were big. You did it twice and you had half of the incoming class in each time. So those were in the theater. Those were held in the theater. So that was always a little Page 4 of 17 �daunting. But I had already been lecturing to the art history survey, which at that point had 125 people in it. So, I wasn't totally put off by a larger audience. Can I say, the best thing about LS was meeting weekly with the faculty. It was fabulous. I knew about Freud, for example, but I don't think I'd ever really read Freud in, well, I'm not reading him in German, but in the English translation, the real text. And so there I am. I'm reading Freud and I'm learning so much more. LG: And who was it that was presenting Freud? PJ: Oh, gosh. Terry Diggory, maybe. I'm not sure. SB: Sheldon? PJ: Well, Sheldon gave a wonderful lecture about personality and things, but I don't think he talked much about... Maybe he talked about Freud. I'm sorry. But in any case, it was great hearing the other faculty lecturers doing the readings. And when it came to a topic like Freud, where I didn't feel I knew all that much, I'm doing all this extra reading on Freud. So, I learned an enormous amount from doing LS1. And I also learned lecture techniques because I'd noticed something that worked really, really well, and I'd try to think, "Okay, I could do that." LG: Like what, for example? PJ: I don't know. Maybe... Boy, that's tough to remember. Probably the person, actually, who influenced me the most was not in LS. It was James Kettlewell. And he was just willing to really give information out, give details. He was really full of interesting information. But I can't say I remember what, but I remember observing people. Maybe noticing more what doesn't work. It was a terrific learning experience. And let's see. If I came in '76... Is that right? I'm trying to think when we started the LS program. Yeah. It was right about then. Well, I was there right at the beginning of LS. SB: Early '80s. Early '80s. PJ: Okay, early '80s. SB: Yeah. PJ: Okay. That makes sense to me. I'd been at Skidmore a few years, but I don't think I was tenured or anything yet. I really enjoyed my fellow faculty. And of course, I got to know people in other departments, whom I otherwise would not have. I think that was probably the greatest value of LS, liberal studies. And then, of course, the courses were interdisciplinary, which was great as far as I was concerned. Because when you're looking at images, at paintings, and sculpture, and structures, buildings, the context matters so much. The patron matters, the historical time period, the cultural sense of the time, all of those things feed into the work. And so Page 5 of 17 �having courses that encouraged me to round out the edges of my courses was great. And again, it affected everything I was teaching, not just the LS courses. LG: What role did the Tang play in your area? PJ: That was great. And again, I was on the Tang, I don't know if it was a taskforce or whatever. I was on the committee that created the Tang. So, there we are again. Long meetings. Endless meetings. LG: With whom? Do you remember? PJ: Tad Kuroda led them. Terry Diggory, wonderful Terry, was a super source for everybody in LS. Sheldon maybe was right there from the beginning. I think he probably was. Sheldon Solomon. That's, for the moment, what I'm remembering. Jim Kehl in English was very early a supporter of LS. SB: Now we're talking Tang. PJ: Tang. Oh, God. I'm sorry. SB: Yeah. PJ: So that was Tad Kuroda. That was Terry also. I'm sorry. So anyway, we had meetings and we ended up hiring. And we ended up, really, setting up the architect... Interviewing architects. We had to decide on that, what kind of things we wanted in the building. It was a lot of very interesting work. But those of us who were museum people, who were... [inaudible 00:18:39] now. Who were museum people, we were very engaged with the Tang. And then, I think it added enormously to our classes, our courses. In my parts for the survey of art history, I would try to engage the Tang. And there were some really neat ways. Boy, that dates me, doesn't it? Neat. There were some really neat ways that one could make use of contemporary art from the Tang, even when talking about medieval art or Renaissance art or something like that. LG: Did you bring your classes to the Tang to view and discuss the art? PJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then... Exactly. And we would sometimes tour the shows together or have the curator tour the show with us. And we decided to do our discussion groups at the Tang. There were two classrooms there, one of which was a smaller seminar size. So, we began doing that, again, just to get the students into the Tang and hope that they didn't feel like, "Oh, that's on the other side of campus. We don't go way over there." So, they had to come there at least once a week. Our lectures remained over in Gannett or in Emerson. But yeah, students made good use. And of course, we began having internships, having students do their work, study at the Tang. There were fellowships that were established Page 6 of 17 �for students working at the Tang. So, it was a great opportunity for those interested in museum work. And quite a few of our students have gone on in museum work. LG: Were you involved in the hiring of the early director? PJ: John Weber. I think I was. I can't remember how directly, but we did a lot of interviewing of architects and people. I think we interviewed the directors as well. That was a big job, but what a wonderful addition for Skidmore to have the Tang. LG: Did you serve on any college committees? PJ: I think I served on just about every college committee at least once, if not more. Yes. In terms of... Do you want to know special ones, or? LG: Yes. Things that made an impact on you. PJ: Yeah. Well, I think the one that was the most satisfying has to have been CAPT. Working on CAPTLG: Appointments, promotion, and tenure. PJ: Yes, thank you. LG: And sabbaticals. PJ: And sabbaticals too, at that point. It really allowed you to admire your incoming faculty when you saw what they were publishing, what they were doing, what their backgrounds were, as people came up for tenure. There were some very difficult decisions. I'm still haunted. Just the other day I was thinking about this. I'm still haunted by my vote on one decision where I probably should have gone the other way. But maybe that's the only one I feel that way about. But our work was taken so seriously by the people on the committee, as well as by the administration. You really felt like you were part of the important things going on. Should we give this person tenure? Should this person be rehired? How do we resolve this problem? How do we talk to the dean about this or that? And it was wonderful. And I was chair for a year, and that was tremendously satisfying. Really satisfying. It was the year we first had 21 people up or 18 people up. It was an enormous number, so I worked out a system of how we would do it, and it worked really well. I don't know if CAPT still uses my system, but... I think CAPT has changed a lot over the years. But I felt very proud of my ability to lead people in a way that I thought was fair and to negotiate with the Dean of Faculty about things. So that was interesting. But committees like CAFR were important. SB: Academic freedom. Page 7 of 17 �PJ: Academic freedom, sorry. Committee on Academic Freedom & Rights. I was most always on the library committee, because my office was in the library, so I felt I had a really vested interest in knowing what the library was doing. That was a great committee. It almost never met. But with the LS1 committee work and everything, I was always, always doing committee work. LG: Penny, I'm curious to know what kinds of changes over the course of your tenure did you perceive? PJ: I think for me, the biggest change I feel is the relationship of the faculty to the faculty, and the faculty to the administration. LG: For example? PJ: Well, I know this just sounds like rosy-eyed nostalgia, but honestly, when I first came and for those first, at least, I don't know, 15, 20 years, I don't want to use the word family because that's just too trite-sounding here, but we were a cooperative group looking at similar goals. LG: You're talking about faculty? PJ: Faculty. LG: Faculty. PJ: Yes, talking about the faculty here. We were comfortable, mostly, with each other. I mean, there were always some wingnuts, shall I say. But on the whole, we knew people in other departments. You'd serve on a committee and you'd meet the new psychology professor. You'd meet the art professor you didn't know real well. You'd spend time with them. And you would work together on those committees. We would have faculty meetings and largely people came to them, I think. I don't remember it being empty. It was really very crowded. And then we'd have a reception afterword with good food and good wine, and people would stay for it. Now, I know people say today, "Well, I have children. The child center closes at 5:00." And my thought is, "Yeah, I didn't even have a child center," a daycare center. In fact, that was part of women's studies. We started it and I was one of the co-chairs a couple of years in a row, where we really worked on establishing the daycare center. LG: With whom did you work on that? PJ: I'm sorry? LG: With whom did you work on that? Page 8 of 17 �PJ: Fran Hoffmann was the leader. She was number one on that. Susan Kress, Mary Lynn. Those of us particularly who had children, really. We didn't have the advantage of it, but we really wanted to. And of course, that's another whole thing, it’s that I had a baby on day three of my first year teaching at Skidmore in September of '76. And that's another one. I mean, if I can segue into that and I'll come back to changes, but this is a change too. I had various medical problems when I was in grad school and I was basically told, "If you ever want to have children, you better start now." So, we were trying to have a child for a number of years and finally became pregnant. And, of course, it was just when I was job searching and interviewing. And sure enough, I finally did get pregnant, and Joe, Joseph Howell Jolly, was born September 17th, 1976. Well, the semester started, that was a Friday, started on Wednesday the 13th. And this was my first job. I had multiple classes to teach. When I went to the chair of my department, he looked at me and saw me very pregnant and laughed. And just looked me up and down and laughed. He had no suggestions for me about anything. So, I talked a little bit to... Probably to James Kettlewell, maybe Joan Sigfried, Harry Gaugh. I don't know. I at least let them all know I was pregnant. And nobody had any suggestions for me. Nobody said anything like, "Why don't you take a few days off." Or, "I'll cover your discussion groups for you." Or, "It's okay to cancel a class. Let the students know and you can make it up later." Nobody gave me any suggestion of what to do. And I remember saying, "Well, my husband is going to stay home. He's a doctor. He'll stay home and take care of the newborn baby during the day, so that will take care of it." And that is what George did. He had a gruesome schedule where he taught 12... Rather, he worked in emergency room 12 hours overnight, a 12-hour shift during the week, and then two 12-hour shifts on the weekend when I was home. So, he was working at the emergency room while I was teaching. And we were both zonked and exhausted, but we survived. But I remember just nobody being any help whatsoever. And it just so amazed me, in my department, the women I heard from were in English. Susan Kress, Mary Lynn in American studies. All those people were saying, "How are you doing?" The secretary of the Art Department, when she said there was a meeting that next Friday, so Joe would have been a week old, and I said to her, "I am so tired. I just don't know I can come." And she said, "You go home. You get some time in bed. You don't need to come to the faculty meeting." LG: And who was this? PJ: It wasn't Denise Hughs yet. Oh, who was it? I can't think right now. At any rate, that was so nice of her. So, I went home. She told me to go home. That it was all right. But see, I didn't know it was all right to miss the faculty meeting, and I needed people to say I could have canceled a class. I didn't. I think I put one class off until the next day, and it was a small class and the students were able to do it the next day. And that was a great help. It Page 9 of 17 �was an evening class. By that time, I just needed to get into bed. So yeah, I had a crummy schedule. That was 6:30 to 8:00 o'clock or something. So, we did it the next day. But that was weird. But my larger experience at Skidmore was that people were really helpful. And it was people in other departments than my own department, quite honestly. James Kettlewell was a dear, a sweetheart, and would have done really anything I asked. But he was so involved in so many things and so scattered, it was hard to ask him to do things. Although, he did dig my car out one day from the snow, which I totally appreciated. It was totally kind of him to do that. But back to the question about changes. It felt more like a family. People communicated with each other. They talked with each other. We didn't have e-mail, so we talked. We'd pick up the phone if we needed to talk to someone. Maybe that's one of the big, big differences. It felt we had a common purpose. We cared about the students. We wanted to do things well. We talked about difficulties. The women's studies group was absolutely wonderful. I couldn't join it at first because I had this newborn baby and barely had a... And an older child. My daughter, Jenny, was five at that point and she was going to kindergarten for half a day. So, there was a lot of negotiation of home care, and George, and then other people, and stuff. But women's studies, when I had enough time to finally meet at the meetings, was just great. They were so supportive. We talked about real things like childcare. So, I became very involved with women's studies. They were just wonderful. And there were some men involved. I also did the Writing Across the Curriculum program. And again, I got to know people in the English department, Phil... What's his name? Phil... LG: Boshoff? SB: Boshoff? PJ: Boshoff. Thank you. He was running that. And a wonderful woman... Well, in any case, Susan Kress was involved again, Phyllis Roth, all those great leaders, later leaders or current. Well, not current today, but leaders in their own departments and in women's studies, those great people. LG: What about the relationship with the administration? PJ: It seemed to me much friendlier, much more open, much more that you could go and talk to people. And they'd be there after the faculty meeting. So, you could walk up to the president. There were receptions. LG: And who was the president at the time? PJ: When I came, it was Joe Palamountain. And when he saw me pregnant at the opening of my first semester, he also looked me up and down and rather laughed. And I thought, "Great." But any rate, but he accepted me. It was fine. Page 10 of 17 �Oh, and by the way, Joe was born later that afternoon on Friday. Another funny part of that story is that at the end of class, the second or third discussion group, one of the students said to me, "Professor, can I come and talk to you about some things?" And I looked at my watch and I said, "I can't. I have to go to the hospital now. My husband's picking me up because I'm going to have my baby." And I did. I had it at 5:10 that afternoon. I was teaching until 12:00, noon. So, it was all pretty crazy, but George was pretty supportive and that meant everything, so... Anyway. LG: Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the development of women's studies as a curricular program? PJ: Oh, yeah. It took some doing with the curriculum committee, although we women had infiltrated a lot of these organizations. The dean was supportive. That was Eric Weller. So, I remember him in general being supportive of women's studies. But there were others on campus who were less so, for sure. And we wanted things like, I think this was now into the '80s, things like gender-free language in the reports of the board of trustees and all official documents and things. And we got some pushback from various faculty in different departments that that was silly, we didn't need to do that. But we got it through. At this point, if you were the director or co-director of women's studies, you didn't get any time off, or any kind of credit or anything. It was very, very frustrating. But eventually, we got a position of the, probably Director of Women's Studies, I guess it was. And we hired Mary Stange as the first director, I think. Yeah, I think she was the first. So, we were in pretty good shape with the administration, I would say. And that helped a lot. We began teaching courses. We realized we had to have an intro, 101-kind of course for Women's Studies. And we put that together and we had to twist department chair's arms to let so-and-so free to teach that course, because then they weren't teaching their sociology or whatever course. Sociologists were very supportive. And it was a great department. Psychology was real supportive. History. Languages even. So, we had people who were really interested and really the program began to grow. And we got good students and good enrollments. And we established a lecture series, the Coburn Lecture series. We really became a real department, a real presence. LG: And that lecture series was meant to do what? PJ: To publicly have lectures about gender issues. I remember a wonderful one talking about medicine and gender issues. About how all the research on heart attacks and on this and on that and on that were done on male studies. There were no women included in the studies. And they began to realize, "Wow. There are women too." And women needed to be in the heart attack studies as well, because their experiences could be a little different. I don't remember who gave that lecture, but it really was eye-opening. I thought it was terrific. LG: Now, you mentioned that at first it felt like a family. Page 11 of 17 �PJ: Yeah. LG: How did it evolve? PJ: It's evolved in the last, maybe, I don't know, 20 years, 15 years, where it seems to me the faculty are just really disgruntled. I think morale is low and it wasn't quite so low back in the earlier days. I think they just feel disgruntled about maybe salaries. Although salaries have taken some improvement, thank heavens. About time. They don't want to stay. People don't want to be at meetings. I mean, the committee meetings used to be at 5:00 o'clock, 5:30. It wasn't easy for any of us, but that's when we had time to do committee meetings. Or maybe at 8:00 o'clock. And I don't know. People began just complaining and say they couldn't do that or they wouldn't do that. How are you going to get a committee of eight people together in the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the day? So, I see faculty as disgruntled. LG: Did this involve separation from administration in some way? PJ: Well, we had a wonderful, wonderful president, David Porter. Who was followed by a president that was not at all well-liked and really had some problems. I was on CAPT during that person and it was not good. LG: And that person was? PJ: Jamienne Studley. Yeah. So, there was real issues with her. I don't recall how long she stayed. Five years, maybe? Four years? I don't know. But she finally did leave and that was to the better. But again, we got in a chair, rather a president, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about him, John Berman. Maybe okay. SB: Dean. PJ: Oh, he was dean of faculty. I'm sorry. Yes, we needed a new dean. Who came after Jamie? Who was next? SB: Phil. LG: Phil. PJ: Phil. Okay. LG: Phil. Phil Glotzbach. PJ: Phil. And I think he settled things down in a lot of ways, which was good, which was helpful. That's right, I was on CAPT and we hired Phil, as I think about it. Right? But I think they're more disgruntled. I think there's more busywork. I think there's a ridiculous amount of busywork. And that seems to be true in the world at large. Filling Page 12 of 17 �out papers and doing things. E-mail. I have such mixed feelings about e-mail. It was great to handle certain things with students via e-mail. Absolutely fabulous. It really opened us up. I mean, when I came to Skidmore, what you could do would be mimeograph a note. And by the way, in our department when I came, studio art was still on the old campus downtown and that's where the secretary was. So, if the art historians needed something from the secretary, we had to drive downtown or bicycle downtown, and then come back up to campus. It was so nice when... Oh, what department was it? Math, I think. I think it was Mark who... Well, someone in math said to me, "You can use our mimeo machine when you need to mimeograph something for the faculty. You don't have to drive downtown to use the art department mimeograph." I mean, that was likeLG: You had to have a card or something? Or something special to use it? PJ: No, it was just in the secretary's office. Yeah. It was just controlled. So, I began doing my committee mimeos and student mimeos and things. Turning those out in the math department, thank heavens. So, any rate, they were... I don't know. The administration just didn't feel as close to us. It didn't feel that we were as united as we used to be. But I largely feel it was the faculty that changed. And they were disgruntled, and it's true our salaries were low. LG: Penny, what have you been doing since you retired and what year did you retire? PJ: Okay. I retired in spring. LG: Okay. Some more of your highlights? PJ: Oh, there's a bunch of them. Let me just start by saying, I really enjoyed all my years, 42 or 43 years, whatever it was. Yes, because I resigned, or I retired in 2019. The spring semester, 2019. So that was 43 years. I really enjoyed it on the whole of the students. I loved preparing lectures. I love preparing classes and discussion groups. I really enjoyed it. So, on the one hand I have to say, the job was a highlight. But more specifically, I think there were several things that really stand out. For instance, back to women's studies, which was so important for me in so many ways. I'm very proud of the daycare center being set up. Now, I was not the primary mover. Fran Hoffmann really was the person who worked more on that than anyone else. But I was involved in supporting that, involved in getting it established. I worked on it with her and others. And that was just such a wonderful addition to Skidmore. And for all of us older faculty who'd had kids and had not had the pleasure of a daycare center, this felt enormous. I think another enormous highlight has to do with the Tang. John Weber really wanted the faculty to be curating interdisciplinary exhibits. And I went to him after one of our meetings [inaudible 00:43:34] [about exhibits] where he was asking for these and saying he needed them. And I said, "I've been thinking a lot about hair in the Renaissance lately. Page 13 of 17 �The meaning of hair. What do you think about hair as a topic?" And he practically hit the ceiling in joy. He was just really excited. John was a great guy, John Weber. And so, I began thinking more about it and thinking, "This would really be fun." And I'm not always a team player. I like control. I think the idea from John would have been that I would have multiple people working with me on the show. Someone from biology, the biology of hair. And someone from, I don't know, whatever. But I didn't really want that. I wanted to be in charge. I wanted my show. So, I began working on it and showing John what I had, and it really was coming together. They began putting in the loan requests and all the things. And I feel like that was very successful. I also was adamant that I wanted the catalog to be at the show's opening. I think it is still the only show the Tang has put on where the catalog was available when the show was available. I just said, "I want these essays." So, I also edited a book of essays for the Tang. I wrote, I think, I don't know, four or five of them, but then I did involve people from other parts of the college in writing essays. So, there's some really nice ones there. Gerry Erchak, Amelia... In my own department, Amelia... Not Rosner. Well, I'm sorry, Amelia. I'm blanking on your last name right now. But several people who wrote really terrific essays, Susan Walzer, and things. And I think that show was a great success. I still have people coming up to me and saying, "Aren't you the person who did that hair show at the Tang?" And I still get e-mails from people asking me questions about hair. I still get e-mails asking me to do an interview about hair. So that's hung on, shall we say. And that was the Tang and that was great. I think another highlight was when I was awarded the Moseley lecture for my research, which is a special named lecture at Skidmore. I pulled together materials and I felt like that lecture was, in some ways, the best lecture I've ever given. It really was interesting, and I heard some great comments from people whom I respect. And I did go on to publish pieces of it and then more of it. LG: And what was the topic? PJ: The, and this is in quotes, "pregnant" end quote, Mary Magdalene. It's about Mary Magdalene the saint, the Christian saint, being symbolically pregnant, not physically pregnant by Christ, as some have claimed. The Dan Brown suggestions. But rather, she was spiritually pregnant. She was infused by the Word of God, by God, similar in a way to Mary, but did not give birth to anything other than grace and positive ideas. So, I was very proud to do that lecture and I was super pleased at how well it went. LG: Penny, you've been very active in the community and at Skidmore with other retirees since you've retired. PJ: Yes. LG: Tell us about that, if you will. Page 14 of 17 �PJ: That's been really very nice of them to keep asking me to give lectures. I've been very happy doing those. It's fun to think about topics. So, we've been doing online lectures... LG: For retirees? PJ: For retirees, for the retiree group. And most recently, I gave a tour of an exhibition I have curated up at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls. And that's been my biggest activity since I retired. Of course, retirement is broken into by the pandemic, and travel plans were missed and getting to museums was missed and all kinds of things were slowed down. This exhibit should have been done earlier, but it was held up for a whole bunch of reasons. In any case, it opened this fall and just closed January 5th. This is an exhibition about childhood in Italy, 1400 to 1500. It's called Growing Up in Renaissance Italy, Childhood in Italy 14... I must have the title wrong. I can't believe it. Growing Up in Renaissance Italy. I don't know, any rate, Childhood From 1400 to 1600. It was a terrific topic to work on. It's a topic of interest to a huge number of scholars right now, huge amount of scholarship on childhood in Italy, specifically in Florence also, which was my focus. So, I just had the fun of reading all kinds of things I hadn't read before, from history and anthropology and different areas, about childhood. It was really a terrific thing to work on. And then putting it up this fall, having it all come to fruition, I've also heard really positive feedback from a number of people about it. So, I've been very pleased. And it really kept me busy all fall because I gave so many tours of the exhibition. I was over there a lot, but I couldn't go for the de-installing. I thought, "I'll be just too sad, seeing them take everything down and crate it up." So, I avoided that this past week. LG: Anything else we should add that we haven't asked you about? PJ: Travel. One of the great things of my job is, I really had to travel. I had to go to Italy. I had to go to Belgium, Netherlands, France, England, Germany, Spain, all these great places. Because it was so important to see and experience the things you talk about. So, Skidmore has been very supportive of that. I have to say, the faculty research grants helped enormously with all that. LG: Those were the faculty research grants while you were still an active faculty member or as a retiree? PJ: When I was active. And I also have gotten a couple of them since I retired, which has been very generous of Skidmore. LG: From the... That's thePJ: The retirementLG: ...retiree group- Page 15 of 17 �PJ: ...group. Right. LG: ...that has funded you. PJ: Yes. Right. And that's for faculty and staff can be funded. So, they funded some of my travel when I was working on the show and some other elements. So that was terrific. LG: Those grants don't come from the College. Those come from the Retiree Initiative Planning Group. PJ: Okay. Have to hear more about that at some point. Again, I don't know. That was support from Skidmore. I do remember once going into Eric, because on a sabbaticalLG: Eric Weller? PJ: Eric Weller, Dean of Faculty. And I was taking a long and very expensive trip, and I asked him was there any chance he could give me more money, because I really needed to do this for the, I don't know, the book or something I was working on. And he did. I mean, he gave me a chunk of change. Which was really incredibly helpful at the time. My husband and I had divorced, and so my income was dramatically different. That was very helpful. And my second husband, Jay Rogoff, has been wonderful because he's been able to take time to travel with me. George almost never could, because of his job. But Jay is great in helping. LG: Anything else we should cover? Well, I want to thank you ever so much for participating in this project. PJ: You're most welcome, Lynne and Sue, most welcome. Wish you luck with it. Page 16 of 17 �Page 17 of 17 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Penny Jolly Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 52:32 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Penny Jolly Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 17th, 2025 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Penny Jolly grew up in the greater New York City area where she was very influenced by museums in the city. After undergraduate study at Oberlin and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Penny arrived at Skidmore in 1976 where she taught courses in art history, especially Renaissance art and became Director of Art History as well as an active member of the Liberal Studies program and the Women’s Studies major. In this interview she discusses the separation of art history from studio art as separate departments, the faculty committee system, the creation of the Skidmore Daycare Center, and evolving relations between faculty and administration. Penny retired from the faculty in 2019. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9d420b4dcaa7c3dd8f96118bd086b78d.jpg 3df6168ed0373f4bc3d2b7734c5807a0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/0786b819f73339e817b7dde3a4bbdda4.m4a c3cd1975640b9f3979e3e6e6100ddd45 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b9e8bdfcdb68a64e2114b67412ee0f53.pdf 1e9a931e74ef3e0e74ebb159bf83edb8 PDF Text Text Interview with Joan Berenguer by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, August 13, 2024. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. I'm here today with Joan Berenguer, from the early days of Skidmore. It's the 29th of June,, 2025, and we're with Susan BenderSUSAN BENDER: "Recording for." LG: ... recording for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. Well, Joan, it's really nice to see you. And I want to start by asking where you grew up and if you could describe your childhood, briefly. JOAN BERENGUER: Okay. It's great to be here and thank you for inviting me to participate in this program. I'm delighted to be a part of it. So, I was born in Southern California, and grew up... My elementary school years were in the Santa Monica area of Southern California. And then when I was 11, we moved to the Bay Area in Northern California and I went to both middle school and high school in the Bay Area. And then I went off to college, to Ohio, to Antioch College. And then I went to Granada for a program abroad and I met my husband. And then we moved to Paris and lived there for seven years. Both of my daughters were born in Paris. And then we moved back to New York in 1974 because my husband was given a post at SUNY Albany. And that was the year that I saw the advertisement for a post that was available at the language department at Skidmore, and that's when I applied for the department post. And started working in 1974, no, 1975, as a language instructor at theLG: In Spanish? JB: In Spanish. Well, actually, I was hired for Spanish and French, but I only taught Spanish. Do I continue on for that in terms of dates? So, I was an instructor in the language department from '75 to '77, and then I was hired in '78... I'm sorry, from '74 to '78. And then I was hired as an academic advisor for the school year of '78/'79. We moved to Barcelona in '79. And then thanks to Lynne Gelber, chair of the department, who asked me if I would be interested in setting up a (Junior Year Abroad) program for Skidmore... at that point, my husband and I and my family were living in Barcelona, setting up a program for Tufts starting in '80, 1980. So, we ran the program for Skidmore, in conjunction with the program we were running for Tufts University, from 1980 to 1985, and then we moved to Madrid in 1985 and ran the program both in Madrid and in Alcalá de Henares until my retirement in 2009. LG: Now, did you have a position also at the University Without Walls? JB: I did. I didn't mention that? I'm sorry. In 1978, '79, before we moved to Spain, I worked as an Academic Advisor in the University Without Walls. Page 1 of 12 �LG: And what did you do? JB: So, I worked with the students who were doing their individual projects and helping them organize the academic aspects of the development of their projects. Because it's a very independent program and they're not on campus. They're not taking, necessarily, courses, but their doing a lot of independent work within their different degree requirements. It was a very interesting job. LG: Any outstanding students or projects that you can recall? JB: I'm sorry, I don't remember. LG: Okay. JB: It was only one year. And everything seemed very interesting to me, but I can't remember any specific projects. LG: Do you remember what courses you were teaching in Spanish? JB: Yes. I was teaching Spanish 3 and 4, and I was teaching Phonetics. Which, that was, for me, my most interesting course. I was teaching Phonetics and it was something that I found extremely useful because I saw that it could be helpful for students who were sincerely interested in improving their phonetic performance in learning Spanish with understanding how those sounds are produced in your mouth. It was incredible, the improvement that people could make. And so it was an interesting scientific course because of the way they found out about how sounds are produced in your mouth, but it's also had great practical results for these students because they were delighted to all of a sudden hear themselves speaking a more phonetically correct Spanish. So that was a very fun course. LG: So, why don't you talk a little bit about the program in Spain? JB: So, as I mentioned before, we developed the program originally in Barcelona. So, I'm talking now about the Skidmore College Junior Year Abroad Program in Spain, which started in Barcelona in 1980. That was our very first year. We started working on its creation the year before. And we set up the program with what they call the Central University of Barcelona, La Universidad Central de Barcelona, which was in the downtown area of the city. And I taught a class and my husband taught a class for the Skidmore and Tufts University students, which we were running in conjunction, the two programs, at the university itself. We were given classroom space at the university. Then we had space, an apartment that we rented, we had space to use for the program where we had some of our special events, lectures, recitals, special projects, at the office. And that's where we had our administrative offices and ran the program. LG: Joan, what kind of special programs? What kind of recitals? Page 2 of 12 �JB: Well, we had Flamenco, and we had some of the singer/songwriters in those days, which were very important because of their political implications. They'd been important during the end of the Franco dictatorship and continued to be very popular. And some of them were our friends and we had them give recitals to the students. And of course there was the interest both in the music and also the political message that was coming through thoseLG: Did the students get involved? JB: Oh, absolutely. They were fascinated. And part of the program was, the philosophy of our program was also to get students as integrated as possible in the culture. So there were two special courses. My husband's, Angel’s, course in culture, and my course in language, to help them with things that they wouldn't find at the university. But then they all took two or three other courses at the university itself that were regular courses where they sat with the Spanish students and did the same work the Spanish students did and got their grades from the Spanish professors. Which we felt was very important for them to be part of a real institution, to not have something just prepared for them on an American type university. And so they did the university, they lived individually with Spanish families, with families in Barcelona. And cultural activities were actually part of their Culture course with my husband, Angel, where they could choose several different types of activities but they all had to do some kind of cultural activity, which could include going to Spanish movies, seeing Spanish plays, going to Spanish music recitals or concerts, going to art exhibits. Just generally being involved in Spanish culture for the same reason, that they could become part of regular Spanish life, and not a tourist, and not a separate American kind of in-house situation. This was something we always believed in very strongly, and we saw how effective it could be with the students in terms of their outcomes. LG: So, why did you have to move to Madrid? JB: So, this is one of the very big challenges that we encountered. When we first moved to Barcelona, there was some movement toward nationalistic Catalans recovering their culture because they felt that they had been very oppressed during the Franco period with the dictatorship. They couldn't use their language at school. I mean, there were lots of things that we absolutely agreed with. But it went very far for our objectives with our students because starting maybe the third year... We spent five years there. About the third year, we saw we were losing the number of the most popular courses that students would sign up for at the university itself (because they) were just being offered in Catalan. So we had the problem with the course offerings at the university that our students could take, but as well as thatLG: Catalan as opposed to? JB: Right. The Catalan language is a separate romance language. It's as separate from Spanish as Page 3 of 12 �French or Portuguese or Italian. So it's not mutually comprehensible. And none of our students were specializing in Catalan so it was not a useful... We couldn't expect students to be able to take a course in Catalan. So we had the problem at the university. We also had a problem at all of these cultural activities we wanted them to be involved in because, especially the theater, was being offered almost exclusively in Catalan. But even the art exhibits would have the information only in Catalan because they were trying to promote their language with such rigor that they were blocking out Spanish. And so even on a social level... All of our families, of course, knew that they had to speak Spanish with our students, but sometimes there was families that mostly spoke Catalan and that was a division for our students to integrate into the families because they would be speaking a language they didn't understand, and that could create also misunderstandings. And on a social level, our students had a hard time making friends because a lot of the students at the university didn't want to speak Spanish. They were using the Catalan language. And so interestingly enough, our students, instead of having friends in the university, they usually had friends that were immigrants from other parts of Spain that didn't speak Catalan either. Taxi drivers, or waiters in the restaurants, or people that they met in other occasions, but they weren't having that very rich experience with their peers of being able to develop a lot of friendships. So it was clear, I would say about the third year in our development, that we were going to have to make a move. So in the fourth year, we started seriously looking at all the other options in Spain. And after checking out several universities, there were lots of fine places to go, but the best place for us, without a doubt, after checking it out and doing a lot of research, was Madrid because Madrid has very good universities but it also offers so much of everything else. Because our students weren't always Spanish majors. Some of them were Spanish majors and some of them were Spanish minors, or some were double majors, but there were many other majors that came on the program. LG: Like what? Like art history? JB: Art history. There were poly sci, there were business. We had lots of business. There were lots of other interests. Psychology. We had lots of different... hm? LG: Dance? JB: Oh, and dance. Right. Dance, right. So we had a variety of majors that you wanted to be able... One of the philosophies of our program was that students get involved in the culture through their interests and continue on with their interests. And they did internships, that was something we had started in Barcelona and we greatly expanded in Madrid because they could find internships in their different areas of interest either for hobbies’ sake or for majors in terms of the kinds ofLG: So what kind of internships? JB: So, we had internships in schools where they helped with English teaching. We did Page 4 of 12 �internships in different types of NGOs where they were working with social services. We had internships with refugees with, I think it was like a UN agency of refugee aid where our students were helping to do research about the different countries where refugee applicants were coming from to help the lawyers prepare their cases with the refugees. And we had some students interested in business working with financial institutions. I'm trying to remember, there was another one. It was also an NGO that was very popular. A lot of the social services where they were working with children in some cases. That's all that comes to mind. There were a lot of different options. There was a student who did an internship in movie making and found a place that did films where she could develop her interest in movie making. So there was a whole lot of variety. And we encouraged students, if we couldn't find something exactly that fit the bill, that they could also look into opportunities. LG: So, what were the highlights for you? JB: Beyond a doubt, the biggest highlight for me... Because I loved this job. For me, it was a dream job. I used to tell everybody that. But I think the most wonderful thing about it was witnessing the kind of growth leaps that all students experienced and achieved in many different areas, including intellectual growth, academic growth, cultural perspectives, adaptability, social development. Of course language development was fundamental. But there were all sorts of different ways in which students were able to take advantage of these opportunities in their own individual experiences, and they all made huge leaps in those growth opportunities. After having taught at Skidmore, I saw it much more because it was more of a kind of complete experience that they were having, and you could see these growth developments. A 20-year-old American, in some cases, it was the first time they had ever gotten on an airplane, in those days. It was their first time out of the country. Living in a city, learning to deal with urban culture and urban logistics. Using a subway. All of these were very important experiences for them in all sorts of different ways. And that, for me, was not just fascinating but it was heartwarming to see how these students were meeting these challenges and accomplishing what they were able to do in the structure of the program. LG: Nowadays, we talk about it as learning about diversity and living with it. JB: And that is absolutely what they did. What I thought was interesting was that each student had their own way of growth. It wasn't like a cookie-cutter experience. Each person developed according to their own situation, their own interests, their own needs, but there was always growth. You couldn't go through that program without major growth. LG: So, Joan, what were the major challenges? JB: I think the biggest challenge was having to move from Barcelona to Madrid. That was, for me, it was a big disappointment. Barcelona is a wonderful city. It's just- Page 5 of 12 �LG: It was the cultural center of Spain at the time, wasn't it? JB: And it was the cultural center. It was much more interesting city than Madrid under the dictatorship. It had a lot of communications with France and the rest of the democratic world, and it was just more open. It welcomed a lot of the Latin American intellectuals and writers from those times. So it was a very interesting place. That's one of the negative outcomes of this nationalistic kind of closing in on yourself. The nationalistic movement has closed Barcelona off to diversity. Basically, to diversity. So anyway, it was very challenging, first of all, because it was a big disappointment that we weren't able to stay there, because it just did not work for our program because of the way we wanted students to integrate into the culture. But also, anybody who is interested in my opinion knows that I never recommend anybody going to a program in Barcelona. The programs that I'm aware of in Barcelona have becomeLG: Now? JB: Now. Most of their instruction is English, but also they're very popular and well known as fun programs. What do you call the schools that have... Was that mine? LG: Yeah. JB: Oh, it's mine. Oh, sorry. So, I'm talking about these programs in Barcelona today, from what I've heard and people I've talked to, they've become very popular party schools where students go because they don't have to work very hard, everything is in English, and they have a lot of fun at the parties. Now, in Madrid, you could have fun at the parties, but you had to do a lot of work and you had do a lot of other things besides partying. And I don't think that's the best way to take advantage of the great opportunity that studying in another country has to offer. LG: Were you able to set up similar kinds of internships in Madrid? JB: Oh, absolutely. We had very interesting internships. And also, in Alcalá, we had kind of a mini program in Alcalá for students interested in a smaller town environment. LG: Now, Alcalá was... JB: So, Alcalá is where my husband, Angel Berenguer, was teaching at the university and we developed a relationship with them to be able to set up a mini program. It's basically a half hour train ride from Madrid to Alcalá. So our students were in Alcalá, they lived with families in Alcalá, they went to the university for their courses, but they came into Madrid once a week to do the basic culture program and also to make sure that they were able to take advantage of Madrid as well as Alcalá. Some of these students preferred not to have the big city experience, but we wanted them to have some kind of exposure to Madrid. And so that worked well. Page 6 of 12 �And I must mention that the other interesting thing about the program was that we set up, with Skidmore College, a scholarship arrangement for the students from Alcalá. Usually it was two students from the University of Alcalá and two students from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Those are the two universities where our students were directly enrolled in courses. LG: Excuse me. So they could take courses at Alcalá or the university? JB: Right. The University of Alcalá and the Autonomous University of Madrid. And so the exchange arrangement with those two universities was that two of their students could come to Skidmore for a year, tuition-free and room and board free, and work, I think it was the lab part of the language courses that they were teaching, like conversation courses, at the department here to help out with student language development. And then they could sign up for the courses they needed to get credit for their university requirements. That was also a great opportunity for the students who came back from the program to have these Spanish students around as well, to be able to help them out in the same experience that they had just had themselves in Spain. So that was also, I think, an enrichment both for the students and the college as well. LG: So, did the program grow over the course of those years? JB: There was some growth and then there was some loss of students. When Skidmore actually set up their own Programs Abroad Office, then there was a larger possibility of students studying at other places besides our own programs. And so we for a couple of years, we lost students that were going to programs in Latin America that were being offered by the Programs Abroad. But they came back and they stayed pretty stable. [inaudible 00:24:31]. LG: But those programs, in Latin America, for example, were not Skidmore programs? JB: They were not Skidmore programs. But they were approved by the Programs Abroad Office, which it was and is a separate administrative entity that dealt with the logistics of signing the students up. And one thing that I haven't mentioned before, because we had an interesting relationship with Regis Brodie, who was from the art department at Skidmore, and he helped us develop opportunities for students interested in ceramics in Madrid. Because this was another option. Besides the regular academic courses at the university, there were possibilities of students taking, at other institutions where we had developed relationships that we had vetted for their quality, students could take specialized type courses, for example in ceramics. And so there's this wonderful ceramics school from the beginning of the 20th century, beautiful place, where students were... These were people who were going to become ceramists? No. LG: Ceramicists. Page 7 of 12 �JB: Ceramicists. So it was very high quality. But our students had a wonderful time. Regis, who,.. he is internationally famous, and so they knew him and they knew his work. He has work in several Spanish museums. They were delighted to be able to set up this system where our students could go and take courses, and get the grades for those courses and get credit transferred here to Skidmore, especially for our art majors. So those kinds of opportunities were also available. And especially with Regis, it was wonderful because he ran a program during the summerLG: Summer 6? JB: Summer 6. Where he also, I think every two years, he brought one of those students from the ceramics school for a summer experience. And that was also very popular and very successful. LG: Now one of the people whose name I remember is Rosa Ajenjo. JB: Oh, right. Right. And she was a friend of ours and she taught English in a high school in Spain. And she came to teach some Spanish courses here, one year? Was it one year or one semester? I can't remember. But there was also these other kinds of exchange experiences between the two countries that Skidmore was taking advantage of. LG: So how did the finances work? JB: So things worked out financially because Skidmore was charging students their regular tuition, which is very expensiveLG: Room, board, and tuition. JB: Right. Room, board, and tuition. And the basic expenses in Spain were less expensive because Spain is less expensive and tuition is very cheap. And we weren't paying tuition because we had the exchange system. So Skidmore was actually using their free tuition, room, and board for the exchange students against our tuition at the University. LG: Now, the room, board, and tuition, did that also include trips? JB: Yes. LG: And did it include air fare? JB: It did not include air fare, but it included trips. We tried to take students to areas of the country that they probably wouldn't go on their own, that were not so normal tourist attractions. Which was interesting. And also, something I haven't mentioned, because they were paying high tuition compared to expenses in Spain, we also offered them... I mean, we covered lots of their expenses. We covered their transportation pass. There's a youth transportation pass that Page 8 of 12 �they could get to and from the university and any other place; all of their cultural activities in the cities, to and fro from Alcalá. We covered their extra meal because they had two meals with the family, but to give them more flexibility they got a lunch allowance weekly to cover that third meal. And then we also covered, besides the required cultural activities, they could also do other cultural activities and write about these cultural activities and get reimbursed for whatever expense the cultural activity had, which might include trips. So they could do their own trips. We encouraged them to do trips with Spanish friends. But it didn't matter. As long as they had a cultural experience that they could include in their journals. They had journals about the experiences that they were having with the culture, with the classes, etc. And so all of those expenses were covered by the program. A lot of the students said that they didn't spend practically any extra money in Spain because so much of the experiences in Spain... Of course, the trips that we covered were always in Spain, which is something else that I think is interesting because we really encouraged students to take advantage of what is a very unique opportunity in life. A 20-year-old in a foreign country, as a student, has many more opportunities to connect with all sorts of different aspects of the people, the culture, the atmosphere, than any regular tourist has. And we reminded them that they would have many, many opportunities to do tourism for the rest of their lives. Which is also a wonderful experience, but it's very different and it's not ever at the same level that these students could have with their integration into society. A niece of mine, a different program, a different, perfectly acceptable American University program, she just spent a semester on the program. And my cousin said, "Oh, yeah. They set it up so that there were no classes on Friday so that everybody could travel." Every single weekend, she traveled to a different European country. So this is a student, who, when I heard she was going, I sent her messages, and she wrote back to me in Spanish. Very good Spanish. I said, "Oh, your Spanish is excellent. I'm so happy. You're going to have a great time in Madrid." When she came back, when she ended the program, she wrote to me in English. Somebody who had just spent a semester in Madrid and she writes to me in English. Which, I think, says something about that kind of experience. Which is, it's just a waste of time. This is so much against the way I think about the opportunity that programs abroad should offer students. And that's the way we had based the philosophy in our program. LG: So, since you retired, what have you been up to? JB: Well, I am loving retirement. Although, I kind of retired without being sure I was doing the right thing, because I really love my job and I felt like I was having the best possible work experience in the world. But I must say that I've really enjoyed retirement. Both my husband and I, we retired at the same time so we've done lots of travel. We have family that's kind of spread over the world, over the globe, so we have time to spend with all of our family members in other parts of the world. Page 9 of 12 �But the other thing that I just really enjoy is having the luxury of saying, "Oh, I'm interested in this. I'm going to read this book about the different places that were settled in the United States and how that impacted the culture development to this day." I mean, interesting books like that that I never had time to... I always felt like I had to read in my specialty and keep myself abreast. But having that luxury of being able to read in all sorts of different areas. I've been reading about pre-Socratic philosophers in Ancient Greece. I mean, there's so many things that are just fascinating to read about history. I love history. And to have that luxury of being able to have plenty of free time is something I'm really enjoying. It's something that's new in my life, so it's been great. I haven't mentioned this, but we live, between the United States, we spend three months in the Boston area, in Medford, and then basically three months in Spain, and then three months in Medford, then three months in Spain, so we're kind of back and forth also in terms of where we live our lives. LG: Do you spend time in Abu Dhabi? JB: Those are trips, not spending two months there. LG: Seeing family. JB: Right. We spend time in Abu Dhabi with our family there, and then we spend time in England, where we have family there as well. And then we spend some time in California where all of my family lives. I'm the only stray sheep. LG: Anything else that we should mention? JB: Well, I must mention that one of the things that I think helped me have a dream job was the kind of support I always felt from the Skidmore administration. I never had any major challenges from the Skidmore administration. I felt very supported in the kinds of developments, the way we saw the program. I felt like people like you, people from the department, were always on board with the kind of program that we wanted our students to experience. And so I only had cooperation from the department and from the Skidmore administration. LG: Anybody in particular? JB: You. LG: No. JB: Specifically you. LG: Outside of that. JB: The Lertoras were always very supportive, and Grace was always very supportive. Page 10 of 12 �LG: So, the Lertoras, that's Juan Carlos Lertora andJB: Juan Carlos Lertora and Patricia Rubio, and Grace Burton, and... What's his name? Another Spanish professor whose name... And Mike Madrovich. So I must say, all of the Spanish professors were very helpful, very supportive, and I always felt like we were all on board in terms of what our objectives were, how we should deal with the students. The kinds of students that they sent on the program, they were all so well selected, because that selection happened at Skidmore. I didn't select the students, they were selected by theLG: But did you meet with them? JB: I met them. Right. They were selectedLG: So you would come back every year. JB: Every semester. I came back in November and usually in April, and we interviewed all the new students that were going to be coming the next semester and talked about what they were looking forward to, what their expectations were, what their priorities were, especially in terms of the kind of family they wanted to live with, to help them prepare their trip. So I think that that's important, that having a job like that, which is a distance, a far distance from the central administration, and feeling like you're being supported and you've got people on board with you in terms of the way the program is run. And we never had any major problem, whatsoever. LG: When you were on campus, did you meet with people in business office or anyJB: Sometimes. And art, and theater, because of specific students that were working in one project or another of interest. Or, sometimes, because there were some credit questions about what kind of credit should we give and what different courses. LG: There was an interdepartmental committee that was overseeing these programs that brought in Spain and France. Did you meet with them? JB: Yes. Yes, we met with them as well. And from my point of view, all of it worked very well, and I felt extremely well taken care of in terms of not having any administrative headaches. Which is something you really appreciate. LG: Anything else? JB: No. As you can hear, I had a wonderful experience and I feel very privileged to have been able to have had this job for, I worked for Skidmore for like 29 years. No, I worked in Spain for 29 years and if you count the other five years, that's like 34 years. So it was a longLG: Not bad. Page 11 of 12 �JB: ... long time, at Skidmore. LG: Thank you, Joan. JB: Thank you very much. Page 12 of 12 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joan Berenguer Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 38:40 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Joan Berenguer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 13, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Joan Berenguer came to Skidmore in 1974.  She taught Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for two years and then served as an academic advisor for UWW in 1978-79.  When Skidmore began its own junior year abroad programs, Joan and her husband Angel ran the program in coordination with Tufts University, first in Barcelona and then in Madrid. In this interview Joan recalls the powerful influence of cultural integration, internships and student exchanges. Joan retired in 2009. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/25ba9d47c3d7809146c0f85637cd531e.jpg a0df1d8ba18ebd0fdf3d70d6277f01c8 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/daffdef37e8698bb9a91c1ab65947ce0.m4a 3e22d33bb8e02dd6d71e82d3446d0b84 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4b9dc3e63f8c6f646e2781be2cab639b.pdf ef0a4f7e8fb8a07611b4554564f6bb8e PDF Text Text Interview with Patricia Poirier by Sandy Welter, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, February 14, 2024. SANDY WELTER: This is Sandy Welter. I am here interviewing Pat Poirier for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It is Monday, February 19th, 2024 and we are in the Scribner Library, room 222. Good morning, Pat. PAT POIRIER: Good morning. SW: Before we start talking about your work at Skidmore, tell us about where you were born, where you grew up. PP: I was born right here in Saratoga. My parents had moved back from California, where my brother and sister were both born, because my grandparents were here. And so, I was born here. I was raised in Schuylerville and I live across the street from the house I grew up in. So, I'm a native and I haven't moved very far. SW: And so, as a native Saratogian, how did you come to begin working at Skidmore? PP: My sister-in-law worked in Dining Services forever and a day. We were talking and she suggested that I apply for a job here, and I did. And they were, at that time, doing the Wide Horizon Campaign. It was 1979. First of all, before that, I worked in the President's Office for Joe Palamountain for a couple weeks. They had been traveling, and Nancy Glass was his secretary. And she was out on leave for whatever reason, so they needed somebody to help catch things up before they came back from wherever they had traveled to. So, I worked there for a couple weeks. And then Wide Horizon Campaign was going on, and somehow or other my resume ended up in what at that time was called External Affairs with Nancy Lester. She was the class of '58, and she was Assistant Director. Anyway, and that's how I ended up here. And I was temporary for a couple years, and then I think they forgot that I was a temporary employee. And I got pregnant and I called and I said, "Can I come back to work? I'm still temporary." And they didn't realize it, so they made my position a permanent position, made it retroactive to 1979 when I started. That was 1983, so they made it retroactive to 1979, and I got my benefits. That's how that ended up. SW: When you first went to work there, it was not called Advancement at the time. PP: It was called External Affairs at that time. SW: Okay, and your job when you first got there was to do what? PP: The Wide Horizon Campaign was going on, so what I did was prepare committee kits. The Page 1 of 6 �Development officers would go out and create committees in various areas of the country to solicit alumni in that area. And there were kits to help them do that. We had to put together biographical information on the people in that area and include gift envelopes. The Development officers hosted kickoffs, which were alumni gatherings to get as many people from that area together and explain why Skidmore was raising money for the Wide Horizon Campaign. It's different from the Annual Fund. It's a capital campaign. Skidmore was still building this campus at the time. So I did that kind of stuff. And then when the Development officers came back, I updated records on alumni, any information that came in. We found a lot of people at that time. There wasn't a real good system for keeping track of our alums and parents and everybody. Actually, the Wide Horizon started that process in vigor to get it going. SW: What was the purpose of the Wide Horizon Campaign? What was their goal? PP: When I started here they broke ground for the Phys Ed Center. They still had dorms to build and classroom buildings. And the trustees had said, "You can build, but you have to have 50% of the money in hand before you can break ground for a building." That was the rule. I don't know if they are still following that rule, but that's back then. So the goal for that campaign was $12.4 million dollars, which seems like nothing compared to what the campaigns are now. Because the whole campus was not all here on North Broadway, I believe, in 1979 there were still some students over on Union Avenue. And I don't believe any classes were there, but they were still housed over there, some of them. So the goal was to get the dorms built, I think. I don't remember that. SW: And the campaign was successful? PP: Oh, yes. It went over the goal, but I don't remember the dollar number. But yes, it was successful. SW: So from that first campaign experience, how did your job evolve? And when did this department, this area, become renamed Advancement? Do you remember? PP: I don't remember it when it became Advancement. I want to say when I started, David Long was Vice President. And then I think Dick Seaman was my next Vice President. And I believe he changed the name to Advancement, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure on that one. SW: So when you came to Skidmore, you were working under President Palamountain. PP: President Palamountain, yes. SW: So you've worked under how many other presidents during your tenure? PP: I think there were five. It was Joe Palamountain, David Porter, Jamie Studley. Who came Page 2 of 6 �after her? Did Phil come after her? Phil Glotzbach, so there were only four. I retired before Mark Connor came. Yeah, and Joe Palamountain, he was fun to work with. SW: What makes you say that? Can you give us an example? PP: When I first came here, I was 21 and I was scared to death of a PhD, but he and Anne were just the most welcoming people. One time when I had moved over to Advancement, we had a wall that separated our office from the Provost, and Joe came in and talked to the Provost a lot. We had been blowing bubbles over the wall, and I said to the girl on the other side, "You're going to get me in trouble. Stop blowing bubbles. Stop blowing bubbles!" And I stood up on a chair and looked over, and it was Joe Palamountain blowing bubbles over the wall, and he was laughing. Oh my God, he was laughing. I said "Well, I guess he can't get me in trouble." He was just a sweetheart. I loved all the Presidents, actually. SW: What a great story! So talk a little bit about some of the changes in your job over the years. Did you see your job changing in some ways? PP: I guess it changed a couple times. I always helped. There was another person in my original position, of course. I moved around not by choice, but they moved me around to work for various Development officers. I had to call and make appointments for them or whatever else, make their travel arrangements. I did all of that for a while, but I really did not enjoy that. When the person who had my position retired in 1990, Nancy Lester slipped me right back into it. Back then, I guess you didn't have to do a whole big to-do, advertise, or whatever. She slipped me right into it, and I really enjoyed it because we went from doing address changes on paper and mailing them out and getting them back and having to file what we called PRC cards, which were permanent record cards to computerization then to the next computerization. Everything was instant instead of two weeks out. SW: Tell us about Nancy Lester. PP: Nancy Lester was the class of '58. She graduated in May and started working here in June. And I think she was here about 30 years. Personally, she could be tough, demanding in how she wanting things done, but I always thought she was very fair. She was one of my best supervisors, really. I really enjoyed working for her. SW: Could you give us the title of the position that you held and maybe a little overview of the work? PP: My position technically was called Coordinator of Biographical Records. My main purpose was to keep track of all the alums. They would call me when they moved, changed jobs, got married, got divorced, passed away. I didn't write the obituaries, but I did all the biographical collection of what they did through their lifetime when they passed away so that the alumni news editor could write up an obituary for Scope. That's when we had Scope and class newsletters all the time. Also, I had quite a list of people, until I retired, Page 3 of 6 �that formerly worked here that wanted to know, especially the ... What do you call them, the person who gets people to put us in their will? I forget what they are called. I can't remember, but they wanted to know if one of their alums had passed away. A lot of times, gift officers and other Skidmore people would go to funerals. I went to a couple funerals because I had known the alums for years and had contacted them often. We represented the College by going to the funerals. I did all of that. I did it for parents in the summertime. I put all the incoming students and their parents on the database all summer long because we solicit the parents also, or corporations. Any biographical information came through me. SW: What would you consider some of your major successes or your contributions to Skidmore? PP: We have a bunch of alumni that we couldn't find. We called them lost alumni. I felt towards the end of my career, with the advent of more computer search engines, that they were out there and we could find them. I felt really good that we got our percentage of lost alumni down to less than 10% out of however many we have now. That's not bad and a major success. I am also proud of my diligence to keep track of alumni and the connection I made with a lot of them. They knew me, especially the older ladies who went back and forth to Florida in the wintertime. We call them snowbirds. They would call me. I had a couple I had to call when I retired and say, "I'm leaving now. You'll just have to call the main office number now. You don't have to worry about it. It'll happen automatically, but if you feel better calling" ... And I still keep in touch with a lot of my friends. I have one student worker who worked for me just for a year, but we're still friends. She graduated in '93, and we still get together occasionally. And a couple Board members. Bill Ladd, he's a very close friend, was right there when my husband passed away. He was on the phone, one of the first. He's a Ladd. I just want to say. I knew his grandmother. SW: Yes, Skidmore is like a family, and you were feeling very much part of the family. PP: Yes, exactly. SW: That's wonderful. We talked a little bit about challenges. Any struggles that you felt or maybe even the changes you've seen over the years that you've been at Skidmore? PP: The biggest challenge was when we converted databases. I had to speak up about things that I kept track of that I felt had to be converted somehow and into the new system. I really fought to be a part of the team that did the mapping and converting of data from one database to another. I think we did three software changes while I was here. That was my big thing. I was so protective of my records and I wanted them to get transferred properly. We talked it out and figured out where to put things, and it worked. Then of course afterward, as time went on, these conversions were smoother. Then you had to go in and straighten things out a little bit afterwards. SW: Right. Your work environment, where you worked in Advancement changed during the Page 4 of 6 �course of your tenure, I think. Where were you first housed? Then wherePP: We were on fourth floor, Palamountain, which was the best place in the world to work. We had the President's office. We had the Registrar's office. We had Financial Aid. Plus we had the interaction with the students because they were always in the hall. We just loved fourth floor Palamountain, but we outgrew it. Because as the College grew, we had more people. We had to get more Development officers, so we moved over to North Hall and then eventually the Alumni office. That section moved over to Colton House to give us more room, and then they added on a section in the back of North Hall. We were supposed to be there temporarily, but I think they're still there. So it hasn't moved. SW: Yes. Your fondest memories? We mentioned a little. PP: My fondest memory is a reunion. Even last year was the first year that I was able to get back on Saturday to the reunion parade and the alums. I love them, especially the older ones. Like I say, I knew Helen Filene Ladd. She was class of '22. Again, I was 22, so it was 1982. I was working her reunion, and a couple kids went down to the airport to pick her up and lost her luggage. So she's standing there at the desk. I didn't know who she was. Registration was at Case Center at the desk, and she's standing there. I said, "May I help you?" And she said, "I'm Helen Filene Ladd, and they lost my luggage. Oh my goodness, they're making a big to-do about it.” She was just a sweetheart, but the older ladies, they're just so happy to come back here, so proud of the College, the whole nine yards. And they always remembered us, those of us who worked there. I just loved working the reunions. It was long hours, a long weekend, but it was great. SW: Is there anything else that you would like to add, any other reflections, any influential people you might want to mention that you worked with over the years? You mentioned the presidents. You mentioned the students and the alums, some of your colleagues, like Nancy Lester. Anything else you would like to add to round out the picture of your life at Skidmore? PP: I was very fortunate to work with terrific Vice Presidents. All of them had their own personalities. I was especially close to David Long up until he passed away. I still, actually last week, had lunch with his wife. And I've kept in touch with Chris Hook, who was one of my Vice Presidents. Michael Casey, I think was. No, he wasn't my last Vice President. Sean Campbell was, but Michael Casey, such a tragic loss. Really sweet guy, great to work for. Skidmore has a talent for hiring great people, really great people. Like I say, I got along with most of the Presidents. I'll just put it that way, to put it diplomatically. But I love Phil, and Mark seems to be wonderful. At our retirement events, he's just so welcoming. I just learned a lot about fundraising, about keeping track of money. I now happen to be the financial secretary at my church, and I often say, "You can't do this. You have to do it this way," just because of what I learned here, even though it's a much smaller organization. But I learned a lot about the fundraising aspect of private institutions and nonprofits, and it's amazing. Page 5 of 6 �SW: And finally, you've continued your relationship with Skidmore through the RetireePP: The Retiree Initiative Program Group. SW: Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing there? PP: I'm just part of the group, but it's staying connected. I kind of worried when I left that I would lose touch. I was here 41 years. It was my life; Skidmore saw me through every major event in my life - my mother passing away, my father passing away, my husband passing away. Skidmore was there. We were so close and such a family and they kept me going. I just said, "I don't want to lose out on being a part of Skidmore." So being on RIPG, it forces me ... I'm very much a homebody, so it forces me to participate. I come to all the programs that interest me that are here. I plan the wine, cheese, and chat. I took that over when somebody else didn't want to do it anymore. That is for welcoming the retirees from the past year, and anybody else can come. Actually, Phil is going to speak this year on that. We also have a grant program for retirees as they have projects that they work on. I'm not really clear on this, but I believe even if they volunteer someplace and this place needs money for a special project, we will grant them money. Phyllis Roth, I didn't know this, and I was in the Advancement office, but Phyllis Roth left a grant for retirees' projects. So we have a budget every year that we can use for grants to support retiree initiatives. If we want to take a trip, part of that is subsidized through her grant. And it's just nice. What I like is I get to meet people that, like you, I talked on the phone, but we're all equals. I'm not just one of the people keeping track of everything. We're professors. We're administrators. We're support staff. There's a nice mix on the committee, and we all are working. It's just wonderful. It's a wonderful experience. I love being on that committee. SW: Well, we're so pleased that you were able to participate in our oral history project, Pat, and your insights are invaluable. They're really wonderful. What year did you start at Skidmore? PP: I started January 15th, 1979, which was my birthday. And I retired January 15th, 2020, which was very fortuitous for me, because where I live, at that time, we did not have high speed internet. I don't know what I would have done because I couldn't work from home. So I don't know. Something told me I had to retire at the right time, so I did. So, I had exactly 41 years. SW: Wonderful. We thank you so much and we wish you the very best. We look forward to seeing you more at the RIPG programs. Thank you, Pat. PP: Well, thank you. I'm so thrilled to be asked to do this. I really, really am. Page 6 of 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sandy Welter Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Patricia Poirier Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 25:51 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit April 14, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Patricia Poirier Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 14, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Patricia Poirier came to Skidmore in 1979 as a support staff member in the President’s Office and retired as the Coordinator of Biographical Records in the Office of Advancement in 2020.  In her 41 years at Skidmore, Pat worked under four Presidents, saw the College move fully to the North Broadway campus, worked on the Wide Horizons Campaign, and developed lasting relationships with students, faculty, staff, and especially alumni.  She helped implement several of the College’s data management upgrades for the Office of Advancement and left that office with a well-organized and thorough system of contacts for students, parents, and alums, an invaluable resource for future Presidents, Development officers, reunion coordinators, and alumni.   Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/ed31850cb6be576a9bc5875267ab30a4.jpg 571e16376084ca21c26b1b973f287e71 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/5d1819f18b44ad194e8e8a898d26085a.mp3 593eb3d4b3322243632583cbf3091463 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/858826f48e4f10200d244a7caffb9f63.pdf d315d7f7d88d58690df2f7b7ba7fe2d3 PDF Text Text Interview with Sarah Goodwin by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, April 11, 2024. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber with Sarah Goodwin and Sue Bender and Leslie Mechem to interview Sarah Goodwin for our project. We're at the, what is it, the Surrey Inn? LESLIE MECHEM: No, the communications. LG: Communications center, excuse me, on the Skidmore campus today. Did I say it was April 11th, 2024? So, to get started, Sarah, can you tell us where you grew up and a little bit about your early days and then how you got to Skidmore? SG: Sure. I was an Army brat. So, I was born at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and lived at Fort\ Huachuca, Arizona, and thenLG: Fort? SG: Fort Huachuca. LG: Huachuca. SG: It's near Tucson. LG: How do you spell Huachuca? SG: H-U-A-C-H-U-C-A. LG: Okay. SG: Huachuca, where my father actually developed the first drone program for the military. LG: Oh. SG: Yeah. His vision, because he came out of reconnaissance in World War II, was to have drones doing the reconnaissance instead of human beings that were sent off and often didn't come back. But they cut the program for whatever reason, so he spent another year at the Pentagon after that. Let me see. After Fort Huachuca, we spent four years in Germany with the military, which was formative for me because I learned some German and was exposed to Europe. LG: And how old were you then? SG: Four years old to eight years old. Just strangely enough, Germany, we lived in Karlruhe, in �Heidelberg. Those felt like home to me really, actually, throughout my life. I've had a sort of pull back to that region. But I also was exposed to France, and my parents had a passion for France. They spent some time there after the war. So that happened too. All those seeds got planted. Eventually, when Dad retired from the Army, we moved to Palo Alto, California, when I was nine. And that was my mother's hometown, so we moved in with my grandmother and stayed. I was pretty happy to have Palo Alto as a hometown. Even as a child, I recognized that it was pretty special, all those sunny days. You know. And it had been my mother's hometown, so there was a feeling of welcome there for the family that was very nice. It was quite different from the Army, a feeling of continuity, of a connection to the past and so on. When it came time to apply to college, I was drawn to the Northeast for whatever reason. That's most of the schools I applied to were in the Northeast. I wound up going to Harvard as an undergrad. And at Harvard, I majored in English, but I did their comparative literature option so that I could focus on a period instead of the history of English and American literature. I focused on the 19th century and did English, French and German. There was a time when I was in college when all I really wanted to do was become fluent in French and German. It seemed I could not find a way to justify that rationally, but it was a drive that I had. So I spent as much time in France and in Germany as I could and wound up doing a PhD in comparative literature at Brown. Brown was the only East Coast school I applied to. I was still trying to get back to California, but it was the one that offered me a full ride. And so there it was. I liked the program at Brown. I found graduate school really hard. I don't know, just the expectation of work was, as one of my professors pointed out to me, "This is good training for being an assistant professor somewhere." And I thought, "Ooh, is that the life I want?" LG: Did you have a combination of classes and teaching? SG: Yeah. Classes and teaching. Yeah. The first year I had a fellowship. They called it a university fellowship, so I didn't have to teach actually until year three. I can't remember what happened in year two. But it was below poverty level living, but everybody I knew was... You all know what it was like. It was fine. It was very close relationships. I'm still connected with some graduate school friends. I finished my PhD, and I spent time in both Germany and France during my work on my dissertation and applied all over the country. I actually got one offer the year before I got the Skidmore job, but it was a tenure-track job that had been turned into a one-year position at UC Riverside. And I've thought a lot during my life about how differently things could have gone if I'd been doing German and comp lit at UC Riverside instead of English at Skidmore. I mean, you could not get more dramatically different, I think, than that. But when I went out for the interview, I saw teaching German in the middle of these orange groves was going to be a slog, and I just could not see that in the long run actually working out. So for better or worse, I went back on the job market and got the Skidmore job the next year. My committee was delirious. They said, "You're going to love it there." �At that point, I was already a subscriber to Salmagundi. That was all I knew about Skidmore. I was a reader of Salmagundi. I loved it, and I found it very intellectually stimulating. LG: So, did you have an initial interview at MLA [Modern Language Association]or? SG: The initial interview was at MLA. I remember Susan Kress and I'm pretty sure Terry Diggory was there too. Don't remember exactly who else. And then they brought me to campus. And the day after I left the campus interview, it snowed 27 inches. I remember that because I was thinking, "Well, I'm glad I got out of there and, oh wow, what's this going to be like if this turns out?" But the interview went really well on both sides. I loved it here. I could see that this was a place that I would be very fortunate to teach at. LG: And what year was that? SG: That was January of '83. Right. And Ralph Ciancio was chair, and he made the offer. He was, of course, totally charming, as you can imagine. Mimi and he hosted me at their house. It all felt very welcoming. And at the same time, I will not forget my interview conversation with Terry Diggory, who I thought, "Okay, he's got all the brain power I need in a colleague." Just very simpatico, understood exactly what I was trying to do theoretically and went straight to the heart of the meat of what I was working on. Then I also remember Tom Lewis because he was so irreverent. That was good. LG: In what way? You want to talk about that? SG: Well, he just said to me, "Do you like graduate school?" And I said, "You know, Honestly, not really." I might as well be honest. I found it kind of grueling, and I won't bore you with that, but it did not feel like a warm and fuzzy experience at all. It was more sort of like the survival of the fittest, and I was never sure on any given day whether I was considered one of the fittest. And so it was just an intensely uncomfortable situation for all those years. LG: Did it have anything to do with male/female? SG: Oh my God, absolutely. I mean it's telling, for example, that I co-edited a Festschrift for our thesis advisor, Al Cook, who intellectually, a wonderful person, but he just didn't have time for women students. But I was one of his advisees, and he dutifully read my thesis. He wrote about five words on each chapter, sort of encouraging me to go ahead and finish it. I mean, it had virtually no feedback of substance. And yet there I was co-editing the Festschrift for him and with these other two guys who were his visible favorites, but I was so used to that. I mean, that was the way things were at Harvard. You were invisible so much of the time. And by the way, I spent a year in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure des Jeunes Filles. LG: Oh. �SG: Yes. And the jeunes filles were allowed to sit in the back of the room while the normaliens sat in the front with all of the illustrious professors, and they tutored them. I mean, they were on informal terms with those professors. Our housing was on the outskirts of town, [French 00:09:50]. The Rue Dunois, of course, was right in the center near the Sorbonne. I was just used to it. It was such a norm. So when I got to Skidmore, it was an incredible pleasure that right away, there was a Susan Kress in my interview who, she was phenomenal. She was that perfect combination of professional and welcoming and also, just intellectually just so alive. Phyllis was on leave that semester when I first came, but I did get to meet her. And I think that was whenLG: Phyllis Roth? SG: Phyllis Roth, yeah. I think she was pregnant with Ruth and then maybe gave birth then. I'm not sure. It was right around then because I'm pretty sure when I first met her, she was very pregnant. That was kind of inspiring too. I thought, "Okay, may be possible." It was different. I was very different. And the fact of it having been a women's college felt to me like some kind of mark on its character that was entirely positive for me. LG: So, when you first came, what courses were you teaching? SG: Whoa. LG: If you can remember. It's been awhile. SG: Well, actually, I'll mention that during my interview, Ralph Ciancio took me out to dinner, and we were talking about how everybody in the English department teaches English 105, which I guess it was always English 105, Freshman Composition. At some point, I sort of heaved a sigh. I was just trying to relax a little, and he said, "What are you thinking about?" And I said, "I'm thinking I'd really love to have this job." And he said, "But will you really love to teach English composition?" And I said, "Oh, yeah. I can do that." And it was true, I was ready. I had taught it at Brown. I knew what it was. I loved to teach, and I could see this is a place where loving to teach would be viewed favorably and not with some kind of suspicion that you weren't serious enough. And I felt pretty serious as a scholar. I was ambitious. I'd already had some publication. I thought, "I can do this stuff." But I also wanted to teach. So, English 105 every semester, did I get tired of that? Sure, yeah. All those papers all the time, relentless, just that paper grading mill. LG: Did it also give you a chance to interact with the students though? SG: Oh, there's no shortage of interaction with students. I will say one thing. The English majors were not the same as the students from across the college. And 105 was my chance to interact with students from all over the college. There were more men in English 105, for example, than in your typical English classes when I first began. It evolved. �LG: Because it was a required course of everybody at the time. SG: Exactly, exactly. And then also, Skidmore at that time was more tuition driven, and so a lot of the kids came from very privileged backgrounds. And that was truer of English majors, I think, than of the student body as a whole, I would guess. I don't know that there's any data about that. So there was a certain pleasure in having more of a chance to work with kids who were maybe a little scrappier where they're trying to figure out, how can they turn this education into a leg up somehow when they were done. I remember one English major sitting in my office, and he was doing kind of B work. And I knew he was smart. He was a sophomore, and I just said, "John, where you going to go after college?" And he said, "I don't actually need to worry about that." LG: Oh, dear. SG: And I said, "Yes, you do. Of course you do. You need a life." He looked kind of astonished that I wouldn't take that so seriously. LG: So, what courses were you teaching after that? SG: Oh, 105. And I also taught Intro to Poetry, the 200 levels, so I'm going from 100 to 200. Intro to Poetry. I taught Introduction to Women in Literature. I taughtLG: Had that been taught before? SG: Oh, yeah. That had been there, I'm not sure how long, not that long. And by the way, it didn't count towards the major, so that was a change that some of us did bring about. Yes. That's a story, I don't know, should I just tell that right now? LG: Mm-hmm. SG: We had two 200-level courses, Women Characters and Themes, something like Themes. I don't know, it's been awhile. And neither of them counted towards the major. And so the curriculum committee, which consisted mostly of womenLG: The English department curriculum committee? SG: English department curriculum committee brought a proposal to the department to divide them into Introduction to Women in Literature and then an advanced course in, gosh, it wasn't Women Characters, which by that time was theoretically dated. It might've been just more theory, just something more advanced. Sorry, I can't do better than that. And that the advanced course would count towards the major. And at that time, this was in the '80s, feminist theory was really taking off. It was very interesting. There were controversies within it that were toothy, questions of essentialism or sort of pro-women. Well, I won't get into that. �But anyway, I'm going to say this. The men in the department did not want that course to count towards the major, and these were my good friends. And I was just astonished at the resistance that they put up, including going to the... One of them said, "Well, you can't have that course count towards the major because so many of the readings are in translation." And I looked at them and I said, "Well, what about Bob Boyers' Contemporary Novel course where almost everything was read in translation?" It was like that somehow was prestigious but feminist theory in translation was not prestigious. So we kind of beat them down. There obviously were some men who voted with the women or it wouldn't have passed, but there was that very vocal opposition. And maybe some of them in the end just couldn't sustain their opposition. Yeah. LG: Other courses that you taught? SG: Yeah. Well, see, I'm saving the best for last. LG: Okay, good. SG: Because my absolute favorite course that I taught for decades was British Romanticism. I played with that a lot over the years. I did a lot of different things with it, but I did really love just teaching the canon of British poetry. And I don't think that course can be taught that way anymore of British romantic poetry. What I loved about those poets, the late 18th, early 19th century poets, is that I felt that they were of an age that was very similar to my own. I felt as though 1968 was a definitive year for me where my world got turned upside down. And I think something like that happened around 1789 to '91 for these youthful poets. I read them, and I felt as though they gave voice to the same kinds of anxieties and aspirations and rebelliousness and desires that I lived with. It was so much fun to teach them because the students did not come in to this course really expecting to love them as much as they could. And almost always, they left loving those poets. And I threw in Wuthering Heights because that's such a great romantic novel even though it's a generation later, or I threw in Frankenstein. That was another one which is a dream to teach. I loved that course. That was my main 300-level course and the Feminist Theory course, also at the 300 level. I did teach research seminars on the Brontes. The department turned out a little top-heavy with Victorianists, though, so that course sort of slipped away to me, to my regret, because that was a really fun course to teach. LG: Now, at some point you got into administration or to administering at least the engineer department? SG: Yes. LG: Want to talk about that? SG: Yeah. But before I do, can I just add that I also taught in the liberal studies curriculum. �LG: Oh, good. SG: My LS-3 course on memory was also one of my very favorite courses, and I thought that was a brilliant curriculum. What I loved about LS-3 was that it had a theoretical construct going into it, and you had to teach to that construct, which was the relationship, what was it? Remind me. Between the arts and philosophy. That was essentially, that was at the core of LS-3 and how to theorize but also how to express things aesthetically and the tensions between those two modes of discourse. And to have that put there before the students as this is what you have to learn about in this course felt to me like a validation of everything I loved to do but the students sometimes didn't want. They sometimes just wanted to go with the flow and read for the story, that kind of thing. The other... Oh gosh, I just lost it. What was the other LS course? Oh yeah, I taught an LS-2 course. Sorry, what was LS-2? It felt like sociology to me. But I taught a course on romance that was really fun where we read schlock romances but also Pride and Prejudice. And often, the students would come in there, one student said to me once, "I thought I was going to get some tips." But again, it was a joy to teach. Okay, how did I get into administration? Well, it started being chair of the English department, which is a slippery slope. Department had 30-plus FTEs at the time. Just delivering that writing requirement, it was on one department, it was a huge burden. And I kept trying to find ways to get other departments to assume more of that, and some of them took and some of them didn't. Because I thought I'd rather have Leslie Mechem teaching her students in classics to write than somebody I've had to pull in off the street at the last minute because we over-enrolled the class again. And that sounds terrible, but I am not kidding, sometimes I had to hire people who were seriously underqualified to deliver that requirement. Sometimes they turned out to be really good teachers, but you just don't know. And to be doing that in an unplanned way and then sometimes also what we were paying people, trying to get people on a per-course basis so we wouldn't... I mean, it was awful. But I did navigate all that, and I suppose that gave me some administrative skills. And English was a complicated department in many ways, so I got some experience, just all of the hiring, all of the performance reviews, navigating curriculum reform and the challenges of that. I would say the hardest thing was the reappointment and tenure decisions when there was controversy. And hiring was often almost as controversial but not as bitter, typically, sometimes as bitter. So there would be divides within the department, and you tried to reposition those divides so that they didn't split us down the middle. I got a lot of practice with administrative work. Sue Bender was associate dean when I stepped down from department chair. And I don't know, I think maybe a year or two later you were leaving the position, and Chuck Joseph, who was then dean of the faculty, called me and asked me if I would be interested. I had just stopped chairing. I was really not interested, to be honest. But we had our first female president since the beginning of the college. LG: Who was? �SG: Jamienne Studley. And she called me and said, "I'd really like you to do this." I didn't really know her, but I thought, "She must need it for some reason to have a woman in that position. She's losing a woman." And I wasn't sure who else was even under consideration. So I agreed to do it, and I sometimes think how different my time at Skidmore would have been if I had somehow just said no. It was hard. It was very hard, and Sue did warn me. LG: What were your big challenges in that role? SG: What wasn't a challenge? So, let me say from the get-go that I'm not a very organized person, and I'm not good at saying no. I take on too much. And those were not qualities that worked well in that position, so I did have too much on my plate. People were happy to pile that plate full. It was we were a little shorthanded, and then it gradually became clear that I could not, in fact, manage everything. But things that I loved, let me start right there. I loved it that I got to work with the Tang. I justLG: Good. I was going to ask you about that. SG: The Tang for me was that made everything else worth it. It was transformative for me. I don't mind saying that it changed my life. I had to be intellectually honest and find out what about the work with the Tang actually seemed urgent to me. And pretty soon it all seemed really urgent. LG: Can you go into some depth about what it was that you were doing? SG: Okay. So virtually within weeks, a few weeks, the first summer that I started the job, our then director, whose name, I'm sorry... Sue Bender: Charlie Stainback. SG: ... Charlie Stainback, who was marvelous, right? He submitted his resignation. And we were on a president's cabinet, then staff, retreat when that came in. And we're looking around the table. At that point, Charlie had been reporting to me. I'd probably met with him once at that point. And Chuck said, "Well, I guess you'll be leading the search." So, I had to search for a museum director, which was insane. I mean, I had run many searches, but this was something about which I knew nothing. And so I took advice from all sides, and I will say that there were people on the Tang's, oh gosh, what do they call it? Their advisory board, essentially, who were enormously helpful. Adam, ooh, he just resigned. He just retired from directing the Whitney Museum, actually, where he went after doing the Addison Gallery, Andover. Adam Weinberg, he could not have been more generous in his help and his advice and helped me make it. We were on such a shoestring that year. We did it, if you can imagine, without a search firm. LG: What was his connection to Skidmore? �SG: He was on the advisory board. LG: Okay. SG: And I'm not sure, did he have any other connection? Maybe not. It might've been a networking thing for him. Sue Bender: I think Charlie brought him in. SG: Charlie brought him in? Yeah, it was a good advisory board. It was pretty amazing. Between donors and people in that museum world, they brought in fabulous candidates, not all of whom were actually interested. But we had to figure out how to court them somehow. And I remember when it was Ian Berry, who is now the director of the Tang and was then curator and much younger, but he found John Weber, who was at that time director of education for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. And I called John Weber and cold call, and John said, "I've been wondering if you would call." Yes, he'd sort of had his eye, but someone he knew had applied for the position. And he did not want to apply and compete with his friend, which I just thought, "Okay, very much in your favor." And so we sorted that out. He was going to be in New York, I don't know, a week or two later. And I said, "Well, why don't you just make a little day trip up?" We courted each other, let's put it that way. I thought he would be a really good hire. It was not my decision, but he had the right experience. He had the right eye. I mean, Ian Berry's eye is incomparable, honestly, but you have to know. Then people on the advisory board said, "Go for it." And the search committee, of course, was also at that point fully pulled in. So, that was one of my favorite things to do and then just making sure that it happened, just being the person that John would bring ideas to, and you just don't say no. You say, "Let's figure it out." That was so much fun. LG: All right. SG: What else? Something I hated? LG: Why not? SG: Well, one of the other hats that I wore was overseeing assessment at the college. I found a way, again, to believe that it was urgent. I found a way to believe in it. That was the only way I could do something. I couldn't do it if I didn't believe in it, but I certainly didn't believe in much of the culture of assessment nationally. And so I thought what we really needed to do as a college was talk about, in terms that really made sense to us, what do we want our students to be learning and how do we know whether they're learning it? LG: Was this generated by Middle States? SG: Yes. �LG: Okay. SG: By accreditation. Thank you for asking that. The new standards for accreditation that Middle States had passed involved being able to define the goals for our students' learning and measure their success. And the whole idea of measuring learning to me seems to me wrongheaded, but I come out of the romantic anti-empiricist tradition. But I did think we ought to be able to tell some pretty good stories about it and they ought to be evidence based. I mean, I'm fascinated by the status of evidence in every discipline. I always wish that our faculty could have a multidisciplinary discussion of the degree to which evidence is actually valid in our disciplines. But I think a lot of people don't want to have that kind of conversation because it's kind of scary. But okay, don't let me go down that road. I was sometimes asking people to provide evidence that I myself wasn't sure would be valid for much, given the numbers and given the weakness of the statistics and stuff like that. But I also thought, "Regardless of all of that, faculty need to be talking with each other about what they hope their students are learning because we don't know." We know that our best students are doing really well, but what about all the rest of them? We had so much anecdotal evidence of stellar achievement. I mean, not just anecdotal but hard evidence of stellar achievement from 10% of our students. But I thought there were others that were actually, and I saw it in my department, that were slipping through the cracks that were not learning what we thought English majors should be learning. And they were going out in the world representing the English major at Skidmore College, and we didn't have any way of identifying them early and working with them and stuff like that. But faculty were deeply resistant to those conversations. They saw it, as I said once on a panel about assessment at the Modern Language Association Convention, I said, "I felt like a Vichy collaborator." And I said, "I didn't think like one, but I could see people viewing me that way." And it was hard. It just never stopped being hard. The resentment that people had, the ways that they would see me coming and turn around and walk away. It was the hardest thing in my entire Skidmore career. I don't know. But I just have one more thing to say about it. The thing that motivated me the most thinking about it was that I got interested in where learning not to be racist had a home in our curriculum. And I didn't see that it had a home in the curriculum. There were some courses in sociology, but I didn't see that we were asking our students to think about racism as something fundamental in American culture that we needed to be more knowledgeable about collectively, all of us. And the more I read about that, the more I thought, "This is an urgent problem that is not being talked about enough." And I started seeing assessment maybe as a way to leverage that. And in fact, when I ultimately became a campus visitor for some colleges like us for Middle States and for New England, the New England Association, and if I said to the faculty... A lot of places, there was faculty resistance to assessment. And if I said, "Well, do you agree that a liberally educated person should not be a racist, should not harbor racism?" And people would say, "Yes." �And I said, "Well, do you know where that is located in your curriculum? And how is it being taught? Even if it's located in the curriculum, what are they learning, and are they actually learning it?" That was one of the reasons that I got involved in the IGR program at Skidmore, the inter-group dialog, Intergroup Relations. LG: You want to say what the... SG: Yeah, Intergroup Relations is what IGR stands for. That came after my time as dean, so I want to finish the time as dean first. But that was sort of the pathway that most engaged me after my time as dean. Anything else about being a dean? LG: Well, one of the things that I think would be interesting to note is the increasing diversity of both faculty, staff and students during your tenure. SG: Yes. That was definitely something that was talked about regularly in president's staff. It was something that Chuck Joseph and also the other associate dean, John Brueggemann, and I were very interested in. Pat Oles, who was dean of students most of the time we were there, also very interested in. And admissions was quite responsive, so it was really led by admissions. But that was a slow process, but I think the college was transformed maybe over, I'm going to say a 20-year period. I think it was transformative, ultimately. Yeah. LG: Was it driven because of the need to widen the number of students who were coming to Skidmore? SG: No, I think it was driven by a need to keep up with changes that were happening in the academy. I should mention that when I was in the dean's office, I led our re-accreditation effort with the Middle States accreditation, the regional accreditation. That was a major effort. And one of the decisions that we made was to leverage that process to advance changes that we were trying to make. And so we were trying to introduce a new first-year curriculum. We were trying to strengthen the sciences and position ourselves better to qualify for more major grants than we could then qualify for and ultimately, build new science facilities. And we were also trying to strengthen the diversity of the college in every way in every department. So using those topics as part of the accreditation process helped us to advance the conversations because we were asking people to collect the data on these topics and bring those to us. And let's talk about them and what's the story that we have to tell there. I thought that was a very positive way to leverage accreditation to further change, and that was something I was very proud of. It worked. It worked well. I do remember one particular moment where all of the working groups were gathered in a room, and I asked them, I said, "So, what are the connections among these three things, diversity, the first-year experience, and the sciences?" And they looked at me like, "No connections." They were very siloed in their own strategies. And it was pretty thrilling �when Muriel Poston came in as dean of the faculty and just said, "What do you mean there's no connection between diversity and sciences? You need more students in the sciences, right? And you're losing students in the sciences, right?" You know what I mean? It was very, I mean, just such low-hanging fruit to change our ways. LG: So, what are your fondest memories? SG: Of Skidmore? LG: Of your time at Skidmore. SG: This is not a specific one, though actually, I could tell a specific one. But my happiest moments were in that classroom with the door closed when something landed with the students. And there was that slight hush after it landed, and you saw something just happened. It was like something went through the room. I don't know. Of course, I almost said, and often, it was a little transgressive, which is why I can't talk about all of them on a recording. But there would be something fun about it. It would be a way that you could connect with those students. They were young people. They were looking for their own way. Part of me was really interested in just the nostalgia of early 19th century literature, but another part of it was, how are they going to bring the future forward? And I would sometimes teach to that. I will say that I also did love teaching in Intergroup Relations. I don't know if we're almost out of time, but I'd like to take a minute with thatLG: Just go. SG: ... because that was so interesting. Muriel Poston, as dean of the faculty, hired, well, sociology hired Kristie Ford as a brand new PhD. And Muriel said to me, "You keep your eye on her." She came from University of Michigan, where the inter-group dialog program had been begun and developed over 20 years, really. And she wanted to start a program here. It was not a short process. I went out to Michigan, and I went through a training process at the University of Michigan in their program and came back thinking, "That was very powerful. I wonder how that would work here." I wound up teaching with Kristie and getting the program launched. And there were things about it that to me were just quite wonderful, and the main one was the strategies that IGR, Intergroup Relations, programs have for creating a classroom in which very hard conversations can happen and giving those conversations time so that they could develop incrementally. So that you would not, if you're talking about race, which is what it was all about, it was these were race-based dialogs, and the classes were based in dialog. And the students, they were composed of half students of color, half white students. That binary over the course of the semester would get richly textured because everybody would see that just being a white person meant pretty much not very much. Because our �white students, overrepresented in the white students were gay students or LGBTQ, students with invisible disabilities or sometimes visible ones, Jewish students who were very interested in racism in part because of their experiences and familiar experiences of anti-Semitism. And those things would surface, and everything suddenly seemed so much more textured. And those were, again, very powerful moments. And similarly with the students of color, I mean, they came from extremely varied backgrounds with very wideranging differences in how much privilege they had and in their familial expectations and socioeconomics circumstances. So, it would take a semester, and I loved that that would play out. It was sometimes quite imperfect. Some groups were more productive than others in reaching that deeper understanding. LG: Now, these were extracurricular groups? SG: No, no. LG: Or they were part ofSG: They were part of the curriculum. And to Skidmore's credit, we were the first college in the country to offer a minor in IGR. And many other schools are trying to do that now. I think the current one is Amherst College. It's becoming clear that that process of difficult dialog is exactly what we are going to need and also that it's not a one-and-done experience, that it takes time to develop it. For our students in IGR, taking one dialog course is one thing, but taking multiple courses and then serving as a peer facilitator for a dialog course was the moment when really, they would just come to shine. The students who left having done the IGR minor in the years when I was active in the program and stayed in touch with them, well, and also, Kristie's done research on this, it changed them. It changed them permanently, and they use those skills in their work. They talk about that. LG: Sarah, what have you been doing since you retired? And what year did you retire? SG: I retired in 2019. My final year before I retired, I had a sabbatical year because I'd postponed a lot during my time in the dean's office. And I did it on condition that I get a sabbatical year for my final year. And my project for that year was co-curating a show at the Tang Museum, which did turn out to be a pretty much full-time position. LG: Right. SG: We created a marvelous catalog that incidentally won a national award for small museum catalog. It was, I don't know, I want to sayLG: Exhibit was? SG: Oh, sorry. The exhibit was called Like Sugar, and it was a classically interdisciplinary, �transgressive, unexpected, fresh, wild Tang show. And honestly, not because of me. I would've curated a much tamer show, but you don't do that with the Tang. So I just sort of, I buckled up and went along. It was just such an intellectually stimulating experience. LG: And who at the Tang? Excuse me. SG: Who at the Tang? I worked very closely with Rachel Seligman, who was then and is still a curator at the Tang, and then also with a faculty group, Trish Lyell in art, who worked closely with Rachel on selecting the contemporary art that was a major part of the exhibit. Nurcan Helicke, who was Atalan-Helicke, I think she... And she was in environmental studies. But we all crossed over different things, but we were looking in part on the environmental impacts of sugar. And then Monica Raveret Richter from biology. Each of us contributed in different ways. I was very interested in, I'm going to say some of the sociological aspects, so sugar and its impact on race and racism in the United States. I had spent a number of years visiting Baton Rouge every February or every spring and had viewed many of the plantations down there. And had also gone, of all things, to Maui and wound up getting really interested in the sugar plantations there. And started to see that there were some themes here and that sugar was one of those invisible things. I'd always thought of cotton and tobacco as being the great products of enslaved workers in this country's history, but I saw that sugar had also played an enormous role and continues to play an enormous role that just needed somehow to be told. So, I would've had a preachier show probably, but at the same time I think it was perfect in the way it came out because it was unsettling. It was visually very arresting, and it wasn't preachy. It allowed for people to draw some of their own conclusions. And one of the things that was especially moving to me about that show that I didn't anticipate was the number of people who privately admitted to me their own eating disorders that revolved around sugar, and that was quite powerful. I thought, "This is just not something that's talked about that much in public discourse." But sugar is extremely powerful in our culture and is being exported by Americans now all over the world with terrible effects. And I thought that was one of the things that came out in the show as well. On the other hand, another thing that came out was sugar is damn fun. Right? And somehow the idea that those very wildly different emotions and lessons could coexist and be true seemed to me absolutely the best of what Skidmore does. LG: Okay. And since you've retired? SG: Oh, since that. I don't know, I'm really busy, just insanely busy, and so that part hasn't changed. I retired into COVID, and I was not insanely busy during COVID. COVID was this incredible hit pause, nothing happens. I know it sounds crazy, but it was restorative for me. Despite all of the anxieties around the pandemic, I was glad that I wasn't trying to teach during that time. I don't know that I could've done it. I think I was exhausted at that point. �But then I started up two reading groups on race and racism during COVID, one for Skidmore retirees and one for members of my college class. I graduated in the class of 1975 at Harvard, and it turned out there were a lot of people who wanted to do this. I won't describe the history of how that came about. It was completely unexpected to me, but it is still going on. And it is extremely time-consuming, very challenging. It's a mixed race group. We meet once a month, but I got roped into another group that meets another once a month that is slightly broader in topic that's about social justice issues generally. But as it turns out, Harvard is also the nexus right now of a lot of controversy related to race and racism and how colleges and campuses are doing diversity, equity and inclusion. And our group does not all see eye to eye on what's happening on campus at Harvard, and we just... I have to say, I'm using all of my dialog skills to keep that going, and it has been a very powerful experience. I will just add that we've also taken a wide detour since the October 7th Hamas invasion of Israel to incorporate more discussion of anti-Semitism in the group. And that was something I had already experienced in the IGR program at Skidmore on a much smaller scale, so it didn't surprise me. But that hasn't made it any easier to navigate. It's been very complicated and well worth doing. We had a meeting just last night that I thought, "Okay, wow, we got through that one." So that's kept me very busy. I also have four grandchildren, two on the West Coast, two here. I'm going to brag and say my daughter just got tenure at Mount Holyoke this spring and lives close enough that I can go visit but, mostly, not just for the day. So, I do shuttle back and forth a bit to Northampton, and that is a source of incredible delight to me, also a whole new generation to worry about, yay. But otherwise, I want to say something that's very weird and to put this out there is a little hard, but I almost never read poetry. And when I do, I find it hard to do. It's like, it's a part of me that isn't ready to be reawakened. And I read obsessively the news with dread and with horror, and that's not altogether healthy. And I sometimes think, "You know, Sarah, it wouldn't be so bad if you allowed yourself some poetry." LG: Anything else you want to bring up? SG: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I started working out, actually, the year I turned 40. And I don't know why in my academic preparation nobody ever talked about making sure that you think about the body, but it is really true. And in retirement, one of the greatest sources of satisfaction is I can work out in as many ways as I want for as long as I want, and nobody is saying, "Better go grade those papers." LG: Thank you, Sarah. This has been a delight. SG: Thank you. SUE BENDER: Thanks, Sarah. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sarah Goodwin Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 51:28 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit April 11, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sarah Goodwin Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 11, 2024 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Sarah Goodwin joined the Skidmore English faculty in 1983 teaching courses in composition, women’s studies, British romantic poetry, feminist theory and participated in the Liberal Studies program.  Her passion was interdisciplinary thinking and courses focusing on student dialogue and diversity.  Intergroup relations were important components which she brought to her role as teacher, English Department Chair and Associate Dean of the Faculty.  Sarah led Skidmore’s Middle States accreditation assessment and later participated in assessments at other schools.  Since retirement in 2019 Sarah has led two reading groups on Race and Racism, one at Harvard and one with Skidmore faculty and staff. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8a0d4fb74796be3d1a5ea74de2c1911a.jpg 66f37b83fd4137ff2fcfc2b09aa552b6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9b6f641ea4e49dcd21acdc6c651a8d0a.m4a f1aa2901820feba0538ddc9652251f20 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/71f07a70e3377300dcd3bff53350302d.pdf c415db1fcc3f33bc3ed0f9e2fcdf0081 PDF Text Text Interview with Philip A. Glotzbach by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, November 10, 2023. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber interviewing Phil Glotzbach for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It is November 10th, 2023, and we are in Saratoga Springs. Phil, welcome! It’s nice to see you here. PHIL GLOTZBACH: Thank you. LG: Tell us a little bit about where you were born and a little bit about growing up … um, a little bit about your childhood, to start with. PG: Well, I was born in the Mid — I’m a Midwesterner … I grew up pretty much in the Midwest. I was born in Kansas City, Kansas. We lived there for eight years, in a little town just outside of Kansas City, on the Kansas side, called Prairie Village. Which interestingly is the place where Reg Lilly, in Philosophy, also grew up! [chuckles] Although we didn’t know each other. At age eight my family moved to Chicago for a few years. We lived there for three years. And then we moved to Dayton, Ohio, south of Dayton — Kettering, suburb of Dayton, and that’s where I really grew up and spent my youth. Went to Notre Dame, also in the Midwest, as we know, and then to Yale for graduate school — so that was really the first time I’d lived any place other than in the Midwest. LG: That must have been interesting to move to the East coast to live for the first time. PG: It was wonderful. I’ve [laughs] I still think that graduate school was sort of the pinnacle of my life and it’s been downhill ever since. LG: [laughs} PG: Although, … and so many people look back on their graduate school days with horror and say “Oh it was awful!” I just loved every minute of it. But … LG: What was so special about it? PG: Well, I got to do what I wanted to do, which was read Philosophy and study Philosophy and do it all day at Yale University, with, you know, the library and with the people and the professors and fellow graduate students who were very smart, and it was just … it was heaven, absolutely heaven. And I got to teach. My first … LG: As a TA? PG: As a TA, and then my final year there I had my own class, a two-semester Intro to Philosophy class, that I just loved. So it was, I had won something called a Prize Teaching Fellowship, which came from having some success as a TA in classes, and the reward was that I got an office [laughs], which I’d had before, but this was a nice office. 1 �It was in Sterling-Strathcona-Sheffield, Strathcona-Sheffield Hall, and it was on the 12th floor and I got to look out over the entire campus, so that was part of it, it was just wonderful. But the award gave me, extended my fellowship and it gave me this class to teach for my final year, so that was wonderful. LG: And, were the philosophy, um, philosophers that you were teaching mostly Aristotle, Plato, that group, or…? PG: Well, this was an Intro class that, again, it was two semesters so we started with Aristotle, with Plato … Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, but then we went up through, I think we taught John … I haven’t looked at this syllabus for a few years — this was 50 years ago! [laughs] But we taught John Stuart Mill and then, you know, a bunch of other things. I mean it was great, I loved it. It was sort of, it was through the history of Philosophy. But… LG: So, it was the teaching and the atmosphere that led you into Philosophy? PG: Well … I got into Philosophy as an undergraduate, and, … um, I’m never sure if I should tell this story, but at the end of my freshman year I had no clue about what I wanted to do, and I’d thought about English or Sociology, I just didn’t know, and I’d never had a Philosophy class — we’d read some Philosophy in a Political Science class, in a Humanities seminar, and so on, so I’d had some introduction. And so I went into the office of Freshman Studies or the Dean of the Freshman Year or whatever it was called back then, and they had an aptitude and interests test, which they would administer if you wanted them to. And this was like 500 questions, you know … “Would you rather be in the forest or driving a truck,” you know, these kinds of questions. And so I just did it, I mean just for the heck of it. And at the end of it, so they computed this thing and went through it all and they said, “Well, you score highest in interest in Philosophy and Religion.” And I looked at that and thought, “Well, yeah, that seems right! Ok!” [laughs] LG: Did anybody ever say “what are you going to do with that?” PG: No. Well, my parents, but… LG: [laughs] That’s who I had in mind. PG: But…and it wasn’t that I got interested in it because of the test, it was the test triggered something in me that said, “Yeah, I really am interested in this stuff.” And so I, … I mean, we don’t have to go through the curriculum. So that was the first thing, so I started taking more Philosophy classes and decided I was going to be a Philosophy major and all that. And every Philosophy class I took confirmed it. And then in the spring of my sophomore year I had another epiphany, and I still remember this to the … you know, vividly. Vividly. This was 1970, so again it was quite a while ago. I was in the library, on the second floor of the library at Notre Dame, and I ran into a section that had all these things called journals, which I’d never seen before, professional journals. I saw all these Philosophy journals, and I just started randomly pulling some off the shelf just looking to 2 �see what the heck these things were. And, you know, I opened one up and it was a Philosophy essay, and I thought, “My God, people write essays and publish them in these journals and people read them,” and I thought “This is fantastic! I want to do that!” And that’s when I decided, “Ok, I really want to … I want to be a Philosophy major, I knew that, but I want to become a professional Philosopher, I want to go get a PhD.” By that time I knew what a PhD was. I wanted to go to graduate school, and that just confirmed it. So I just fell head over heels in love with the discipline, and that led to graduate school. And at the end of my senior year, when I had applied to grad schools and had been accepted at a couple, including Yale, and I was very happy to go there, I got a letter from the American Philosophical Association — the professional association, right? And the thrust of this letter was basically, and I believe it was like, it was a one-page letter, and it said, “So, you’re going to Philosophy graduate school and you probably think you’re going to go to get a PhD and get a job teaching Philosophy at a college or university. Well forget it…” [laughs] “…because there are no jobs out there, and so you might as well …” you know. And I’m not sure what the purpose of that letter was, sort of to … to say “Well maybe I shouldn’t go to Philosophy graduate school after all.” But I thought, “Well, sure, there are no jobs out there, but I’ll get one.” [laughs] So I just threw it in the wastebasket and went on. And as it turned out, I was lucky to be one of the few who actually did get a job, at Denison. Denison University. It was my first … LG: And what year was that? PG: That was 1977. I graduated from undergraduate school in ’72 and, you know, spent 5 years in graduate school and still hadn’t finished my dissertation, so I was ABD. And they hired me anyway. And I, when I spoke over the years to new faculty members at Skidmore, I always told this story. I said, “Well I was hired …” and especially to the ones who were on temporary contracts or, you know, whatever it would be, um, short-term contracts, non-tenure track contracts, and I said, “So when I was hired in this job my contract said, ‘Tenure possible.’ ” And I would say, “I don’t even think they knew what that meant.” But to me it meant, “Ok, it was possible, so I’ll just go and do a good job and I’ll get tenure.” You know, silly me. But, um … and that was the first time I had really had experience with a liberal arts college. You know, I was at Notre Dame, which is a university, and Yale, which is a university, and larger, and I had a great undergraduate experience at Notre Dame. The Philosophy Department there was first rate and they really cared about their undergraduates. And they cared about their graduates too. And it was a community, and there was a philosophy colloquium every Friday, and everybody went to it. And I went to it and got to hear people, you know, argue about philosophical stuff. I mean again, it was just great. Um, but I’d never been to a liberal arts college, and at Denison I started learning what a liberal arts college was, and what it meant to teach at one. And I thought I was a pretty good teacher already, coming out of graduate school, but I wasn’t. And, you know, I had a lot to learn, and I think you could spend your whole life teaching — you guys know this — you can keep learning forever. But I really did learn how to teach there. 3 �LG: Isn’t that why they say we all became faculty members? PG: Right. To keep learning. LG: Yes! PG: Because it’s fun. It’s the best job you can have. And, and so this is kind of a long-winded way to say, and I spent 15 years at Denison in the Philosophy Department teaching, and loved it, and did some other things there, and … LG: So how did you get into administration? PG: Well, a couple of things happened. Over my time at Denison I became the Department Chair, and I enjoyed doing that. Most people look at that as a prison sentence and I liked it, I thought it was great. You know, you got to help the department. I mean it was really a series of experiences that expanded the scope of what I was thinking about. So, you know, when you are a teacher, you are thinking about your classes and this and that, and as a department chair you have to think about the whole department, like that, so I enjoyed that. And I got involved with some governance committees, connected with curriculum, primarily, and we did a curriculum revision and put in a new first-year curriculum. And I was elected chair of the Faculty Senate and we got that curriculum through, and then the last thing we did, at the end of the year, was to vote ourselves out of existence. Because, you know, I thought, and others thought, it’s silly at a small school to have a Faculty Senate. I mean, you know, have a faculty meeting and be done with it. And I enjoyed all of that, I found it interesting to think, now, then, not just about the department but about the whole college. What’s going on and how can we make things better? And my second … and so I had a series of experiences like that, where I kind of enjoyed it and thought it was good. And all that time I was very much enjoying teaching and doing research and all that other stuff. But I also started a couple of programs there. One was called the Denison Greek Studies Program, that I started with another faculty member, in English, and some other people in Philosophy, a bunch of us, and we would take students to Greece for a six-week seminar in the summer and study ancient philosophy and science and art and history. I mean it was great, it was an interdisciplinary seminar, so I loved that. And the second thing … and that doesn’t exist any more, it persisted a few years after I left and then I think it went away. But the second thing that I started was a PPE program, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, structure… patterned after the one at Oxford. And I’d heard about that program, I thought, “Gee that looks really interesting,” and it was an interdisciplinary program, and I thought that would be something that students at Denison would really take to. And so I worked with it, and I was chair of the Philosophy Department and I got support of our department and I worked with the Government Department and the Economics Department and it took a little while but we put this thing together and got it approved. And that program still exists today. So, I’m actually kind of proud of that. But 4 �anyway, I found those experiences to be interesting and enjoyable and satisfying and all that. And then I spent a period of time in 1987 as a member of the Presidential Search Committee, we were hiring a new president. And we had had a president before then who was there for four years and was not successful. And it was somebody who, someone with a very strong faculty background who came in and I was totally convinced that this person would be a great president, and it turned out he wasn’t. And, you know, I thought, “Well that was kind of interesting, to find that out.” So I found myself on this Presidential Search Committee, and I’d never worked with trustees before, barely sort of knew what they were all about, and there were alumni on this committee, and some other faculty members and staff and so on, and there was about 14,15 people on this committee. And I found that the experience of, first of all, I really enjoyed getting to know the trustees and to see how they related to the college and what they were all about and their commitment to the place, and they were very interesting people on their own, and same for the alumni who were on there. But the whole process of trying to figure out whom we should bring to Denison as a president, the next president, just turned out to be fascinating to me. I was interested in the questions we were asking and the whole process, and seeing … and we had 150 applicants, you know. There was no shortage of people who were applying. And I looked back over the list, once upon a time, and gee, some of those people went on and did other things and I’ve sort of gotten to know them in other contexts, I mean it was pretty interesting. But, so I found the process itself to be fascinating, and I thought, “These are questions I’m interested in,” — that we were asking the candidates. And I also thought, “And you know, they’re not THAT great.” I mean, it’s not like they came from another planet. LG: [laughs] You can do that too! PG: I mean, so I thought, “Yeah, maybe I could do this.” So, that led me to think that, “Yeah, I think I would like to be a president.” Because, again, it’s an expansion of scope. What would it be like to have responsibilities for thinking about an entire institution, and so on. And the pathway to becoming a college president, from where I sat, was to become an academic administrator, a dean. And I, there was no pathway for that at Denison because they had some very good people in administration and they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and, given the ages of our children and all that, it just seemed that, if I was going to do this, we would need to go somewhere else and start. So, that’s kind of a long winded, … I don’t know that anybody’s really going to be interested in this. LG: Well yeah, actually! So how did you find your way to Skidmore? PG: Well, I went, first of all, to the University of Redlands in Southern California, and … LG: As a…? PG: As,… I was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. LG: And that was … 5 �PG: That was in two,… in 1992. 1992. So I’d been at Denison for 15 years, and … I was Dean for, oh, I don’t know, six years or something, and I kind of moved into being what they called the … the Chief Academic Officer, something, then I became officially the Vice President for Academic Affairs. And when I came, there were two divisions, the College of Arts and Sciences and an adult learning program. By the time I left there were three divisions, a School of Business, School of Education and College of Arts and Sciences. And as Chief Academic Officer and Vice President for Academic Affairs I was in charge of all three of those, and so that was interesting. But I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a president. And it was no secret to anybody, and the president there was very generous and … um, worked with me, mentored me, and you know, we thought about being, you know, what does it mean to be a president, and I paid attention to what he was doing. So I really felt like I learned a lot about administration in that job, and I was there for eleven years. And then in 2003 I had applied for some other presidencies and we, Marie and I, had gone on some campus visits and I’d had a number of interviews and nothing had quite clicked, and in the … in the spring of 2003 there were … there were three really interesting jobs that I was involved in. I won’t name the other two schools, but … basically became a finalist at all three, and one of them was Skidmore. And I didn’t know much about Skidmore. I heard …. I knew the name, and, situated on the West Coast I really didn’t know much about the liberal arts colleges on the East Coast, but we, Marie and I, wanted to come back to the East Coast if we could, and I knew by then I wanted to be a president at a liberal arts college. Um, the University of Redlands was actually a bit of a larger school, we thought of it as a liberal arts university, it’s kind of medium-sized., and very interesting, and had a bunch of good stuff going on, and it’s a great school, and the undergraduate school is terrific there. Still is. And it’s gotten better and better, after I left. But, I wanted a liberal arts college. And so, um, we went through a number of interviews with some various schools and that spring of 2003, I was a finalist in three different searches and came in second in one of them and the other two were Skidmore and this other school which was very good and actually ranked higher than Skidmore on US News and all this, and had more resources, but, um, Marie and I thought that Skidmore really would be the place for us, and a lot of things resonated with … with us and with what we’d learned about the college through the interview process and all that, and so we … LG: What struck you, in particular? PG: Well, I mean first of all I loved the, um … I loved the motto, Creative Thought Matters, and what that meant and what that said. And, of course, Marie’s in theater and music, and, you know people think of creativity as the arts, and all this, and we’ve been through this conversation at Skidmore all my time here, but what I took that to mean was that creativity matters everywhere. And that’s what the college was saying. And that motto had just come into existence. LG: Who did that? PG: Well, it was at the, Jamie Studley, right at the end of her time, because this — it was 6 �already there by the time I came. And some people don’t remember that [laughs], and I’ve gotten credit for it, … um, I’ve … SUE BENDER: [laughs] LG: [laughs] We had this discussion, Phil and I. PG: I love taking credit for things I didn’t do, but, um … but it had just come into being, and the process that brought it there, Michael Casey was involved in that, very heavily. And you know, you had an outside consultant who came in and actually talked to people and listened. And mostly those exercises result in failure. A school spends some amount of money, more than people would imagine, creating a new motto, a new phrase or something, and they go with it for four or five years and then they say, “Yeah, this isn’t that great, you know, it’s just not working.” But Creative Thought Matters came out of a process that, right, it fit the college, it really expressed something that was there, and the fact that it has persisted over all this time shows that it was really the right thing. And I thought this was great, because I loved the idea. People weren’t talking much about creativity back then. Today everybody talks about it. It’s a big deal. But back then it was very rare, and … so one of the things that attracted me, and us, to Skidmore, was that this was part of their presentation at the time, the search committees of the college and all this, and we talked about that. Secondly, the strong sense of community that, um, that we felt and people talked about, and when we went on campus we felt that and people cared about the campus and the college and they cared about each other, and … you know, no place is perfect and all that, we know, but … but that was something that was, seemed very distinctive at Skidmore. I mean … LG: Were there any surprises? PG: When we came? LG: Yeah. PG: That’s … people always ask that. Um, I don’t know that there were any particular surprises. Um, again, liberal arts colleges are all kind of alike in a lot of ways, right? They have small classes and faculty members care about students, and, … you know, nice campuses and all this. I mean there’s just a … and a lot of schools, when they’re trying to tell prospective students why they should come, they talk about those things, and I always thought, “Well gee, talk about those things, but why does that send you to Skidmore as opposed to, you know, Denison or any place else?” But I thought Skidmore really had something with Creative Thought Matters. And one of the things that, one of the other things that I always talked about, I always thought was important, and that Skidmore was already talking about, was interdisciplinarity, you know, with the liberal studies curriculum. And, ironically, when I 7 �was cleaning out my office at the University of Redlands I had a box of books underneath it, that had just gotten shoved in there for whatever reason. And I’m going through these books and two of them were the liberal studies curriculum from Skidmore college. Which I’d gotten, you know, at some point in my Dean … Deanship and Vice Presidentship and all of this, and I’d looked at it but I hadn’t really read through it and I thought, “Well this is, you know, kismet here. This is…” [laughs]. LG: That was kind of neat for everybody involved. PG: Yes! LG: Faculty and students. PG: It was a marvelous program! And it was interdisciplinary, and it really brought people together. I mean, you guys know all this, you lived through it. But I’m just saying so that was something that I thought was enormously interesting and important about the College, that they had developed this curriculum, even though it hadn’t completely been finished, right? I mean there were parts of it, so it ended up being this first year curriculum. But I thought that was great. And even though one of the first things that happened when I got there was to basically put that curriculum in mothballs and create First Year Seminars, which I also thought was the right thing to do, and so on … but it retained the commitment to interdisciplinarity with the requirement that every seminar have an interdisciplinary component, not just as an add-on but built in. And the fact that the Skidmore faculty could teach that seminar — you know, sixty sections a year, forty to sixty, I mean it depends on the … it grew over time — was a tribute to faculty who understood the importance of those cross-disciplinary connections. I mean you have to be rooted in your own discipline — you have to have that. If you don’t have that, you have nothing to bring to the table. But to understand that there’s a wider world out there. And, what I came to learn, pretty early on in Skidmore, was that faculty members did not feel a proprietary sense about their students. I had experienced, at other places, faculty members in certain departments that will remain unnamed, who thought they owned their students. And … owned in a sense that if a student wanted to, you know, double major or spend time somewhere else or something they said, “Oh no, you can’t do that. You have to be here.” None of that at Skidmore, that I ever saw. And I thought that was marvelous. And so, you know, was that a surprise? Maybe a small one, but it fed into or grew out of what we’d already seen. So those were things that really attracted us to Skidmore. The sense of interdisciplinarity that people understood. And I’ve always been interdisciplinary, my work cuts across lots of disciplines, that’s what I always did. And that Greek seminar was an example of that. But, and so to find a school that had that in its DNA and that cared about community and cared deeply about students, which again would be true of most liberal arts colleges. And the last thing was that it had enormous potential …enormous potential, because it seemed pretty clear to me that there were things that the school wanted to do and could do that it couldn’t do yet. LG: Like what? 8 �PG: Well, the search, I’ll give you… I’ll answer that in a second, but the, when I was talking with the search committee at the end of the, at the end of the, you know, interview, first interview, and I remember this, they asked me, “Well, ok, so what … what challenges do you see at Skidmore? What are some things? And I said, “Well there are three of them: endowment, endowment and endowment.” [laughs] I mean, the endowment was about $150 million back then and I thought, “my God, I mean, here’s a school that is a strong liberal arts college, and it has all these things going for it and everything, and only a $150 million dollars in the endowment? How can this be?” And, of course, we all know the history of how, how that came to be. Yeah, I mean a lot of things went into that. So that was one of the things that had to happen. Um, you know the potential was — it’s in my inaugural talk, actually, I mean I’ve said, addressed — you know the first thing to figure out is, “Ok, we say Creative Thought Matters. Well, what does that mean?” You know, “What does that mean in classrooms and curriculum, what does that mean for students? How do we live that?” And so that was an interesting challenge. The other challenges had to do with, it was very clear that there were things that needed to be built here, starting with what became Zankel Hall. I mean that was already designed, right? It was already on the books, but … it had already won an award! [laughs] It was one of the best unbuilt buildings in America! You may remember this. LG: [laughs] PG: It won an architectural award for that. Um, you know that building needed to be built. And, as it very quickly turned out, there were other things that were pretty obvious. I mean we needed to get more students back on campus. We needed to get students … there were too many students living out among human beings in Saratoga Springs. You know, college students should not live with human beings, they should be on a campus, right? LG: laughs] PG: And so, we were fortunate enough to be able to build the Northwoods Apartments very quickly, and we borrowed money and it was easy because we were bringing students back, and so that was revenue stream right there and that took care of the cost of … LG: By bringing them back what did you hope to accomplish? PG: Well, the first thing we wanted to accomplish was to get, again just to get them back on campus where they needed to be, instead of … to be less of a commuter campus. Number two, the students who were living off campus were juniors and seniors, right? And so there was this huge unbalance, imbalance, of too many first year and second year students on campus and the, and so the campus was too immature. Number three, when so many students are living off campus, they clear out at night and so there’s a kind of vitality drain, there’s an energy drain that happens, and as soon as we opened those residence 9 �halls the energy level of the campus kicked up. And you didn’t have all these students driving cars back and forth. And the other part was Moore Hall. You know, getting rid of Moore Hall. Which the trustees realized, even … even before I did. LG: The Pink Palace. [laughs] PG: Yes, the Pink Palace, where we live today. We live on the site of Moore Hall in a townhouse there. Um, I mean you know, to have this residence hall, which was good in its own way, aside from the facade, um, for years and years, and students actually liked living there, but it’s two miles away. I mean, so again, so to get those students back on campus, that was huge. To build Zankel Hall, to give music a real home and to make a space where you could bring people together on campus. You know, Zankel Hall is just amazing; we were fortunate to be able to do that. Um, and, you know, just to find ways to give, bring the resources here so that the College could do what it wanted to do. What people wanted to do in the classrooms, what people wanted to do in departments. I mean there were just places where there were needs. It’s the first strategic plan. You know, if you look at the strategic plan from 2005 to 2015 there were four goals in there but the title of the plan was “Engaged Learning.” So how do we strengthen that? What does it mean? And I wrote the preface to that, which I still like. The preface was really about “What is liberal education? What does it mean? What could it mean at Skidmore? And what about our distinctive identity?” So those are all things in the preface of that strategic plan. LG: And what did you mean by “engaged?” PG: Well, having, I mean it’s the difference between active and passive, to start with, you know. I mean, and again this was not some new idea. Um, the revolution in pedagogy that happened in the ’80s and the ’90s, and you guys lived through this, was a discovery of … that there was a difference between students learning and professors talking, right? I mean, people sort of figured out, “wait a minute.” I mean, I, I grew up, and we probably all did, at the time when we thought teaching was performing. And I love to do that, I love to lecture. But the discovery that really if you want to talk about how students learn, you need to do more, and you need to rethink what your classroom looks like and what you’re doing, and all that. I mean, so that was a major, a major revelation, I think, and revolution. Particularly in the ’80s and ’90s. Along with trying to get more diversity in student bodies, and all that, and what it meant to do that. LG: So, would you consider diversity as one of your big challenges? PG: Well, it was, and it was the second goal in the strategic plan, you know, that we need to make Skidmore a more diverse place. The number of, the percentage of students of color was about eleven percent back then, and the number of international students was, you know, point three percent, or something, I mean there just… and so, we, to make Skidmore College for the 21st century, we needed to make it a more diverse place. And the faculty was not any more diverse than the student body. And so, that strategic plan said we have to change that. And, you know, so the first thing we tried to do was to 10 �increase the number of scholarships, you know, to be able to bring students to campus who hadn’t been coming. We needed to expand our outreach in admissions. The very first thing we did was just to expand the HEOP program, because that was a place where there was, you know, sort of a center of diversity on campus. The problem was people thought that every student of color was an Opportunity student, even back then, which wasn’t true. Wasn’t even true back then. So we had to move past that and say, “No, it’s not the case that every student of color is in the Opportunity Program.” But, expanding the Opportunity Program was a way of bringing more students of color, and not just students of color but some, you know, white kids who were from disadvantaged backgrounds and so on. But that was a start. And then we set some very ambitious goals, and worked on domestic diversity first, and then we went for international diversity. And, you know, the result is it’s a completely different student body today. LG: So, you mentioned endowment and diversity. What were some of the other challenges that you … you faced? PG: You know, one interesting challenge, which was not quite on the scale of the others, was governance. I’d thought a lot about governance as a professor and as a dean and vice president and all that, and when I was being interviewed, I met with, I think it was, well it became the Faculty Executive Committee, I forget what it was called back then. LG: CAPTS. PG: CEPP? CAPTS? LG: CAPTS. PG: CAPTS? Well, CAPTS was the promotion and tenure committee. SB: That’s personnel. LG: Well, it had to… SB: Educational Policy. PG: CEPP, CEPP, it was probably CEPP. LG: Ok. PG: But whoever it was, I mean it’s a group of faculty leaders who were involved in governance. And I asked them, how many … LG: See the governance was Committee on Academic Promotions and Tenure. PG: Well, that was … 11 �SB: They both … PG: Now let’s not argue [laughs]. That was the Promotion and Tenure Committee. CAPT. LG: But they, in my mind, focused on … anyway. PG: Anyway, so I met with a bunch of faculty leaders and I said, “Now, how many … how many faculty positions are required in the governance system?” And I knew the answer to that because I’d read the faculty handbook and I’d counted them up. And it was like … twice the size of the faculty or something … whatever it was. I mean it was some factor, and I gave them that number and they were all kind of surprised. I said, “You know, you’ve got so many different committees and so many different people on this, it’s like, it’s taking all this energy. Is all that really necessary?” You know, “Is there a more efficient way to do this?” And so that was a question that I asked, coming in. And that’s something that, that we’ve wrestled with over the years and I think made some progress. And, you know, you never quite solve that battle, but if you look at the difference between what the governance system was in 2003 and what it was in 2020 when I retired … there were some new committees, which were great, um, and some committees that had morphed … LG: Like what? PG: Um, CIGU, the Committee on Intercultural and Global Understanding, which I started as a committee with a different name around the time of that, of that, um, first strategic plan. And it morphed into CIGU and it’s still there and I think it’s been a very important committee; it has given a lot of good advice. Um, the IPPC grew out of the IPC, and there was another committee, there were actually, there was a Budget Committee, right, whatever, Faculty Budget Committee, and then there was a third committee, which was kind of an all College committee, which involved students and so on, and so we were able to get rid of those two committees and to combine them into the IPPC, which … LG: Stands for? PG: Yes, right, the Institutional Policy and Planning Committee. So, it’s a strategic thinking committee that also dealt with policies. And it was a College-wide committee, so it had faculty, students, staff, and … people periodically would ask if that committee was too big, and isn’t it unwieldy, and I said, “No, it wasn’t unwieldy.” I mean, people get in there, we got a lot done. Um, so I think we did manage to reduce, and the Budget Committee, it became the Budget Committee, was something, but separate Budget Committee I thought was unnecessary, and this other committee that was like the College Life Committee or Campus Committee, that … we got rid of that and that became this. So we did some of that, and over the years people have, I think, successfully reduced a few positions here or there. It’s hard to … to get fewer people involved in shared governance because people know it’s important. Anyways, so that was one of the things. That’s kind of a small thing, but my thought was that people are having to spend an awful 12 �lot of time on this, and, you know, you just need to, it’s really important and if you are in it you need to do it well. Not everybody is going to do it well, and you need to make sure you’ve got time for other things. So that was one of the little things we did. And the Alumni, you know, we needed to bring … the Alumni engagement was not where I thought it needed to be. We needed to work on that. Fundraising, we needed to gear up. We needed to increase the annual fund. I mean, you know a lot of stuff revolved around money, um, but that was enormously important. So those were some of the things. LG: Any disappointments over the years? Things that you wanted to happen that didn’t? PG: [laughs] How much time do we have? What time is this? LG: [laughs]. PG: You know actually, the truth is not that many. Um, I wish that I could have — we, it wasn’t ever I, it was always we. I wish we could have raised more money. You know, the endowment now is over half a billion or is around there. The first strategic plan set a goal of … I think it was 300 million. Yeah, we wanted to double the endowment and people thought that was ambitious. Well, we actually hit that pretty quickly. Um, the two capital campaigns were successful, and both of those raised more money than people thought initially they would. Um, the first one was aided by the untimely death of Arthur Zankel, which was a tragedy. Arthur was a wonderful former trustee, and he’d sent two sons to Skidmore. But he named Skidmore, I think, the number one recipient of the residuaries in his will. And we ended up with, 45, 46 million dollars from that bequest, which was transformative in a lot of ways. I mean that gave us the lead gift for the Zankel center. That gave us endowment. That gave us money for scholarships. That created the, um, Arts Management program, um, … and you know, with some endowment from that. And so that was an amazing gift. And it also put Skidmore on the map with some other people who hadn’t perhaps noticed the College as much, but when that kind of a bequest comes through, people pay attention. Um, it started a relationship with Carnegie Hall, because they were the number two recipient of the residuaries, and of course there’s a Zankel Hall there, and Arthur had been very strongly involved, very much involved; the family is still involved with Carnegie Hall. And, um, I got to know, as a result of that, the director of Carnegie Hall. I’m blocking on his name right now, which is a scandal, I shouldn’t … wonderful guy, it’ll hit me in a minute. And he was just starting up the program that became Connect. Connect, right? It had a different name back then. And so one of the things that we talked about early on was having those fellowship students come up to Skidmore and perform, and so that’s where that all came. Who was that? Clive! Um, Gillian? Gillian. Yeah. Clive … his last name begins with a G. Wonderful guy, very smart, very creative. Um, and so that was a relationship that Skidmore was able to forge with this major cultural institution in New York City, which was great. Um, and … so you know, a lot of good things happened as a result of that. LG: One thing you haven’t talked about … 13 �PG: Ahh. LG: Way back, you were a sports coach. PG: [laughs]. LG: Do you want to talk about that? PG: Well, LG: It’s a different part … PG: For one … for one semester. It was the fall of what turned out to be our final year at Denison, and our son was a freshman in high school and was on the football team and, I won’t go through the long saga of how I got this, but I was invited to become a … a volunteer assistant coach on the football team, and I really didn’t, I didn’t know much about coaching, and the real coaches were very generous and taught me a lot of what I needed to learn, and it was a pretty interesting program at a very small school. And so I became the coach for the freshmen and the reserve team. I was a defensive coach, defensive coordinator, and I loved it! It was one of the most fun things. The only reason I could do it is I was on sabbatical from the college in that fall, I mean I was doing other work but I didn’t have to teach, and so I could, I could go to practices and do this. LG: And you could use your philosophical skills? PG: Well, I’m not sure how … LG: In the defense. PG: Only once or twice. But. And I won’t go into details because we are running out of time, but that … LG: Did that … PG: They did give me a little plaque that said Philosopher Coach, or something, which was kind of funny. LG: Did that have any effect on anything that you were, anything having to do with athletics at Skidmore? PG: No, I mean I’d always thought that athletics were a valuable part of the student experience. Both our kids were athletes. Jason went on and played football at Princeton and Elizabeth played water polo at Santa Clara, which is a Division 1 school. She was team captain by the time of her senior year so, you know, I saw first-hand how important sports are. And they were both good students, you know, so. I mean Jason did alright … you know, he became a cardiothoracic surgeon, so. And Elizabeth did alright, too … you know, she’s 14 �involved in the film industry. Um, I thought athletics were important. I mean they’re not the be-all and end-all. And I really liked, one of the things that I very much liked about Division 3 was I thought athletics were in their rightful place. In Division 1 it’s a different story, you know. But Division 3 athletics are a complement to the academic core of the Institution. LG: So, one last thing I want to ask you is, what have you been doing since you retired? PG: [laughs] Um, let me just go back before we get to that, because we, you talked about athletics. I mean, one of the things that I am proud about at Skidmore was the growth of athletics over the years, and you all will recall that my first year, my freshman year as president, I received a recommendation that we needed to get rid of hockey, right? That there were too many programs in the athletic department. We couldn’t support them at the level of funding that we had. LG: You’re talking about field hockey or ice hockey? PG: No, ice hockey. Ice hockey. Men’s hockey. And it was unbalanced and it was unbalanced in terms of Title IX — I mean there’s all these reasons — and the program wasn’t that great at the time, and so on. And so I made the decision to eliminate hockey. Right? Remember this? And that created an uproar, among both the hockey players and their parents, and a lot of students on campus thought this was awful. A lot of women students thought this was awful. Get rid of the hockey players on campus? No thank you. Um, and I understood that. And a lot of male alumni from the ’80s and the ’90s came out of the walls and said, “You can’t do this. This is really important. It’s important to us.” And I said, “Well it’s important to you? Have you ever contributed to the college to support this?” “No, we don’t do that.” “Well,” I was like, “Guess what?” And so we went through a period of negotiations with those guys and the number of parents and everything and it was really, a really interesting process, and after several weeks, months, I guess, probably six weeks of discussions, and Michael Casey was involved with that as well, the Advancement Office was convinced that we had come up with a plan, and with commitments from these alumni, who had not been supportive of the college, to be supportive. And we came up with various things and, that convinced Michael Casey that it was a legitimate plan and we could follow through on this, and that in fact there were numbers here that said “Ok, we could make this happen.” I mean I never wanted to get rid of hockey. What I wanted to do was have a strong athletic department that we could afford. And that, we came up with a plan not just for funding hockey but for doing more with funding of the athletic program as a whole, which was underfunded terribly at the time. Still is, but it was much worse back then. And we created FOSA, Friends of Skidmore Athletics. First time there was ever any serious fundraising around athletics. And we brought hockey back. And that was fine, it was easier to do that than to get rid of it. And, by the way, the hockey team is undefeated this year, as far as I can tell. LG: [laughs] PG: But, you know and we brought Gail Cummings-Danson in as Athletic Director a few years 15 �later, and one of the things that she did — she did two things — she created a lot of things — she’s done very well over her time here. She created the Hall of Fame to honor Skidmore athletes over time, which was a wonderful thing and it’s terrific over there in the Athletic Department. And, uh, they actually made me a member a couple of years ago, which was kind of fun. But she created the Thoroughbred Society, right? An honorary society to honor student athletes who had a GPA of … I forget what the … 3.6? 3.4? It’s pretty high to get in there. And the hockey team actually won the team award a couple of years ago for the mens’ scores, and I think they’ve done that several times in a row, so. You know, to honor our student athletes for their academic achievement is, I think, exactly in keeping with what athletics should do in Division 3 schools. So anyway, I’m very proud of how that worked and it came to be. So you asked me about …? LG: What you’ve been doing since you retired. PG: Oh. LG: So, Phil, why don’t you talk to us about your relationship with students as they came in and then through the years. PG: Yeah. Um, you know I talked before about being a teacher, and I loved being a teacher. I loved seeing what happens to students over the course of a semester and over four years, and that was very much at the heart of my professional identity. And, when I became a Dean and Vice President, [clears throat] excuse me, out at Redlands, I tried to do a little teaching. And I did a few, a few classes, but I always ended up feeling I was cheating them because as an administrator something invariably comes up, right? Something happens that you have to drop everything and deal with, and I always felt like when that happened the students got shortchanged, so after a while I stopped teaching. So, I really, at the University of Redlands, I really didn’t have much contact with students and I, … my main constituency was always the faculty, right? So, I had a lot of contact with faculty members. And when I became the President, one of the things that I looked forward to was to be in an office where, as part of the responsibilities, were to connect with students and to have, you know, to know what was going on in the student body as much as you can, and all that sort of thing. So that was something that I looked forward to. And it was always the case in every Presidency to which I applied or I spoke to the search committee, there were always students in there. I was always interested to hear what the students had to say and what they had to say about the school and all that. So, when we came to Skidmore, I looked for opportunities to talk with students and there were two major ways, I think, that that happened. Maybe, three — here’s two. One was in larger settings: so every year during Accepted Candidates Days I got to give a talk, a sort of welcoming talk and a why you should come to Skidmore talk, as part of that program, and I thought that we did that very well. And one of the things that really helped was when we got Zankel built, and to be able to have Accepted Candidates Day transpire in that space. I mean, my goodness, you know, in this beautiful space — what a great statement about the College. And I loved giving those talks to new students, or prospective students and their families, and they’d been accepted, and … and so I enjoyed that very much. And then when they … when they actually arrived in the fall, in 16 �the opening fall convocation, I also gave a talk. Presidents do this, right? And many Presidents change that talk every year and they talk about, you know, liberal education and a bunch of stuff, and I thought that — the Dean of the Faculty always spoke at that and I always thought, “Well, that’s what that person should do … should talk about liberal education and, you know, those kind of things,” which I love to talk about, but what I thought the students need to hear from me was, “Here’s how not to screw up your college career.” [laughs] You know, “Here’s what you need to do, and by the way, parents, this part is for you too.” And so I talked to students and parents and said, here are, you know, five things, six things, eight things to think about to get started well and to finish well. And so we’ll come back to that later, but I always enjoyed giving that talk because I thought it was important. I thought that they, it’s the one moment when they are actually sort of paying attention and might be able to hear some of this. And if their parents heard it and liked it, that they could reinforce it over the years. And I think they did. And a lot of parents came up to me after those talks and, you know, we’d talk about it and everything, and … I actually met a parent just last spring at a Skidmore event who was a father of a graduating senior. And we’re chatting and he’s a smart guy and we had gotten to know him and his wife a little bit because they were, you know, advancement prospects and they actually made some nice donations to the College and everything, but one of the things he said, just spontaneously, was he said, “I still remember that talk that you gave them freshman year. We talked about that a little bit.” And I thought, “Well that’s music to my ears.” Um, so those were the big things. I always met with students in the governance committees, where, like IPPC, especially, where there was a strong student presence. And I always got to know the student body president, the SGA President, and some of the other class leaders, from time to time, and made a practice, certainly, I’d say over the last ten years when I was there, of taking members of the cabinet and going to the Student Senate at the beginning of the year and meeting with them and talking with them and hearing what’s on their minds, and, you know, talking about what we were trying to do and all that. But working with the students, the SGA President and some of those students, was always fun and interesting, to see who they were over the years. And then at a certain point we created office hours, President’s Office Hours, and I think Mark is still doing that. And you know, students could just drop by and whatever. Um, and so, and you know, you’d meet students informally, you’d run into them in different contexts. And we had student groups over to Scribner House. Something that Marie and I said from the very beginning is that the College President’s house should be the living room of the college, and we really tried to invite people in, you know, for receptions, and that’s partially why we came up with — and it was really Marie’s idea — Skidmore Cares. We wanted to do a holiday reception as a focal point for building, one point of building community. And we always had student performers there, the a cappella groups. And, I don’t know, there were just a lot of opportunities to kind of get to know students over the years, and that was really fun. For a long time, we had our dog, Summit, a chocolate lab, and of course that’s a great ice breaker with students. And I always had this, this image of taking walks on campus with the dog, and frankly I ended up doing that less than I thought I would, but I brought him on campus to, you know, events when it was appropriate, whenever I could, and of course students loved that because they missed their dogs. So, you know, I loved talking with students. But again, I never taught — well that’s not true, Marie and I did teach a seminar once, we co-taught. 17 �You know she was teaching in Theater for pretty much the whole time we were there, and still is teaching in Theater. Um, we taught a first-year seminar together. It was on leadership in liberal education, and what I always say about it is, the first thing is, well the marriage did survive. So that was a good thing. It was touch and go sometimes, but we did. Um, and because of my responsibilities she ended up bearing a little bit more of the burden of some of the advising and so on, but we tried to share that. And we enjoyed it and we got to know those students really well and one another, and so that was great. But that was the only time we did it. I gave a lecture to the, to the liberal studies students my first year, when it was still a program, and then, so that was that. But every year in the fall we invited all the first-year students over to Scribner House for receptions around the honors code. And you know, with their first-year seminar teachers and all that, and that was something that we did, you know, so we did like three or four of those receptions, or three or four days with two receptions per day, you know, to get them all in. And that was an interaction with students that was a lot of fun. So there was a fair amount of interaction with students. LG: Have you been doing anything of interest that we should know about since you retired? PG: Well, funny you should ask. [laughs] So I talked about the … I do have views about retirement, and you guys are in this, and I really think that the people who have trouble are the ones who retire from something and don’t know what they’re going to do. And this is no … this isn’t rocket-science, but I think this actually is important. And I, so I wanted to retire to something. So, I have an office in town, had to have some place to put all my books and everything, which also was part of saving the marriage. If we hadn’t had that, there’s no way we would still be together, but I wanted to write. And I never found the time that I wanted to write, even as a faculty member, because I was always doing all this other stuff and I never published as much as I wanted to. And, certainly as an administrator, you know, I feel like I was writing all the time, but not … And I gave talks and contributed things to various publications but. Anyway, I wanted to write and I had a couple of books in mind. One that I’d been working on for some time about liberal education and democracy, which is still a work in progress, and I’ve co-authored with that Bob Weisbuch, who is a professional friend and was actually on the Board of Trustees for a period of time while I was President. But I also wanted to take that firstyear address to new students and parents and turn it into a book. You know, a little book of guidance for new students and their parents, because I liked it and I thought it was important and I thought it would be pretty easy to do. — Well, it took two years to do that, and, um, it became longer, of course, and it got organized in slightly different ways and so on, and when some earlier versions were read by some of my colleagues in, you know, different places, and they said, “Well you’ve got to put some student stories in there. You can’t, you know, have all this stuff about what they should do.” And they finally convinced me, so now it has student stories, and from a number of Skidmore students, because they’re the ones I knew, with their permission and their assistance, and they reviewed the stories to make sure I was accurate. But then I put in other stories of other people who were more in the public domain, and so it’s now full of lots of stories. And it’s … I found a literary agent and through his good efforts we found a publisher and it’s being published July the 9th, 2024. So, we’re still working on this book, but it’s um, 18 �so that’s been an odyssey. But I feel good about it. I think it’s … and you know there are a lot of books out there that tell students what to do in college. More than one would think. But I don’t … none of them has been written by a college president, as far as I can tell. And none of them has … this book, the title of the book is called Honor Your … it’s Honor Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life. And it really talks about more than just how to deal with your naked roommate or Where to Go Find, you know, which is the title of one of the books that’s out there “How to Do Your Laundry When You’ve Never Done it before.” This kind of thing. There’s a lot of practical down-to-earth stuff in there, but it also talks about why liberal education is still important, and by the way, if you think you can succeed in the 21st century workplace with a narrow college education, you’d better think twice. And, by the way, one of the most important purposes of getting a college education is to prepare yourself to be an informed, responsible citizen, which is a phrase that I loved coming from the Skidmore mission statement. And that is not part of our conversation. It’s becoming more of our conversation today, but it really dropped out of the conversation about college in the ’80s and ’90s, much to our detriment. And so there’s that in there. But then it’s “What about freedom? How do you think about it? What is this new freedom you’re experiencing?” And so there’s some talk about that. And, you know, “How do you make plans for your life and how do you carry them out and how do you take care of yourself because, by the way, you are responsible for yourself, your physical and your psychological well-being.” And so there’s a lot about that stuff. And then, um, take good risks. That’s one of the chapters. Earn a victory for humanity, which is something I talked about in those talks. And begin now. Your college career starts when you set foot on campus. LG: Are there any other things that we should, that you want to talk about? That you want to tell us? That we haven’t talked about? PG: Well, let me just say that there are two chapters for parents at the end of the book. So, anyway, that’s my little shilling for the book. Um, so I’m kind of excited about this book and I’m hopeful that it will receive a good reception. Um, anything else? Um …I mean, obviously I’ve sort of talked nonstop here, there’s a lot more of the memory dump that I could give you. You know, one of the things that I think is part of this project, and that you’ve asked people, and that people always ask, you know, “What are you proud of?” And we’ve talked about a lot of those things, and I am proud of what we were able to build. Presidents love to build things because, you know if you put in a new curriculum it will last for a while and then it goes away. That first-year curriculum that I was part of creating at Denison went away, you know, some time ago. It lasted longer than most, but now it’s gone and so there’s no trace of that. But if you build a building, it’s going to be around for a while. So I am, actually … and I do think that spaces, and I said this at the end of the little evening they put together a couple weeks ago about the Glotzbach era, that space, you know, we are physical beings and the spaces we inhabit are important. And Josephine Chase said that in her charge to the architects for the new … new campus, right? And I mean spaces are important in how you construct them. Winston Churchill said we build our buildings and then they build us. And he was dead right on that. And so I was very proud of the work that we did over the years with Zankel, the North Woods residence halls, the Sussman Village residence halls, the redo of the dining facility to 19 �make it not just a feeding station, but a place where community could actually happen. And it’s still, I think, one of the highlights of the campus tour. We redid Saisselin. And then of course CIS. I mean there were other things but CIS … . And the, and the athletic facilities. And I'm glad to see that the College is going forward with the tennis and the wellness thing, and that’s all very good, but CIS was really the biggest need for the college. Part of Skidmore’s reputation, a major part of it, was always that Skidmore was an art school. First of all, it was a women’s school, right? And people were still saying that, right, when I was there. I’m saying, “No, it’s co-ed, and it’s been co-ed since the ’70s, thank you very much.” And “Oh, Skidmore, it’s that art school.” Well, we have great programs in the arts, performing arts, visual arts, very strong. I think the visual arts department … you know, I'd put that up against any visual arts department for any liberal arts college in the country. And, you know, same for music, by the way, I would say that. Theater was always very strong, and so on. Dance, I mean, the dance department is routinely listed as one of the top ten in the country. I mean, this is just amazing, right? That's all there. But of course, there’s so much more to the college. It’s much, much more than just the arts. Great strength in the arts, but strength in all this. And what about our business program? You know, most liberal arts colleges don't have that. And I think our business program is strong and interesting. But science has always been, and you guys know this, has been really important at Skidmore, going back to the nursing program, which is a very science heavy program, which is why it ultimately failed in the end and had to be gotten rid of. LG: Some of that had to do with money, and being down in New York City. PG: Yeah, I mean, that was part of it. But I think that the major reason that it went out of existence is that it was such a science intensive program that a lot of the students who were attracted to that shifted over and went to medical school. I mean, medical schools opened up to women, and, you know, and it's hard to remember that. LG: I remember that. I was here then. PG: Right. Yeah. Now, if you say that to, to nursing school graduates, they get pretty upset because of, “we didn't want to be doctors, we wanted to be nurses.” And that's true. Fair enough. But I think the times changed. And so anyway. But, but Skidmore had always had strong sciences in the, the natural sciences and you know, and then sociology, anthropology, psychology were strong, and physics and chemistry and I mean, the, the physical sciences and the life sciences, biology were strong, but they, they did not have the facilities that reflected the quality of what was going on in there, you know, health and human physiology today. Also, a department I’d stack up with anyone in the country at a small school. I mean it's just amazing. And so, as you guys know, Dana Science was really pretty cool for the ’90s, but it had aged out, and I believe there were some parts to that that were never completed. I think that was part of it. And so it really became clear that we needed to do a major science facility. And when we started talking about it with the faculty, and really the design of this thing came out of the faculty, which is a marvelous process. You know, the idea quickly came about to bring all the sciences together. The physical and biological sciences — put them all in one place so there could 20 �be interactions and synergies and the cross-disciplinary stuff that was, again, so important, that we talked about before. So that was, you know, became a major, major project, as we all know. And I do believe there were times when I was the only person on the planet who actually thought we could do it, because it was a very expensive project, as we all know. And it went through a lot of stages. And Scott McGraw talked about that a little bit at the event the other night, so I won't go through all that now. But, the fact, and when we started fundraising for that, Marie and I would go out and we’d talk to alumni and they’d say, “What do you … what is science? That wasn't really part of my experience when I was at Skidmore. I don't get this. Why are you building?” So we had to talk to a lot of people about how science is integral to liberal education, which was something that I’d always argued and I’ve, you know, gave talks about that when I was a, a Dean and a Vice President at Redlands. And, you know, even going back to Denison days. I mean my interdisciplinary work was generally with psychology and philosophy, biology and so on and so on. And I always thought philosophy was science, you know, that science was always integral to liberal education. And so that was something that, that absolutely had to happen for Skidmore, really to realize its full potential and to make a statement to the world about the strength of the science programs at Skidmore that really are, really quite amazing in all kinds of ways. And so that was a really important goal. If you want to talk about things that I'm proud of and successes, the fact that we got that done, before I left. I mean, funded. It’s not, still not quite finished yet, although I met with Dan Rodecker, I saw Dan Rodecker today at the veterans’ event on campus, and he said that they’re projecting that the renovations in new and old Dana will be finished in June. Which means people can really move back into there, because there was, you know, there were people … you always want to under-promise and overdeliver. So you think, well, you know, maybe that might go into the fall and so on. But he thinks it’s going to be finished in June. So that means that everybody who's going into that complex will be able to be there for the start of the academic year in 2024. And I just think that’s amazing. And we’ll dedicate that complex in the fall of 2024, and that’s going to be a great celebration. So that’s something I’m proud of. LG: Good! PG: I mean, a lot of people did it, and the faculty were amazing. And I'll just tell one other story because it deserves to be in the record. When we identified the architects to build this building, and there were, you know, people who’ve built science buildings all over the place, and colleges and universities, and that's one of the reasons we picked them, we figured they could do it. We said, now you're going to be working with faculty in 11 different departments. 10, 11, whatever it was at the time. And they've been working on planning this thing, and they're going to work with you to, to come up with the design. And they said, “Whoa, we're not sure we can do this. We've never worked with that many people and departments. Are you sure this can happen?” And we said, “Yeah, it'll happen.” And about, I don't know, 5 or 6 months into the process, they were saying, “We've never seen collaboration like this.” And I thought, that's a tribute to the Skidmore science faculty, you know, the people who really … and the way people leaned into the design of that building. One of the things that I said at a very early meeting … and actually I think Karen Kellogg repeated this the other night, is that this building also 21 �needs to ooze creativity out of every pore. This building has to somehow instigate the idea that creative thought matters. And I said, I don't know what that means, but that’s you guys. You need to figure that out. It needs to be a building that fosters creativity. And interdisciplinarity. And I think they came up with one that did that. So that’s something that I think has helped propel Skidmore into, you know, the 21st century. To have that, to have that structure and to be able to bring the sciences together, I think there’s going to be an explosion of creativity that, you know, we’ve not seen before … because of all the synergy that that’s going to create. And you know, that's a really good and exciting thing, and it's already changed the student body because the number of science majors has gone up from, what, 25 to 35%, something like that. It really makes it a more attractive place for everybody because everybody has to do science. It's a place where students gather. They're already in there a lot. It's a place that attracts students like a magnet, whether they're science students or not. So I think that was the last piece, from my watch. LG: Thank you. This has been really very, very instructive and fun. PG: Well, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the fact that I was able to get these things on the record, and I hope that I was accurate, [laughs] or pretty accurate anyway, in remembering things that happened. But, thank you for doing this project. And I do think it's exciting to have these … LG: It’s been fun! PG: … reminiscences on the record. 22 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Philip Glotzbach Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:09:14 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit July 31, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Philip Glotzbach Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 10, 2023 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Phil Glotzbach, Skidmore president from 2003-2020, grew up in the mid-west, received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Notre Dame and his Ph.D from Yale in 1972. After years as a professor in the philosophy department at Denison, he became department chair, then Vice President for Academic Affairs. At the University of Redlands in Southern California, he was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In all these institutions, his interest was in interdisciplinarity and student/faculty/administration interaction which attracted him to Skidmore. He was instrumental in growing the endowment which allowed for funding and building Zankel Hall, the Center for Integrated Sciences and the Northwoods Apartments. Since retirement, Phil has been actively working on a book titled, “Honor Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life”. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Active Learning Arthur Zankel CIGU College Governance Creative Thought Matters Diversity Encore Connect IPPC NCAA Scribner House Receptions Strategic Plan 2005-2015 Thoroughbred Society https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8724cd574684f9897a57937a4ce1fd6f.jpg 455a23c6d896e5e1eb8cd80ae8836ddc https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/93c0faca31c1bcca74e517a6d5d5a9d7.m4a 4828b0a55761bfed4fdc7a1289edb1bf https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/50bdf698470b4afca8d04ac601fd6dd4.pdf 547a52b2d9690049f1c47eac4c46db34 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Ruth Copans Years at Skidmore: 24 (1991-2015) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Denver, CO Date of Interview: February 22, 2023 00:00:00 Header 00:00:48 Grew up in Newburgh, NY. Learned bookbinding and book preservation in Paris; realized would eventually need a library degree. 00:01:23 Interest in book preservation arose from fixing husband John’s used books. 00:01:48 Lived with family in Paris and studied in bookbinding studio. 00:02:15 Moved to Saratoga Springs when John was hired at Skidmore; eventually negotiated an exchange of book preservation skills for studio space in Scribner Library. 00:03:00 First worked in Skidmore Administration, then other campus roles, then sought space. 00:03:35 Space was on fourth floor; worked on Special Collections, Victorian book collection. 00:04:02 Concurrently, earned library degree from SUNY Albany and worked in several libraries, then hired as Skidmore’s librarian for Humanities and Special Collections. 00:05:14 Two major library renovations; first, a complete gutting and renovation. 00:05:50 When Peggy left, Copans became Interim Director for one year. 00:06:20 Newly hired director Barbara Doyle Welch stayed only eight months; Copans didn’t want interim role again, so sought and was hired as permanent director. 00:07:27 Challenging time for academic libraries; tension between print versus electronic material, in terms of budget allocations, ownership versus rental, etc. 00:07:48 Public libraries missions also evolving, but different missions than academic. 00:08:55 Academic: tension a reflection of the Internet in general — access to greater amounts of material, but then became more important to teach how to distinguish quality of materials. 00:10:00 Did so by creating series of classes, partnering with faculty, staffing reference desk. 00:10:55 Goals: to keep students working in library, and for faculty to engage in that space too. The new study rooms were important, especially as faculty were assigning more group projects. 00:11:40 Challenge: to keep up with technological changes. 00:12:00 Second renovation’s purpose was primarily to move IT Department into library. 00:12:49 Also provided faculty gathering space; “the more activities… in the library, the better.” 00:13:26 Copans wanted people thinking of the library as a place of help. 00:14:35 Primary challenge: money! Another: making library space both respectful and lively. 00:15:40 Money challenge because departments wanted library to subscribe to many resources. 00:16:30 Negotiated money with Vice Presidents of Academic Affairs and of Financial Affairs. 00:18:10 Other Skidmore administrators Copans worked with during her tenure. 00:20:33 Fondest memory: getting the Carnegie Weill chamber musicians to perform in library. �00:21:29 When Copans was Interim Director, she dreamed of having tea and music weekly. 00:21:59 Did host some faculty talks at noon. Eg. Mehmet Odekon discussed marble collection. 00:23:00 Embracing technology was perhaps biggest element of tenure as Director. Not just IT department, but altogether. Eg. putting music CDs in more public, accessible space. Shifting from idea of library possessing objects to borrowing/subscriptions. 00:24:48 Also important: understanding that the library had many functions, not just one. 00:25:15 A change: hired a head librarian (Marta Brunner) who didn’t have a library degree. 00:26:10 Dramatic change in the nature of libraries. Eg. used to have typewriter rooms. 00:27:00 Even once students all owned computers, many still preferred to work in library: quieter, and also a less isolated environment. 00:27:48 Also had movies; VHS, DVDs for students to take out, plus some streaming services. 00:28:26 Money limited amount of material available, though library renovation added group viewing rooms, which enabled more access to films. 00:29:10 Retired 2015. Great community of people, beautiful campus, great time for libraries. 00:30:25 Hard things happening in US at that time, but still really good years. 00:30:48 Since retiring, moved to be with children. In CA, volunteered with World Reader. 00:32:05 In CO, several volunteer projects with Denver Public Library Special Collections. 00:34:45 There was no Special Collections librarian when Copans started at Skidmore. Copans got an endowment that covered part of salary and enabled purchase of materials; one area of focus was collecting artists’ books; a particular help for art classes. 00:36:45 Other Special Collections materials included David Porter’s collection of classic texts, Phyllis Roth’s vampire collection, a valuable Native American Indian book collection, etc. 00:37:30 Copans brought people in to Special Collections with presentations during Skidmore Celebration Weekend, as well as worked with various classes to teach history of information. 00:38:18 Work with Special Collections was great counterbalance to work with technology. 00:39:10 Increasing need to help students distinguish important resources from among the vast availability of materials. 00:40:00 Used to be library orientation classes for first year students, but not in many years. 00:40:50 Now rely more on faculty bringing classes; sometimes peer mentors bring groups in. 00:41:52 In first/big renovation, had some input into the Special Collections area. 00:43:04 In second, worked really closely with architects. That renovation included digging space for IT and redoing first floor to make space for Help Desk and other IT offices, to keep them integrated/accessible, not stuck “in the middle of nowhere.” 00:45:37 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/127b7cc3d9de75e88f00fca68a67dfb9.pdf caf4a77337e8d85c4d80522bdc87234b PDF Text Text Interview with Ruth Copans by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Denver, CO, February 22, 2023. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber on Wednesday, February 22nd, for the Skidmore Oral History program of retirees. We are in Denver, Colorado, and I am interviewing Ruth Copans, and … with the nice help of Susan Doherty. We are in Denver, Colorado, where Ruth has … where Ruth is currently living. So, Ruth, tell us where you grew up and a little bit about your background. RUTH COPANS: Ok, well I grew up in a small town in New York, on the Hudson Valley, called Newburgh. My background in terms of librarianship, umm … I started out as a fine bookbinder; I trained in Paris to become a bookbinder. Then I went into book preservation work, mostly realizing that I would need to work in libraries, and eventually realized that if I was going to work in a library and wanted to make a living, I needed to get a library degree and be a professional, which is what I did. LG: How did you get interested in book preservation and such? RC: Well I was married to a French professor who collected books, and we never had a lot of money so he was always collecting falling-apart books [laughs], which needed a lot of repair. So, um, and of course French books were often published in paperback, so the issue became also learning how to bind paperback books. But then I was lucky enough to go to Paris because we had family in Paris, so we could live with my uncle, who was my father’s brother, and his Parisian wife in their apartment and I could study in a bookbinding studio, and so I studied fine leather binding and did that for a while. Umm, and that of course brought me back into library work, into preservation work, and once we moved to Saratoga Springs, where John was teaching at Skidmore, thanks to you [laughs], I exchanged my skills for studio space in the … what was the Scribner, the old Scribner Library … um, which was … LG: Now did you get a degree in librarianship? RC: I did. I was working on it … LG: From? RC: From University of Albany. Yeah. LG: And when was that? RC: Ohh… I don’t know. LG: Ok, sorry [laughs]. RC: Sometime, sometime in the ‘80s [laughs]. Sorry about my poor memory. �LG: Ok, and do you remember when you came to Skidmore? RC: Well John moved, we moved to Saratoga Springs in 1985. I was pregnant for our second daughter then, so it took me a while to, um … I had a lot of bookbinding equipment which I’d shipped back from France sitting in the garage, et cetera, so … obviously it took me a couple of years. I worked first in the Admissions office, interviewing. I did a bunch of stuff around campus. Um, … so eventually I, you know I had the hutzpah, I guess, to go ask David Eyman if there was any space in the library. LG: And David Eyman was, at the time? RC: The director of the library, right. And there was, on the fourth floor where the Special Collections were housed there was a small, empty, windowless room — actually the whole floor — I used to call it my penthouse. And so he gave me that space and then I had access to the Special Collections and I could pick and, you know, choose. I wasn’t working on leather bindings but there were a lot of Victorian cloth bindings that needed repair, so I worked on that collection. LG: And for how long did you do that? RC: Well, I did it for two or three years. Yeah, I got my library degree during that time, I worked at SUNY Albany as a Preservation Assistant, I got a grant to spend three months at Cornell working in preservation. Then I came back, worked part time in reference at the public library, did a one-year replacement librarian position at Skidmore, and then, when the Humanities Librarian was denied tenure, the Humanities position became available. And because I had a Master’s degree in English Literature, plus my Library … it was still a Library degree in those days, I applied and was a successful candidate to do special, um … Humanities Librarian and the Special Collections. So I continued my preservation work —- worked on the Special Collection. One of the candidates took a look at the job description and said, “that’s three jobs!” But I was undaunted, of course, because I wanted the job, because John was there, we lived close by, so, um … and I loved the place! I loved Skidmore and I loved the library, so .. yeah. LG: Good! Um, there were a lot of changes during your time. RC: Oh, boy, yeah! I mean, we went through two major renovations! The first one Peggy Seiden was the library …, David sort of oversaw, David Eyman oversaw the construction and the renovation. LG: Of the new building? RC: Of the … the original. I mean, we’re still in the building which was the first one on the campus, the new campus, to be built. So it was renovated once when we all moved down to the gym. We moved the whole collection down to the gym. It was gutted and redone. And that was under Peggy. Then Peggy left. �LG: She went to Swarthmore. RC: She did, she went to Swarthmore, where she still is, I think. Um, I … oh! [laughs]. A neighbor of Bryn Mawr, where someone else graduated, which has the most amazing collection of incunabula of, I think, any college in the country. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Um, so when Peggy left I was an interim director for a year. We hired a replacement for Peggy who left eight months later, and then … LG: Who was that? RC: Ah, Barbara Doyle Welch. Yeah, well she was sort of fleeting … And then, um, the then Dean asked me to be a … LG: And the Dean was? RC: At that point … a psychology professor, what was his name? He was also short lived. You know who I mean, though, right? He and his wife both came. LG: Okay. RC: … I’ll remember but I don’t. LG: Alright. RC: But in any case I said, “I’m not coming back as interim. I can’t get anything done, I’m treading water. Look at my resume compared to all the resumes we looked at. Either hire me back as a permanent director, or, you know, find somebody else.” So they gave me the job. Which was, you know, like good news-bad news, because it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing but the … LG: And when you got the job, were you still in your temporary quarters or had you …? RC: No, we moved back into the library before Peggy left. She was there for all the celebrations and she, you know, she stayed for a while. Yeah, so that was, you know, a challenging time already. I mean the building was in good shape. We weren’t questioning that. We had a good teaching room, we had a lot of good spaces, umm … but, you know, it was the … it’s been a dynamic time in libraries for a very long time now, and certainly, especially, academic libraries. You know, public libraries have a different mission, although their mission has certainly been evolving. When I look at the Denver Public Library, where I volunteer now, umm, I see that every day. It’s a, you know, a haven for homeless, among other things. Yeah, they have social, right inside the door they have social services available, and bathrooms, and public computers … but anyway, that’s not academic libraries, that’s public libraries. Our tension became one, of course, of analog versus digital, print material versus electronic material. You know, when I came the print budget was much more significant than the electronic budget. By the time I left it was �completely the opposite. And so that was a really … um, stressful change. It was like moving from ownership to rental, because we weren’t owning things, necessarily, anymore. And we were paying on a continuous basis for access to material, on one hand. On the other hand we were giving access to our students to a wealth of material that they never, in a million years, could have had access to otherwise. RC: Um, so it feels a lot like it’s a reflection of the Internet in general. I mean, we all have such amazing access; um, on the other hand, too much is not necessarily good either. But one of the things that was very clear is, our students’ attention spans seem to be decreasing. So, you know, they were hungry for short material. No one wanted to sit there and read a 600 page book, necessarily, but access to scholarly material became really important. Especially because their instinct was always to just go to Google, do a search, stick on the first page, take the first couple of articles they could find, no matter what the quality was. So a lot of the challenge was saying, “We have fantastic material that’s available. Let us help you actually find this material.” LG: And how did you do that? RE: We did that by, you know, creating a whole series of bibliographic instruction classes. We tried very hard to partner with faculty to get them to bring their classes in so we could teach them how to do research, and if they had a topic that they were working in, that made it all the easier. And of course we did it also by staffing the Reference Desk — being available to students, especially in the evening. LG: I was just going to say, “Student time.” RE: Yeah, exactly. Evenings. I mean, we did weekends but obviously we stopped doing Saturday afternoons because that was not a time when students were necessarily looking for help, but we did Sunday afternoons and evenings. Really. I assume they are still doing them. Yeah. LG: Um, what kind of goals, then, did you have once you moved into this new building and, um, RC: Yeah. I mean, it’s … so for me, what I understood was that we needed to keep students coming to the library to do their work, and we needed faculty to also engage with that space, and we had created, in that first renovation there were a lot of study rooms, which were very important for students because faculty were moving towards group projects, especially in some of the heavily populated majors like Business, so there were a lot of spaces which had wonderful facilities available to students to use. Um, the challenge was to keep up on the electronics because that changes so much and because the students were always five steps ahead of us in terms of understanding what they wanted and how to use it, and because often their presentations use technology. So at that point in time the IT department was a separate entity in a separate building. So over time my big challenge became renovating the building once again to incorporate the IT department into the library. �LG: And do you have any idea when that happened? RC: Well, if I retired in 85, it was done in 83. I’ve got the wrong dates here. 2000 … I retired in 2015. I was on sabbatical in 2013, and the project was done, so it must have been between 2011-2012, that that was done. And that was huge but it felt very important, and at the same time, what had been our staff room I gave to the faculty for the, a little faculty study area. I can’t even remember what it’s called … the Weller Room, in the library, for gatherings of faculty, because I felt like we needed faculty — we had moved the teaching faculty, the art historians who had been in the building, out of the building, and taken that space over as part of the IT department as well, so the fact that it was organic at that point felt very, very important. And the more activities that were going on in the library, the better off I felt we were in the long run. LG: Um, did you institute the Help Desk for technology? RC: No, that was the IT Department. It had been, in the early days it had been in a different building. LG: Right. RC: But having that … having it in such a prominent place in the middle of the campus is what became important to me. LG: So that was their undertaking? RC: It was my undertaking with the architect and the head of IT, who was Justin Sipher at the time. Justin and I met with the architect about the renovation and I wanted the Help Desk there, because again, I wanted people coming into my building. I wanted them thinking about it as a place of help. It’s kind of the joy of being a librarian. I didn’t have to grade students, I just needed to be there for them, and that’s what the Help Desk felt like. Not just students but faculty as well. Which is why we had some, you know, study carrels for faculty as well. LG: So if you had to make a list of what the challenges were? RC: Oh money!! [laughs] LG: Ok. RC: Student behavior. You know, trying to keep a space that felt respectful. Um, you know, students have a tendency, especially, you know — you don’t like your roommate so where are you going to go? Well, a great place to hang out is the library. But, no, we … people were sometimes dealing drugs. There was a Facebook page in those days: “I definitely have had sex in the library.” It, you know, I wanted it to be a scholarly environment if I could. But I also wanted it to have a certain liveliness. I mean, I took all of the “Do Not” signs down. When they first renovated it you couldn’t eat, you weren’t �supposed to talk on your cell phone, blah blah blah. People were sort of struggling with all those issues and I was like, you know, the first time we tell a student they can’t do something, they’re going to say, “Somebody yelled at me and I’ll never walk back in the library.” So part, you know … that was one challenge. RC: The money challenge, of course, was … every department, every academic department, wanted us to subscribe to electronic resources and we couldn’t afford all of them. The cost of those, of journals, in the sciences, was escalating to an incredible degree. But as collaborative research became more and more important for many of the science faculty, many of the faculty in general but certainly the science faculty, as we were trying to build the STEM areas on the campus, again the pressure over money and how to allocate the funds that we had was a really tough one because we were constantly making choices. LG: Um, whom did you do battle with over this money? RC: Well, I mean my first line of defense, obviously, was the person I reported to, and that was whoever was the VPAA, because that was my reporting line. For a while I reported to Sarah Goodwin, who was the Associate Dean, which was really kind of lovely in its own way. But really my report was to the VPAA. So part of it was that, part of it was Mike West. I mean, Mike West and I worked — who was the Vice President for Financial Affairs — umm, we worked very, very closely together, and he held the purse strings. So when I wanted to completely re-carpet the library in 2011, he was the person I had to go and plead with. You know, he was the one who oversaw the renovation plans, et cetera. And it was a little whimsical, as some things at Skidmore were. I mean you never knew. You know there was … I also was collecting for the Special Collections and there was a very expensive book I wanted, and the old person in Finance, Mike Hall, you know, was a really good friend and colleague and one day he said,“What was it you wanted to buy?” And I said it was this illustrated Barry Moser Bible for a thousand dollars, and he said, “Do it.” You know, so you never knew, honestly. But what I knew was important was to have a congenial relationship with people in the administration. LG: And, um, who was the President, who in the administration, aside from Mike Hall and company, did you have a lot of dealings with? RC: Well, Beau, Susan Kress, … LG: Beau? RC: Beau … umm, ahh, [laughs] I was going to say Bridges and that’s the wrong name! LG: [laughs] RC: [laughs] If only! Oh … what is his name? Oh boy. This is what happens when it’s the retiree interviews. LG: Yeah. �RC: Umm, Susan Kress, … I mean I started out under Phyllis. LG: Phyllis Roth? RC: Phyllis Roth. LG: Who was then? RC: Um, VPAA, right? Or … or Dean of the Faculty? LG: She was a Dean of the Faculty and then briefly, wasn’t she the, a President? RC: She was. So there was also … Chuck Joseph, right? LG: Yeah. RC: Umm. Beau Breslin. [laughs]. Um, so you know, those were my immediate report … I had a very good relationship with both David Porter, obviously, whose a book lover, so David and I had many a long conversation, and Helen worked in the archives … LG: Helen? RC: Helen Porter, David’s wife. We actually gave her a study carrell, finally, because she was up there so much, and was working on a project for the archives. Um, Phil Glotzbach and I got along incredibly well — he was very, very supportive of the library. He was a real library booster. I mean all of, these are, these were scholarly Presidents, in a lot of ways. I missed out on Palamountain. I didn’t work under Palamountain. So, um … I mean people love the library, and I think the fact that I was willing to embrace the IT Department meant a great deal. I wasn’t, like, being standoffish. I really could look at the future and say “this is of critical importance.” You know some colleges have just shut their libraries and they just don’t care about the … the print material. And it’s expensive to maintain, it’s expensive to staff, and in some places, especially where technology is the primary focus, it’s like, “we’re just doing online material.” They, you know, have Help Desks, per se, but they’re not maintaining collections. LG: So what was your fondest memory? RC: Ok my fondest memory was, I negotiated to get the chamber players to perform in the library, the Carnegie … um, what was the … Weill? Carnegie Weill, that’s what it used to be called. I don’t know what it is anymore. And so … LG: I think it might be Ensemble Connect, now. RC: Could be. �LG: In its current iteration. RC: Yeah. I loved it, when we first … LG: These were the students who would come for a residency, right? RC: Exactly, yeah. They would come for a performance, most of them had graduated, they all had graduated from conservatories, and they were working, many of them, within the public school system in New York, and they did amazing performances together. And as a sort of preview to their major concert on campus, they would come to the library and perform. When we first moved into the building, when I first took over as the Interim Director, I, my dream was to have tea and music late one afternoon every week, like Friday afternoons when the library wasn’t crowded and it wouldn’t disturb any students who were studying. So I was, I really desperately wanted to bring things that felt cultured, to me, but also really fun. I loved music just kind of drifting, never for long and never in a disruptive way. For a very brief moment we did some faculty talks at noon, where faculty would come and talk about their collections. LG: Do you remember any in particular? RC: I remember Mehmet Odekon coming and talking about his marble collection. LG: Mehmet was in the Economics Department. RC: Yeah, yeah. It was just, I just wanted a little bit of life and vivacity at the same time as I wanted it to all feel like it was grounded in something academic. I mean, that, you know, that’s a battle long lost, but, those, I have very wonderful memories of that. LG: Any others besides Mehmet that you remember? RC: Uh, I’m really struggling here because, you know, I’m a few years out from my retirement, and also, having physically removed myself from Saratoga, they are not faculty that I bump into very often, so… um, I … I don’t. LG: So probably the IT, um, presence in the library might have been one of the biggest? RC: I think embracing technology … LG: Altogether? RC: Altogether, became really, you know, negotiating with faculty for a long time. For example, the entire CD collection was behind the Circulation Desk because the Music Department thought that if we put it out in public that the students would all steal the CDs. Um, and finally I went to the Music Department and said, “We will replace any CD that is stolen. I promise you. We will replace them. So have no fear. Students don’t want them, they download music. Even if they take them out they’re going to download it. They don’t �want to own CDs.” But, I took John Cosgrove, who was my Public Service librarian, and a six foot tall Irishman, with me, so when they decided to beat me up I had some protection. [laughs] And they were not happy. There was no question they weren’t happy. And finally I just said, “Look, we’re going to do it. We’ll try it for a year and we’ll reevaluate.” And of course nothing was stolen! But that sense of possessiveness of the object, just like possessiveness of books and texts. And it’s true that students are happy to read books, but they don’t want to read them for their courses. They’re happy to read fiction — a lot of them said they prefer to read an actual book rather than on the Kindle or whatever. At least that was true when I was there, though it may not be true anymore. But I do think that embracing technology and also understanding that the library had many functions, not just one, became very important. Yeah. LG: So it was a meeting place for faculty. RC: Yeah. LG: It was a meeting place for students. RC: Yeah. LG: It was a place where they could go for technology. RC: Yeah. LG: What am I missing? RC: Help with research. Access to materials. LG: So, what kinds of changes in the backgrounds of the librarians, um, did you see in the course of your career? RC: Well, it wasn’t so much the background of librarians but we hired a head librarian who didn’t have a library degree. The woman who replaced me does not have a library degree. LG: And that is? RC: Um, Marta… LG: Brunner? RC: Brunner. LG: Marta Brunner. RC: Yeah. And that was controversial when I left. You know there were some people who were �very reticent to hire someone … um, she had worked in a library, she had a PhD … in Consciousness or something, from some place in California. Um, I mean I never worked with her. We have a very cordial relationship, but I, um, I knew when I left, there were changes that were needed in the library. There always are changes that are needed in a library. But I also felt like I was done. That I had done what I set out to do. I left the library in wonderful shape. I was, you know, really happy about the changes. But I …I was done. I don’t know what Marta’s done — I’ve never been back to the library. LG: But it sounds like the nature of what a library is has basically fundamentally changed. RC: Yeah, yeah! Yeah, from the days when everybody was going around going, “Shhhh,” and, you know. We had funny pictures of the small room with the typewriters where students came to type their papers, you know. And then … a flood of computers where students could come. LG: And printers? RC: Well the printers were critical, because they all had computers by then, but they didn’t have printers. But a lot of them worked better in that kind of an environment and I understand that, … it kind of forces you to concentrate in a way. LG: And you don’t have your roommate or folks next door making noise. RC: Yeah, and some people don’t like working in isolation. They feel lonely and isolated. And so that’s another thing that the library always provided, I think. And I remembered that from me. I spent a summer up at University of Vermont taking courses, um, because my brother was doing his residency there, and um, I didn’t know anybody. I was very lonely, and I would just go to the library to do my research for the courses, you know, so I never felt alone. And I wanted our students, especially the students who might have one of those weekends when they didn’t have a lot to do, to feel like there was a place for them to come. Movies for them to take out. Whatever. Yeah. LG: When you first started, were there movies for them to take out? RC: Always. They were VHS tapes. Yeah. I mean, we had a great film collection. I still miss it. LG: And when you left, what were those movies on? Not VHS. RC: No, DVDs. They were on DVDs. I mean we were, we … there were some streaming film services that we had. The problem is in, I think Marta’s made some hard decisions about the ones to maintain and the ones that … faculty can rent films for teaching, but they, we couldn’t give free rein to students. Again, money. Money, money, money. There’s so much available. I mean I, you know I think there’s almost anything you can get if you are willing to pay a few dollars and to be honest. Considering that lots of people aren’t requiring $200 text books any more, I think students can afford. And they can watch together. One of the things we built into the library was the, into the library renovation, �was the viewing room. So, you know, twenty people could sit there and watch a film. Yeah. LG: So when did you retire? RC: I retired in 2015. LG: And as you look back, what are your fondest memories … of the college in general? RC: What a great community of people it was! I, you know there’s no denying that these were our friends, these were people that we knew, that we loved, that we … that our children grew up with. It’s a beautiful campus. Its heart is in the right place, even if it gets some things wrong. You know, it’s not always easy. Umm, it was a great time, really, to be in … in higher education. It was a great time to be in librarianship. I mean I bridged a funny time, but I started out loving books so I felt like my heart was in the right place so I could talk to a David Porter about his book collection and about rare books, and you know, lecture students about the history of printing, and, you know, do teaching of that sort, that felt so important for them to understand, that everything wasn’t just delivered on a computer. But, ah, you know it was just a really beautiful moment. Not … again, that there weren’t —- I had just taken over as the permanent Library Director before 9/11. I mean we lived through hard things that were happening in our country, but, um, it was still a great time. They were really good years. LG: So, what have you been doing since you retired? RC: Besides following my children and grandchildren around the country? Um, I mean, which keeps us very busy. But, in California I volunteered with an organization called World Reader, which … LG: Again, what? RC: World Reader, which distributes digital texts to countries in Africa and India. They partnered with Amazon and they sent Kindles and so could therefore download the texts. So, I did a variety of things but it was really fun for me because it was a small company full of youngsters. And there was one librarian on staff, and much less seasoned than I was, and so we did a lot of work in terms of, not actually cataloging but I wrote up a lot of descriptions of books and did a lot of, sort of busy work previewing things, and it was really fun for me. That was a great introduction to doing something that felt useful as a volunteer. Yeah. Also it got me out of the East Bay and into downtown San Francisco, which was really fun. So. But then my kids started having families and then we moved to Colorado. LG: Again to follow family? RC: Again to follow our girls. Yeah. I mean, we all sat down and had a, decided as a family we �were going to move together. And just before COVID I went to a lecture up in Special Collections in the library, in the public library, where … LG: The main … main library? RC: The main branch of the Denver Public Library, which is magnificent. It’s a beautiful, fabulous facility with a stunning collection of books. Um, and John and I were in there all the time anyway, just taking out books and movies. They had a great foreign film, um, collection. So I went to a lecture on artists’ books, which I had collected at Skidmore. That was actually, that was all about my being Director, but I could talk about my role as creating a collection of artists’ books at Skidmore. But … and at the end of that I went to the person who is in charge of the Special Collection and told him I would be interested in volunteering, and he was very excited and interested. So I did volunteer. And I’ve done a variety of projects. And, at the moment I have a very, very long term project which I’m loving, which is … they have two distinctive collections. They have many collections, but one is in a vault and it’s designated as very valuable books — so that’s the Audubon ele … you know, elephant folios, and … you know, North American Indian collect…, you know, incunabula. They have just amazing, amazing books. And then there’s a secondary collection which had been collecting over the years, much of it was gifts. And so I’m going through that volume by volume and assessing whether it should stay in the collection or be moved to the valuable collection or just be sent down for sale. And there are many hundreds of volumes, so I’m about two-thirds of the way through the, um, through the quarto books, the smaller of the books. And then I’ll move on to the oversized ones. So, I don’t go in often, but even … the main library is actually closed for renovation at the moment, and now a part of it is open, just a part of the first floor, but the Special Collection is up on the fifth floor. So I go up to the fifth floor and work at least once a week. Mostly once a week. Yeah. LG: I’d like to go back to something because you really didn’t talk about the artists’, um, collection. RC: No I didn’t talk about the Special Collections. LG: Yes, would you elaborate on that? RC: Yeah. And the only reason to, or the special reason to do that, I guess, is because when I started at Skidmore there was no Special Collections Librarian. There was a locked collection up on what was then the fourth floor, where I had my studio, and then there was the Steloff Collection, which had its own little room in the library before the renovation, and eventually they were integrated. But when I got there one of the things that I began doing was collecting artists’ books. And I managed, while I was there, to get an endowment of a quarter of a million dollars to maintain … from Sonny Stahl and the, um … now I’m forgetting the name of the foundation … um, to continue to collect that, book, and pretty much in those days Peggy …, that endowment did two things. It endowed my position to get me off of the Reference Desk at night and on weekends, so I could work a regular week, which allowed me to give access to that collection. Um, and I �began collecting artists’ books and built a very sizable artist book collection, both from the endowment and also it was matched in the early years by Peg Seiden, and then I continued to maintain that. When I left I took the full endowment and allowed that to be used to purchase books. By then we had a full time Special Collections Assistant, Wendy Anthony, who had a full time assistant, whose … Jane … whose last name I don’t remember anymore. So it was a way of bringing classes in to Special Collections to see this rich material. The artists’ books were used heavily by the Art Department. We had a small collection of classic texts from David Porter’s personal collection. I don’t know if they’re still there or not — I presume they are. Um, we had the Phyllis Roth vampire collection, which she used extensively to teach her, you know her vampire classes. You know there was a whole, we had, you know, an odd smattering of quite beautiful books. The Native American Indian book collection, which is worth millions. Um, we had one early Blake, which Sarah Goodwin would come up and use. Um, you know we really had, just, it’s kind of a hodge-podge of a collection, but I did my best to kind of enrich that collection and make it available and try to bring people in. So I would, um, you know the Celebration Weekend, I would do little, you know they had those presentations — I would do presentations up in Special Collections of some of the materials that we had. And brought classes in to do a little bit on the history of books, the history of printing, et cetera. I was very … I was very proud of that work. That was … I mean those are some of my really good memories. The teaching that I got to do, building that collection, um, which was a kind of counterbalance to IT in my life, because so much of my attention and my money was put into technology and into the library’s web page and into making really hard decisions about what we were purchasing, um, et cetera. So, having this precious collection of wonderful material that I could show students and let them understand that, this is the book that Shakespeare read that influenced the writing of Macbeth. I mean, that was pretty special. LG: Yup! RC: Yeah. LG: Anything else we should, um, include? RC: I mean not that I can think of. I’m glad we thought about the Special Collection thing because that was really important to me. No, I mean there was … a lot of changing in the staffing and that was inevitable, and … I, you know I feel like it’s a great library! LG: It sounds like there was an increasing participation of the faculty and their stu… and their classes in the course of your time. RC: Yeah. Well for one thing, students, you know in the old days you’d say to a student, you know, I want a bibliography. Go to the catalog and find five books and three articles, or, if you were lucky enough to find them in the library. But we certainly always had interlibrary loan, but, as I say the vast availability of material and the ability to discriminate what is important and useful became something that was very, very important. And then also I think Special Collections got used more and more because, �you know, it was very good for students to understand a little bit about the history of information and the dissemination of information. LG: When students first come on campus as first year students, um, there was an orientation in the library, was there not? RC: Not any more. Not for a very long time. Because they felt so much pressure, on the one hand, and also felt that, um, students during that orientation absorbed very little because they are so worried about who’s going to be their friend and who they’re going to sit with at dinner, et cetera, and, you know, as I saw … we did, for years we did it. I don’t think … maybe they’re doing it again, I don’t know, but we used to develop these little hunts through the library and little … but it was never required so sometimes they would come, sometimes they wouldn’t. Um, you know, and sometimes … I think we rely more and more on faculty bringing their classes in. And sometimes we sort of babysit the classes when the faculty have to go away and give papers, and it’s not our favorite way to do it but we’ll take ’em when we can get ’em. And then they all have peer mentors and sometimes the peer mentors, we would try to get the peer mentors to bring their groups of students in and have little projects for them to do. But I’m, again, I’m … seven years … eight years out from what’s going on now, so … . But we did our best, honestly, to train, to teach, to be part of the teaching mission and to give students access but also the ability to find the best material they could. LG: This has been fascinating for me to hear, you know, what has happened in the library over those many years, and the changes, even in the physical structure. Did you have any role with, I suppose, the architects who were planning how the building would look, you know? Do you remember? RC: I, you know, in the first round when Peggy was the Director and I was the Humanities Librarian, when we did the initial renovation, the big one, not the IT integration one, um, I had a lot of input into the Special Collections area because we were going to have the Pohndorff Room and then we were going to have an area behind that that was a work room that became my bindery and my book repair place. And for a long, for the first few years, I trained students to do book repairs with me up there, to make boxes, um, more than anything else. So I always had students up in Special Collections working with me. But I, and then eventually I got a part time assistant to keep the Pohndorff Room open because I was working as the Humanities Librarian and I wasn’t up there, I was downstairs. … That’s not true, I was up there one year during the interim year. So I did have input into that, with those architects. In the second round when we were integrating IT and renovating the library, yes, I worked really closely with the architects. Just … LG: And what kind of changes had to happen? RC: Well we needed to completely redo the lower level of the library to kind of dig out a big space for IT, and then we needed to redo the first floor of the library so that we could fit the Help Desk and other IT offices. And then there were some smaller renovations, and �then, truthfully, we needed to re-carpet. We shifted the entire collection; the entire library collection of hundreds of thousands of books, had to be shifted. LG: Did you run into some geology kinds of problems? RC: Um, in terms of weight and … or in terms of …? LG: Well I’m thinking, you know, when IT moved into that basement space, RC: Yeah. LG: Were there any issues about the ground, or? RC: No, I… no, I mean they had to blast. Everything’s built on stone, of course, but there was no water that we knew of, and that would have been really critical, that would have been a problem. LG: Because there was a lot of underground water in the area. RC: Of course, of course. No. No. The bigger problem was that the fourth floor, which we eventually put stack areas on, was not built for the weight and so I think that was one of the things that was taken into consideration during the first renovation, not the second one. The second one was modest by comparison because the building wasn’t gutted, but it was refreshed and changed enough to integrate this Department in such a way that it felt like the building belonged to them too. Like we weren’t going to just stick them off in the middle of nowhere, which is what some of the staff wanted. I think they really felt it was compromising the integrity of our staff to have another staff in that building. But sometimes it’s hard to share. But that was fine — I did all of that hard work and then I left, so it could all be blamed on me! [laughs] LG: Ruth thank you very much. RC: Yeah, it’s been a delight! LG: This has been a delight to hear. RC: Great! LG: And very, um, enlightening for me. RC: Great! LG: So thank you. RC: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for coming and talking to me. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ruth Copans Location The location of the interview Denver, CO Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit April 12, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ruth Copans Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 22, 2023 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Ruth Copans joined the Scribner library staff in 1991, serving as the Humanities Librarian and overseer of Special Collections. During the library’s first renovation, Ruth was named the Library Director, and she oversaw the completion of that renovation, as well as the subsequent renovation in 2011-12, when IT was incorporated into the library building and electronic holdings were expanded. Ruth brought disparate and multi-disciplinary experiences to the library, from chamber music concerts to faculty talks about their interests outside of their research and teaching to printing services and music borrowing. Ruth turned the library into a welcoming meeting place for students and faculty and an accessible resource for materials, both in print and digitally. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Analog vs Digital Material Audubon Elephant Folios Carnegie Hall Musicians Chuck Joseph David Porter Electronic Resource Funding Helen Porter Library Renovation Marta Brunner Mike West Phil Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Pohndorff Room Reference Desk Sarah Goodwin Scribner Library World Reader Organization https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/006f6146d6cbe2e1072e5168ea2ecdc5.jpg 6c660fc9c717b46a85cfead79ed99466 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/307aa7ae22cc5c820c973f23260465b0.m4a 8eeba3958dc15d004b318073fbad2bf1 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/34e15cf6251afbe5876ba5a50e54cb0e.pdf dd01159a5491494176ff3478eb1ebce7 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Lisa Aronson Years at Skidmore: 32 (1984 - 2016) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 7, 2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:24 Born 1946 in Detroit, MI; raised there & did undergrad in Art History at Wayne State U, then in 1971 attended Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, for graduate work 00:01:00 Worked various jobs in NYC for 2 years, then traveled in Europe for nearly a year 00:01:30 Aunt, Cyril Miles, was artist in Detroit - very supportive & influential 00:03:21 While writing dissertation taught part-time at Wayne State (in Detroit); first tenure track teaching job was at U of Wisconsin in Stevens Point (3 yrs) 00:03:46 Sought teaching position that was better aligned with areas of expertise (African, preColumbian & Oceanic art); began teaching at Skidmore fall 1984 00:04:10 Interest in Africa stemmed in part from Aunt’s interest in textiles; also, African American studies programs were beginning to be formed on campuses, so it was a viable field 00:05:00 Loved working with Africans, their kindness & receptivity; still many connections 00:05:45 Dissertation: why identical patterns found in different parts of Africa? Ans: Trade & people “taking in these textiles and making them their own … assigning meaning” 00:07:28 Spring 1984 interviewed at College Art Association and then on Skidmore campus 00:08:36 Was hired at Skidmore because of expertise in Africa - replaced previous professor 00:09:34 African art was often combined w/ other areas, “wastebasket definition of art history” 00:10:05 Also taught Western art history survey & even Native American art - stretched too far 00:11:02 African art no longer part of Skidmore art history curriculum 00:11:25 When arrived at Skidmore, Art History & Studio Art were one department 00:12:00 Split b/c different disciplines. Art History akin to Humanities, Anthropology, Religion 00:13:52 The issues dealt with, and the questions explored, were very different from Studio art 00:15:12 Tang Museum a high point; involved with planning committee, later exhibitions, etc. 00:15:30 Committee members visited museums on other campuses, asked questions about exhibition space, storage space, staffing requirements; 00:17:01 Another consideration - what art in Tang collection? How the space would be used? 00:18:25 Instrumental in getting African materials added to Tang collection and in Tang shows 00:18:50 Supported student curated exhibitions of African art, visited Peabody Museum (Boston) with students to negotiate borrowing pieces 00:20:35 Curated exhibition of African Art and the Environment with Tang director John Weber 00:24:01 Served on many committees, including Curriculum (chaired 3 years) & UWW 00:24:39 Enjoyed working with UWW students; especially loved teaching seminar connected to African Art and the Environment exhibition; students more mature, interested, willing to work 00:26:50 Taught classes in Africa through Parsons School of Design. Became better at French �00:28:19 Led Textile Society of America tour to Ghana to study textiles 00:28:56 Skidmore always supportive, paid for travel to present papers, do research, etc. 00:29:52 Some particularly supportive individuals to note: Phyllis Roth, Sue Bender, 00:30:10 For example, Aronson and a colleague received Getty grant for project/book on Nigerian photographer, and Skidmore provided funds for travel to Nigeria during Aronson’s sabbatical 00:31:20 Retired 2016, now writing book about anarchist grandmother, involves much research 00:32:45 Will give paper related to African textiles at conference this spring 00:33:46 Also volunteers at Saratoga Springs Public Library’s used book store 00:34:48 African textiles is a unique field, a non-Western field; a non-Western course requirement was added to the curriculum, so got non-art students; I enjoyed teaching that perspective to them 00:36:10 There was a point when some on campus wanted to eliminate the non-Western requirement, questioned the terminology, whether there were really two viable categories 00:37:17 “I always felt that it was a way to allow students to broaden their understanding of the world and of themselves within the world, to be seen that other cultures handle things very differently than we do.” 00:38:27 Skidmore has a growing number of students from non-Western backgrounds; Taught some students from African countries who hadn’t had a course on African art 00:38:50 Some awkwardness in being Western White woman teaching non-Western topics; eg. when teaching about Native American Ghost Dance, a messy classroom conversation arose 00:39:53 When Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke at Skidmore, he noted “You don’t have to be African or Black to teach African art.” 00:40:33 Indiana U had an African Studies program & an African American Studies program; it was mostly White people in African program and Black people in African American program. 00:42:00 “I’ve always felt very fortunate to be at Skidmore” because Skidmore is so supportive of faculty. Even in retirement, funding the retiree program that enable faculty to continue to connect and learn 00:42:56 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/e975fe5264ed50b12f8096004398c929.pdf c677e01541c2f4186b9ba11dde258a70 PDF Text Text Interview with Lisa Aronson by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, November 7, 2022. LYNNE GELBER: It’s November 7th, 2022, and I’m here with Lisa Aronson and Sue Bender. This is Lynne Gelber. And welcome, Lisa, to the project, and I’d like you to start off by telling us a little bit about your growing up years. LISA ARONSON: Woah, ok, growing up years. Well, I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the west side of the city, in 1946. LG: Which city did you say? LA: Detroit, Michigan. Lived in Detroit until I went to college, undergraduate school, at Wayne State University in Detroit. Majored in Art History. And then I went on to do graduate work at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In between that time I went to New York City and lived there for two years, just getting one job after another and enjoying the city. LG: What impelled you to go to the City? Just to get a job, or …? LA: I always was attracted to New York City because it just seemed so bustling and so … there was, you know, you feel like you’re a puppet, you know, being held up by strings. And, I just wanted some independence from Detroit. I wanted to get away from family, including my aunt, who was a very influential person in my life but with whom I needed to get some distance. So I went to New York and got some jobs there, working … LG: Your aunt was? LA: My aunt was an artist in Detroit. Cyril Miles. She sort of took me under her wing and supported me and really, I think, influenced me to go into Art History, so that was, it was a very viable course for me. �LG: But she was an artist, not an art historian? LA: She was an artist, not an art historian, no. And, I used to live at their house, in fact, and when she passed, sadly, at the age of 75, I inherited a lot of the art that she had collected. I have that in my house, so it feels like she’s got a very strong presence in my house. But I needed to get away, and I went to New York and took a job in publishing and the sorts of things that undergraduates get in New York before they go on to graduate school. And then after two years there I went, did a, close to a year, hitch-hiking through Europe, like every young person back then. And I applied to graduate school and got in and then the rest was doing graduate work. I got to Bloomington in 19… let’s see now, when would it be, 70 … um, no, 81. It was 81 … when I got to Bloomington. LG: And did you come directly from Bloomington … LA: No, I’m sorry, it was ’71. It was ’71. I’m getting confused here. Yeah. LG: And did you come directly from Bloomington to Skidmore? LA: No. I, while writing my dissertation I was in Detroit teaching part time at Wayne State University and then I got my first job, teaching job, tenure track job, at University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point, and I was there for three years, but knew I didn’t want to stay there forever. The job was not tailored well enough to my areas of expertise, and so I applied for the Skidmore job and I was hired, and that was … LG: And what were your areas of expertise? LA: African, pre-Columbian, and Oceanic. But mainly African, and that’s where I did my field work. Yup. LG: How come you went to Africa? �LA: Ah that’s a good question. I think my aunt, again, was very influential in sending me there. She was very interested in African art and in African textiles in particular, or just textiles, throughout the world. And, I knew I wanted to do something with textiles and I knew Africa was a good place to do it. The other influence was the African American movement, way back in the early ’70s. And people were beginning to study African art and African American studies and schools were beginning to open up programs in that area, so I knew it was a viable profession and I probably could get a job in the field. And I did. So, that was, I think that was my foray into Africa, and I loved it, being there. It just opened up so many windows for me. LG: Like what? LA: Ah, well, I loved being, working with African people in general. And I know that’s very simplistic to state it that way, but there is something about the African … state of mind and the ambiance and the kindness and the receptivity that I really gravitated towards, and I have maintained a lot of connections with people in Africa. Most particularly in Nigeria where I did my field work. And so I feel very close to things having to do with Africa. LG: And what special things were you doing in Nigeria? LA: Well, I went initially to — for my dissertation, it was my PhD. work — to do a study of African textiles in a particular area. I had noted in my research, library research, that there were patterns on textiles from one area of Nigeria that seemed identical to patterns and textiles in another area, and I wanted to know why. And I basically solved the problem, I figured out that there was a long and enduring pattern of trade of textiles coming in, not only from other parts of Africa into the delta, but from Europe. And it, there was a real receptivity to, for these people, to things coming from abroad, coming �from elsewhere, and taking in these textiles and making them their own. And that was really the essence of my research, was to see how people take things in and take ownership of them by renaming them and assigning meaning to them that has to do with their own culture. LG: So what made you decide to come to Skidmore? And when? LA: Well, I applied in 1984. It was a job that was advertised. I don’t, I can’t say that I was particularly seeking out Skidmore, I mean, you know, the nature of the beast in academia is you go where the jobs are. And so I applied and was fortunate to get the job. LG: Um, did you interview on campus? LA: Yes, in those days we interviewed on campus. First of all, I interviewed at College Art Association, which is the annual organization for art … artists and art historians. I interviewed with Penny Jolly, and with … I think Robert Carter was there in that interview. And also Joan Siegfried. I remember her. And then they called me to … unusual, I received a letter in the mail that I was invited to come to campus, they didn’t call me. Those were the days when [laughs] things were done differently than they are now. And as I came to campus, Penny was not here at that point. She was on sabbatical. So I met Jim Kettlewell and other people in the department, and did the interview and got the job. LA: So you arrived on campus, what year? LA: It would have been in the spring of ’84, in 1984. So I started teaching in 1984. LG: In the fall of ’84? LA: Yeah. �LG: And so you were hired because of your African teaching? LA: That’s right. LG: Is this something that the department didn’t have yet? LA: The department had long time, had long had African as an area, as a subject in their courses, in their curriculum. You might recall that there was someone in the department prior to me, Montêquin was his name … deMontêquin? I may not have the exact name, yeah. And there was a bit of a faux pas with him. He had gone to, he had taken students to Spain and they jumped over a wall at the Alhambra, and they got … do you remember this incident? [laughs] LA: So he was out. LG: That was during the 4:1:4 — it was a January term. LA: Yes, that’s right, it was a January term thing. So, fortunately for me, he lost the job and so they hired me. Now he taught African. He also taught Islamic art and he taught preColumbian art. Which is to say that in those days, our field was, the field of African was often wedded with other areas. My thesis advisor, Roy Sieber, always referred to it as the wastebasket definition of art history; you know, whatever doesn’t fit within the normal Western paradigm, and Asian paradigms, goes there. So, I really had to teach a tall order. And, also, they were asking me to teach a survey of art history, which is a Western survey. So, I felt like I was all over the place. LG: And did you add anything about Africa when you were teaching the survey course? LA: Umm, no. The course was strictly Western art, as I recall. Maybe at some point we sort of introduced a little bit of African, but I don’t think so. I don’t think so. It was strictly a Western survey. And then at some point I even took on the subject of Native American �art, and I taught that. So I was covering a lot of bases. And I have to say to some degree that was to my detriment. I was stretched too far, too wide, and needing to be more focused on my own areas of expertise. And the people that they’ve hired in the department since then were more focused on Africa and maybe African American. But I’m sad to say that Africa is now out of the curriculum. They did not rehire when the last person left. So, it’s the end of that era. LG: Now there, umm, was the department separate, the Art History department separate when you came? LA: Mmn mn, we were all one department. I met with, I remember having dinner at the interview with the then chair of the whole department, who was a Studio person whose name is escaping me for the moment. Um, and, of course I would meet the Art History faculty but it was part of the larger department at that point. And I don’t remember at what point we split from Studio. It was sometime in the late ’80s, early ’90s that we split. LG: What can you tell about that, what brought that about? LA: Well, Art History is a very different discipline than Studio Art, and we always felt that we were closer to the Humanities, we always felt that we were closer to, in some cases, to Anthropology, Religion, and not to Studio Art. The act of making art is a very different thing from studying about the history and whatever around art traditions throughout the world. So, it made sense. I think we had a review, one year, of the whole department and it was strongly urged that we split, and so we decided to do that. LG: Was that review part of the Middle States review, or was that … LA: Could have been Middle States, um there’s another body that does a review, and I’m forgetting the name of it, it mostly is concerned with Studio, but Art History, because we were part of the department, was included in it. So … um, I can’t even remember what organization was reviewing us at that point, but I know that when I went up for tenure … �for, yeah, for tenure, we were still a whole department, and then a few years later we split. LG: So what was gained by splitting, or what was lost by splitting? LA: Well it’s always comfortable to have a larger department as your umbrella, that you’re under a larger umbrella of faculty who take care of you, and we’d always felt like we were taken care of. But, to be honest, we felt that being our own discipline and having control of just our discipline seemed to make more sense, in terms of the kinds of conversations we have. You know, did we really want to be hearing a lot of discourse about how beginning drawing should be taught, and what should, how the basic curriculum of Studio should be laid out. Those aren’t the issues that we deal with, and the questions and subject matter that we address as art historians is much more akin to other humanities areas. I always felt much more connected to Africanists in Anthropology or pre-Columbian in Anthropology. Penny’s work was very much wedded to… LG: Penny Jolly LA: Penny Jolly, to literature and religion and classics and so those were our, that was our family, and not studio art. So… LG: What were the high points of your career at Skidmore? LA: Well, um, high points … there were many high points, like it’s hard to pick out one, but I will say, speaking of the Tang, the Tang became kind of a haven for me. I loved working with the people of the Tang, I loved doing things at the Tang. I was involved in the Tang project from the time of its inception on paper; I was on the committee. I was traveling to various campuses throughout the northeast with other faculty from the college, none of them Studio, as you might recall. LG: Who? �LA: I remember Terry Diggory was on that committee, and I don’t remember who the other ones were, but we went to Bates, we went to Dartmouth and we went to Wellesley and looked at, and also, the other college in Vermont, umm … LG: Bennington? SB: Middlebury. LA: Middlebury. Middlebury, right. And looked at their museums to get an idea of what we want. And so that really got me interested in the museum at a very early stage. And, then when it got built I was so excited about the possibility of doing projects with the Tang. LG: Let me interrupt one second before you get to the project, because I’m interested in that, but … what qualities were you particularly interested in bringing into the Tang as it was being built, and conceived of? LA: Well, we were thinking of very practical things, like what kind of storage space do we need, how much exhibition do we need? What would the staffing look like? Every museum that we looked at, you know they had a certain number of staff members and we needed to know how that worked and how it didn’t work, so we were constantly asking those questions. Um, we were not dealing with the design of the museum, per se … it was, that was taking place on sort of a different level, but we were interested in the mechanics and the collection itself. Do we want to go out and purchase items for the Tang or do we allow gifts to be given to the Tang? I mean there were many, many questions about the collection. What do we do with the existing collection that we have at Skidmore, which, prior to the Tang, was housed, when I first came, it was housed in a house behind the President’s house on … SB: On Broadway? �LA: On Broadway, yeah. And I remember going in and seeing the pre-Columbian … LG: The garage. LA: Yeah! And then it moved to a building where Charlie, the new director of the Tang, the first director of the Tang, Charlie … SB: Stainback. LA: Stainback, thank you for that. Where he was housed, there was a house at the edge of the campus, … anyway, the collection was there, and then it moved to the Tang. And so what happens with that collection and how valuable is it in relation to what else could be done at the Tang? So, those were the questions that we had to ask. [Clears throat] Sorry, my voice is getting raspy. LG: What kinds of things did you want to come to the Tang? What kinds of things did come? LA: Well I was always interested in seeing African material be added to the Tang, and I did, I was instrumental in seeing that happen. LG: In shows or in the collection? LA: Both. We wanted stuff in the collection and we wanted to start exhibiting African art. So, I was, I’m very proud to say this, but I was the first faculty member to curate, to oversee a student curated exhibition at the Tang, and it was an exhibition of African art, and it was based on a collection , well actually I did it, I had done it prior, if you recall, in the student center, in Case Center there was a room that was an art gallery, and I had curated an exhibit of African art there, based on a collection owned by a colleague of mine who did work in Nigeria and had quite an elaborate collection of African art. And students curated that collection. So that kind of gave me the taste for what I could do with African art, and what the students could … which, I found that to be a very exciting way to teach �about African art, was to be able to work with objects. And then when the Tang opened I proposed that we do an exhibition and we borrowed pieces from various collections and also used what we had in the Tang. I remember taking the students who were in the class who were helping to curate; it was a seminar that I taught. We drove to Boston and went to Monni Adams, who was working then at the, volunteering at the Peabody Museum, and she had quite a collection of African art that we ended up borrowing. And the students got to see somebody who owns it, the negotiations you go through to get the objects, and then seeing the objects in the museum and working with them. Very exciting for the students, and for me. LG: Other highlights in your career at Skidmore that …? LA: Well the other one was the, my curating the exhibition of African Art and the Environment with John Weber and that was, to me, an incredible experience. LG: And John’s position was? LA: He was the director of the Tang after Charlie Stainback. I believe he was next after Charlie. And he had proposed, we together came up with this idea, of doing an exhibition on contemporary African art, because so much of the collection is focused on traditional objects, and we wanted to, sort of, bring Africa to the 21st century. So we were going to do a contemporary … and my original idea was to do an exhibition on body arts and things related to the body, including dress, and the whole gamut of themes. But then we went to Senegal, the Tang paid for us to go to Senegal to attend LG: [inaudible] LA: To the Dak’Art, the… what did you ask? LG: Who is the we? �LA: John and I. LG: Ok. LA: John and I went to Senegal to attend the Dak’Art, it’s a play on Dakar and Art, and it’s a triennial, they have it every three years, or a biennial, they have it every two years, excuse me. And it is focused strictly on African, on contemporary African art, and we went to see what’s going on in the field. And as we went around and looked I said, “You know, body art is not as interesting to me as the environment. I think that’s what we need to focus on.” And he said, “Yes! Let’s do it!” So that’s how that all started. And we came up with a wonderful array of objects and artworks, we brought the artists to campus, we wrote a catalog together, and it was very successful. And it traveled. This show traveled. It went to Middlebury and it went to the campus in Virginia, um … the Commonwealth, is it the…? SB: VCU? LA: VCU in Virginia, yeah. Virginia Commonwealth. And then of course it was here at the Tang. I would say those are highlights. LG: Challenges? LA: Well, the challenges are dealing with faculty [laughs] in your department and around, abroad. I mean, you know, we’re not family in departments, we’re just colleagues, and we don’t always see eye to eye on things, and one had to struggle with different perspectives and different ways of viewing things. So that was always a challenge for me. And I always say now that I’m retired that I don’t miss the grading — grading is another challenge that we all had to do — and I don’t miss the committee work and the department dynamics. I don’t miss. Yeah. LG: Were you part of any of the college committees? �LA: Yeah. It seems like I was always on a committee [laughs]. I can’t remember … let’s see, I was on the Curriculum Committee for three years in a row, that was … I chaired the Curriculum Committee for three years in a row. That was … that was quite a challenge. And this was when people were changing their curricula because of the writing component that had been added to our curriculum. Umm, I was on umm, the UWW Committee, I recall. To be honest with you, I’m drawing a blank on the others that I was on. LG: Did you work with any UWW students? LA: Yes, I did. I had some. And those projects were very fruitful. I enjoyed working with them, and oh, in addition I taught a seminar through the Special Programs, I guess it was still UWW at that point, and that was really a high point — teaching that seminar. And actually it was a seminar … LG: The seminar was for? LA: It was for the Masters Program through Special Programs. And it was a seminar having to do with African Art and the Environment, and it was wedded to the exhibition. And it was fabulous. I loved doing that. I loved working with these mature students. There were challenges with it — they had to write a thesis within the space of a week, which seemed ridiculous, but that’s how it went. But to have the show there, and too, we actually had an artist come and talk and do, she did an installation, Nnenna Okore came and did installation art in the Schick Art Gallery, and so the students got to meet her, and … that was really a highlight for me. I loved it. LG: That Master of Arts Program began with an intensive series of meetings and … LA: Yeah, and lectures. �LG: Lectures. And then they went out on their own. LA: Right. Well, they, I don’t know, in this case, … Yeah, they didn’t write the thesis during that first week, but they had to come up with an idea and a prospectus and I know it was a challenge for them, when you think about it. But we read some fascinating texts and … I felt like I was teaching in a way that I didn’t experience so much with my ordinary classes. There’s something extra special about a more adult, more interested, if you will, body of students. Um, mature, more mature, and more willing to do the work without complaining. [laughs]. LG: Did you go with students to Africa? LA: No. I did not. I went to Africa and taught classes in Africa, but not with Skidmore students. Although one of the Skidmore students did go on her own to the program, was in the program that I was teaching in. LG: And which program was that? LA: This was a program initiated through RISD, I’m sorry, um, what’s the art school in New York City, um, … LG: Parsons? LA: Parsons School of Design, yes, thank you. Parsons School of Design, in collaboration with Jerry Vogel, who was once married to Susan Vogel who’s a big name in the field of African art. She was the curator, chief curator of African Art at the Met, and Jerry was very, very involved in Africa in many, many ways, and he created this program and worked with the Parsons School of Design, and I taught in that program for three different summers. It required me to become a better French speaker than I ever had been. A lot of translating going from local language, Baoulé, to French, French to �English, and having to talk to the students about what was going on. So I taught in that program quite a bit, and so I’ve done programs in Africa. I also led a tour through the Textile Society of America to Ghana to study textiles. LG: And who was on that tour? LA: Well this was organized by the Textile Society of America so there were a number of people from the organization, members, who came. And some colleagues of mine from different parts of the country. It had nothing to do with Skidmore, per se. LG: What kind of support did you get from the Skidmore administration for you? For the African component of the program? LA: Uh, I don’t feel that I got support for the African program in particular. I always got support from the college for whatever I did, and I’ve always been grateful to Skidmore for the kind of support that we’ve gotten through the years. Being paid for travel to do papers and whatever. But for the African program, per se, I mean there really was no African program, and I was it. Along with Gerry Erchak and then Sónia Silva, we were it, and then Hedi Jaouad. We were the Africanists. We didn’t have an African Studies program then. There is one program now, although it’s not necessarily Africa focused, I think it’s more African American focused. So, no support at large, but never in need of support. The college always was behind me to help me with my projects. LG: Anybody in particular? LA: Well, Phyllis Roth was very, very sympathetic to our needs, and you, working with her — Sue Bender I’m talking to. Um, my last large publication was this book I co-authored with a colleague of mine on a Nigerian photographer who was active in the 1890s. And this was a big project. We received a Getty Grant to do the project, and then together proceeded to look at collections and go to Africa. We were supposed to go together but, the reason that she didn’t come with me, there were some health issues she had, and �Nigeria wasn’t safe at that moment and so we decided not to go then, but then I went during my sabbatical and the college gave me money to go twice during that sabbatical. And it was absolutely critical for this book because we hadn’t yet gotten the African voice on the meanings of these photographs that had been generated in the late ’90s, 1890s. And so the college was very, very supportive with that. And, um, yeah. LG: Ok, so I think you talked about the major challenges and the major high points of your career. When did you retire? LA: I retired six years ago — I think it’s 2005, wait, 2006, no, I cannot exactly remember. It’s back then [laughs]. It’s about six years ago. 2016… oh, sorry, my mind is like mush. [laughs] LG: And what have you been doing since, Lisa? LA: Since then, well the book came out after I retired, so we still had research work to do on it for another year, so … and then, I got involved in a project about my grandmother. I decided I wanted to write a book about her because she was an anarchist, and she dedicated her life to being an anarchist, to the anarchist movement. And I’m working on that now. I’m writing it now. I gave a talk on the subject to the retirees — you might have been there to hear that, and you too. It’s been a really fun project, though challenging in its own way because I don’t regard myself as an expert on anarchism. I don’t regard myself as an expert on the Russian revolution — I’ve had to do a lot of reading and a lot of research for this. But it’s turning out to be a really fun project. I’m also giving a paper this spring that is on my field, related to my field of African textiles, in honor of a, it’s like a Festschrift panel at a conference to honor a colleague of mine who has retired. LG: And where is that? LA: That will be, it’s the Midwest Art History Conference, and it’s going to be in Minneapolis … I’m sorry, no, um, hmm, where is it going to be? I think Minneapolis is where it is. �LG: You’ve also been very involved with the library in town? LA: Yes, I’m doing a lot of volunteer work — was doing too much when I first retired. I was working at the, volunteering at the … Treasures Thrift Shop and decided I didn’t want to sort through used clothing anymore, decided it wasn’t for me, so I switched to the library and was taking on a lot at the library but now I’ve cut it down to just working on afternoon a week. LG: Doing? LA: I work in the used bookstore, and I work the cash register and help out in any way that Jeff needs help. It’s been really rewarding to work there because a lot of my colleagues and friends come in. I like to be able to help people who are looking for one type of book or another. I feel like I’m really serving the community by doing it. I also was working, and this was another volunteer job that I gave up, but I was doing, teaching English as a Second Language through the library. And that, combined with working in the bookstore, felt like too much. And when I started working on the project about my grandmother I decided to stop doing the ESL. And, so that’s where I am now. LG: Lisa, Susan just reminded us that, your field was quite unique. You want to talk a little bit about that? LA: Um, meaning that it was a non-Western field. LG: Yeah. LA: Alright. And of course at some point, not when I first arrived, but at some point the non Western requirement was factored in to the curriculum, and I fit that category. So I would get a lot of students who were taking this course to fulfill their non-Western requirement, you weren’t necessarily getting students who wanted to take African Art, but, that said, I �enjoyed teaching the non-Western area and I felt like it made sense to be providing that kind of other cultural experience. Constantly thinking of how we do things in the west and how it differs in Africa. Also, what were the relationships between the West and Africa. The history of colonialism, the history of trade, and the like. And so I felt that it was a very rich kind of way to deal with the material. I know that there were people on campus who had a problem with the non-Western requirement and there was a point at which they tried to eliminate it from the curriculum. LG: Do you know why? LA: Well they were arguing, and to me this seemed crazy, is that they could see in their mind that some areas within the Western world seemed as marginalized as maybe Africa was, and that, why would Africa be the … what does it mean to be “non-Western.” Questioning that, they had a problem with that terminology. I thought it was very astute of Steve Hoffman at some point during a faculty meeting in which this whole issue of the non-Western was discussed to point out that people in Asia and other parts of the nonWestern world, are the … in Asia and India and that whole part of the world, use the term “non-Western.” So it is used. But, people were challenging whether it was appropriate to be making a divide between Western and non-Western, as if these are really two viable categories. I always felt that it was a way to allow students to broaden their understanding of the world and of themselves within the world, to be seen that other cultures handle things very differently than we do. So, that was … LG: I think we all share that. From the different disciplines that we come from. LA: Right. But you can see where maybe somebody who focuses on the West but deals with marginal issues within the Western context could argue that there is a kind of cultural “other” within their purview. I mean, I don’t know, it became a very contested issue and I wasn’t comfortable with it. I don’t think the non-Western is, I think it still exists in the curriculum. It is, and it’s here and it should be. And it is, I mean when you hear about �people from other parts of the world referring to us they refer to us as the Westerners versus the non-Westerners, so it’s in their heads as well. LG: We’ve had a growing number of students from non-Western backgrounds. LA: Yes, we do. And I would get a lot of African students who had never had a course in African art — loved being educated about their own cultures, in, more broadly speaking, of course, it’s not just from what country they come from but from many other parts of Africa. That said, teaching non-Western subjects sometimes brought up awkwardness in the classroom, with students maybe feeling that you weren’t, I remember there was a particular issue with a Native American course that I was teaching where I was not being tough enough on the Ghost Dance, that I should have given it a more … nuanced representation, and something that was owned by the Plains Indians rather than something that was in response to the introduction of Christianity. I’ll just say it, put it that way. It created a really messy conversation in the classroom. And, so you can’t, I found that sometimes I couldn’t be … here I am, a Western White woman talking about Africa, talking about Native Americans, and I think some students perceived that as being — it just isn’t right to them. I remember when, who came … Gates came from Harvard, came to speak at Skidmore, and he said very openly, “You don’t have to be African or Black to teach African art.” He said that. And that’s the politics of it. And that’s what some students expect — they expect you to be of their culture or their culture area, broadly speaking, and that always kind of unnerved me a little bit. LG: Good. This has been a really interesting post-script, this hour. This conversation. Thank you for adding to it. LA: I remember in graduate school there was an African American program and there was an African program, African Studies. African American Studies and African Studies. And all of the African Americans were in the African American Studies program and we White people were in the African program, and … I just noticed that, observed that, as a reality. You know, it’s not something that African Americans are necessarily drawn to. �They want to know about their own culture, even though Africa is sort of at the roots of their own culture. And, um, I kind of saw these trends as I moved along in the field. [coughs] Excuse me, I’m losing my voice. Um, an African friend of mine, Nigerian friend of mine in the last ten years was involved with a, her church had a African fashion show, and people came out wearing African clothing, but, she offered to come out to be part of it and they didn’t want her to be part of it because they are African Americans, they wanted to own Africa in their way. So this is just another kind of an issue that one deals with. LG: Lisa is there anything else that we should be covering? That comes to mind? LA: Umm, I can’t really think of anything other than, I … that, and I’ll end it on a really positive note, that I’ve always felt very fortunate to be at Skidmore. I’ve always felt that Skidmore is supportive of what faculty do, and as you compare, and I mean, you know, financially and academically and whatever, … and that’s something that I think about a lot. I mean, even now we have the retiree program, the funding that enables faculty to continue to do things after the fact. So, I very much appreciate that. LG: Good. Well thank you! LA: You’re welcome SB: It’s been fun. LA: Sorry that my voice gave out. LG: Do you want me to get you some water or something? LA: No, I’m good. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lisa Aronson Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 42:56 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit January 29, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Lisa Aronson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 7, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Lisa Aronson joined Skidmore’s Art History faculty in 1986. In this interview she traces her academic journey to Skidmore and reflects on the influences that led her to specialize in the study if African textiles. While at Skidmore, Aronson experienced Art History’s establishment as a department separate from Studio Art and participated in planning for the Tang Museum. She reflects here on the challenges and opportunities for teaching a non-western subject at Skidmore, including the unique opportunities created by Tang Museum programming. After her retirement in 2015, Aronson has continued her research and writing and has volunteered with a variety of community organizations. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Art Department art history Charles Stainback John Weber Non-Western Requirement Phyllis Roth Skidmore Art Collections Tang Museum UWW https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/26f28ffd9befe2e7a105e861a77777d7.jpg 55709a73f18e10f270178ba307ad3ed9 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/430d40f71ff75d75af7aab8fa6e776dd.mp3 d57b80b2a63dbf3ca0e903a577ce3ced https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/008b5419a67f2416a0004c8d505ca4cf.pdf affd8d6d1608c36e3dae2af0ba61a64c PDF Text Text Interviewee: Tim Brown Years at Skidmore: 26 (1980-2006) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: June 22, 2023 00:00:00 Header 00:00:33 Born/raised in Keene, NH; undergraduate in math and played basketball, baseball and soccer at Keene Teachers College; then taught math and coached at Keene High School. Then attained Masters in Physical Ed and PhD in Biomechanics at Indiana U. Taught Biomechanics and Research Methods in a graduation program at U of Delaware. 00:01:47 While at Delaware, learned of opening for Athletic Director and Chairman of Physical Education and Dance; after connecting with Skidmore’s Nancy Davis at a convention, accepted offer. Was also in charge of the Riding Program. 00:03:47 Bev Becker went on sabbatical but left great notes. 00:04:15 Job responsibility: to develop an intercollegiate athletic program. 00:04:22 Skidmore had gone co-ed in early 1970s, but by 1980 Skidmore still had mostly club teams, with only a few varsity teams in women’s sports. 00:06:07 Louise Wise, Admissions Director, found “men were interested in a strong intermural program and intercollegiate opportunity. The women were interested in health and fitness.” 00:06:45 In 1980 Skidmore had no space for it; had some equipment in a corner of a basketball court. Hesitant to accept job because of this, but Palamountain confident about fund raising for it, so Brown accepted. First year at Skidmore involved traveling and designing the center. 00:07:38 Wanted space for different activity areas including a pool, gyms, racquetball courts, weights/resistance, exercise & stretching area. 00:08:12 Polo was expensive. Coach was great, but we didn’t have the $ or facility, so reduced it to a club program. It needed to be endowed. Downhill skiing also reduced to a club sport. 00:10:00 Brown’s “golf pro” reputation derived from research for National Golf Foundation. 00:10:48 “But really the time and energy went into developing all … the programs.” 00:11:02 Changes during tenure involved building the sports center and its 1990s addition, plus development of faculty and staff. 00:11:45 Important to hire people who could coach varsity level and teach academic level. (Eg. Jeff Segrave. Paul Arciero, Denise Smith, and new Athletic Director Gail Cummings-Danson.) 00:13:02 Challenges: budgets. Renting space for hockey, equipment for various sports 00:13:45 Many coaches then were part-time; Skidmore rented vans for travel — hard decisions to make. 00:14:40 When started in 1980, Skidmore had 4 varsity teams: women’s tennis, women’s field hockey, women’s basketball and women’s lacrosse. 00:15:00 Developed varsity schedule for other sports by joining associations. �00:16:02 Became competitive at national level, winning some national championships. 00:16:10 Championships weren’t the goal, though. “I wanted a very good experience for a student athlete,” rather than an “athletic student.” Goal: a higher ratio of students participating. 00:17:50 Skidmore doesn’t give athletic scholarships, so students come for academic priority. 00:18:14 We do recruit, sending letters to prospects, watching them play, interviewing, developing rapport and assessing level of respect. More time and energy, but “healthier.” 00:20:22 A highlight: developing the Tim Brown Scholar Athlete Award with John Ramsey. 00:21:20 Another: watching people grow, staying in touch. Some outstanding faculty/staff: Paul Arciero, Jeff Segrave. 00:21:54 Many outstanding students. 00:22:20 Another highlight: when Robert Spellman (student) asked me to read at his wedding. 00:23:08 Students went into careers that include professional golf, business, sales, finance. 00:24:22 Vision of role of athletics in a liberal arts institution: opportunity to compete against self and others, and finding ways to get and keep in shape, make athletics part of regular routine. 00:26:33 New facility at Skidmore will provide enough space so no need to close parts for a team’s use, or no need to wait for equipment; can better fit student and faculty schedules. 00:27:50 Retired in 2006. “I decided … I had to have a plan.” Plan included volunteering to run fund raising golf tournaments, help with Skidmore Hall of Fame, volunteering as a rules official for golf tournaments and youth programs in Florida. 00:28:50 Tasks when volunteering as a rules official: like an umpire, helping the kids know their choices and guiding them through the decision. 00:30:35 Through 26 years at Skidmore, received some job offers, but “Carol and I thought, ‘How can you leave home?’ … Skidmore became home.” 00:31:15 Connected with other Skidmore chairs through retreats & playing squash, golf, tennis. 00:32:03 Also played and connected with some Saratoga Springs people - helped with support. 00:32:24 Decided that no other offers were greener — “This was home. It still is.” 00:33:10 Had many bosses through the years, “Phyllis was in a class of her own.” “She always seemed to be able to work out solutions to the most difficult problems. She was just a brilliant, brilliant woman.” 00:35:63 “And then it influences your decisions. You start looking in a broader way of solving problems, of coming up with solutions.” 00:36:18 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1fceeb2d37efd2d0dacf7503963f23a5.pdf affaa594e1c6e3ffa04d61649e277102 PDF Text Text Interview with Tim Brown by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, June 22, 2023. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. It is June 22nd, 2023 and I’m here with Sue Bender to interview Tim Brown. And welcome Tim. TIM BROWN: Thank you. LG: It’s really nice to see you back north. TB: [laughs] Yes. LG: Tim, let’s start out by having you tell us something about you - growing up, where you grew up, and how you ended up coming to Skidmore. TB: Perfect. I was born and raised in Keene, New Hampshire. I went to high school there. Went to college. I wanted to be a teacher, I knew that from when I was younger, in junior high school/high school, so I went to Keene Teachers College, which is now State — Keene State College. And wanted to be a teacher-coach, as I said, so I was a math major; I played basketball, baseball and soccer at Keene State. I’m in their Hall of Fame for basketball and baseball. From Keene, I went right from Keene State to Keene High School and I coached football, basketball and baseball and taught Math there. I was a math major in undergrad. And some jobs came up. I wanted to coach as well as teach, and jobs came up and I didn’t have my masters and I needed a degree in Physical Education at a lot of the colleges and universities to be able to coach at their level, so I went to Indiana University, got my Masters and Doctorate in, well Physical Education Masters, Biomechanics Doctoral Degree. And from there went on to University of Delaware and taught in a graduate program, Biomechanics and Research Methods. And my secretary and boss, Dave Nelson, saw the job at Skidmore opened up, as Athletic Director and Chairman of Physical Education and Dance; they thought it was perfect for me. So, I was thinking about it and I sent a letter off to Skidmore. And I knew of Skidmore because so many of the, our students at Keene High School went to Skidmore �College, and they were all very bright, intelligent, wonderful people, so I thought, “What a great place to be!” Interviewed with Eric Weller, Dave Marcell and Joe Palamountain. And Bev Becker, as well. And it was a great interview. LG: And Bev was the chair? TB: Bev was chair at the time, correct. And she was looking for a sabbatical, and she went on down to Duke, and did a wonderful, had a wonderful experience down at Duke. LG: What year was that? Do you know? TB: It was 1979 when I interviewed, I came in ’80. Actually, one of the big turning points was at the Eastern District Convention for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. Nancy Davis was there and she introduced herself; I didn’t know who Nancy was, didn’t know she was there. And she said, “Would you like to have breakfast some morning?” And I said, “Sure.” So we met at 7 o’clock the next morning and at about 10:30 when they threw us out of the cafeteria where the convention was, she’d convinced me to make a trip up to Skidmore. And one of my really good friends, who was Physical Education Director at Geneseo, Myrt Merritt, was very good friends with Nancy. And the connection was made, and … as you all know, once you come to Skidmore, it sells itself. It was just tremendous. So, I took the job and never looked back. LG: Good! So, you were hired to teach or to coach? TB: I was hired as Chairman of the Department and to develop an intercollegiate athletic program. I was Chairman of Physical Education and Dance and in charge of the Riding Program as well. LG: Is that the point at which Bev had just retired? TB: No, she still stayed on. Matter of fact, she was a big help; [laughs] she left me a lot of great �notes! I was supposed to start in September but I came up in June and she had had to leave and there was still one person to be hired and so I started in June instead of September. She came back the next year and taught in the department for a number, a few years after that. But again, the responsibility that I had was, ah, was to develop an intercollegiate athletic program. I guess there were a number of schools that had gone co-ed at the same time, in the early ’70s, and Skidmore evidently chose not to make any push — push or move — to attract men. Joe Palamountain said, “Now we have the opportunity for men to get an education at Skidmore College.” And they found out after that, Louise Wise did a study, a survey, of the kids … LG: And Louise Wise was, at the time was? TB: Director of Admissions, yes. And a matter of fact, she even talked me into making a few trips to Deerfield and Mount Hermon and Choate and so on to try to recruit students — not specifically men, but uhh, we … so the job was to [clears throat], excuse me, to try to develop a program. A lot of interest from the kids, but really no commitment to the program. So, when I came in fall of ’80, we had like twenty-something club teams and no varsity teams. I shouldn’t say no varsity teams because Jeff Segrave’s women’s tennis team played a strong varsity schedule, Jane Misurelli’s field hockey and women’s lacrosse programs had a strong program, and the women’s intercollegiate women’s basketball had a, played a varsity schedule. But in reality, none of the men’s programs really played a varsity schedule. LG: Was that because there weren’t enough men? TB: Not enough men, not enough commitment from the men students. They wanted to play but they didn’t want to make the commitment that it took to be, you know, a commitment to excellence. �LG: And was this at a time when athletics were less important to students in general? TB: Well, at Skidmore that’s the case, but not overall. The survey that Louise Wise did, found out that the thing that was lacking in their four year experience — now there’ve been four years of kids going through Skidmore, graduates that she had to survey, and she found out that, number one, the men were interested in a strong intermural program and intercollegiate opportunity. The women were interested in health and fitness. They wanted an exercise center, they wanted space to be able to work out, and they didn’t have either, so that’s when, they gave the information to Joe Palamountain and Joe Palamountain said, “Well we need to build a sports center.” And that was part of it. Now when I was offered the job, I was reluctant to take it because there was no space at all for … for activity. There was a universal gym, fitness gym, in — IN the basketball court in the corner, which was extremely dangerous when you are playing a basketball game or intermurals. And I was reluctant about it and then Eric Weller called me up and said that, you know the rule, policy at Skidmore at the time was you had to, to build something you had to have 50% in hand and 50% in sight to build a building. And Joe Palamountain said they had about 25 or 30%, and when I was balking a little bit Eric Weller called up and said, “Joe Palamountain said to call and tell you that his vision is outstanding.” I said, “What does that mean?” He says, “It means he has 25% committed but his vision, he can see it coming, so we’re going to go with the project.” So, the first year here we spent traveling around and designing the sports center. LG: And what did you look for in the sports building? TB: Uh, activity areas. Wanted to have a pool, gyms, some racquetball spaces, racquetball and squash, because that was a big sport at the … at the liberal arts colleges in the northeast. And, you know, an exercise area where you have, uh, do stretching, flexing, and weight resistance activity. LG: What was the link to polo at the time? �TB: At the time the polo was through a student and he was pushing it hard and we had it in the stables but it was, it was extremely costly. I mean the polo program as a club was costing us as much as the rest of the club sports and varsity programs, and we, we didn’t have a full-time coach, he was part-time, he lived a ways away. LG: Who was that, do you know? TB: Paul Kant. And he was a great guy, did a really wonderful job with the program, but it just became too costly, so we made a choice … uh, I’m not really positive when this was, but it was about the late, the late ’80s, where we evaluated every program, including the programs that we knew were very successful like the women’s tennis and the field hockey and lacrosse, and just decided that, number one, polo was too expensive, and we didn’t have a facility, so we were going to reduce it to a club sport. We had skiing — we only had downhill, we didn’t have cross country, so we couldn’t get into the bigger meets, so we reduced that to a club sport, after making some of the others varsity, at that time, about ’85 or ’86. So, it was a hard, difficult decision and, Dave Long was director of, um, he was in charge of fund raising and many, many a meeting in his office with people very interested in polo, and the bottom line is that nobody was willing to write the check that would support the program. We really needed to endow it. We could not run it year to year on, with it in the budget. LG: Everybody at Skidmore knew you as “the golf pro.” TB: laughs] Yeah. LG: How did that happen? How did that come about? TB: Well, my background in golf was really through research and pedagogy, because I did some research for the National Golf Foundation on equipment and swing analysis, teaching methods, and I would go to their … and lecture, and it was in my resume; my background �was really in baseball. I expected to come and maybe start a baseball program, but two students, Al Antonez and Steve Yale, saw me the first week I was here and explained why it was important that we add a golf team that wasn’t just a club. So, I went to some National Golf Foundation clinics and went to PGA schools in the summers, uh developed, you know, a program that, as you say, I got to be known as the golf coach rather than the Athletic Director, but really the time and energy went into developing all, all the programs. LG: So, in the course of your tenure at Skidmore, there’ve been a lot of changes in the program. What were the highlights for you? What kinds of changes did you see? TB: Well, the building of the sports center was huge. That was just unbelievable. And then the addition that we did in the early ‘90s — mid-90s, that allowed us to expand our intermural program and our weight room, those were huge. Uh, I think the development of some of our faculty and staff was probably the biggest thing. I mean I think of some of the people that we hired, uh, starting … you know Jeff Segrave was already here but he’s a huge asset in everything that we did, in some of our hires, because we had to hire a person that could coach at the varsity level but also teach at the academic level that Skidmore was, had a reputation for. So, it was difficult to find the right people, but we were able to. I mean I think of Paul Arciero right off. I mean his great expertise when he came to us was as a tennis coach. He was an All-American tennis player from Central Connecticut, he had a masters’ degree from University of Vermont in Nutrition and a PhD from Springfield College in Exercise Science, Exercise Physiology. And when you get people like that, it just kind of like, it’s exciting to look back at them and see Paul’s giving lectures here, or writes a paper there, or Denise Smith writes a paper for, with the firefighters, and so on. It was exciting. It’s been exciting to watch them, watch the program grow. And I think that, the new Athletic Director, I think she’s doing a fabulous job in what she’s able, doing. She’s really made some progress. LG: And who is the new one? �TB: Gail Cummings-Danson. She’s wonderful, she’s done a fabulous job. And I stay in touch with her. She calls some, often, and we chat. LG: So, what were the biggest challenges? TB: Budgets. Budgets. I mean, we had a hockey team we had to rent space for because we didn’t have a hockey rink. We had to find those moneys; equipment for hockey, lacrosse, those sports are very, very expensive. LG: And there’s still no hockey rink! TB: No hockey rink still, but at least they have a space out there that — I was on the Rec Commission in town when we built that rink and, uh, we have a designated locker room and ice time, and so on. But, ah, yeah, we do not have a rink, and that, that’s a drawback for the program, but … there are priorities, right? But budget was huge, I mean it was just, I think about it, what we used to pay our personnel. As a result, a lot of our coaches were part-time. And eventually moved them all to full time and now they have full time assistants, but, at the time, just, the budgets were, … like I think of putting them in a van, a 15-passenger van, and driving them up to Middlebury or over to Williams rather than putting them on an upstate bus — those were the decisions that we had to make if we wanted the programs, so, you weighed them, both sides, I mean it’s, it was — those were hard decisions. Today they are in busses, and, you know they’re safe, safer traveling than in a 15-passenger van. SUE BENDER: Tim, could you describe the program that you had when you started and what the full array of programs looked like by the time you left? TB: Sure. Well, when I started, we really, as I mentioned, only had those four teams that really played a varsity schedule, the rest were really club teams. �SB: And the four teams were? TB: Women’s tennis, women’s field hockey, women’s basketball and women’s lacrosse. So, we really didn’t have any of the men’s teams that were playing, quote unquote, a varsity schedule. So, we developed through joining associations, we joined the Mayflower Conference, which is a New England conference, with similar schools in size but not in academic, uh, [clears throat], excuse me. But, um… LG: Who were some of the, what were some of the other schools? TB: Franklin Pierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, umm, Castleton, New England College, those were some. Uh, Roger Williams. But it was, then it was also the NAIA, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, out of Kansas City. We weren’t quite ready to develop a program to compete at the NCAA level yet, but then a few … we were that, in the Mayflower Conference and the NAIA for three or four years, then we joined the ECAC, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, which is about 350 schools from Maine to Virginia, Division 1, 2 and 3. And once we got into that level and were able to compete we joined the NCAA and then we developed the programs through the years; uh, each program has been very competitive at the NCAA level. And winning national championships. Not that, I should put this in right away, national championship is not the goal as I saw it in 1980 when I came. I wanted a very good experience for a student athlete. A lot of schools that we see are really athletic students, right, like Ohio State, Michigan and Florida, and so on. We really wanted to have the students have a real positive experience. And in the mid ’80s I was on a panel. There were three Division 1 Athletic Directors, two Division 2 and one Division 3 — I was the Division 3 Athletic Director. We each had 12 minutes to talk about our programs. And then went down, 1, 2 and 3, and they got to me at the end and I said, “You know, this is wonderful, a lot of money that these programs have, but athletics at Skidmore College is much more impactful on the campus than at Ohio State. We have about 400 of our 2000 students play athletics. Do the percentage. Ohio State has about 400 and they have 60 thousand students, so it’s, - the student body is involved with our program, all of them; they are �participating in one, in one way or another, it seems.” It was, just, the numbers, to me, played a bigger role. And, we tried, uh, we tried competing with some of the, uh, NESCAC schools, like Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Hamilton and so on, and we weren’t, facility wise, we weren’t up with them and budget-wise we weren’t. But we slowly developed into those and we now have them on our schedule. LG: Scholarships have often played a large role in college athletics. TB: Right. LG: What role does it play at Skidmore? TB: None at all. We do not give scholarships. And again, that’s part of my philosophy on the student athlete. They choose Skidmore as a student and then they can come to play the sport that they are recruited for. Now, not to say that we’re not recruiting, heavily recruiting kids, because for the golf team, I would try to recruit two or three kids a year to have about twelve kids on the team, and we would probably send out 400 letters to prospective students that we knew were possible … could get into Skidmore, number one, and then could play at Skidmore. And that’s what all of the coaches are doing. When you don’t have a scholarship to give, which I think is healthier than trying to buy a student out of high school, um … it’s, uh, just takes a lot more energy and time and effort to get them. LG: So, you would visit the schools, when the students would play, and … TB: We would uh, I would pretty much see their schedule, see when they’re playing, um, for the golf we only saw them, really, in the summer, at times, at different tournaments, but the other coaches would go and see them play basketball, hockey, soccer, whatever, during the year, and … you know, try to develop a rapport with them. When I recruited kids and we got down to the end, I always wanted the student to bring their parent or parents with them to the interview. Because I wanted them in my office, sitting, talking, so we had a �three-way conversation going, because I wanted to see the relationship between that student and the parents. I wanted to see the respect and the love going back and forth, because if it wasn’t going back and forth there, it was never going to happen between player and coach. And there were some kids that that was the last time we, the last time that we actively recruited them to come to Skidmore College. And a few times the parent would call and say, “Well why haven’t you contacted my son?” “Well, because we’ve filled the spots with other people” or whatever. I mean you wouldn’t want to really lie, but we had filled the spots. But this student, this child, wasn’t going to fit in to our … our philosophy. LG: Ok, so, you’ve talked about some of the challenges, mostly budget [laughs], … but, what about … the highlights? What stands out in your mind as… TB: I think one of the things for me was when, John … he was in advising, academic advising. He’s passed away, moved to California … SB: Ramsey. TB: John Ramsey came to my office one day and he said, “You know you keep preaching” and this is the way he put it, “to me about their academics, yet you honor the outstanding athlete.” So, we developed an award, with his help, called the Tim Brown ScholarAthlete Award. And we give one to the senior, the outstanding academic athletic senior, every year, that award. That, to me, is just … that’s just rewarding to … to see something like that. And as a retirement present, Jeff Segrave kind of spearheaded raising the funds to support that, that award. So, yeah, I think that’s … that’s one of the big things. The other is just watching the growth of these people, as they come to Skidmore and stay or move on to other, other positions and jobs. LG: Did they stay in touch? TB: Yes. Yeah, they do. �LG: Any outstanding people you’d like to mention? TB: Paul Arciero is one that stands, and Jeff Segrave. I mean, when I came, Jeff was in his second year at Skidmore and I had to do a reappointment and a tenure letter for him, and review, and … he’s always been a very close friend. LG: How about students? Any outstanding students? TB: Uh yes, I mean there’s, um, I think Steve Cornell, Steve Yale, Scott Yale, Al Antonez, Bobby Antonez … I think of these guys. Heather Mitchell, Pam Thompson … there are a lot of great kids that, kind of, I’ve stayed in touch with for a long time; but I’ve been retired 17 years now and it kind of, like, drifts apart. LG: Where does the time go? TB: I don’t know where it went. But I think another highlight was, I’ll never forget, I’ve been nervous a lot of times in my life, but when Robert Spellman asked me to read at his wedding, this piece, and I looked at it and he sent it to me with blown up print so I could read it if I had to, … uh, I’ve never been so scared in my life to get in front of 200 people in that church and read what he wanted me to say at the wedding. It was … but it’s wonderful that I met … his children, have been part of our lives and he has for … ever since. LG: He was a student? TB: Yes, he was a student, yeah. LG: Do you remember what class? TB: He was ’85, I think. ’85 or ’86. He was a business major and a golfer. He also played �basketball. And a great supporter. He’s made a number of very significant donations to the golf program through the years. LG: So, what have most of your students gone on to do? Do you know? TB: Oh boy, all kinds of things. I mean, I’ve had a number of my golfers go into professional golf, obviously. Al Antonez is a club manager down in New Mexico, at Santa Fe, right now. A bunch of pros at clubs. In Philadelphia — Joey Pohle there, and Tommy Gilbert. And it just … you know, a lot have gone into business, as well. They are salesmen. Robert was in finance. Very, very successful in finance. It makes me feel old now, now that he’s retired. And Mike Harran, who was Steve Harran’s son. Steve was the business manager. He did an internship with Stewarts his senior year, wound up getting a job out of Stewarts. Got a … became District Manager, Manager, now he’s 59 years old, and I saw him with Gary Dake the other day and he’s retired! I thought, wow, that’s … makes me really feel old now! But a great, great career he had, and that was just because of the internship that he got through Skidmore College, through Stewarts. Tremendous career. SB: Good. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experience and vision of the role of athletics in a liberal arts institution such as Skidmore, and some of the, um, the trickiness, shall we say, of that relationship … the complexity, is the word I want. TB: Right. Well, I think the role is to give the kids an experience to compete against themselves as well as other students in their class and other colleges and universities. It’s very difficult to … to pull it out of anything I think is part of their everyday life. I mean I like the model I saw …when Bev Becker went to West Point for a year, also, and I like the model they have down there, when I went down, it was, you know, they get up in the morning and they do their … their conditioning workout, they do their academic work, and then they have a two hour spot in the afternoon where there is a varsity team, intramurals, activities of some kind, and it’s just part of your college experience. Uh, whether it happens to be a varsity sport or club sport, just your own personal workout, but �it’s part of your daily routine. And I see that as athletics — it’s just part of what a student does in their daily activity, daily routine at the college. SB: And does that, I’m thinking about the fit between that and some of the developing sense of health and wellness that, that we now have. TB: Correct. Yeah, and exactly. That’s the, I mean, that’s always been the thing that every coach pushes with his or her students, is that they get, keep themselves in shape and work out. Have the facilities to do that. Now we used the Y and other places until we started developing programs here. And now with the new facility going up, what a, what an opportunity for all of the faculty, staff and students at Skidmore College. It’s really going to be state of the art. But the sooner that people get into a regular routine, of exercise, and, whatever it might be, however vigorous it might be or however inactive it might be, it just is important that you be active in your life. LG: What do you think the new facility is going to add? TB: Well first of all the small — I shouldn’t say, the small facility that we have right now there is so much bigger than it was 25, 30 years ago — but what it’s going to allow now is it’s never going to be closed down, where faculty and students in their time, free time in the middle of the day, can’t go work out. Because if there was a class in there, you couldn’t go use the facility. And it’s small so that all of a sudden if there’s a team that goes in there or a lot of people have free time to go in, there’s not a station for you to go to, a treadmill or bike or weight machine and so on; that’s not going to be the case now. It’s going to be available whenever the building’s open, all the time. And it’s … right now I work out at the Y every single day, and the number of retired faculty, I just was, yesterday, talking with Bob [inaudible] for a long time. Retired faculty and current faculty, staff that are up there. I saw Mark Huibregtse last summer, just before I went south. It’s going to just be able to keep them on campus in a nice environment. I think it’s very healthy for a faculty member to be down there working out beside a student of his or hers. There’s a good relationship that can … only good things happen. �LG: One last thing I’d like to ask is what have you been doing since retirement? TB: I’ve been very busy. I saw how … LG: Oh, and what year did you retire? TB: ’06. 2006. 17 years. I saw my dad struggle with retirement. I saw what I interpreted as Joe Palamountain struggling with retirement. I mean his whole life seemed to be Skidmore College, which obviously Skidmore College needed at the time. So, I decided if I was going to retire, I had to have a plan. And so I had a plan. I was going to run the Alumni Golf Tournament for Mike Sposili. I was going to be involved with the Skidmore Hall of Fame. Be involved with the tournament, the FOSA Tournament, Friends of Skidmore Athletics tournament here. LG: Which? TB: That’s a fundraiser that, Mike Sposili is running it out of his office, Gail was running it out of her office for a while, and it’s Friends of Skidmore Athletics. You’d pay a certain amount of money to play in the golf tournament out at Saratoga National, and it raised a nice chunk of change for the Athletic program. LG: Saratoga National is a tough course! TB: Yeah, it really is tough. Then I knew I always wanted to be in Florida so I was down there, I’m a USGA Rules Official, so I went to different tournaments to … as a volunteer for colleges and youth, uh … youth programs. LG: And what did you do as a volunteer? TB: Just out on the golf course traveling around, kind of like a baseball, like an umpire; you �referee, you travel around — if the kids have a problem, they’re not sure how to, um, what the rules situation is, what their choices are with a given circumstances, you guide them through that decision. Then I met a wonderful man, Mallory Privett, who was in charge of the Honda Classic, and he got me involved with the Honda Classic and now I’ve been there sixteen years, fifteen - sixteen years, and I’m chairman of the Honda Classic. And I’m proud to say that we raised 7.2 million dollars last year for hundreds of charities and thousands of kids. The year before we raised 6.2 million, 6.4 million dollars. So, it’s just a ton of money and so many kids benefit from what we are able to do. LG: And the Honda Classic takes place where? TB: The last week of February at the Palm Beach Gardens at PGA National Golf Course champions’ course. And I might add that this is the last year as a sponsor, so they had an awful lot of things available at a very reduced rate, so I was able to pick up a dozen things for the tournament, the Saratoga Players tournament that I’ve talked with Paty … LG: The Chamber Players? TB: The Chamber Players, for, um, with Paty. We’ve got umbrellas and hats and balls and things for, uh, to give away as prizes, which was exciting. SB: Good. LG: Anything else we should add, Susan? SB: Talk to us, is there something you would like to just look back on? TB: I just, in the years, 26 years I was at Skidmore College, obviously you meet a lot of people �professionally, and there were a number of opportunities that arose where you might look to leave, and there were three offers made, and Carol and I, my wife Carol and I, thought and talked and looked at it and we just thought, “How can you leave home?” I mean Skidmore became home. And that was just the place that we’re going to, we’re going to stay here. It’s ah, we still have our house here, although we are eight months in Florida and only four months here, we still maintain a house and look forward to coming back to Saratoga in the summertime. But I, from the first, first week I was here and we had the retreat, Dean Weller, Eric Weller, had a retreat for the chairmen, and I got to know three or four of the other chairs very well, and did things with them, either playing squash or golf or tennis or whatever. LG: Who were they? TB: Peter Baruzzi. LG: In art? TB: In art. Earl Pardon, in art. Jeff Segrave with squash. Tennis with Don Chu , Jeff [Segrave]… [inaubible], Don McCormack — uh we played a lot of squash together, or something. I couldn’t play tennis with him, he was too good, but we could play squash together. And it involved us also with people in town like John Carusone and that whole group, Bill Dake, John Roohan, ah… Jack Carey, a bunch of people in town, and that helped us bring their support in for the cause. Not that it wasn’t already there, but it definitely did help. Ah, but when it just came time to look at another place you thought, you know there’s … it’s not greener. I thought when I came here in 1980, I’d be here three to five years and I’d be moving to a different situation. I looked at, probably my father-in-law helped me most, he said, “If you ever move it’s got to be either Williams, Bowdoin or Dartmouth. Those are the only ones.” And, opportunities came up at one of those but we didn’t pursue it enough, we were going to stay here, but three other opportunities came up and jobs were offered but we decided not to. This was home. It still is. �LG: Well, thank you Tim. TB: Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure. Thank you very much. It’s fun. [Recording stops, and then is re-started] LG: Tim, in conversation … you want to mention something about your relationship with Phyllis Roth? TB: Yes, thank you. I’ll preface that by saying that through my career, teaching high school and as a graduate student having bosses and being at Indiana University, Delaware, and then here, I’ve had many, many bosses through the year … ah, years, but Phyllis was in a class of her own. She just was spectacular! I can’t tell you the number of times and the guidance and the direction that, uh, that the athletic program and physical education program and dance programs benefitted by her, her counsel. I can remember going into the office, and I always got to the office early, 6:30, 7:00 o’clock every morning, and I’d see something on the, an email from Phyllis, so I’d answer it right away and “bing,” it would bing right back. She was on it right away. And never did a day go by that she didn’t get a response to you, no matter how busy she was. And she would call up and say, “listen, we need to discuss this,” she said, “We cannot be disturbed. How about meeting for lunch?” We’d go to lunch and spend a two-hour lunch, iron everything out, we were not disturbed. It was just tremendous. But she always seemed to be able to work out solutions to the most difficult problems. She was just a brilliant, brilliant woman and, uh, I just treasured the times that we had with her, and the counsel that she gave me, our faculty, and as a result the entire department. LG: Any one particular situation that stands out or, in general? TB: Well, I think that the addition to the sports center was one of the biggest ones. I had the �proposal in and we had, looking at some different things, and she looked at it and suggested some avenues to go and how to move with it and as a result, we’re sitting in a faculty meeting and David Eyman was the librarian then … he was making a presentation at staff meeting over at the Surrey and saying that we were going to close down half of the library for X number of months and then move into the new part when that’s done, and have to close it down, so it’s going to be a two, two and a half year project instead of a year project. And I thought to myself, “You know, what would Phyllis do?” Honestly, that went through my mind. I sat up and I said, “Dean Ross, what about the possibility of putting them into the addition that we just built at the sports center and we’ll wait for the intramural gym for another year?” I’m thinking that’s just what she would have done. It was in the best interest of the College, maybe not the Department, but the College, for us to give that space to the library so they could do it in a year. And those are the kinds of things that she just did time after time. LG: And Ruth Copans just talked about that …. TB: Did she? LG: …that, yeah, in her interview. TB: It was amazing how … the counsel that she gave. And then it influences your decisions. You start looking in a broader way of solving problems, of coming up with solutions. LG: Good. Thank you. TB: You’re welcome. Thank you. SB: Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tim Brown Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 36:19 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit January 29, 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Tim Brown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 22, 2023 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Tim Brown joined the Skidmore faculty in 1979 as Athletic Director and Chair of the Physical Education and Dance Department, with a mandate to develop an intramural and intercollegiate athletic program and to attract men to the College which had recently become coed. During his tenure, Brown also helped to develop concepts for the new sports center. In this interview, Brown reflects on the many initiatives he engaged at Skidmore, including coaching golf, enhancing intramural sports, expanding varsity sports teams and leading Skidmore to membership in the ECAC conference. As he expanded the breadth of Skidmore’s health, wellness and athletic programs, Brown focused on developing student-athletes among the college’s students. Since 2006, the Tim Brown Scholar-Athlete Award is given annually to the outstanding senior athlete who has excelled academically. Since his retirement, Brown has been involved in the Friends of Skidmore Athletics, Skidmore Alumni and he runs the Alumni Golf Tournament at Saratoga National. In Florida where he spends the winters, he has been involved with college and youth programs. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Beverly Becker ECAC Friends of Skidmore Athletics Golf Program Intercollegiate Sports Intramural Sports Program Jeff Segrave Joseph Palamountain NCAA Paul Arciero Phyllis Roth Polo Scholarships for Student Athletes Sports Center Construction Tim Brown Scholar-Athlete Award https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/30b19af9f85eb73e5e4335654729bde6.jpg b86c829683627fdcdbeac9e14ecd416e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/6af1b596e0a6c860c4f0fc85fef2a38a.m4a 8cc556c87e8a7395f2184c915bc6183b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f6780462d8781d59e67b7bd6d28f5dac.pdf 1e28a7af457893117c89af7bf7be06a3 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Carolyn Anderson Years at Skidmore: 38 full-time (1981- 2019) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 7, 2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:24 Grew up in Westchester County, NY, near NYC; frequently attended theater in NYC. 00:01:08 Started college at Briarcliff, worked at HB Studio in NYC, took some theater courses at Vanderbilt, then completed degree at Middle Tennessee State U, majoring in English and Theater; graduate degree in Theater at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. 00:02:30 Started teaching at Emma Willard School, became Executive Director of the Albany League of Arts, began teaching one class at Skidmore, then 1981 began teaching full time. 00:04:12 Skidmore theater faculty at that time: Alan Brody, David Rosengarten, Rebecca & Dale Bendalsom, Larry Opitz, plus Joan Lane was an assistant, did some management training. 00:05:33 Anderson taught Voice and Speech, Acting, and American Theater History. 00:06:23 Also taught seminars for plays, exploring the intellectual/academic aspects of the texts. 00:07:58 Was Chair during planning/building of new theater; both joyful and challenging. 00:08:41 Had shared a theater with Dance Department and office space in multiple locations. 00:09:50 Worked with Opitz to create an intimate theater design for the new theater that brought the student actors closer to audience; at this age their vocal instrument is still developing. 00:10:43 State of the art equipment: a joy to prepare students, a challenge because cost. 00:11:05 Must continually update equipment to prepare students for professional theater. 00:12:00 Supportive administration. Theaters are complex structures so they cost a lot on their own, in addition to requiring frequent equipment upgrades. 00:13:05 I learned applied components of theater during graduate & undergraduate school. 00:13:25 Needed to teach applied; plus wanted to provide the seminars to teach the intellectual/thinking part. 00:13:41 Lynne Gelber taught a 4-1-4 course with Alan and saw that combination in one class. 00:14:16 “To me … the most exciting part of starting a play is doing the research…” 00:14:45 Worked with many Skidmore presidents and interims. 00:15:26 Felt tremendous support from administration; blessed to have a theater department in a college that values the arts. 00:15:52 Had to convince people: “If we didn’t have this equipment … no point in doing it.” 00:16:15 Department provided Karl Broekhuizen with arguments for why more funding was needed, and he convinced the board. Very generous donors, including Jean Bernhard Buttner. 00:16:44 Also, Alan Brody made difficult decision to sell NYC property (nursing building). �00:17:49 Community relationships — Skidmore is a vibrant place because of its arts, music, theater, dance, and lectures, and people from surrounding communities come to campus for that. 00:18:20 Skidmore’s events often reviewed in local media - indicates importance to community. 00:19:12 College theater programs can often offer works that local groups can’t; eg. “big plays.” 00:20:42 Skidmore students post graduation: many well known in theater, plus in other fields. 00:22:21 Has long been a Board member with Capital Repertory Theatre. 00:22:57 Retired 2019. Still working with Capital Rep, which is moving to new space; also writing (drawing from teaching experience to share ideas); birdwatching and gardening. 00:24:38 A challenge: helping people know that theater is more than an applied art. It can provide skills relevant to a variety of fields, including research skills, quick thinking, etc. 00:25:43 As chair, a joy: making it possible to hire guest artists, eg. Anne Bogart and Will Bond. 00:27:00 University Without Walls was a valuable resource to people already working in the arts; provided them with a chance to earn degree. Sad to see it go. 00:28:25 Curriculum reconfiguration challenge solved by varying the number of production credits that would be required - provided a range of credits for students to decide. 00:29:55 Skidmore governance structure important “because we have a say in how things go.” 00:30:15 An honor to be on the Committee on Academic Appointments and Tenure — entrusted with being both thorough and fair; also, learning about colleagues work “made me feel much closer to the College.” 00:30:55 Also served on Committee on Academic Rights and Freedoms, Faculty Council, plus ad hoc hiring committees and task forces; eg. one examined the needs of the Music Department this task force work led to construction of the Zankel. 00:32:56 Also worked with the Women’s Studies group (eg. Mary Stange and Kate Berheide); “I always tried to teach something in our curriculum that would support that program, Women in the American Theater … Women Actors Throughout History … .” 00:33:48 Physical changes on campus. Had worried that growth would destroy the beauty, but it didn’t; still a beautiful campus. 00:34:49 Eg. new athletic center, new science building, library renovations, Tisch, Zankel. 00:35:35 Students: now more people of color, and “people are freer to be who they want to be.” 00:36:24 Increase in men: Still more women in theater program — “that always is the case in theater, I think, but … there certainly have been more men, and that’s really helped.” 00:37:29 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/eb0fd5515e0a1fb72837e61b210ea6b1.pdf 90b92ac08fc6f586fdebfd94918d5d10 PDF Text Text Interview with Carolyn Anderson by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, November 7, 2022. LYNNE GELBER: It’s November 7th, 2022, and this is Lynne Gelber with Carolyn Anderson and Sue Bender doing the interview. And, it’s really nice to have you, Carolyn. Why don’t you start by telling us a little about where you grew up? CAROLYN ANDERSON: Well, I grew up in Westchester County, New York, right … very close to New York City, Chappaqua, Yorktown Heights. Right on, near, the now Metro North. So, I was able to get into the city quite a bit and see a lot of theater growing up. Which was, I think, one of the reasons that I decided to go into this world of theater. LG: What were your favorite things that you saw? CA: Oh, I think the first thing that I saw was when I was, I think it was in the fifth or sixth grade, a production of Threepenny Opera. LG: Oh! And where did you go to get your training? CA: Uh, well, I started my college career at Briarcliff College in Briarcliff Manor, New York. And then I did some work at HB Studio in New York City, on Bank Street. It is still there, I believe. Then I was at Middle Tennessee State University. Did some courses at Vanderbilt in Theatre, too, but ultimately finished at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. And then I went to graduate school at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where I majored in Theater. LG: What took you down to the South? CA: Oh [laughs]. Well, that’s a bit of a personal question, but it’s ok, I’ll answer it anyway. I was attracted to someone who lived in the North and I followed him all the way to Tennessee, where he was in school. And that actually turned out not to be a good idea [laughs]. But the school was fine because I was able to major in English and I studied with a lovely poet named Virginia Peck, and so majored in English and Theater there. LG: And, what brought you to Skidmore, and when? CA: Oh, ok, sure. I started my teaching career at Emma Willard School in Troy. And, a former chair of the Theater Department, Alan Brody, his daughter Elise was a student at Emma Willard. And he would come down to see the plays and he talked to me after, one time, and he said, “Gee,” he said, “You know, if you ever decide you want to teach college students, I’d love to have you.” So, I thought about that but I stayed at Emma Willard for a while. And then I ended up actually working as the Executive Director for a regional arts council called the Albany League of Arts. And Alan convinced me that I should start teaching at Skidmore. “One class only,” he said, “Just one class!” [laughs] So it was a beginning acting class. And then he said, “You know, maybe your Board will allow you �to teach a little more.” And I said, “I don’t think so.” I said, “I know they will not. It’s not fair to them; I can’t do that.” So, he … LG: This was the Emma Willard Board or the? CA: No, pardon me, the Arts Council board. The Arts Council board. And so, it ultimately turned out that after a couple of years I left the Arts Council and started to teach full time at Skidmore, around 1981. I started out as a guest artist and then moved to a tenure track line a couple years after that. LG: And who else was in the department at the time? CA: Well, Alan Brody was, of course. And David Rosengarten was there. And two designers … Becky and, you know, I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember … this is what happens [laughs] when you get to be my age, right? You forget names … Bendalsom! Rebecca and Dale Bendalsom! Got it! Yeah. And I’m trying to think it through, was anybody else? Yes, we had a secretary … she was really an assistant in the department who did a lot of the management training. Her name was Joan Lane, who passed away recently. Umm, I’m trying to think … other? I think we were it. I think we were it. Oh, and Larry Opitz, of course, as a designer! And actually, I think when I first came on, he may have been on sabbatical … I don’t recall, but yes, Larry Opitz, of course! And he was primarily a designer at the time, and also designed for, at that time, the José Limón Dance Company, and had quite a career with them. LG: I’m just curious what courses you taught and what was the most fun? CA: Ah, at that time I taught Voice and Speech, and I taught Acting, and I taught American Theater History. The most fun was the, for me, the American Theater History course because the students really had no idea that the theater HAD a history, and going back to the colonial era. So, it was always sort of a lot of “ah-ha” moments from them. But I enjoyed that tremendously. I liked the Acting class too. That was lovely to teach. LG: What was the most challenging? CA: Of the classes or …? LG: Well, let’s start with the classes and then move out from there. CA: (laughs) Ok. The most challenging courses during this time, certainly it would be the history course, but also, we, and this was at Alan’s design, we also created seminars for all of the plays that we did. And this is one of the things that I thought was just wonderful about Skidmore, because it allowed us, as we are known today and certainly yesterday, as an applied art, but this gave us a chance to broaden the academic discourse within our program and throughout the college, so that people could see that theater does have a tremendous intellectual component. And so, I really valued that and tried throughout my �tenure as Department Chair, and I know this is true of Larry, too, to always engage the students intellectually in the material that surrounds the actual play text. So, that, to me, was the most fun and challenging also because you had to engage people from other departments who maybe would wonder, “Why should I come to the theater to speak about this?” But I think after a while people really began to understand what our goals were with this, trying to really tie in to the liberal arts more thoroughly. LG: When did you become chair? CA: I became chair after Alan … Alan went on sabbatical, I took over, and then he left, he went to another school, to Texas? Barnard, I think? LG: MIT. CA: Oh, MIT. But I think he did a stop at Barnard, too, along the way, because he did do performances in the Miller theater there. So it was during the time that we were building our, going to build, our new theater, so it was very joyful, very challenging. But it was, I would say, in the ’85, ’86, somewhere in there when we were building the theater. We moved into it, I think, in the mid to late ’80s. LG: And where had you been before that? CA: We shared the theater that is now the dance theater. We shared that space with the Dance Department. With Isabelle Williams, you may recall Isabelle Williams? Yeah, we shared with the Dance Department and we would share the lighting equipment with them, the stage management. All of that was a shared endeavor. And our offices were, for a time, in mobile homes that were set up near the dance theater. And it was not always pleasant to come in and find mice in your [laughs] office and oh …yes. LG: Well, that’s one of the challenges, isn’t it? CA: Yes, that was a big challenge, the little mice. But then when the Green.., the, now-known as the Greenberg Child Center, you know, when they moved in, we were in that office space for a while, too, then we moved out to the new theater. LG: Did you have a role in how the theater was being constructed, and…? CA: Yes, thank you for asking that question. And someone who could give you much more detail on that is Larry Opitz, but the two of us worked on that tirelessly to create a theater that was … that was intimate so that our students wouldn’t have to fight to get their voices to the last row, because at this age they are still developing their vocal instrument, and so we wanted a theater that felt intimate and that would bring the actor closer to the audience. And that’s why we had that thrust theater, it’s a thrust, proscenium thrust theater, is what it is. So, it was full of joy, getting all these new lighting instruments and things. Some of the instruments we used were from the old theater. Also getting a state of the art — at that time, state of the art — dimmer boards and electrics. It was really quite �wonderful. So, we were able to really train our students on some of the best equipment. And now, of course, that’s all changed! [laughs] None of that exists anymore! We can’t even, I’m sure that they couldn’t even donate some of that stuff because now we have incredible equipment in that theater- lighting instruments that can be rejiggered through computers. You don’t have to get up on big tall ladders to move them, unless the designer wants many more lights than you have. So, there’s just a lot of updating that has to happen in a theater, and that’s very expensive. And that’s one of the challenges, is meeting the budget requirements of the College, which you want to do, you want to stay within that framework. But if you want your program to move along with what’s going on in the profession, you have to find ways to sacrifice some things to make sure that your design program is moving along, that the students are able to go out into the professional world after knowing, learning, on the newest equipment. LG: What kind of support did you get from the administration? CA: A lot. We were, I think we were very, very lucky. Karl Broekhuizen, who was the Business Manager, Treasurer, I think that’s his title, at the time — he was great, but he was really tough on us. — He said, “This building was supposed to cost three point something million” and … we got a gift of a million and the other two million were raised, but it ended up costing close to eight million. And, if you understand how theaters are built, [laughs] they cost a lot of money. And I was told, and I could be wrong, but this one contractor told me the most expensive buildings to build are hospitals, prisons and theaters. And, you know, it’s because you have to keep updating the equipment, but also there’s just so much that goes into the construction of a theater. The scene house, the … you know, all that stuff. LG: Where did you learn all of those components? CA: Um, by … a lot of that in graduate school, and in undergraduate school. I mean, that’s really part of the training, you know, and that’s the applied part of the art. You have to know about this. But again, one of the things that I know Alan wanted to do, and certainly Larry and I carried through with, was really bringing the intellectual life to the program — making sure it was there so that the students realized that it wasn’t just doing, it had a lot of thinking, it had to do with a lot of thinking, too. LG: Yeah, I did a 4-1-4 with Alan. CA: Oh, yes, yes! LG: We were reading … now I don’t remember what French play it was, but in the morning — because we would meet with them all day long — in the morning we would study this as a piece of literature; in the afternoon the students got up out of their seats and we ended up doing a scene from that …which we opened to the rest of the community. CA: Right, that’s lovely. �LG: That’s the sort of thing that your department was doing. CA: Right, right. I loved it. It was great. I mean that, to me, is …you know, as a theater director I have to say that the most exciting part of starting a play is doing the research. Doing the deep dive into the author or authors, the, you know, the thematic content, as well as understanding the structure of how the play is … how it’s built. LG: So, who was the president at the time? CA: There was Joe Palamountain, and David Marcell — When Joe was sick, he stepped in to help out. And then after that was … David Porter. LG: Was Phyllis there for a year, also? Interim year? CA: Phyllis was there too. She did an interim at one point, too. And so did Susan Kress, when I was there, so there were a lot of, yeah. Now, Phyllis … LG: Roth. CA: Yeah, Phyllis Roth, right. Phyllis Roth. That’s right, thank you. [laughs] I do remember. She was a good friend to all of us. Definitely so. But I felt that — going back to your point, though — I felt a tremendous amount of support from the administration and I feel, and I know my colleagues do, past and present, probably, that we are blessed to have a theater department in a college that values the arts. So, yeah. LG: The reason I ask is because you had mentioned how much above budget, the original budget, and so obviously that … CA: Well, that was the challenge, I mean that was the real challenge, because we had to convince people that if we didn’t have this equipment, I mean there’s no point in doing it because of what the students need to learn while they’re here. LG: Who did you have to convince, besides Karl? CA: Well, Karl. Well, he had to convince the board, you know. But we gave him some arguments and then they ultimately went ahead with it. And, you know, Jean Buttner Bernhard … was… Bernhard Buttner, excuse me, was wonderful, and you know, very … that whole family, Arnold, Van and all, they were very generous to us, and I think they gave another gift, too. So, we ultimately came up with it. And also, part of this, going back to Alan Brody again, one of the ways that we started the fund for the theater was to sell the nursing building in New York City, and that provided a big leap in funds. But, you know, it was a sacrifice. You know the College has to make those choices. And, I think they made a good choice, frankly. LG: So, when did you retire? �CA: In 2019. 2019. Yeah, it seems like … yesterday, actually! It really does. But, you know I just have been so grateful to have been a part of this Skidmore community, and what you’re doing, you know, really helps us to stay connected with it, which is important. I think that, you know, going back to the theater and to the rest of the College since I was there, our relationship with the town, you know through the arts programs, music and theater and dance, and just all the lectures, the public lectures. I mean this is a vibrant place, just vibrant, and I think … I love the relationship with the community. And the greater Capital Region, too! I mean people come to the Tang Museum. When I was at Skidmore, I don’t know if this is still the case, they reviewed our plays as though, you know, we’re just part of another theater. LG: Who’s the they? CA: Thank you, the Times Union, the Saratogian. The Knick News, which used to be. But they all reviewed our plays and reviewed the art shows. And so, I think we felt like we were all a part of something bigger and important — that we’re bringing Brecht to the community! We’re bringing Chekhov, we’re bringing Beckett, you know, all these playwrights. Shakespeare. So that, you know, we felt like we were making a contribution. SUE BENDER: Carolyn, might you describe some of the opportunities of being a director in a college program? CA: Oh sure! Yeah. Well, one of the opportunities, one of the most important things is that when one’s directing in college, in a college environment, you can direct the big plays. You can direct the plays of Chekhov; you can direct the plays of Shakespeare. Regional theaters can’t always do this, particularly if they have to have so many equity actors in their show for that particular time. They can bring in local actors that are non-equity, but they can’t always bring in the full equity company to do a big play. So, you know throughout my career I was really able to do the work of a lot of important artists. Including Sarah Ruhl — the play that they’re doing right now is Eurydice, which I’ve done before here. And, also, Passion Play, which had a huge cast! So, I feel really lucky that we’ve been able to do that work. LG: And the students, too, would be given enormous challenges and opportunities. CA: That’s well said. Absolutely enormous challenges, to … well first of all, to understand these works, but then to do them. It’s really quite an honor, indeed. LG: Did you have any role to play in the students, after they graduated, in where they went and what opportunities they had? CA: Yes. You know, this is interesting, I’m really glad you asked that question because I was at Skidmore the other night at a rehearsal, helping a colleague … LG: For Eurydice? �CA: Yeah, you know, just watching, helping out a colleague, and in that room were three people who were former students but they were there as employees! So that’s great. That made me feel so good! The other thing, too, is that you can turn on television, go to the movies, and see some of our actors in, you know, important roles. In Mrs. Maisel, The Wonderful Mrs. Maisel, Mike Zegen is in that! He was a student of ours. Zazie Beetz, she was a wonderful student. She was in a couple of big movies, The Joker, and she’s done some series. And, Ian Kahn did a television series called The Turn; he played George Washington. So there … and Jon Bernthal’s been in a lot of films. So, I feel like … and there are a lot of people who do design work too that are, that have their designs done all over the country. And people are in public relations in the theater. And, they are also lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and some of them are running for public office, you know, so they’re citizens, good citizens, and that’s what we want mostly. LG: With good roles to play. CA: With good roles to play! [laughs] Well said. LG: Am I correct in remembering that you also have played a role in the theater in the Capital district? CA: Yes. I am one of the early board members of Capital Repertory Theatre. I’m still on the board. I’m in charge of their Nominating Committee, chair of their Nominating Committee and I’m on their Education Committee. I feel very proud to be doing that. It’s a lot of work, you know, boards are hard workers. But I enjoy it and it keeps me … it keeps me going. LG: When did you retire? In two thousand …? CA: Nineteen. LG: Ok. And what have you been doing since then? CA: Well, working at Capital, doing a lot with Capital Rep, because we just, you know we’re in the throes of moving into a new space, so that has taken a lot of time in terms of, you know, fund raising, getting new board members, spreading the word, that kind of thing. But also, I have been going back through several directing notebooks that I have — for every play that I direct I keep a notebook about the various rehearsals and the process and all that — and pulling out various ideas that I think may help others along the way, so I’ve been trying to write something about that. And it takes time to go through everything, and I realize, not everything is worth saving [laughs]. So … yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I like to do bird … I love birdwatching, particularly waterfowl. I love hiking. And doing a lot of gardening. LG: Are you part of a group that goes out birding? CA: No, I’m not, but I know of groups. I mean, I’m a member of a couple of groups but I don’t, �I haven’t gone out with them. LG: And gardening. CA: And gardening, yes! Yes, I love gardening. Vegetables and all that. So, yeah! LG: Well good. I’m trying to think of what we haven’t covered, Carolyn. SB: [inaudible/whisper]. LG: Yeah, I was getting to the challenges. Um, what are the, what do you think, in the larger sense, what were your greatest challenges? CA: Well, I, and I think I mentioned this earlier, I think, to keep on Alan Brody’s path, that theater is an applied art, but it is more. It can provide skills to students that are useful in a variety of fields. So, that was a huge challenge. Because I would have parents in my office saying, “why should they major in theater?” You know? And you say, “Well, you know, research skills, being able to think fast on your feet…” you know just so many different things. So, I think that is always a challenge for people in the arts, in this day and age particularly, with the economy the way it is. I think the other thing, too, that certainly keeping the budget going in tight, when the cost of plywood goes up for scenic design, the cost of materials goes up, but your budget doesn’t change, so that means you may not be able to have a guest artist. I can say one of the joys, and we feel very proud about this, is that when I was chair — I rotated off and on, chair with other people in the department, but — I was very happy to help bring Anne Bogart here, who’s an acclaimed contemporary director. She’s world renowned, and so we had her here every summer, and that to me was a tremendous joy because we were also able to hire one of her company members as a teacher, Will Bond, and that kind of training is, makes a huge difference in how students approach their physicality and their vocal work. So. LG: Did the students participate in the summer program with Anne Bogart? CA: They were, they could definitely do that. Some of them did. Some of them chose to do that, yes, definitely. Another challenge, a couple of things … one challenge that I feel that, and I don’t know how I still feel about this except I feel bad about it, and that is University Without Walls. During my time it really gave so many people in the theater a chance to do more, people who didn’t have a degree. And, you know, they got their degrees from University Without Walls, working with us, many of us as advisors. And then when the College had to close that program I certainly understood why, you know, I really understood it, but I felt so, I felt very sad about it. LG: Ok. Why don’t you say why, in your opinion, the College closed that program. CA: Well from my opinion it was that they couldn’t afford to keep it, is what I gather was the �main reason. I don’t know of any other reason but that. Maybe they felt, too, that it didn’t quite work with the mission at hand, was part of it also, but I know it was a very valuable resource for people in the arts. Um, the other challenge that I had, which I think we ultimately met but was very difficult for us to get our heads around, was the whole changing of the curriculum, when we were asked to think about reconfiguration and all that. But you know I think we found a way to solve it, but it was hard. It was hard during that era … with my colleagues particularly, just kicked and screamed along the way, but we found a way to solve it for us and I think it works. LG: How did you reconfigure? CA: Well, what we did was we looked at our production work and we changed our production requirement credits so that it could be optional between one and four credits, because the students, at one point in rehearsal, which is the last couple of weeks, are all there all the time, so for counting time, I thought, well, let’s just do that and they could pick. So, if one credit suited them for their coursework fine, or if four did, that was fine. So, it ultimately worked out, but it was a challenge. So that was another one. LG: Carolyn, you did a lot of work outside of your department. Do you want to talk about that? The committees? CA: Sure. Yeah, sure. I think the governance structure is very important to liberal arts colleges because we have a say in how things go. I served on the Committee on Academic Appointments and Tenure for two terms, two full terms, and a term that was a replacement term, so I got to really know a lot of the faculty members and their work. And to me, it’s a real honor to be on that Committee because you are entrusted with being as fair as you can be and as thorough as you can be with the materials provided. I learned so much about what my colleagues were doing and it made me feel much closer to the College. I really valued that work. I was also on the Committee on Academic Rights and Freedom, for a while. And on a committee called, which was called Faculty Council at one point, and I think we were in charge of the elections! [laughs] That was early on. I think Kate Berheide was on that too! Yeah, forgot about that just until you mentioned it. Oh, and then there would be these committees that would pop up, like ad hoc committees for, you know, I was on the search committee for the president, that hired Phil Glotzbach. I was on search committees for the development Vice President, when we hired Chris Hoek. And also Tad Kuroda and I were on a committee, a task force, to examine the needs of the Music Department when they were in Filene and to see if there was a way that that place could be reconfigured or should we build a new music building. And Tad and I, after several weeks and months of dealing with this, decided that they just had to have a new music building, so he wrote up that report and so I was very pleased to be able to help my colleagues in Music. LG: What was Tad’s role at that time? �CA: He was an Associate Dean of the College. Yup. SB: So that was the foundation for Zankel? CA: That was the foundation for Zankel, that task force. And I think at the time Chuck Joseph may have been in the administration as well … or maybe not yet. LG: He was chair of the Music Department. CA: He was chair of the Music Department, yes, that’s right. Because I know Tony Holland. We interviewed him and he took us around to see the cramped space of the Filene building. Yeah, um … yeah, and I, you know I also cherished the work that I did with Mary Stange and Kate Berheide of the Women’s Studies, the Women’s Studies group, and I always tried to teach something in our curriculum that would support that program. Women in the American Theater, you know, Women Actors Throughout History, all that stuff. So, yeah, and Kate Berheide and Mary Stange and then Catherine Golden … so, it was, that was really a wonderful time of growth. And Penny Jolly was very involved with that as well. But, yeah. Yeah, huh. A lot [laughs]. LG: Anything else we haven’t covered that you would like to mention? CA: Um, yeah, yes. I don’t want to take all of your time but I, one of the things that I really have enjoyed over the years was watching the physical changes on the campus. When I first [laughs] this is going to sound really snotty, but at first, you know, coming to work in the morning, into the woods, years and years ago, was just so beautiful! Because I love woods. But then, then we had this big, the campus plan. The big plans for the campus. And after a while, you know, I thought, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen to these woods?” You know, “this is just so beautiful and I hate this, I hate this,” and my gosh! Over the years to see how it has, you know, flourished and grown, with the pond and all the trees around it that they protect and take care of, and, you know I really enjoy that, and, you know I was really wrong about that! [laughs] It’s so beautiful to drive on the campus! But … so that would be one thing. SB: What things did you see added to the campus during your time here? CA: Um, well, the theater, of course. The gym, the new athletic center. The science … which was partially, I mean it’s done now, but it was being started, it was starting. Um, the renovation of the library. And also, Tisch was being built, too. Yes, so quite a few of them. And Zankel, of course. Yeah, so I’ve really seen this campus grow, and I just, the physical changes are really quite wonderful. And some of the architecture is really lovely too, yeah. LG: What about the changes in the student body? CA: Well that I am very, you know, when … I’m glad to see that we’re, we have more people of �color, I’m glad to see that we have people who are not … they feel comfortable in being on campus because of how they define themselves individually. That’s changed. You know all of this has changed since I’ve been here. People are freer to be who they want to be and I think the College is really providing, giving a warm atmosphere to have them. LG: Umm, the growing number of men on the campus, since you arrived. What kinds of changes did that bring about in the theater? CA: Well, it, it actually did bring a great change for us, for a certain time. But then, you know, things sort of … we’re getting more and more women still, and that always is the case in theater, I think, but um, yeah, there certainly have been more men, and that’s really helped. [laughs] LG: Um, are there any other issues that we should bring up that we haven’t touched on? CA: Mm-mnn. LG: Well, thank you. This has been enlightening and very enjoyable. CA: Well, thank you for inviting me. I’ve enjoyed talking about this a great deal. Yeah, thank you for doing this project! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 10, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Carolyn Anderson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 7, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Carolyn Anderson came to Skidmore in 1981 after teaching at Emma Willard and working with arts and theater groups in the Capital Region. She taught courses in theater history and acting and served as department chair. A central focus of her teaching was to develop students’ appreciation of theater as a literary art. She also played a role in the building design of the Bernhard Theater. Carolyn was active in the Women’s Studies group until her retirement in 2019. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Alan Brody Albany League of Arts Anne Bogart Arthur Zankel Bernhard Theater CAFR Capitol Repertory Theater CAPTS David Porter Isabelle Williams Karl Broekhuizen Larry Opitz Phillip Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Tad Kuroda Theater Department UWW Will Bond Women's Studies https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4235aaa6db9d445aa61f30ab98654aae.jpg 6aedee1519c644decd22cf6882969dc0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/0e4cdb576af01e0c0864ce1d13658e67.m4a 36d93e323ff993c82dfdbaf9c7f78869 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cbdf694bc7f96557c50f9710be829855.pdf b691ac4f3468979f7e8c11e67a131496 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Tom Denny Years at Skidmore: 1982-2010 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: May 4, 2023 00:00:00 Header 00:00:33 Grew up in Pittsburgh suburb, earned degree in philosophy from Haverford, taught English and history at The Harley School, then decided to return to college to study music. 00:01:10 Did undergraduate work in music education, earned PhD at Eastman School of Music. 00:01:30 Always had played piano and had interest in music, but Haverford didn’t have much music and it wasn’t focus at that point. “It took me a few years to find it … I’m happy that I did.” 00:02:20 Interviewed at several places, including Skidmore. Began at Skidmore fall 1982. 00:03:30 At that time, music department classes and concerts were in Filene Music Hall. 00:04:05 Taught medieval section of music history sequence; History of Jazz, where “I was one step ahead of the students;” some music theory; plus courses on various composers. 00:05:00 Zankel opened two semesters before Denny retired. Zankel had many superior facilities. “It was one of the great privileges of my life to be chair of the department for [the years] that led to the opening of the Zankel and then to shepherd our move through there.” 00:06:00 Original Zankel design was planned before Denny was chair, but construction delayed because of the dot-com crisis. “When we actually got the money to move forward, … I had a lot of responsibility for details that made things work.” 00:06:40 Denny advocated for details such as compartmentalized storage, a moving pit, etc. 00:07:40 Chaired music department for a total of 12 years at Skidmore. Music department is large (35-40 staff people with various statuses), which created some complexity/challenges. 00:08:40 Chair responsibilities ranged from hiring people to rearranging stage/pushing pianos. 00:09:40 In fall of senior year, music majors who wanted to graduate with honors proposed projects or auditioned for an opportunity for a final recital; faculty determined who was eligible. 00:10:38 Filene Scholars began September 1982, “just as I arrived … [I] probably perceived the whole trajectory of the department in terms of the Filene program and everything it led to.” 00:11:10 Huge impact, including being the first merit scholarships, “which the College has later on embraced in other areas… .” Filene program brought very talented performers to campus, which helped provide a critical mass for orchestra, chamber ensembles, etc. They also were bright students — a high percentage received Periclean award and/or were Phi Beta Kappa. 00:12:35 “It raised the expectations and the profile and the capacity of the department because [in addition to scholarships], also provided money to bring in professional artists to work with the students.” A contributing factor to the increase in numbers of faculty, students, and majors. 00:13:51 In 1970s Skidmore had 6-8 concerts per semester; “now they have 35 concerts, and it’s the same thing with programming all over campus, that everything is much more.” �00:14:29 The profile of the performers invited to campus was also elevated. 00:15:22 Some came for Filene Gala, others for Filene Residency. Residencies visited several times during academic year to work with students, plus did a final performance. 00:15:58 Funding for group performances: some from Filene, some from Jean Sterne, etc. 00:16:26 Performance groups included Robert Mann (of Juilliard) with his son, and Continuum, a Juilliard ensemble that performed interesting 20th century programs. 00:17:10 Also Young Concert Artists, a “talent agency, that had this incredible track record of identifying the rising stars.” 00:18:00 Fondest teaching memories: teaching new courses; also, some great research collaborations with students. 00:18:30 Opening night at Zankel. “That was just such a fulfillment of so many things.” 00:19:05 Carnegie Hall group performed at Zankel opening night; comes back every year. 00:20:23 When Zankel opened, Phil Glotzbach was Skidmore president. When the money came for Zankel, David Porter was Skidmore president. 00:20:50 “It was fun to have [David Porter] give lectures and perform in Filene or elsewhere.” 00:21:24 Greatest challenge at Skidmore “…was mostly when I was chair, … managing both personnel and managing …the limited facilities that we had in Filene.” Moving into Zankel was also a challenge, but “an exciting, totally great challenge.” 00:21:50 Served on a lot of committees: CEPP, FPPC, Curriculum Committee, some task forces. 00:22:35 Two governance roles with most impact: 1) chairing an ad hoc committee that worked with Curriculum Committee to consider the science requirement. 00:24:20 2) Being part of a task force to review faculty statuses; led to improved artist-inresidence situation. “And there was nobody else on that task force who had particular knowledge of what those people did and how under-compensated they were, so that was sort of my niche.” 00:27:15 Changes during time at Skidmore: expanded curriculum — more courses overall; more non-Western music, more jazz, more electronic music and music technology. 00:29:16 Comic example of Zankel’s importance: Filene not soundproofed, so before Zankel, “the College tried a variety of solutions to where the drum instruction should take place.” 00:30:17 Once drumming was in Palamountain, underneath Biology. “Bernie Possidente does research on the circadian rhythms of mice, and their sleep was being disrupted … so we were thrown out of there mid-semester.” Zankel has a soundproofed space. 00:31:27 Activities since retiring in December 2010 have included writing program notes for some Lincoln Center events and giving pre-concert talks for alumni in the summer. 00:32:03 Also headed up Sustainable Saratoga’s Urban Forestry and Treetoga programs for years, and is still involved. That led to getting appointed to the City’s Comprehensive Plan Update Committee, which in turn led to volunteering with the Open Space Advisory Committee. 00:33:12 Recently co-founded small non-profit to re-green a small property in Saratoga Springs. �00:34:14 Soon will give two community talks related to Opera Saratoga’s festival. “I’m excited about it. As satisfying as all the tree and other stuff … it’s really nice to be … digging into some music again.” 00:35:04 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d5b6f5853db3798249fac7e6608d3591.pdf 8549ee1ea2d007b071a85afb8f63ce3e PDF Text Text Interview with Tom Denny by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, May 4, 2023. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. We’re in Saratoga Springs, and I’m with Sue Bender, who is helping with this interview, and Tom Denny, who gladly agreed to come and talk to us, for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. Tom, why don’t we start by having you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and, um, what your preparation for your job here at Skidmore was. TOM DENNY: Okay. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, had a Pittsburgh mailing address but was technically in the suburbs, and lived there my whole life until I went off to Haverford. And then I had a bit of a circuitous route to get to be a music professor because I did an undergraduate degree in philosophy, very little music study, and I went out and did a few things that people did in the early ’70s and ended up teaching for a couple of years at a private school — English and History — and then … LG: Which school was this? TD: This was at The Harley School in Rochester, New York. And then went, decided to leave hat and go back to school. And I had to do a couple of years of undergraduate music education before I could apply to grad schools. And did my graduate work at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, and, uh, Skidmore was the only real job I ever had. LG: So, what made you change your mind and go into music? TD: Well, I had always been, you know, played piano and been interested in music, but ended up at Haverford. It didn’t have too much of a music department and it wasn’t, um, … LG: No! We had a lot of people who would come over from Haverford to Bryn Mawr for music… TD: Uh huh. Anyway, I um, I just, it wasn’t where I was at that point in my life and it took me a few years to find it. So, I’m happy that I did. I thought for a while that I might be, you know, a pianist, but that was a delusion in that highly competitive, rarified world, and I found musicology was much more suited to my skill set and interests. LG: Um, so how did you get to Skidmore? TD: They hired me! I came out of the PhD at Eastman and interviewed, actually at a number of places, and Skidmore, which was probably the best of the places I interviewed, was also the only one that offered me a job [laughs]. So. LG: Who interviewed you? TD: Isabelle Williams, George Green, Ruth Lakeway, Ed Hausman. I’m not sure there was �anybody else because they hired three people the year I came. They hired Tony Holland and they hired Janet Sullivan, who was a choral director and did some classroom teaching, and so it was a small department of full-time people and they were having three hires, so I think it might have just been those four. LG: Yeah. TD: That was, um, 1982. LG: Okay. Um, do you know why there was this, uh, growth in the number of people that they were hiring? TD: It wasn’t really growth; they were all replacements, I believe. LG: Oh. TD: Yeah. Um, I really don’t remember, I mean I didn’t dig too deeply into why people had left, but I think it was a mixture of reasons, it wasn’t all either bad or good, but … LG: Where were most of your classes at the time? TD: They were all in Filene. Yeah. Filene Music Hall. LG: And that’s where all the concerts were, and …? TD: Yeah, it’s where everything was, a 240-seat lecture hall that they pretended was a concert hall. [laughs] It was great, my daughters still can conjure up the fragrance of Filene Recital Hall from their childhood years. LG: laughs]. Um, so, what courses were you teaching then? TD: I was teaching mostly just basic music history. Um, at that point we still had a four semester sequence that went from medieval through Renaissance through Baroque through Classical to Romantic and Twentieth Century, and I initially was teaching the medieval class. Isabelle Williams said, when I got there, “You’ll teach History of Jazz, won’t you?” And what’s an untenured person going to say, even though they don’t know anything about jazz, but “Of course, I’d love to.” So, I was one step ahead of the students. LG: Uh huh. TD: Um, at some points early on I taught a little bit of theory, but it was mostly — and I would teach, you know, lower-level courses that might be in what we had, The Great Composers rubric, where you could pick a composer or two and spend a semester with liberal arts students, looking at that. LG: So, I’m curious, in the course of your tenure, um, Zankel was opened, and what effect did �that have on the curriculum and the way you taught and things that you could do? TD: Well actually Zankel opened, um, only two semesters before I retired, so it had a huge effect, but not so much on my life, long term. You know, I didn’t teach that much in Zankel. It had, you know, far better, um, larger classrooms, more varied classrooms, more room for all of our studio teachers. Um, it had a spectacular concert hall and a large rehearsal hall. And, and, and, and! It just, it was spectacular and it was one of the great privileges of my life to be chair of the department for about the five or six or seven years that led to the opening of the Zankel and then to shepherd our move through there. LG: Did you have a role in making suggestions about that new building? TD: I didn’t have a role in the original design, so I didn’t have a role in the big design. That design was already in the books in the, maybe 1999, 2000. The dot-com crisis sort of derailed that for a while. And so that had been done when, I think Gordon Thompson was chair, might have been Dick Hihn, but in any case, I didn’t, I wasn’t on the committee that designed the main elements of the hall. But that said, when we actually got the money to move forward and started to work on it, I had a lot of responsibility for details that made things work. Things like, one of the huge problems in Filene was that back stage we just had one big room where the small … the jazz equipment was stored, the pianos were stored, the music stands were stored, the African drums were stored, you know, it was, and it was just a mess. The stuff would kind of wander off out of that. So, in Zankel I made sure that we had compartmentalized (space) and we carefully measured them and so that the storage thing was. So that sort of level of detail. Lobbying for, we lobbied at that point to have the pit that goes up and down, um, and so those kinds of details, I either advocated for or had some role in designing. But the big, the big building was already in the books before I became chair. LG: What kinds of challenges did you face? TD: With Zankel, or? LG: No, in general. TD: In general, um, I was chair for probably 12 of the, my 29 years, something like that. So, a lot of, three or four different intervals, starting with a one-year but then a couple of fiveyear stints. Um, it’s a big department, we had 35 or 40 staff people, when you counted every part-timer. There were various statuses, we had the tenure track people but we also had the Artists-in-Residence, who went through a lot of changes. And … so it was just sort of a lot of complexity there. And then, um, … we had our personalities that made life interesting, you know. [laughs] So. LG: Do you want to … do you want to talk about any of those interesting moments? TD: No, that’s okay, no that’s okay. Leave it to say, 35 musicians can, you know, cause their challenges. �LG: All playing in different tempos? [laughs] TD: Yeah. LG: So, the responsibilities would have been to help hire all these people? TD: Absolutely, yeah. And, um, I mean, [laughs], when I interviewed — to show you the sort of involvement we had — we didn’t have a concert manager, we didn’t have, um, a dedicated stage crew, we didn’t have any of that, so when I interviewed for the job, Isabelle Williams, one of the things I had to do for my interview was to push pianos around the stage to see how I did. Um, because that often fell to the chair [laughs]. You know, the chair might be the only faculty at a particular concert and there’d be a need to have a little rearrangement of the stage, the students hadn’t shown up and, uh, the chair was down there pushing pianos and moving music stands and things. It’s, it was astonishing how, how much of those kinds of things, uh, the chair had to either oversee or convince people to do, or … LG: [laughs]. Did the student majors, um, do a final concert, while you were there? TD: It depended what their emphasis was; it wasn’t a requirement. Um, if they wanted honors, they had to do either a recital, if they were a performer, or they had to do a thesis or they had to do a composition or some major project, but it was not a requirement that every student do a recital, no. LG: Mm hm, okay. And whose responsibility was that, for doing the recital? TD: Uh, the faculty had the auditions in the fall of their senior year to determine who was eligible for honors, and in the case of theses or whatever, we would look at proposals and discuss them and make a call as to which students, uh, seemed promising both in terms of what they, their level of achievement during their four years but also the … the quality of the preparation for the actual project or concept. LG: Now, there were Filene Scholars? TD: Right. LG: Do you know when that started? TD: I do. The first Filene Scholars arrived the same day I did, basically [laughs]. 1982. They had auditioned in, I guess the spring of 1982, and they arrived on campus September, just as I arrived and Tony Holland and Janet Sullivan, who didn’t stay there, but Tony and I, I think, really saw, or probably perceived the whole trajectory of the department in terms of the Filene program and everything that it led to. LG: What did it lead to? What effect did it have? �TD: Oh, it had… LG: On both the faculty, the curriculum and the students. TD: It had a huge, huge impact. Um, it’s, I mean from the College’s point of view it was kind of the first of merit scholarships, which the College has later on embraced in other areas — science, I know was the first, and, I don't know how that’s played out, but. Um, it just brought, we had basically four a year, so it brought 16 very talented performers to campus, and, they weren’t just performers, they were bright people. We, back when I was chair and we were trying to kind of do statistics on impact, um, we had the highest percentage of, I mean a very high percentage of people who had gotten the Periclean award, a very high percentage in Phi Beta Kappa, even. I mean there was, they were good students, so they brought a lot to the department. They gave a critical mass for some kinds of programs, or at least they provided a critical mass around which an even larger critical mass, for the orchestra or vocal chamber ensemble or string chamber music, some of those things. Um, and just the whole concept of the Filene program, I think, it raised the expectations and the profile and the capacity of the department because it wasn’t just, um, it wasn’t just scholarships, it also provided money to bring in professional artists to work with the students, and that led, those kinds of things, as I think Skidmore has realized, in a larger sense, when you start to get things that seem attractive and high profile, they attract other things that are high profile, or that people want to do more. So, I think it was clearly a turning point. It’s not the only factor, but … but since those days the faculty expanded, the student — I don’t know what the majors are currently in terms of numbers, but in the time I was there, we went from around a steady state of nine, ten, eleven to about nineteen or twenty. LG: Majors. TD: Majors. But that was just the tip of the iceberg because there was, um, all the people who were in the chorus, all the people who were in the jazz ensemble, and, um … you know a chunk of that was attributable to Filene. Not all of that, other things happen, but it did lead to us completely outgrowing Filene and having to move to Zankel [laughs]. LG: And the residencies of outside groups, professional groups, did that start at that time? TD: Well, in any high-profile way. I mean, I think if you go back, at one point, we assembled all of the programs that we could find for Filene, I don’t think we went back to the old campus, so that goes back to, like, ’67 or ’68, and in the … you know this from Skidmore as a whole, in the ‘70s we had about eight concerts a semester, maybe six concerts a semester, [laughs] you know, and now they have 35 concerts, and it’s the same thing with programming all over campus, that everything is much more. And, the profile of the people who came definitely jumped up. Initially in the Filene program they tried to bring in really high profile people, like, we had Marilyn Horne, we had, I think the first was Anna Moffo, we had Vladimir Ashkenazy, and … and then we decided it was, rather than spend, you know, X amount of dollars bringing those people in for a one-off, and they �didn’t really understand liberal arts students, we started dividing that up into maybe three pots and bringing in people who were more like extremely, um, high profile faculty at conservatories, who actually knew about teaching in a way that Vladimir Ashkenazy didn’t, and that kind of thing. So, we began to use the money differently, but even at that point, still, the people we’d bring in were much higher profile than they were in the ’70s. LG: They would come in for short residencies and interact with the students? TD: They typically came in, we had two things, we had … um, what was it called — the Filene Gala— was a concept that we eventually abandoned, but it was, that’s where we brought in Marilyn Horne and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and that was basically a concert, and an expensive concert. And then we had a Filene Residency that was funded. And that, those people had to come maybe two, three, four times over the course of one academic year and work with students, and then give a, some kind of a final performance. LG: Were they individuals or were they groups? TD: Typically, they were individuals. I’m trying to think if we had any groups. Uh, we certainly had been bringing in groups, and they must, some of them must have been funded by Filene. We then had Sterne money, which was, Jean Sterne was a wonderful alum that I went down and visited in Philadelphia, and gave money, and um, she … she wanted kind of a chamber music and particular instruments that she favored. And then we got other money, so it’s … LG: So, did you bring in chamber music groups? TD: Absolutely, yeah. LG: And do you want to, do you remember which ones? TD: Um, well we had Robert Mann of the Juilliard, and he didn’t want to bring the Juilliard, he wanted to bring his son and they did a duo concert. Um, who were some of the earliest? We had Continuum, which is something that came out of Juilliard, which was kind of a Twentieth Century … it wasn’t your typical, like, string quartet chamber group, it was an ad hoc ensemble that Joel Sachs, down at Juilliard, would pull together for very interesting programmatic concerts. Um, I know way back in the ’80s we did have string quartets, but I’m drawing a blank on which they were. We also had Young Concert Artists, which was an amazing …ah, what do you call it, agency, talent agency, that had this incredible track record of identifying the rising stars. And, I mean they really, whoever was doing the auditioning was very perceptive. But we could never sell our audience — like we had Dawn Upshaw, who went on to be a superstar, and 23 people came to our concert in Filene because nobody, um, you know, we didn’t quite market this as “you’re hearing the next great thing.” That was, you know, an early transitional thing. LG: Um, okay, let’s see. Um, so what would you say your fondest memories are? �TD: [laughs] Um…fondest teaching memories usually centered around teaching a new course, and that, I always found that particularly exciting and … the first time I ever taught Duke Ellington or the first time I ever taught Wagner, I can remember those students really strongly. Um, I had a couple of really great collaborative research students. I think if there was one night or one moment that I remember that really captured the excitement of all it was opening night at Zankel. I mean, that was just such a fulfillment of so many things, and, um, were you there? LG: Mm hmm. TD: Ok there was, you know, everybody was there an hour early! I mean it was chaotic, we had no way to manage the crowds, we had no concert manager, it was just kind of us improvising, and … you wanted it full, you didn’t want any melt, and we had people sitting listening to the pre-concert talk in a different room, and … but it was just jam packed and then it was the people from Carnegie Hall, the young people from the Carnegie Hall who gave the concert, and they were just blown away by the hall. LG: And they came back every year… TD: Yeah, and they still do, they still do. They keep changing their name but they keep coming back. And, um, yeah that, I mean that was just a magical night after all the years we’d been in Filene and all the promise that that hall showed, and just the whole thing. So, from that point of view, that was a high point. Um …so. LG: Did you have advocates in the administration who were particularly helpful? TD: Oh, you mean like Chuck Joseph was the Dean of the Faculty? [laughs] LG: Well… TD: No, that, I mean to some extent that was a coincidence that he was Dean of the Faculty when Arthur Zankel died. Um, you know that’s, that was not planned and I think that was going to happen, that money was going to be used for that hall regardless of how much people advocated. Um, I enjoyed working with a lot of people in the administration. I wouldn’t say that any of them were, you know, sort of, under the radar particularly strong advocates, you know. LG: Who was the president when Zankel opened? TD: David Porter. No, no, no, Phil Glotzbach when it opened. Um, David Porter when the money came, I think. I think David ended in about ’05; the money came in ’04. LG: And David was a music major at Swarthmore, as an undergraduate. TD: Yeah. And he was, he was always very interested in music. But I wouldn’t say that he gave �us any favoritism, that I was ever aware of. But, uh, it was fun to have him give lectures and perform in Filene, or elsewhere. LG: Robert J. Lurtsema. Do you remember that name? TD: Sure, from Boston radio. LG: Well, he was, um, also a Swarthmore student, and I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the music classes that the two of them took together. TD: Yeah, [laughs], hmm. LG: Okay, um, so your greatest challenge, you think? TD: Um, I would say it was mostly when I was chair, you know managing both personnel and managing the … the limited facilities that we had in Filene. I mean it was a challenge to move into Zankel but, um, it was an exciting, totally great challenge. LG: Now, um, you were also a large part of the faculty governance system. TD: Mm hmm. LG: What committees did you sit on, and …? TD: I served on a lot. I never served on CAPT. I served on CEPP, I served on FPPC, I served on Curriculum Committee, I served on some task forces, um, and I would say the two things that stand out, I don’t think we ever did anything terribly dramatic when I was on CEPP; being chair of FPPC was, you know, a lot of Karl Broekhuizen and dealing with budgets and all of that, and I wouldn’t say that was the most fascinating. The two most fascinating things that I think I did, or that maybe had the most impact, one involved Sue … SUE BENDER: [laughs] TD: It was when I was on the Curriculum Committee and they had been trying to get an expansion of which departments, or courses, qualified for the lab science requirement, for ten years, or something. LG: Oh! TD: And the faculty finally had voted pretty definitively that they wanted it expanded, but they didn’t really give a road map and so it was handed over to the Curriculum Committee to figure this out. And Janet Sorensen and I were on the Curriculum Committee and we decided that she would become chair of the Curriculum Committee in exchange for me chairing this little ad hoc committee that was going to consider the science requirement [laughs]. And it was, this was to get Exercise Science, it was to get some of the Anthropology or Archeology, as lab courses. Um, was there anybody else who was really �trying the …? You know at that point it was Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, and whatever else — the standards. And so [laughs], we sat in a room, the bullets were flying over our heads, … LG: … Computer Science? TD: I don’t think Computer Science ended up being a science. LG: Okay. TD: I’m not sure. But, we had sort of been given a mandate but the science departments weren’t that happy about it, and, you know bullets were flying over our heads, but we kept ducking and we came out of the, we came out of that committee with everybody on board and it passed and the rest is history! Now they’re all in the Center for Integrated Science, you know? LG: Yes. [laughs]. TD: But that was … the other one that I was really happy to be a part of was there was a task force on faculty status that Mehmet Odekon chaired, and it was to review a lot of these people who were, you know in unusual statuses, it wasn’t about tenure track people, by and large. LG: You had quite a number of them. TD: We did, and we had a large number of just adjunct part-time instructors, but the one that was of greatest interest was the artists-in-residence, and they had been created when Ed Hausman and Ruth Lakeway retired in the late ’80s. I think Chuck Joseph was chair. And they were tenure track, full tenure track professors, they were full professors, both of them. And we had need for, you know, not just a piano and voice, we had need for string, we had need for flute, guitar, whatever else, and, um, Chuck worked it out that we would give up two tenure track positions in exchange for four artists-in-residence. And then, a few years later it got expanded to six artists-in-residence. And initially they were oneyear contracts and extremely lowly paid, low paid, and no faculty development access, you know. And so, the artist-in-residence was, sounded like high status, but it wasn’t. So, one of the things that we did on that was to get it so that they, in this task force on faculty status, to get it so that they moved to three year contracts, they became eligible for sabbaticals, I think. I’m not sure what else happened, but I do know that it made a huge difference in, not just the lives of the music department, but Alma Becker came up to me once and said, “I hear you had something to do with getting me into this status. Thank you for that.” And that took a lot of pushing. LG: Alma Becker was in the theater department? TD: She was in theater. And, um, … I mean part of me thinks that we should recoup, regain �some of our artist faculty in tenure track positions. It apparently is not likely to happen at this juncture, but in any case, that was a solution that I thought was really important. And there was nobody else on that task force who had particular knowledge of what those people did and how under-compensated they were, so that was sort of my niche. I’m sure we dealt with, you know, some other important faculty status situations but I’m a little fuzzy on those, but that was rewarding. LG: Good! That’s helpful. Are there other things that you want to tell us about? TD: Um, I mean I know you had asked about how things had changed since, in the time that I was there. And the Filene thing, as I said, did a lot. It mostly did it, but not a hundred percent, for classical, Western classical music, because that’s what the audition requirements were. Although a number of Filene scholars have come in who were multitalented in music and had other interests besides purely classical. But the curriculum not only expanded in terms of the number of students that we served and the number of faculty but it broadened, you know, into having West African drumming, and … you know Gordon Thompson, and now others. LG: [inaudible] TD: Yeah, or, um, you know world, various non-Western music. And jazz grew incredibly in the time that I was there. And even electronic music and music technology, which has an amazing studio in Zankel. All of these things that were, if they had any place in the department in 1982 when I got there, it was tiny and understaffed, and/or under resourced. And so, over time, all of those things grew. LG: But the offerings were focused mostly on Western? TD: When I got there, there were, there were a couple of things, there was one History of Jazz course in the catalog. I think there was an American Music course in the catalog. And pretty much everything else was straight, you know, Western music sort of stuff. So. LG: But it didn’t include Indian or Asian, or TD: No, not when I was first there. Probably not technically until Gordon arrived, which must have been the very late ’80s. So, if you want a comic example of why the Zankel became important, it would focus on drum instruction. LG: Right, yes. TD: So, Filene was in no way sound-proofed that you could have drums being played in the building at all. You would have heard them every … every area. So, the College tried a variety of solutions to where the drum instruction should take place. And sometimes it was also a sort of …mixed in with band rehearsal space, but we tried to resist that because that led to different management problems. But for a while they were in a trailer kind of just outside of Filene. They were in um … I guess there was kind of a part of �North Hall that was … I think in the end they put air conditioning, HVAC coolers in, a big industrial thing into this space. The funniest thing on campus was they got put over, do you know where purchasing is right now? At that point it was kind of underneath Biology, over in Gannett, not Gannett, Palamountain. And, I guess it was, was it Bernie? Bernie Possidente does research on the circadian rhythms of mice, and their sleep was being disrupted by [laughs], so we were thrown out of there mid-semester. And that, once they had that sort of data to show what the drumming was doing to his mice, we were … and then we rented a house kind of kitty corner from Allerdice, down on Division Street, for probably close to a decade. A guy by the name of Freddie Blood taught drums there. And, anyway, in Zankel they have a bunker [laughs] where they are able to do all of this without being chased around campus. LG: Tom, the last thing I wanted to ask you was about the activities you’ve been engaged in since you retired? TD: Uh huh. LG: When did you retire? TD: 2010. December 31st, 2010. There was that, there was an offer made, and you had to retire that fiscal year, or that tax year, or whatever. Same year as Terry Diggory. And Chuck Joseph. Yeah. So anyway, um. Yeah musically, for a while I was writing program notes for some things at Lincoln Center and giving pre-concert talks for the alumni in the summer. And I got started with Sustainable Saratoga very shortly after my retirement. And ended up heading up their Urban Forestry project and Treetoga for about ten years, which I’m thrilled to say, I handed off the administration of that enterprise to somebody else now who’s doing a great job. So, I’m still involved but I don’t have to call the meetings. That … that led to me getting appointed to the Comprehensive Plan Update committee back around 2014, which was a very tempestuous experience in terms of city … inner workings of City Hall, and … LG: Nothing’s changed. TD: Yeah. And then that led me to sort of volunteer to be on the Open Space Advisory Committee, which I’ve chaired for the last few years. We just brought a new Open Space plan to City Council about two weeks ago, and it’ll be open to the public for another six weeks or so and then will get voted on by City Council, um, probably in early to midJune. And so that’s been exciting. And most recently I’ve founded a little non-profit with some people that talked an oil company that owns the little triangle of land at the corner of South Broadway and Ballston Avenue, right next to Dunkin’ Donuts and across from Stewarts and across from Limoncello Bank property. Um, they gave us that property and we’re in the process of re-greening it. We’re going to get a water connection on the 12th of May with the help of DPW, and we’re going to plant some trees and then we’re working on a full pollinator … LG: So, it’ll be a little mini park? �TD: It’ll be a pollinator friendly planted mini greenspace. We hesitate to use the term “park” because apparently that opens up, you know, some legal requirements. [laughs] LG: Oh! TD: There are different standards for a park than there are for a greenspace, apparently. Right now, we are just landscaping this parcel we happen to own. So anyway, that’s, um, … but I am, this June, finally doing again something musical. With the new administration of Opera Saratoga I offered to give two talks at the library in preparation for their festival. So, I’m going to be talking about Italian opera buffa, and specifically Don Pasquale, which is what they’re doing. So, two things that are open to the public and maybe will drive a few people there. I’m excited about it. As satisfying as all the tree and other stuff has, it’s really nice to be digging my, you know digging into some music again. LG: Okay. Anything else we should add? TD: I don’t think so LG: We covered all of the bases, Sue? Thank you very much. This has been a delight. TD: Thank you for having me. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tom Denny Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 35:04 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 9, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Tom Denny Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 4, 2023 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Tom Denny grew up in Pittsburgh and received his graduate degree at the Eastman School of Music. He arrived at Skidmore in 1982 and spent his entire career in the Music Department, serving as department chair for a number of years. He experienced the transition from Filene to the Zankel Music Center, the growth of music department faculty, and the start of artist-in-residence and visiting artist programs. He also worked to expand the scope of music courses taught beyond classical Western music. During his tenure he facilitated the growth of concerts on campus by students and visiting musicians. Since retirement, Tom has been active in Open Space and green projects in Saratoga. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Artists in Residence Carnegie Hall Musicians Curriculum David Porter Drumming Filene Musician Residencies Filene to Zankel Hall (Transition) Gordon Thompson Jazz Lab Science Requirement Music Technology Non-Western Requirement Sterne Chamber Residency Task Force on Faculty Status Visiting Artists Concerts Young Concert Artists https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/86371536d339028b913632e8d3c32e8f.png 3bfbc672f3dd417b7c45e1d284e4a15c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Unity There Is Strength Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d743e91f9566c6e55b0cba610add53b7.jpeg 3d98fc62ec314988c78ca1a1243bc67d https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1084882b66cbd761290b7a1661ee407e.mp3 b46009ebfd325f4e5f8f7e8d7dd1f208 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/35b50e42c3c9f851b0c80862caa0a45c.pdf 7bbf333574eea983b37554a49861dde9 PDF Text Text Narrator: Eileen Sperry Interviewer: Sophia Delohery Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: April 7, 2023 Sophia [00:00:01] Today's date is April 7th, 2023. My name is Sophia Delohery. Eileen [00:00:11] I'm Eileen Sperry. Sophia [00:00:12] And here we go. So, Eileen, can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up? Eileen [00:00:18] I grew up in upstate New York. I'm an upstate New York native. I grew up in a small kind of rural farming town called Harpursville, which is about halfway between Oneonta and Binghamton. Sophia [00:00:29] Oh, cool. Sophia [00:00:30] That's awesome. And can you tell me a little bit about where you, just your school experience, like, beginning school and then secondary school. Eileen [00:00:41] Mm-hm. Started school in a sort of more suburban school district. Then my family had moved out to Harpursville, and so I went to this, the local high school all the way through the local public school. It's a really small school district, and so it was really intimate. My graduating class was sixty-three people, many of whom I'm still friends with, right. So it was a very small, kind of tight knit community growing up. And I went there all the way through high school. I went to NYU for my undergrad. I was, I had had enough of living in a small kind of rural town, and I, like, desperately wanted to get out and live in the city and sort of be in a big school environment. So I moved to New York and I went to NYU. Sophia [00:01:29] Yeah, that's definitely a big transition. Eileen [00:01:31] Yeah. Sophia [00:01:33] That's nice that you had like a good community, though. Uh, but did you find that going to NYU, like, changed that for you? Like, was it easy to find community there as well? Eileen [00:01:44] It was. I gravitated towards other people who I think had similar experiences like my, my kind of close group of friends ended up becoming, you know, people who had been in a similar place of like they had grown up in smaller schools or they had grown up working class. They had grown up in, in poorer communities who like all like me, really loved being in the city and really loved being at the school, but who also felt moments of estrangement, like not part of the kind of rich kid crowd or the private school crowd, like feeling both belonging and a kind of sense of being an outsider. Sophia [00:02:24] Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's, that's an experience that a lot of people go through making that transition, and it's nice that you guys, like, gravitated towards each other then to find that community. Eileen [00:02:35] Yeah. �Eileen [00:02:36] Yeah. I think that that was that was one of the things that really sustained me. Sophia [00:02:39] Yeah, that makes sense. And so what were you studying at school? Eileen [00:02:45] I was studying, I initially thought that I was going to be a major in a program that NYU had at the time called Language and Mind, which was a combination of linguistics and psychology and neuro linguistics. And then I remember that I was not great at math, and it was a lot of math. And I had taken an English class my freshman year as well, and I fell in love with the English major. And so I declared early on and I stayed an English major for the rest of my time there I minored in linguistics. I had a real love for the linguistics program, just not so much the psych in the stats and the hard science. Yeah. Sophia [00:03:21] Yeah, that's very valid. So did you go to school at any place post-NYU? Eileen [00:03:29] Mm-hm, I went from NYU, I did my master's degree in English at Binghamton University, and then I did my Ph.D. at Stony Brook University out on Long Island. Sophia [00:03:39] Oh, nice. So a lot of staying in, like, at least the New York state. Eileen [00:03:44] Yeah. You know, my, my now husband, my boyfriend at the time, he and I started dating in high school, and we both went to separate colleges, but we sort of stayed in the same geographical area as a way of staying connected to one another. I still had really close connections to my community and to my family, and I sort of never was possessed with the desire to, like, run away to California or move across the country. I wanted to stay relatively close. I also had a recurring summer job at a summer camp back near where I grew up, and so I would go back there for the summers, so it was nice to be able to stay relatively close. Sophia [00:04:19] Yeah. Sophia [00:04:20] So it sounds like you are someone who's, like, really rooted in community then, like, it seems like you've, like, sought that out in the different places you've gone. Eileen [00:04:30] Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot recently, actually. That I think, especially from those early moments in high school that we, you know, it was not I never had a schooling experience growing up where you were always sort of encountering new communities. You know, I had heard from friends who had gone to bigger schools that, you know, you could sort of abandon one friend group and find another one or you were transitioning schools. And for us, it was the same. It was the same people the whole way through. And so I became really attached to these ideas of, like, forming deep bonds and deep community. And then that has extended, I think, to a lot of other places in my life that I've, like, privileged forming these big communities and sort of these deep relationships. Sophia [00:05:10] Yeah, that's interesting as you kind of move into the topic of labor organizing, I think community comes up a lot when people talk about that kind of stuff. Eileen [00:05:18] Yeah. �Sophia [00:05:20] But kind of in that same vein, was there anything in your, like, schooling or growing up experience that kind of portended, like, an interest in labor organizing for you? Eileen [00:05:30] My, my freshman year at NYU, we arrived. I had been there maybe four or five weeks, and the graduate students began a union campaign. They had filed for unionization and they were working towards, I believe at the time they were working towards their first bargaining agreement. And so they went on strike. And so many of my classes, because it was a big university, many of my classes were taught by graduate students or I was in a big lecture and the recitation session was taught by a graduate student and they all went on strike. And many of my professors were incredibly supportive of their graduate students and so refused to cross picket lines. And so as a freshman, you know, I had one class that moved to like the Marxist community school organizing space like halfway across Manhattan. So like every week I had to, like, grab my backpack and trek twenty blocks away to go to class. But it was this really early exposure to like labor in academia, right? Like seeing and hearing the graduate students say really clearly, I love my job, I love the work that I do, I love my students, but I have to be able to, to live here. I have to build to support myself and have a life, and that's equally important. And seeing the solidarity from other professors who were saying like, yes, our graduate students are important. They're one of the things that make this university work. It doesn't work without them. We have to be in support of them. And so seeing how much that was an early reminder or an early moment for me, where it became really clear the kinds of work that were necessary for a university to function and the way that, like, different elements, had to come together to support the fight for fair working conditions. Sophia [00:07:15] Yeah, wow, what a cool, like, experience to have, right going into college too. Eileen [00:07:19] Yeah. Sophia [00:07:19] That sounds awesome. Eileen [00:07:23] My dad pulled the most dad move ever and he was like, I'm just you have to go to -- I'm going to email the college president. And I was like, Dad, you cannot email the college. And he did. And he, like, had several emails with the college president about like labor rights. Sophia [00:07:36] Oh wow, that's awesome. Eileen [00:07:37] It was really sweet. Sophia [00:07:38] So are your parents kind of interested in this as well? Eileen [00:07:42] Yeah, to a lesser extent. My mom was a public school teacher as well growing up. My mom was a public school English teacher and so she was always a teacher's union member. She was never really involved on the organizing end. But I always remember being kind of conscious of that as just like an element of her job or that she was tapped into this bigger community. Sophia [00:08:00] Yeah, that makes sense. The teachers union, I think like starts a lot of stuff for a lot of people, like growing up around that. �Eileen [00:08:06] Yeah. Sophia [00:08:08] So kind of shifting this to, to the Skidmore experience, can you tell us a little bit about the non tenure track faculty union just and your involvement with it so far? Eileen [00:08:22] Sure. I began working here part time last year. I had been at the College of Saint Rose before that and Saint Rose during, during the period of COVID, although it sort of had its roots much furtherbefore that. They had a mass faculty layoff. They laid off thirty-three tenure track faculty, and then they let go of eight contingent faculty members. And I was one of the contingent faculty members. I had been there for four or five years on this rotating one year contract, and I always knew that it was not a secure contract, but I had become part of the department. I had, you know, built relationships, built community there. And my department fought really hard to save my position and just just couldn't. Right. Like the tide had turned. And so I arrived at Skidmore in this part time position because I had been job hunting. I had found some other work. I was sort of cobbling things together. But I had just come off this experience of, of a layoff, of seeing what happened at a college that, like, was unionized and still had a really tough set of working conditions for many of its faculty, was in terrible financial straits. And so I was at this point in my professional life where I was thinking about, like, what's the kind of security that I want? What are the sorts of things that I want to work for? What's the kind of working environment that I want to choose for myself going forward? And I had friends already in the English department through just, like, local research groups and other connections. And as I arrived, I started talking with some of the other contingent faculty members about some of the things that were going on and was able to find out that there was this kind of growing union movement. And I was enthusiastically, like, sign me up, give me work to do, like, I want to help out however I can. It helped that, you know, the organizing process was happening in conjunction with SEIU, which is the union that I had been part of at Saint Rose. And so I knew Sean Collins, the lead organizer. I knew him through other, other interactions, and I liked working with him. And so I was just sort of like enthusiastic to, to dive in and contribute. Sophia [00:10:39] Yeah, that makes sense. So like your, your previous job experience kind of propelled you into this current union experience and motivated you. Eileen [00:10:52] Mm-hm. Sophia [00:10:52] Yeah. Can you speak a little bit more to like, how how it feels to be on that, like, kind of tenuous contract and be working and how it affects, like, job experience and performance. Eileen [00:11:03] Yeah. From a really concrete standpoint, the academic job market requires a lot of work to sort of be on the market, you sort of have to prepare a set of materials every year. This can be upwards of, you know, fifty pages altogether of cover letters and syllabi and teaching statements and course evaluations and diversity statements and all these sorts of things. And so maintaining a current dossier of materials takes a lot of work. It takes a couple of weeks every summer. Then the application process. Applications would go up every fall. You'd spend time combing the listings, submitting things, interviewing, doing campus visits, making all these decisions. And all of that time was time that I wasn't spending on teaching or wasn't spending on students, right? I would find myself sort of saying no to things that I really wanted to be doing because I needed to sort of always have one foot out the door. It also affected the way that I was making decisions about the kinds of things that I would teach. Right? I was sort of �not in a position to be as experimental as maybe I would want to be, or that I was thinking about, like, how to build a CV that, like, would make me attractive to other jobs rather than, like, allow me to excel at the job that I had. And so that, just the time spent on being kind of one foot out the door, having to always sort of search for other jobs and the cognitive load of like always sort of thinking elsewhere and not thinking here. Both of those have affected in previous positions my ability to just like kind of be at home in a place and really dedicate myself to the students that are in front of me. Sophia [00:12:46] Yeah. And kind of circling back to the community aspect, like, it, it just kind of alienates a whole group of people working here who are supposed to be a part of the community and helping, like, build it and everything to yeah, to have them feel so unsettled the whole time while they're working here. Eileen [00:13:05] And I think that that distinction is often, you know, it's not visible to students because these job distinctions are sometimes they're not really clear and students don't know if I'm here permanently or on a temporary contract. And so, you know. This past year, I've had students who have asked me to serve as their advisor, and I can't, you know, I can't in good conscience say yes because I might not be here next year. I can't sort of support them all the way through to degree completion. I don't know if I will be a stable presence for them. And so it prevents me from building those kind of long term mentoring relationships as well. Sophia [00:13:41] Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that's interesting to, to move into, I just want to ask you what you think like the student perception of the union has been or your experience, like, with what questions students have been asking you. Do you feel like they're kind of aware of what's going on? Eileen [00:14:02] I think they're becoming aware. I think that it's something that has, you know, the last few years have been this really incredible time for labor organizing. I think that students are seeing the ways that unionization can affect jobs at every different level. Right. The faculty are attempting to unionize or have unionized. But also the local Starbucks is unionizing or, you know, the Trader Joe's is unionizing, thinking about how this is a tool for workers kind of across the spectrum. I think that has also helped students understand that maybe the popular perception of, like, what a professor is and what that lifestyle or job security looks like that that's not actually the reality for most of their professors. My, I predominantly teach freshman writing and these are often themed courses. And one of the themes that I use that I taught this past year was on the philosophies and economies of higher education. So, like, how does college work? How do our decisions about what college means to us, how are they shaped by our desire for money, for wealth, for happiness, for knowledge? And one of the things that came up in that class was this conversation about, you know, what do you think professors are making? What kind of class position do you think professors are holding? And I think a lot of students assume, because this was the case, you know, twenty years ago, forty years ago, that all of their professors are, like, making six figures and, like, own their own homes and are these, like very comfortable middle class lifestyles when that's not necessarily the case anymore. Sophia [00:15:34] Yeah, that must be that must have been a crazy conversation to have because yeah, I'm sure a honestly me before kind of getting more involved in this world and learning more about it, I also think I safely assume that, like, oh, my professors are definitely just making, like, stable money, stable jobs. They all kind of are on the same, like, professor is the one position you can be in kind of thing. And yeah, learning more �about this faculty union has been really interesting. And I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to, like, what stage the, the union is at now. Eileen [00:16:14] We're currently in the negotiating process for our first collective bargaining agreement, which is, it's a really exciting place to be because it's just, like, a place of possibility. But so the election happened this past fall. The majority of non tenure track faculty voted in favor of unionizing. And so now I'm on the negotiating committee, along with several other faculty across departments, across different job roles. And we're in the process of putting together our bargaining proposals. So, you know, what do we want our contract to look like? What are the sorts of things that we want as terms of our employment and bringing those to the college to then negotiate with college representation about, like, okay, what can we make happen? What can we both agree to? What can we put in stone in the language of the bargaining agreement? Sophia [00:17:03] Yeah, wow, that's very cool. Eileen [00:17:05] Yeah, I, we, I, in fact, just before this, I spent an hour on a Zoom working meeting to look at some language about benefits and, like, who has access to health care, which of our faculty have had access to health care. What would it look like to try and widen that scope a little bit more to include maybe part time faculty or other faculty in that? Sophia [00:17:25] Yeah. And just for the record, on the, on the recording, if you could talk a bit about like what the main goals are of the union. Eileen [00:17:38] Through the organizing conversations and through all of the other conversations we've had with the full bargaining unit,that's all the faculty who are members of our new union, a couple of things have come up consistently.So one of them is, is compensation, especially for part time faculty. Part time faculty make a pretty low rate of pay and aren't eligible for a lot of really core benefits. And so increasing their compensation. For full time faculty, it's increasing job security. That's been one of the, one of the primary goals is that we have a system right now that has lots of people who are on these rotating one year or two year contracts who are in that position that I was describing earlier. They're never sort of really secure. The college has kinds of contracts that offer that sort of security for non tenure track faculty. But they haven't been extended to a lot of the faculty who are currently here. So we're fighting to create that kind of stability so that professors can be here and can be fully present for their students. And then finally, it's protecting the benefits that people have already that they really love. The college right now has a great system of benefits for full time faculty members, and a lot of faculty rely on them. And so we want to make sure that those are enshrined in the bargaining language, to make sure that they can never go away or they can't go away without the college negotiating. That's one of the things I think I have brought with me from previous job experience is that, like, knowing that even if you feel, like, you've got a great relationship with the administration, even if things feel like they're going great, feeling like things won't change isn't protection to say that they can't change. And so putting things in the bargaining language means they can't change. And so it's been a priority to get things that people really love about their jobs just memorialized and safe. Sophia [00:19:21] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And kind of going, following that vein of, how do you feel like the administration response has been to the union in terms of like supportive, non supportive? �Eileen [00:19:37] I think it has been, it's been neutral to supportive so far. I've been, I've been pleasantly surprised by how how things have been going. I will say at previous institutions, I have seen things rise to a level of, like, real aggression and real anger. And so far, that hasn't been the case. I think that also Skidmore has recognized that this is something that is core to its value system. At Skidmore one of the things that I've been so impressed with arriving here and that seems to really define the community, is a real dedication to, like, social justice and an awareness of, like, inequality of power in the world and on campus. And frankly, I think if the college wants to continue saying that it supports those values, it has to sort of be open to improving working conditions here on this campus. Sophia [00:20:32] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In that same kind of question, how has the support been from the tenured faculty or what has been kind of their involvement being like adjacent to this whole thing? Eileen [00:20:50] I've had nothing but supportive conversations with tenure track faculty. It's been really great. I think that they recognize that the work of the whole faculty body is necessary, that we are doing the same kinds of work, that we are supporting students in the same way, and that that labor is equal to the kinds of labor that they are putting into the classroom. They know how hard it is to, to make the ship run. And so they they see that. I also think that right now the academic job market is, is really, really poor. Right. That there are hundreds of Ph.D. holders or hundreds of eligible and suitable candidates for every position that gets listed. And a lot of them were also on the job market for many years, or a lot of them have also had a history of being a graduate student instructor or being an adjunct instructor or being a contingent instructor. And so I think increasingly other professors are recognizing that, like, the difference between these levels of faculties is disappearing, like that we are we are all bringing the same credentials to the table and that we could very easily be in one another's place. And so I think that that has increased this, the sense of solidarity. Sophia [00:22:03] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like things could, things could change. It's yeah, kind of luck of the draw in that way. What would you say the biggest challenges to the union are at this time? Eileen [00:22:20] I think one of the big challenges is, is building the kind of community and solidarity across departments and disciplines. You know, we had, it was a really great experience. I was working on some bargaining demands with a faculty member in in the Chemistry department. And we became immediately obvious that, like, neither of us understood how the other person's job worked, right? Like, that we were, our contracts looked different. The way we accounted for our work looked different. And then you fold in somebody from music who's an instructor who, like, accounts for their labor and their work and their relationship with students in totally other ways. And so finding the space to really understand the kinds of work that we all do, like, how our jobs look kind of different on the surface, and then using those differences to actually find the core values of, like, what are the things that we share? What are the ways like what are the ways that we can build common goals out of those differences? That's something that requires a lot of trust. It requires a lot of relationship building. It requires a lot of time. So I think that that's been a big challenge. But I also think that that will ultimately be one of the big strengths. Sophia [00:23:31] Yeah. Like a cool part of it that just takes so much work. Eileen [00:23:35] Yeah. �Sophia [00:23:36] So, yeah. Do you think, I mean, hopefully the union just will build strength over time through, like, the course of creating those bonds and community. Eileen [00:23:44] Yeah. And I also think that this, the process of the first bargaining agreement is such a difficult one, but can be such a rewarding one. One of the other things that has been notable is that this is, it's sort of on generational lines, but not entirely, but that for younger professors, it's much more likely that they would have gone to graduate school and been in a graduate student union. Those have been increasing over the last ten, twenty years. And so we have one part of the population who has a long history of being unionized and knows what that kind of contract feels like, what it means to be part of a union, what that experience would look like. And then you may have another portion of the faculty who have never been a unionized worker before, like they've never been in a faculty union that has never crossed their mind. And so the process of sort of education in all of this is another, it's another struggle, but it's also going to be another kind of deeply rewarding thing that these people, you know, who've never been a union member, who've never been under a collective bargaining agreement, I think have a lot of fear of the unknown. But I'm excited to, like, that sort of motivates me even more of, like, you know, we have to secure a really strong bargaining agreement to sort of show people what we can do when we all work together for something like this. Sophia [00:25:05] Yeah, I think that's one of the classic, uh, like attributes of the union process is, like, it is such a difficult process, but, like, ultimately such a rewarding process. Eileen [00:25:15] Yeah. Sophia [00:25:15] I think that's what, like, a lot of people feel about it. And kind of in that same vein, what support would you say that the union needs the most from, from like the student body, from the Skidmore community at large? Eileen [00:25:35] Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, I think the support of recognizing, recognizing the work that's going into it, like knowing that your faculty are working towards this and recognizing the labor that people are putting in, that has been a huge, that's always a huge morale boost for me when we've done like outreach events or we've been out on campus and students come by and they're like, this is great. Like, you know, we're so happy to see this. Like, well, like, let us know how we can support you, even if that's like putting a sticker on your water bottle, wearing a pin around campus. Like, it's a good way to know that the community is behind you. That makes a huge difference. And I think learning more about the conditions of, of employment, the conditions of, like, the place that you are living, right, that being at college is this weird place, you know, you're sort of, you're a customer, but also a community member and also a student here, all these things. But taking the opportunity to sort of learn the details of like how the community that you're in, how it's working and the kinds of work that make it possible. Sophia [00:26:35] Yeah. I mean, and considering that you kind of initially were drawn to this kind of work in college, like, would you say this is an important time for, like, people to start learning about it now? Eileen [00:26:47] Absolutely. One of the tenure track faculty who'd supported us when we sort of declared the, when we filed our cards, when we had declared that the, that the vote was going to be scheduled, we held a little rally and she got up and said something that �has, like, stuck with me of, like, one of the things that you all are doing that is such a value here is that you're showing students what it means to, like, live into a set of values, to, like, to, to recognize something in the world that you can try and make better and, like, try and do that. And I've thought about that a lot over the past year of, like, that, that that's a responsibility that we have as organizers, but also as educators to, like, show students what it means to, to sort of commit to a value and to try to bring that into reality. Sophia [00:27:34] Yeah, that's so interesting to be, like, considering your role as a union member, but also an educator at the same time. Like, education based unions are so, like, special in that way. That's incredible. Is there anything else you wanted to, like, add or explain that you feel like we missed? Eileen [00:27:53] No, I think that that covers it. Sophia [00:27:55] Awesome. Sophia [00:27:56] Well, thank you so much for coming in today. This has been a great interview. Eileen [00:27:59] You're so welcome. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sophie Delohery '25 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Eileen Sperry Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 27:59 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 29, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Eileen Sperry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 7, 2023 Description An account of the resource Eileen Sperry holds a PhD in English from Stony Brook University. She teaches composition and early modern English literature, and her research specializes in poetry and disability studies. She’s been a member of the CWA 1104 Graduate Student Employees Union—Stony Brook chapter, United University Professions—Albany and Empire State chapters, and SEIU Faculty Forward—Saint Rose and Skidmore chapters. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/833e825a076280d4eed978f3c2fb4df9.jpg 0bd0793e4383964af1ce3b244775b0c4 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/adcab524798a83cc3ed3ad4ccc9b8c77.mp3 75f49f0b9e78be274063fd00f00e973b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7d5bd67564028d60fbdfe9097a93a1c4.pdf a8167d597e6097570c3d890bc9128636 PDF Text Text Narrator: Ruth McAdams Interviewers: Sam Stiefel ’24 and John Sveen ‘24 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 17, 2022 Speaker 1 [00:00:00] Lets see how this is going. So yeah, I think it's. Speaker 2 [00:00:05] It's good volume level. Sam [00:00:06] Yeah. He said it should be right around six. Speaker 2 [00:00:09] Okay. Sam [00:00:10] So I think that if we talking to. Yeah. It's picking stuff up. Okay. I think we're going okay. Speaker 2 [00:00:18] Yeah, right. Sounds good. So I guess to begin, we're just going to start talking about kind of like more general background stuff and kind of as a rule of thumb, it's helpful for the transcription if when we ask a question in the way you respond, if you repeat the question, that's really helpful for someone transcription. Sam [00:00:40] Just so we know what where we're at. Speaker 3 [00:00:42] Sounds good. Speaker 2 [00:00:43] Sounds good. But I guess so. We're going to be a little bit freeform, but we also have some questions prepared. But um, just to start off, could you tell us your name and where you're from? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:00:55] I'm Ruth McAdams. I'm a teaching professor in the English department at Skidmore. You want to know where I'm from - from? Yeah. Chicago. Sam [00:01:04] Chicago. Great. Did you spend your whole childhood there? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:01:08] Yeah, I grew up there. Sam [00:01:09] Yeah. What was that like? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:01:12] Chicago was a great place. I have positive feelings toward it. I haven't been back in a really long time, though, so I don't think about it too often, I guess. People sometimes ask me if I can recommend like a good bar or restaurant, but I can't, like, I have no idea what's going on in Chicago these days. John [00:01:30] Gotcha. Gotcha. Did you say you lived in Chicago your entire upbringing then? Until going to college, I assume. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:01:41] Yeah. Since then I've moved around a lot. I did my undergrad at Penn in Philadelphia, so I was there for four years. And then after that I had a fellowship that took me to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I lived for three years. I did a master's degree in English literature at the University of Edinburgh. I then after that was two years, and I spent a year there afterward doing some teaching, various other projects, applying to graduate school. And then I did my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. So Ann �Arbor, Michigan, is where I lived for four years. And then around that time things became very complicated. My partner had a post-doc, so we moved together to Atlanta for one year. Then he got a job here at Skidmore, and so I was here while I was still finishing my dissertation for one year. Then I went back to Michigan for a postdoc for one year. Then I went to Istanbul, Turkey, for a year for a job. That was really wonderful. And then after that I came here to Skidmore, and so I have been here since September of 2017. John [00:02:39] It's great. Yeah, that's awesome. You want to go ahead? Sam [00:02:43] Yeah. Did you always know that you wanted to pursue, like, such a devout background in literature and education, or did you have other plans growing up? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:02:55] Well, my first plan was to be a professional oboist. I was a musician as a kid and very serious about it. So that was what I really wanted to do for a long time around the, around college, I decided to do something else and that's when I really fell in love with literature. And that's when I decided I wanted to pursue a job as an academic, as a professor. Sam [00:03:19] Yeah. John [00:03:20] It's great. Yeah. It seems like with so many different experiences at universities and, and places that you've lived as well, it seems like all that together that must have had an influence on, on where you ended up now. Could you tell us whether in in your experiences at these, these all these universities are larger on the larger side? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:03:40] That's correct. Yeah. John [00:03:41] And now you're teaching at a smaller very much smaller institution. Could you tell us a little bit about the experience teaching at a liberal arts school and how it's different from your experience at those bigger schools? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:03:55] Yes, I'm happy to talk about that. Small liberal arts colleges are very different places to work than big research institutions, which, you are correct, is where I spent my whole academic career prior to coming to Skidmore, and I would say that the differences are really huge. One of them is that Skidmore sees itself as a community. As a small community. I have my own thoughts as to what that really means in practice. Some more critical thoughts about what that means. But I would say that, at its best, it's really wonderful to be part of a small community of faculty and students, to get to know students a bit better than I did at my previous job. And to, you know, really, I think Skidmore tries to, tries to provide students with what they need to succeed, which wasn't even attempted necessarily at some of my previous places, or that was just considered to be immediately outside the scope of what we were trying to do. Sam [00:04:57] Yeah. And so you mentioned this, this transition and you said you're from Chicago and you went to school in Philadelphia. I live outside of Philadelphia, so. And then you went to Edinburgh. You know, these are very big places and then you come to a much smaller place. And do you think that maybe that focus of like going to such a smaller place kind of allowed you to maybe think about that environment and, and your job and what you liked about that job and, you know, how that kind of transitioned into maybe looking at what you thought could be better about that job? �Prof Ruth McAdams [00:05:37] Yes, I would say that one really noticeable thing about teaching in a small liberal arts college is that you begin to be very aware of the high level of hypocrisy institutions like this have, they attract a liberal, progressive student body, and yet the labor practices of the institution are dire and, you know, indefensible and totally inconsistent with the kind of stated values of the college. And that to me, was a really eye opening experience. My, well, I could say more about that, but yes. Sam [00:06:14] Could you say more about that? John [00:06:16] We'd love to hear more. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:06:17] So I, I said this in my interview with WAMC. So I've already talked about this in a recorded context, but I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll share it again with you, which is that I didn't know very much about unions growing up. My parents were upper middle class, professional type people. Unions weren't a part of my consciousness, really, until I began my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, where all the graduate students were members of the graduate employees organization are all the graduate student instructors. When you taught, you became a member of the union. They had been unionized since the late seventies, and all the new graduate students were invited to attend the meeting in the first semester I was there. And I didn't know much about it, but all my friends were going and they invited me to come. So I went and it, it wasn't immediately clear to me what the union was for, or what I, why I needed it. And I remember speaking with a friend who is smarter than me and she said like, “Well, the union is what gets us good health care.” And I said, “Well, Liz, shouldn't we have nationalized single payer health insurance here in America?” This was during the Obamacare wars and our pre Obamacare discussions of the possibility of health insurance reform. And she said, “well, yes, Ruth, we should, but this is America and we don't. And it's the union that ensures that people have the kinds of things that they should have but don't.” And so I was I never was especially strongly involved in the graduate employees organization at Michigan, but I was sort of on the periphery, and I would attend the meetings when they were negotiating the contract. On one memorable occasion, I went to several meetings to discuss kind of whether we should accept this contract, what we should push for, what we should be willing to compromise on. And so, so I was involved the whole way the whole time I was there, and though never especially closely involved. And it was a great experience. The union was the reason that we could afford rent that we made enough to live on. Not a lot of money. Not a, not a comfortable living. But I wasn’t desperately concerned as to how I was going to get through the month. And that was because of the union. And so I, when I came to Skidmore, I, you know, a private college that charges that astronomical tuition, I was shocked and appalled to see the level of financial hardship under which many of my colleagues, non tenure track faculty were living so early in my time here. I got to know somewhat randomly a part time faculty member who has since left Skidmore. But while they were here, I got to know them just a bit. And they disclosed to me that they were the parent of two children and their partner – they were in a partnership, but their partner was not, not able to, to have a job for reasons. And they, they were on WIC benefits: women, infant, and children supplemental nutrition assistance benefits. Like it's not food stamps, but it's, it’s a corollary of the food stamp program. And I was just amazed that Skidmore College, which charges so much in tuition, has faculty that are qualifying for these federal safety net programs that are intended for the poorest Americans. And as we know, America has such a limited set of safety net programs, totally inadequate to the needs that people actually have. And so to see that a Skidmore faculty member was qualifying for those programs was absolutely amazing to me and really has stuck with me over the years. Even though this person has left the college, you know, and has moved on to bigger �and better things. And, and I don't know how common that experience is, although I don't believe that they're the only person. But it just has been really, that has really stuck with me as, as part of why I wanted to get involved in union organizing. Sam [00:10:45] Gotcha. Thank you. And so you came to Skidmore and you see this around you, these people who are, you know, providing basically what Skidmore is effectively selling, living in very dire straits. And you've got this background in, you know, the union at Michigan. And so I was wondering what the kind of start of that process really looked like. You know, where you come to the school and you're like, okay, we can make this better. Perhaps, maybe I can bring what my knowledge is of the unions to Skidmore? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:11:22] Sure. So you're asking about how I took that as experiences and I started actualizing. Sam [00:11:29] How did how did it go from experience to the physical? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:11:32] Sorry. Yes. So, I mean, I don't want to overestimate how quickly I came to the conclusion that we needed a union. I would say that my initial approach was to, to look out for myself. And I, both my partner and I took all the steps that you're supposed to take when what you want to do is get somewhat converted to the tenure track. I was, I always wanted a tenure track job. That was my dream. I was very ambitious in achieving it, and I was deeply heartbroken by my inability to get the job I wanted. So at first I was simply seeking tenure track employment elsewhere, as was my partner. For various reasons, that didn't immediately work out for us. So as I got to know a few more non tenure track faculty at Skidmore, I began to see how widespread some of these problems were. And I would say one, another kind of moment of, of a turning point moment for me would be when I realized how much of what my department, the English department, did was teach First-Year writing classes and how everyone who taught those classes almost was not only non tenure track but also on these short term terminal contracts, short term contracts of just one or two years that come to an abrupt end at the end, and that the college had, and the department had no long-term plan for how to fill those roles. And in fact, although it was extremely notable problem in my department, it was, in fact, a pattern widely across campus in many different areas. I would say that there were some early meetings that were not intended to foment union activity, but that had that result. So in the 2017-18 school year, the Center for Leadership, Teaching and Learning, the CLTL, which was at that point run by Kristie Ford from Sociology, who has since left Skidmore, ran just a kind of meeting for non tenure track faculty at which we were simply encouraged to meet each other. And that in of itself was, it was, it was a shocking thing because many of us were sort of led to believe that there were very few non tenure track faculty at Skidmore. But all of a sudden, we, we had booked the test kitchen at the dining hall and like it was standing room only like nobody could sit because there were so many of us. So simply just discovering how many of us there were and how many of us had many of the same concerns was totally eye opening. where things went from there on the union, you're probably wondering. Okay, so I would say that within a year or so of my being here, there was a small group of us that had, you know, basically said, like, this is, this is bullshit. We we've tried asking nicely. It got nowhere. The college’s lying about stuff. How many of us there are the college’s stonewalling our requests for extremely basic, straightforward information. We need a union. So at that point, I'm actually not entirely sure because I wasn't as strongly involved then as I am now. But we reached out to Sean Collins at SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, and we reached out to them because SEIU has a sort of specialty in academic workers, particularly contingent faculty, and they represent non tenure track faculty at campuses all over upstate New York and in �Vermont and in surrounding states. They were called the Faculty Forward Division. I don't know that it's like sort of called that anymore, but, but we reached out to Sean. He gave us some practical advice about how this works. And then we began speaking to our colleagues seeking signatures on these union authorization cards. The way that putting together a union tends to work in the early phases is that you you operate in secret and you, you know, basically get people to sign on to say that like, yes, I support unionization for us. And there are these little cards. They're like an index card. And, you know, you sign it, you have your contact info. And so we did that a lot and it went incredibly slowly because for many reasons, one, people are scared. People are terrified to support union activity because they have seen the movies and they know that people who try to organize unions tend to get fired. They I think also people are to a, to a far lesser extent than, than their fear. People are a little ideologically suspicious of unions. Again, they've seen the movies. There's just decades of anti-union propaganda in this country that has been unbelievably successful at convincing people that collective action is suspicious, that it undermines individual autonomy and agency, that it is an arm of organized crime. The number of people that randomly bring up Jimmy Hoffa to me is just absolutely staggering and kind of horrifying, you know? So it was challenging. It was it was challenging. Yeah. John [00:17:27] You used the word hypocrisy speaking on the part of the college. And could you maybe speak a little bit to how their policy of the colleges really comes through in, in non tenure track faculty specifically you mentioned that 1 to 2 year contracts for initiation or not initiation but rather preliminary English courses. And in those phases of learning they're likely very important. And how important are forming lasting relationships with professors and how did you initially see that hypocrisy coming through? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:18:08] Sure. So your questions about how do I sense the hypocrisy of the college. So I can answer it in several different ways. So one is that when I was hired, I was given a one year contract and my department chair, to her credit, was very honest that she's like, we can give you no more employment than that. And I said, okay, I that that's that is the best offer I have right now. I'll take it. And yet it became clear to me within a couple of months of working here that there was no other plan for the teaching other than continued reliance on short term contracts. So as I speak to you right now, I have no idea whether I'll be teaching at Skidmore in the fall. Now, that's because I don't have a contract and I and I won't have one for months. My department has absolutely no plans in place to bring in anyone else to do the teaching I do. The teaching that I'm doing this year. It will need to be done next year. There is no short term quality to what I'm doing and this is a constant, this is a really persistent pattern across the college. So, for example, Skidmore will say things like we only use non tenure track faculty to fill short term instructional needs. That is false. That is rampantly false. We, they'll say things like we only use terminal contracts when we anticipate that instructional need going away. Totally false. Totally, totally false. They'll say things like we, you know, the say. They'll say vague things like we really value our non tenure track faculty. Whenever someone says that they value you, that's a way of not paying you, right? If they valued me, they’d pay me enough to live on so they can say that they value me all they want, but they don't actually value me because I know what's in my paycheck. Sam [00:20:12] Yeah. And so I was wondering, you mentioned the kind of the fear that the propaganda, you know, to push people away from unions. But you also mentioned that, you know, my dad's in academia. So I know a little bit about the processes of, of how you you know, my dad actually applied to Skidmore when I was a young very young. He didn't get the job. But, you know, these jobs are few there are few jobs in academia across the country, across all departments. You know, people are struggling to find places to work. �And they come to a school like Skidmore and they, you know, they're there. People might be straight forward like, Oh, we can only sign you for one year. You know, it's not ideal, but hey, like, I don't have any other options, so this is what I'm going to do. But people like that, you know, might they might buy into the fear because they, they don't have very many other options and they're worried about getting fired. So I was wondering what you would say to a person who's maybe kind of struggling to, to know what they should do in this situation. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:21:18] Yeah. I don't have to answer that in a sort of hypothetical way. I've had that conversation many times, and what I would say is that it's going to be pretty hard for the college to replace you quite as quickly as they claim that they can replace you so that there are costs to doing a search that the college doesn't want to incur, and that if we stand together, we're much more powerful. Like we, yeah, one person can be fired in a retaliatory fashion. That's easy. Skidmore has done it before. It's, it's not possible to, to fire everyone at the same time. And that's the basic logic behind unionization, behind collective action, is that when you get together, you're much, much, much more powerful than you would be otherwise. And I would say with respect to the the sort of the scarcity of jobs nationwide, you're, you are absolutely correct. But there's an important second point to that, which is that there isn't a scarcity of jobs. There is a scarcity of good jobs. So, in fact, there's tons of jobs in higher ed. They're just so, they pay so little that they're not actually jobs. They're sort of hobbies. And it's a, it's, there's a, there's, a there's as much like in industries across the country and in across the sort of, you know, you know, across similar places in the world like Europe and and and elsewhere, you know, just working conditions are just getting worse. Like there is no actual shortage of jobs. There's a decline in working conditions. Sam [00:23:04] Yeah. And so you, you were a major part of the decision to unionize. And you see these, you know, these problems everywhere. Do you feel that a union is you know, it might be extremely helpful to people, but do you feel that it is the solution to these problems? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:23:25] So there's a part of me that still is the same asshole that said that unions were inadequate because what we need is nationalized single payer health care, Liz, and that the union was a sort of Band-Aid measure. So, you know, that's the world I want to live in, but I don't live in that world. And we're not getting any closer to that world. And I don't think that I’m going to see it. So. And now having tried to having just so laboriously finally after everything and at great cost to my physical, mental and emotional health, participated in successful union, union campaign. I am, I can't imagine anything harder and, and I just like the idea that this is somehow inadequate. I mean, it's, it may be inadequate, but like it, it was so challenging. And so yeah, on the one hand, yes, I do. I think that unions are a significant part of the solution. Obviously, they're inadequate to like the world's problems. But I, considering labor, labor conditions is just absolutely must be done. And the union provides us with a legal framework to do that. Sam [00:24:49] Yeah. And so you've, you've really come in, you know, these this process has been way harder, likely than it should be. And you guys have finally, you know, voted to unionize in the past couple of months. And so I was wondering, what does the future look like for you? You know, you mentioned that you still, you're unsure about what your own future looks like. You know, like you mentioned, they're not, they need what you're offering. So, you know, I was just wondering what the what the future looks like for the union. �Prof Ruth McAdams [00:25:19] So the future of the union will involve collective bargaining negotiations with the college. So we are in the process of determining our bargaining priorities, selecting a negotiating committee, and putting that together to begin negotiating with the college in earnest early in 2023. That process will be lengthy, over a year. No doubt. Perhaps closer to 18 months or two years, it's going to be a very long road. It'll, it'll be a highly collaborative process involving people, non tenure track faculty from across the campus. So the, the, and the college's working conditions with respect to not tenure track faculty have to be sort of frozen in time during the bargaining process so that could be a long time. The future for me personally, again, I, I don't have a contract for the fall. I will be teaching here in the fall, though, unless I'm retaliated against for my union organizing activity, because I simply, the department simply doesn't have another plan. They'd have to, they'd have to get rid of me. And I think that one ironic detail is that when you speak to the NPR affiliate and the Times Union about your working conditions, you actually become harder to fire because, it's because everyone knows what's going on there, namely retaliation. So I've taken that approach very seriously and have made myself extremely visible in the in the public eye for for that reason. So yeah. John [00:27:11] I know that you mentioned in your time at Michigan when you learned initially about unions from your friend and your friend mentioned this is America and that's why you can't have these health care plans that would be most suitable for non tenure track faculty and people with similar type jobs where they're being underpaid for quality, living at Michigan with that larger population. And I know you mentioned that there's strength in numbers in a union and that you can't fire everyone. Do you think that you're face and have you faced struggles in having a smaller population of people to get behind a union and to really make a change? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:27:55] So the question is whether being in a sort of smaller union environment here vis a vis the larger one I was at at Michigan, what implications that would have? So I think you're, I think you're right. On the one hand, being smaller has the real advantage of having fewer people to talk to, which, again, I, I'm just so moved by the people who are able to organize a union on a bigger scale because it was incredibly hard with the, with a small size right now. But yes, I do think that there's a potential for our ultimately having slightly less power than than we had when when there were thousands of us. I you know, when I was at Michigan, there was one very famous anecdote that the year before I started my degree there, they had negotiated a contract, and the negotiations were in sort of a stalemate between the graduate students and the and the union university until the graduate student union called in the support of the construction workers who were working on the Michigan football stadium and the Michigan football stadium construction workers put down their tools for one morning and we had a contract. And so you have to think about labor as being these coalitions of solidarity. And one of the things that has been incredibly moving about being involved in this project has been getting kind of invited to all these capital area labor events, a whole community and set of events that I had no idea existed prior to about May of this year. There are people across the area who are, you know, really heavily involved in, in, in, in union stuff and interested in building coalitions of solidarity. Some of these people are traditional blue collar union people, construction workers of various kinds and related jobs, but also people like K-12 educators, people - the, there's a big representation from the postal workers at the capital area labor events and all these other unionized workforces. So I think that the potential to call in support from from, those people is really important. And that's, that's how it works, right? That that is how it's supposed to work. We support each other. �John [00:30:25] That's great. In your experience overseas at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, correct. Did you notice any talk of unionization? And do you think that there's any real difference between being in America and trying to unionize and being in the U.K. or Scotland, rather? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:30:46] Yes. So the question is about whether there's a difference between American union experiences and those in the U.K. So, yes, there is. And it has to do with the law. And there's also dramatically huge differences between individual U.S. states. So when I, we won our union on like September 27th of this year or the next day, I went to a conference. Bad timing. And I got to the conference and I was I was telling, you know, my friends at other campuses about it and they're like, Well, that's nice, Ruth. We live in a “right to work” state. We can't like or like. Ohio passed a law that explicitly bars higher education faculty from unionizing. It's like that's the purpose of the law. So, I mean, the, the legal, the legal framework is ridiculously relevant, ridiculously applicable. And again, like, it was incredibly hard to do what we did here. I cannot imagine how much harder it would be in a, you know, state that we're at or a country that has worse labor laws. In the U.K. - I don't - you know, this, I lived in Scotland during the period of my life kind of before I knew a whole lot about unions. So I actually don't know a huge amount about that. I will say that from my time in Turkey is that those union organizers are really tough and those people are fighting the good fight under really, really bad circumstances. And they amaze me. Sam [00:32:23] That's great. I was wondering so speaking about kind of like the laws and the process of unionization and specifically in Skidmore, you know, New York, obviously, you can, it does have you do have the ability to unionize. But I was wondering if there were any specific aspects of the laws or the process that you would really like to change, if you could, to maybe make that process easier for people because, you know, even though it's possible here, it is obviously not an easy thing to do. And I think you and a lot of other people would really agree that it should be. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:33:04] So, so the question is whether there are laws or practices with respect to and why labor law that I would be interested in changing. And the answer is yes. One thing that absolutely amazed and deeply horrified me was the way that the election took place. So the election took place by mail. And what that meant was that the National Labor Relations Board office in Albany mailed ballots to the addresses provided by the college of all the non tenure track faculty. The college is responsible for providing the NLRB with the addresses. The list of addresses that the college provides the NLRB was riddled with errors, riddled with errors to a truly horrifying extent. What that meant was that the organizers had to identify those errors, contact the individual faculty, be like, Hey, what's your postal address? Get back to me right now. Send that address to the National Labor Relations Board. Rely on them to send a duplicate ballot to the correct address. Wait for the entirely underfunded U.S. Postal Service to deliver that ballot to the address. Then when people receive the ballots, there's, it's an incredibly complicated system. There's the inner ballot that you have to mark very, very carefully. Right. Then you have to put that in the inner envelope, seal it. Sign. No, not there. No, you don't sign over that one. You seal it up. Then you put the inner envelope inside the postal envelope. You seal that up. You sign over the seal with your cursive signature spanning the upper, the top of the envelope in the bottom the envelope so that over the seal. And then you send that back. And then you pray that the entirely under-funded U.S. Postal Service will get that ballot to the National Labor Relations Board within this two week window. Every part of this process is just like a wink and a prayer. There were so many people who I know voted. They told me they voted. I believe them. They don't. They're not lying. But the ballots didn't make it, �because every part of the process is nightmarish. There were people who forgot to sign in the place they were supposed to sign. Those ballots didn't count. There were people who mixed up the envelope and put the outer envelope inside the inner envelope. Those ballots didn't count. There was a, one ballot, and this is true, that got wet in the mail. So the external envelope was visibly damp. What this meant was that we could not know whether the internal envelope was damp and if the internal envelope was damp, whether the ballot inside the internal envelope was damp. And because we could not therefore guarantee that the anonymity of the person who submitted the ballot could be guaranteed, that ballot got disqualified for no reason of the person's own. I happen to know exactly whose ballot that was, and I happen to know exactly which way that person voted. And I happen to know that that person would have absolutely no problem tweeting it out. That person was not at all concerned about their anonymity. But and again, it was entirely possible that the ballot wasn't even wet. It was the external layer was wet. So this was just a nightmare. I mean, I don't know exactly what the ideal way to do this election is, but that's not it. Right? That's not it. John [00:36:42] Wow. That's a very interesting story. I mean, it seems like they put every barrier in place possible. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:36:48] That is correct. They put every barrier in place possible. Sam [00:36:51] Sounds a lot like voting and in elections in the country. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:36:56] Yes, it is. The NLRB is a failure by design. It is designed to sort of. It is it exists to give us a way to think that we have the option to unionize, but also to make that process as hard as possible. Sam [00:37:09] We actually, we actually learned a little bit about the creation of the NLRB in class recently, which I thought was kind of funny. But, and you mentioned that you weren't really sure about a replacement system for voting per se, but do you think that there's any kind of room for maybe changing the NLRB or perhaps there should be a better kind of, I don't know the word, like overseer of the process. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:37:43] So the so the question is whether the NLRB itself could be reformed or its duties overseen by a different and better organization? I would say that probably, yes. But again, this is America. Those positions on the NLRB are appointed by the president. So, for example, early in the process we filed, we went public with our intention to unionize. The college attempted to argue that all full time non tenured track faculty were ineligible for unionization because we were all managerial. What, what or who we were managing, they never explained. But they basically said this entire thing must be shut down. And they used that claim to achieve concessions from us on other fronts, because they knew and we knew that if we went to a hearing, that would - because the NLRB is dramatically underfunded and experiencing massive delays - that would delay our union vote for months to years. If we appealed to beyond the local board, that would delay for years and that would also kick us over to the national NLRB, which is currently occupied by a number of Trump appointees who have a fundamental opposition to the idea of organized labor. So basically because the process does not work, because the process has been so captured by the political right that, that implicates the whole process. And it means that we could have, I mean, the college's argument about the the ostensible managerial status of a full time entity faculty is a baseless argument that has absolutely no merit whatsoever. But in order to fight that in the courts, fighting that in the courts would �have been a Pyrrhic victory at best for us, so we couldn't pursue it. So, yes, the NLRB is deeply flawed, and the only way to fix it is, step one, elect better politicians. John [00:39:49] In the scope of Skidmore College. I know you've noticed. I know you've mentioned being stonewalled for basic information inaccurate addresses, and it's clear that this is all information that the college has easy access to and could distribute to you. Do you think that in a private institution like Skidmore, it's supposed to be a community, but in this private institution, does that give the college a lot more leverage in, in preventing your, your organizing activities? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:40:27] Public sector salaries are another story. Your question is whether us being a small private institution allows that and in a quote, community allows the college more leverage in preventing us from getting access to info. I would say basically yes is the answer to that. Public sector salaries are often a matter of public record. That's not the case at Skidmore. Yeah. So, yes. Sam [00:40:52] Right. And I think going off of that, you know, before this interview, I was kind of reading through some of the letters that were put out by the administration as the process went along. And, you know, I feel like that after hearing what you've had to say, the letters aren't exactly very reflective of how, you know, Skidmore kind of paints itself as being very open to discussion. And, you know, having heard what you had to say about kind of them labeling you guys as managerial positions when obviously, you know, what does that mean? What do you think could be done to maybe make Skidmore position kind of more transparent? Because I feel like those those letters would have you believe that, you know, they're right along here for the process. We're open to talk, like whatever. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:41:46] So your question is, how was Skidmore’s communication - could have been more transparent. Yeah, I would say that the college really bungled it. I the whole time we were organizing, there was a persistent tension between the organizers who were kind of on team speed and team discretion. And I thought that I, you know, shifted between those camps at various points. We did need to be underground, but at a certain point, that's just very, very, very hard to do. And, you know, occasionally an email will go across a server that it shouldn't have. And there have been there were other slip ups. You know, occasionally you're talking about someone outside the, the Case Center and you realize there's a dean standing behind you who could have been listening. But was he? You know? I would say that when we went public, what I, what I realized to my total shock and amazement, was that the administration had no idea what we were up to, that we really did catch them by surprise, which amazed me because I thought I had been unbelievably brazen. It turns out that dean was not listening and in fact was paying zero attention to you and didn't know your name prior to the point at which you started talking to the press. So I would say that Skidmore’s handling of the situation it was. I can't imagine that they would look back on it with, with pride. I don't know what they think, though, so you'd have to ask them. I would say that the college,s, the college used some extremely familiar anti-union talking points, though, and I would say that after the initial kind of confusion phase, they did figure out precisely what they wanted to say and they said it. And those were the same points that they use to oppose unions at Starbucks, at Amazon, at the auto workers, everywhere that’s trying to unionize. They use the same arguments against unionization, I would say. And one thing that I think particularly horrified me was the way that the college used a kind of rhetoric of individual agency and autonomy to discredit collective action. A classic thing to say is that, oh, the union organizers are bullies. They want you to sign these cards. They're pushy. They're pushy and they're bullies. So, you know, setting aside the fact that, as we all know, like people who accuse �others of being bullies are usually the bullies themselves. That's how bullying has been coopted in the discourse. But setting that aside, I mean, there’s this emphasis that like individual agency is this absolute highest thing was extremely familiar to me and but, but very disappointing, I would say. I am a scholar of 19th century British literature and my area of expertise is Victorian fiction. And so, for example, the work of Dickens is in my area of expertise and you know, Dickens, Dickens came up with all these arguments and he made them a lot better than the college does. And, you know, the, the sort of the sameness of those arguments over time was really striking to me. Sam [00:44:48] Yeah. And I think maybe speaking to the sameness and the kind of unawareness of what was going on. You know, you mentioned the it was surprising to you that the college didn't really, wasn't really picking up on the hints of of discontent. And, you know, I think that kind of I feel like having been at a few academic places, there's usually a kind of disconnect between the faculty, the administration and the students also. And I feel like that, you know, looking around campus in recent years, you know, I’m a junior, I've been here I was here during the COVID times. And when all that the Title IX stuff is really flaring up. And I can sense a kind of similarity between all of that, between the faculty's frustrations and the students frustrations and sort of the kind of, you know, we're supposed to be this small community, but then you see the kind of sameness between the school’s responses to like Amazon and Starbucks, these humongous corporations. And so I, I guess where I was going with this was I was wondering, you know, what can be done in terms of the kind of common ground between the students and the faculty, and what do you think should be done in terms of kind of maybe bringing the administration a little bit down, not like pushing them down, but, you know, kind of bringing us all on the same sort of playing field. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:46:23] Great. So your question is how we can bridge gaps between students and faculty and also between everyone in the administration. So I have, I have a lot of feelings on this question. I would say first that I've been reluctant to discuss my working conditions with my students because it's a little bit embarrassing and because it's not their fault and because I want them to have a really positive feeling toward their life, toward their lives, and toward their, toward Skidmore. I look back on my college years fondly, and I hope that my students develop lifelong, fond memories of their time in college. And so I'm sort of reluctant to burst that bubble in certain ways, although, you know, perhaps I, perhaps I shouldn't be. I would say that I've been incredibly moved by the level of student support for our, for our movement. It's, it's honestly like brings me to tears. It's, it's very moving. As for how to, you know, bring, bring that kind of administration to, into better touch with reality, I would say that I don't have a great answer to that question, but that the collective bargaining process is a legal structure that requires them to negotiate. And so I don't frankly need to get along with the administration. I don't particularly need or want to be very friendly with them at receptions. I actually don't think that the model of community is the best way to describe Skidmore. Skidmore as a workplace. It is my workplace, and although I do like many of my colleagues a lot, I don't think that getting along socially should be the ultimate measure of whether we are succeeding here. So I would say that I don't I don't particularly care that the administration comes to see things my way. I'm just delighted that I'll be able to negotiate them, negotiate with them through the structures provided by collective bargaining. John [00:48:41] In terms of relationships between non tenure track and tenure track faculty, how much support do you really see from tenure track faculty and is it in their best interest to support non tenure track faculty? �Prof Ruth McAdams [00:48:56] So the question is what the level of support is that we've received from tenure track faculty and whether it's in their best interests to support us. So I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support that the tenure track faculty offered to us immediately. The morning that we went public with our campaign, there was already a petition circulating among the tenure track faculty in support of our movement. And there was a, there were a lot of signatures on there. I was delighted and also surprised. Definitely surprised. I would say that I have some theories as to kind of what was going on there. I think that the, I think that the non tenured track faculty unionization campaign went public at a moment in which overall faculty satisfaction with the administration was at a historic low for a variety of reasons. So I think that we benefited from that. As to whether it's in their best interests, this is a contentious issue. I would say that, that, yes, it is in their best interests to be supportive of us. And I'll give you an example. So, for example, there are tenured faculty, tenure track faculty who lament that Skidmore is hiring fewer and fewer tenure track faculty and more and more non tenure track faculty. And those faculty, though the people who feel that way wish that there were fewer of us and that there were more tenure track faculty. And what I say to those people whenever I have a chance, which is not all that often, but does occasionally happen, is that the reason that the college is hiring fewer and fewer tenure track faculty and more and more non tenure track faculty is obvious. It is that we make so much less money. We are so much cheaper and so much easier to fire. So if you, colleague, would like to reduce the college's support, use of non tenure track faculty, one thing that you could advocate for would be like a $25,000 raise for us because that would take the edge off why we are so much more desirable to hire. That argument is not always super successful with those people. I think those people are a little bit disingenuous, and what they're really saying, and aren't always very good at listening. But I do think that, and shoring up and ensuring some minimum standards for the working conditions of non tenure track faculty will mean that the college has less of an incentive to rely on us. And I would just observe that the non tenure track faculty unionization campaign went public in April of this year. We had our election in September. Over the summer, the college decided to hire a huge number of tenure track faculty. Those searches are in process. The way that searches work is that it takes about a year to hire someone. So already, even before we had successfully unionized, the college was moving to hire more tenure track faculty. I think that that is the best possible proof of my argument, and I think that the future will bear out that if you can't simply pay faculty next to nothing to do the same work, perhaps you will have less of an incentive to do that. Sam [00:52:18] I think going off of what you're talking about with tenure track faculty, both my parents are teachers. My dad's a professor, he's tenure. But my mom has taught at, at the college level a couple of times as kind of like an adjunct professor, but, you know, it’s, it’s a really hard field. And I was wondering if maybe you could speak on the kind of difficulties of, of the whole tenure track concept and maybe that that itself might need some kind of reform in terms of being, it feels to me from kind of an outsider perspective to be sort of kind of arbitrary and, you know, kind of just you as the person being hired don't really have a lot of say in the matter, I feel like. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:53:08] So your question is about the tenure system, whether it is sustainable, whether it needs reform. I would say that the tenure system has been subject to a variety of outstandingly excellent critiques. The tenure system is for years supported abusers, for years encouraged the worst behavior among faculty. It has, it is, it is notoriously problematic. That said, what the tenure system achieves, at its best, is that it allows faculty the academic freedom they need to pursue unpopular topics. And I would just say that what we see in red states that have eliminated tenure for public sector professors is a completely unsurprising crackdown on things like critical race theory, on �things like professors who study transgender issues. Women and faculty of color have been targeted by those cuts. So the tenure system is problematic, but it provides something that needs to be provided, which is academic freedom and freedom from political critiques on knowledge production. That said, you know, I personally, as a person who has been kept out of the tenure system against my will, I would love to be a tenure track faculty member, a tenured faculty member. I'm highly deserving of it. I am not going to cry too many tears at the death of tenure. And I think that we need to think about models of employment and models of, of education that encourage both the freedom that faculty need to do their job, but also accountability toward their students. And so I would say, I think that the union model is a really strong model. In that sense, I think it, I think that it provides the kinds of support that faculty need, but also the encouragement to be accountable toward what the needs of students actually are. Sam [00:55:17] So you would say that you think that perhaps unions can be kind of an option in terms of replacing, you know, tenure provides protection for people to say things that need to be said, but it also provides protection for people who are not deserving of that protection. And I was just trying to reiterate that you'd think that unions could possibly provide an option. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:55:42] Yes, I would say the answer is yes. But I would also say that the tenure system is not going to die. It's going to wane, as it has. And it's not going to be wholesale replaced. It's going to be supplemented. So, yeah. John [00:56:00] From a student’s perspective, I will say often times if collectively a class has, takes issue with the way that a professor is teaching or professors action, then the dialog will go something along the lines of, Oh, he or she, whoever they identify, they don't care because they're tenured. So they don't care what, what will come of their, of their actions. I guess that that's the downfall of the tenure track system. And I agree that I think the union, the unionization system, it seems like it is, it's difficult to get it rolling. And I guess part of my my curiosity about it, you've mentioned a dean behind you and you're trying to discuss the early stages of unionization and how much how much do the deans and the and the administration really benefit from preventing your unionization? Why are they at the root of this situation? Is it just comes down to money? Do they make more money if you aren't unionized and they get to pay you less? And where is, where's the money going that we, we get from these $70,000 tuitions? Really. Prof Ruth McAdams [00:57:18] Great. So your question is, what do the deans have to gain by suppressing the union movement? And where where are your tuition dollars going? Yeah. Okay. One thing that I think is really important to understand as a, as a student and it took me a while to understand this as a faculty member, is that, in fact, the deans aren't even running the show. The show is run by the board. The board are a bunch of rich people that bankroll Skidmore, that oversee our funds, and they have particular views. They are absolutely concerned, entirely and exclusively with the financial health of the institution. That is what they care about. They don't care about anything else. I would say that even the deans are -- although I don't like all these people -- they are themselves workers who are beholden to systems that they didn't design and wouldn't defend. I would say that the, the control of the, the, the institutional control exercised by the board is very disturbing and is one of the root problems here. Not the only one, but, but one of them. Sam [00:58:37] And yeah. And so I think that maybe to kind of bring this to a close. You mentioned earlier that you felt like, you know, you were maybe a little bit cautious to talk to students about this sort of thing. But I think from my perspective. From what I've talked to �about my friends, about coming here during COVID and experiencing all these things that you might find that, you know, students are more willing to talk about this sort of thing than, you know, you might think. And so I was just wondering in that regard and in kind of context of the whole country, you know, what do you think should be done to kind of start these kind of conversations about dissatisfactions with, and not just dissatisfactions, but looking to improve our surroundings? Prof Ruth McAdams [00:59:31] I think that's a great question. So your, your question is about what we can do to kind of get these conversations rolling in the future. I want to go back and say that, like, I think that I was reluctant to talk to my students about unionization before we went - obviously, earlier in the process, and at this point, I'm pretty open about it. It comes in handy. My students were like: “Can you cancel class the Monday before Thanksgiving?” And I'm like: “No, I can't. And you see, I am, I just was involved in unionizing the non tenure track faculty, so I have to follow every single rule. And the dean says that I can't cancel class.” And the students look at me like “that is a legitimate answer. I will stop bothering you about this. I will not ask again. Thank you for your answer.” So it was helpful. I would say, I don't, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I think that, I think that, I think that we just need to be really honest about what work is. You know, my when I was growing up, my parents both worked a lot, and they still work a lot, and they're both very satisfied and happy in their jobs. They both have had jobs that have been fulfilling for them and have offered opportunities for advancement. And I am totally convinced that if I had gotten a job that offered me opportunities for advancement, that was fulfilling to me, that I would work all the time too. I think that that is, I can see the temptation of that, in a way. But since I never got that kind of job, I think about things quite differently. And I think that we need to be honest that like, work is work and should be fairly compensated, even if it is a, quote, good job. You know, the, the “do what you love” mentality, the idea that if you, if you get a job that you love, you'll never work a day in your life. That is some of the most nefarious bullshit. You know, every job that you, it is a job, and it should be fairly compensated. And I think that, that, I think that, just like getting that through our thick heads is challenging. And I still find myself struggling with it, to be honest with you. And, and, and it's hard, it's hard to, it's hard to say to students, too. Because I teach, I've taught twice a one-credit course called “The English Major and Beyond” for graduating senior English majors. And the idea is to help students prepare to take their first professional steps after graduation. So we do things like workshops, resumes, and cover letters. We talk about interviewing skills and stuff like that. And one of the things I say to the students in that class is that my impression is that there are three things that many Skidmore graduates want out of their job. One, intellectual stimulation, two a sense of moral purpose. And three, a living wage. And I say to my students, you know, you should think about how you'd rank those three, because it can be hard to find all three of those in equal measure in a single job. And I feel very weird about this advice because firstly, the students hate it, like they don't want to hear that. And why would they? That's, it's horrible. What I'm saying to them is truly a horrible thing. It is a reflection of something very dark that I'm saying. On the other hand, it's the truth, and I don't see value in not telling the truth. I think this is one of my problems in life. I will answer your questions honestly, and this has gotten me into a lot of trouble in many contexts in my life. And I, I don't, I don't, I don't know what to say. Like, I think that, you know, it's not as though if someone had given me that advice, I would have, like, thought any differently, that I would have done anything differently than I did. I think that I was completely dead set on doing every single thing that I did, and no adult could have ever talked me out of any of it. Some of them tried. But I don't see the value in pretending as though anyone, regardless of their interests, regardless of their training, regardless of their GPA, can just waltz into a job that is intellectually stimulating, gives you a sense of moral purpose, and actually pays you a �living wage. I don't think there are jobs that provide those three things anywhere in the world in equal measure, and I think that just some honesty about that, that, has to be involved in this process. John [01:04:21] Yeah. I think that that's absolutely a great way to finish things off as we're reaching the end of our time. Sam [01:04:27] Yeah, that was wonderful. John [01:04:28] Yeah, that was a great conclusion. Sam [01:04:30] Thank you so much. Prof Ruth McAdams [01:04:31] Thank you both. Yeah, this has been fun. Sam [01:04:33] All right. Well, I think I think we'll end it there. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sam Stiefel '24 and John Sveen '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ruth McAdams Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:03:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ruth McAdams Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 17, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Ruth M. McAdams is a Senior Teaching Professor in the English Department at Skidmore College, where she has taught courses in literature and writing since 2017. She is a scholar of Victorian literature with a PhD from the University of Michigan. She has written many articles for scholarly journals and has a book under contract with Edinburgh University Press. She grew up in Chicago, and has also lived in Philadelphia, Edinburgh (Scotland), Ann Arbor (MI), Atlanta, and Istanbul (Turkey), as well as Saratoga Springs. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, running, and playing the oboe. She was one of the lead organizers of the successful campaign to unionize Skidmore’s non-tenure-track faculty in September 2022. She is currently serving on the Negotiating Committee of Skidmore Faculty Forward, SEIU Local200 United. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/52ab92723c704591b1b834cc0ebbee47.jpeg ab73818b63105b44886d450727b70cf6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/e8481d084fef3d59fdb03354eb3463b3.jpeg 3536f85970f0e045b3335dd49a0ecc5f https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2be9343d515033e25fc2ceef534d1813.m4a d3581ed90a836be3d8fd3ecbc994f6f5 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b8c3aa18d4c60506b950276266241bb1.pdf 30eb502c3117fbb688293acf6f5b06f5 PDF Text Text Narrators: Lynne Mattinson and Stuart Whipple Interviewers: Conrad Kassin ’24 and Giovanni Jacobelli ‘24 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: Conrad Kassin [00:00:00] Okay. Recording, recording. So thank you so much for both of you guys for coming today. As you guys know, this is for our American labor history class. We'll be conducting oral history interviews based on labor in the Saratoga area. These interviews will be compiled with others, which will be archived for the public for future use and to look back upon. So today, me and Giovanni, my name is Conrad. We'll be asking questions. Giovanni, do you want to start asking the first question? GIovanni Jacobelli [00:00:27] Yes. So when, you can introduce yourself a little bit, and then tell us where you were born and where you grew up, and a little bit about your childhood. Lynne Mattison [00:00:38] So my name is Lynne Mattison. I grew up in a West Albany, New York, which is a little village outside of the city of Albany. I grew up in a blue collar family, so both parents worked. For, my mother worked for the state. My father worked for a meatpacking plant. So it was a very small knit community that I grew up. Stu Whipple [00:01:09] My name is Stu Whipple. I was born and raised in Saratoga Springs. Lived here my whole life, with the exception of two years away for college. I, as well, come from a blue collar family. Both of my parents actually retired from Skidmore College. My dad was the head baker, and my mom was a housekeeper. Conrad Kassin [00:01:28] So for a second question, let's just get straight into it. Please, can you tell us what do you do and how did you end up in Saratoga? Lynne Mattison [00:01:36] What do I currently do? I work at Saratoga Springs High School. I work in the attendance office. I have a clerical position at Saratoga. Stu Whipple [00:01:48] I'm a custodian for the school district. Saratoga school district. At the high school as well. And actually, my first job I ever had, paying job, when I turned 16 was working here at Skidmore College in the kitchen as a high school trainee, glorified name for a pot washer. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:02:07] What inspired you to get involved in labor issues? Stu Whipple [00:02:14] For me, that's a no brainer because my dad was the president here for years for the local 200D . My brother was the president for the Saratoga Springs Fire Department, and I took a union class in college. It was just. We have to. Lynne Mattison [00:02:33] So for me, my father worked at a meatpacking plant in West Albany. They had just started to unionize down there and then the meatpacking plant closed. So he ended up working for the town of Colony, and he felt that he needed to become active for the labor movement there. They would just CSEA was just starting to get involved. So he got involved. My mother worked for the state and she was, what we call building rep . But she was a chef steward for CSEA at the Education Department. So for me, I feel like it was born, bred, and raised into me. �Conrad Kassin [00:03:14] Very cool. So what was your first experience with labor organizing? Lynne Mattison [00:03:22] Mine was probably about when I started 25 years ago when I started at the school district. I was approached by the, I was approached by one of the custodians in the school that I worked for. He was running against our current president at the time, so he asked if I would support him and help him organize his campaign for him. That's how I originally got involved in Up Here. Conrad Kassin [00:03:50] And you had already been at that point somewhat bing introduced to labor organizing from your childhood? I see. Stu Whipple [00:03:57] Mine was just when I started here in 1985 as a high school trainee. I was exposed to it my whole life. It's something that interested me tremendously. And then when I started at the school district. You know, I as well was, Lynne has inspired me to do it. And that was, oh boy, probably twelve years ago as an officer. So and it's, it's just something that you're, lot of it is, a lot of it is instilled in you when you're younger and you see the fight that your parents do. And it goes from generation to generation, I believe. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:04:31] So you’re discussing how important and how it's a generational importance of unions. What challenges do people in your field face? Stu Whipple [00:04:42] Right now, we're having a big thing where people just don't want to join a union. And to me, for me, it's hard to understand why, because there's so much job security. I mean, I love having that guaranteed paycheck every other week. I love having my vacation time, my sick time, my pay. And, you know, that's just and I've been at jobs where I've had paychecks bounce. And they show favoritism. When you're this, everybody's the same. Everybody's treated the same. And that's what you want. You want unity. And that's what that's what the union is about. It's about everybody. Lynne Mattison [00:05:23] I agree with Stu wholeheartedly. And I think the other challenge that we face right now was when the Janus case happened, right? You no longer, you know, it wasn’t mandatory that dues came out. So the challenges that we face are getting out, doing intake meetings with no employees, right, new support staff and explain to them the importance of regardless of what happens with Janus, but the importance of why you should become a union member and like Stu said, you know, the guaranteed paycheck and the benefits and the, that and the, to be represented, you know, if you, if something should happen. So, for us, it's about the positives and the pros and trying to keep our movement moving forward, so to speak. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:06:11] What is this, Janus? Lynne Mattison [00:06:13] So Janus Case was. Stu Whipple [00:06:16] Started by a schoolteacher years ago in California. And they just, they said that they should not have to join a union if it's a union job. But the only problem is they can opt out of the union, but they still get the benefits of the union, which that's another thing that we have to fight for now. Because if you opt out, I'm still paying union dues. Why should you get the same thing that my contract that says union members, why should you get that? Why should you be entitled to that when you're not paying union dues? That's specifically for union members. �Lynne Mattison [00:06:52] I think it was about 2018 that the Supreme Court ruled in favor for him so that we used to have agency shop fee payers, people that didn't want to join the union but still had to pay that union fee. And then there was us. So now they, they, all they have to do is just write a letter to that union. Now they can opt out if you don’t feel like the union is being beneficial to you. Like Stu said, we're now having that uphill battle that they're getting the same benefits that we're getting and not having to pay union dues. So we battle that on a daily basis. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:07:33] We, we’re both not on the labor field yet. What does, what does union dues look like and how much is a union due and is it a… Stu Whipple [00:07:43] Union dues are based, it's different for every union. It’s like a certain percentage of pretty much, your pay. So if you pay $33 like we get paid every other week. So a 60 to say $60 a month. But okay, so that equates to 720 a year. That's $720 a year. That's huge for it's it's not it's huge in a sense of the protection I have and what I get for that. It's peanuts. Lynne Mattison [00:08:12] And there's a breakdown. I would have brought the breakdown. So there's a breakdown of, like, where your union dues go. So in the broader picture there's AFSCME. Right? And so they're the big parent company of the unions. So AFSCME will get a percentage or are like political? Political action gets a portion of it. So our union dues, and they stay local. They'll stay for our regional dues and our state dues. But there's an overall broader picture of why you would pay union dues. Free college we used to have, ASFCME started a free college that the government now took away from us. Conrad Kassin [00:08:58] So I had a question for Stu, because you mentioned early that that a lot of the new laborers are not interested in joining labor unions. And I just had a question, if you could attribute that to, is that a policy decision that that's leading to that outcome? Or is that a, is that just like union busting on a local level? Stu Whipple [00:09:15] I don't think it's union busting. I think some of it is people are thinking, why should I pay to work? I think that, but and the thing is, if they don't, then like when it comes time for voting for our union officers or our contract why would you not want that right to vote for who's leading you or vote for your raise? You have no say if you're not a union member. And I just think some of it is also maybe because we have a lot of twenty and thirty hour employees and the union dues, that little bit they have that, I think that's part of it maybe. Conrad Kassin [00:09:53] I see. So for my next question, what have you guys accomplished? What are your big accomplishments you would like to tout, I mean, you kind of already mentioned this as a benefit of the dues. You have some protections, but is there something about organizing that you've accomplished that you'd like to tout? Stu Whipple [00:10:09] I know one thing with our last contract or I would Lynne, she's our president of our unit, one of the big things is we got health insurance back and that's a huge accomplishment. 50% health insurance when I retire, cause that was given away years ago. But she fought hard for that, her and the other officers. And to me, that's a huge, huge benefit. 50%. When you retire as opposed to zero. Lynne Mattison [00:10:36] I think we face a lot of battles now, right when it when it comes to negotiating union contracts. So like money and like Stu said, so we, when we try you know we reach out to our members, we get feedback from our members and then we take �it from there. Like how are we going to organize this? How are we going to, you know, go into something big to be able to negotiate retiree health insurance for members like? When you when you try to organize, you stand your ground like you, you don't back down from the issues that you believe in. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:11:16] Going along the same. What do you wish to accomplish that you haven't yet accomplished? Stu Whipple [00:11:21] 100% union membership. Lynne Mattison [00:11:25] I agree. 100%. Yes. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:11:28] And going with that, what percent of union membership do you currently have? Lynne Mattison [00:11:33] Well, we currently we have eleven school districts within Saratoga County that we represent as a local. So at Saratoga, we probably have we're probably at about 90%. So we have about four hundred, four hundred and thirty support staff. So we are probably at about 90% at Saratoga. County level for our eleven school systems, we're probably about the same percentage, probably at 90%. We have that 10%, we have. So we, we do new hires, all the districts do new hires all the time. So it's important for us to get out there and to get out there and be able to reach those new hires to let them know that what the union is about and why they should be coming. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:12:25] Why do you think this 10% is hesitant to join the union? Stu Whipple [00:12:30] I think some of them, like I stated a little while ago, is if they're only going to be a twenty or thirty hours employee, any money they are earning they need. So maybe it might be the the union dues or, I hate to say it, but some people might have retired somewhere and had a bad taste, you know, got a bad taste from union and just don't want to be in a union. Lynne Mattison [00:12:58] Right. We have, I've noticed from new employees this year we we’re not, we're not attracting the younger generation. So a lot of the generation is that middle aged generation like forties and older. Right? So these are people that have left maybe private sector and now are coming into the public sector. So it's it, it, it becomes a tough sell to us sometimes to get them to understand why it's beneficial to be part of the union. You know what you get for this, um, how we help. How? So I see more of that generation than I am the younger generation. Conrad Kassin [00:13:47] So kind of to backtrack a little bit, Lynne, I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about on the ground advocating for labor issues. Can you talk a little bit about your experiencing and what does that look like on the ground? Lynne Mattison [00:14:00] So. So we also, so if we are at a delegate conference or a workshop conference. So we go to Lake Placid for a conference. Right. And they we're in Lake Placid, let's say, and there is a public department, public safety or public works department. And they're not getting a fair contract or they're not. So we will, sort of say, walk the line for them. Right? To show our support. To help organize with them. To show, you know, you're not in it alone. Right? That we, we will organize this group when we come and we bring our CSEA signs. And it's all about supporting one another regardless of what union you’re in. So we have CSEA. We have local steamfitters. Teamsters. We �have PFE we have, we have, have PEF. So. It's important to me for my eleven school districts to act, to have my members also get involved, to show support to the other unions that are around us. Does that help? Conrad Kassin [00:15:14] Yes. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:15:16] So you were talking, Stu, earlier about like some people have a bad taste of unions. What makes a union good and effective and something that people want to join like on an individual basis? Stu Whipple [00:15:26] Well, it all starts with the leadership, too. If you have leadership that just sits back and lets stuff happen. Our leadership in our unit, in our local, our region and our state, we're great. We're out there. Like, we do. What do they call the door knocking things? The blitzes. They’re called the blitz. We go to non, non-members houses and knock on the door and get them to sign up. So… Lynne Mattison [00:15:54] We do drive throughs. Stu Whipple [00:15:56] Drive through, yeah. Lynne Mattison [00:15:57] We do drive throughs. Stu Whipple [00:15:58] Movie nights they had at the drive-in movie night, you know, things like that. You're trying to get the people to join. If you've had a bad experience, we want to make it better. We're going to make it better. It's not that we want to. We're gonna. Lynne Mattison [00:16:14] And I think if you notice, so things the saying is things come around in a full circle. Right? So, a while ago it was union, union, union. And then all of a sudden you started seeing companies, corporations move away from the union. Right? Now, all of a sudden, that's coming back full circle. Right? You're starting to see people organize unions. Starbucks. Right? Amazon. So you're starting to see people come back to the blue collar community. Right? Want to bring back a union so that people can fight for their rights? Safe work environments, fair wages. So that's what we've become part of when we see another union, brother or sister struggling for them. We can't get a fair contract, you know, where their employer wants to lock them out. That's where we come in and we've become their advocate for that. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:17:10] You used the wording, brothers, sister. Is the union kind of a family almost? Are you very closely connected? Lynne Mattison [00:17:16] Yes. Stu Whipple [00:17:17] Yes, absolutely. It's a huge unity and great. Conrad Kassin [00:17:22] And it's definitely seen it seems to be at least also cross across unions, too. It's beyond just your individual unit. Stu Whipple [00:17:28] Because we were with, who do we, that. Momentum. We were walking down with them. Lynne Mattison [00:17:34] Yes, yes. �Stu Whipple [00:17:35] Down in, wasn’t that Schenectady or wherever it was? Lynne Mattison [00:17:39] Waterford. Stu Whipple [00:17:40] Waterford, yeah. Conrad Kassin [00:17:39] So on the topic of organizational, organization, can you talk a little bit about how your organization has changed over the years, a little bit, and how it's come to the position it is in today? Stu Whipple [00:17:49] The thing for me is the Janus thing that was a huge change. And that was. But we're, we're fighting on that we didn’t give up just because we lost that. We don't give up. We fight. And that's, that's just how it is. That's what's great about being in a union. We all get together and go, goddammit, it's enough is enough. We're coming after you. It’s not that we’re coming after you. We want what we deserve. Conrad Kassin [00:18:16] Absolutely. Stu Whipple [00:18:17] You know? Conrad Kassin [00:18:18] If I can build off that question, what is, the what is the maximalist goals here? Like, if you're saying we're fighting, what is, what is, you win, what is, what does that look like? Stu Whipple [00:18:28] Well, it just shows you the unity and what, what, what people are capable of, capable of doing. Lynne Mattison [00:18:33] Equality. Stu Whipple [00:18:34] Yeah, exactly. When everybody gets together and it's just, it's great. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:18:44] Why is it important to remember these stories of working people? Lynne Mattison [00:18:51] Because you're always going to have working people. Right? We're always going to have to blue collar people. Right? College is not meant for everybody. Right? The private business is not meant for everybody. So you're always going to have labor class working people. So for future generations, it's important to them. It's important for us to let them know. Right? It's okay to be in a labor movement. It's okay to be part of a union. Right? You know, it's okay not to have to go to a four year college and get this big degree that, it's okay to be able to feel like that and be able to go into working class and, you know, build your, build yourself up from there. Stu Whipple [00:19:39] Yeah, I agree with that 100%. You're always going to have us. Lynne Mattison [00:19:44] We're always going to be there. We are not going, as Stu said to you guys before. We're not going anywhere. Stu Whipple [00:19:50] We are not going away. �Conrad Kassin [00:19:54] I mean that, just I'm thinking, just that means a lot of think tells a lot about what Americans who America is really for and what we're really working here to achieve. Lynne Mattison [00:20:04] I mean, we're learning to rebuild America. You just said it. I think we're looking to rebuild America into what America wants. Conrad Kassin [00:20:12] And I absolutely and I think you really, you made a point that working people have always been here and they are going to continue to be here. I think it's just a matter of now we've acknowledged that. And I think it's we need to uplift these working people and then kind of they need to have their due. They built this country, and… Lynne Mattison [00:20:28] But I think you're seeing that again. Like I said, that was my whole you’re going around in a full circle. Right? Like everybody at one point, people felt like 'taboo' to a union. Right? And like and now all of a sudden, you're seeing that come back together. So, so people are starting to unite again and feel like we need to bring America back to America. And that if that means bringing America back and forming a union to get better work environment, better pay, just a better life then, so be it. Conrad Kassin [00:21:03] So my final question, I'd be remiss not to ask about the midterm elections and the impact on labor issues as today is November 8th. I was just curious if you could opine on what you think are possible challenges facing labor organizing following these elections? Stu Whipple [00:21:23] This is a very touchy subject. As you guys know, it's a very touchy subject. I've lost friends because I, they don't like who I support or cause I don't agree with them. That's not what it's about. We all got to get along. Lynne Mattison [00:21:38] I think it's it's the political arena is tough enough. Right? So. It divides even as a union, right? A union, they may support that one candidate that you may not support. But like Stu said, you know, bottom line, it comes down to, for us, who is the best candidate that's going to do the best job for us as a labor? Right? And, and, and really meaning, like we for our local elections and our school board elections here, we get involved like we actually interview the candidates and, and ask them questions like, why do you want us to endorse you? What is it that you're going to do for us? And I have to tell you, the candidates that are running for Saratoga County I don't care if they are Democrat or Republican that are running. They are very pro-labor and very pro-union either, whether they are Democrat or Republican working families. You will find that, that, that the candidates that are out there now are in support and they do follow through. Once they're elected, it's not like they, they're just out there. They will say that they will follow through with the labor movement. Stu Whipple [00:23:03] Because they would never get the support from us again. Lynne Mattison [00:23:05] Right. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:23:06] Do you think, uh, local politics is most important for union successes, or do you think it's a federal also? Stu Whipple [00:23:17] Well really. It like with us, it's, our union is divided into four sections. You got a unit. Local, region, and state. So it's definitely all four, well pretty much your unit, your locals is the region. So I would say your unit, region and state. But I would �say probably most likely all four. It is very important for all four. Because when you go to negotiate your contract as unit. If you have, you know, like for the city of Saratoga, when they go, they got the mayor. And all the other four, you know, the commissioners, you know, if you back the wrong person and then they lose and, you know, that's a tough, that's a tough, tough to do. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:24:10] So you've both been in the union for a while. Your family's been in. Have you seen failures happen and is it difficult to recover from failures? I know you'd say you keep on pushing, but sometimes. Lynne Mattison [00:24:21] Now failures. So define what you mean by failures. GIovanni Jacobelli [00:24:23] Like, getting push back. Lynne Mattison [00:24:25] You’re always going to get push back. Stu Whipple [00:24:28] Like when you negotiate contracts you don't, you're not going to get, you can go on with a list like this and go “here.” You're not going to get all that. You go in with a wish list and if you get three or four of them, that's awesome, because you know that you’re gonna. It's like going to a casino. You got, to go to a casino knowing you're going to lose, you know. But with this, you know, you go in and you go, okay, we got twenty items. We get three or four of them. It’s Great. Lynne Mattison [00:24:52] Right. And I, and I, with the pushback. So that's what, that's what makes you, that's what makes us strong right now. The harder, the more you push us, the more we're going to push back at you. Right? So it’s about not giving up. So push, they're going to push and we're going to push back harder. At some point, we're going to come to me in the middle. Stu Whipple [00:25:16] When you go into a negotiations. You're not going to, it's not going to be done one or two trips. It's going to be months, maybe years. Because the union just does not give up. And the leadership and the membership. They get together. They know what they want. If they don't get it. We're not approving it. We're not ratifying it. Conrad Kassin [00:25:37] What would you say to someone, a younger person like me or Giovanni, who is just entering the workforce and is failing to unionize or failing to achieve this level of unionization? What do you would you say to them to keep them motivated? Stu Whipple [00:25:54] Well, first of all, remember, it's a learning, it's a learning experience, too. You just, you learn. I'm still learning. And I've been doing it for a long time. But you learn all the time. You keep your head strong and if you see something, you go after it. What’d your parents always tell you? You see something, you go after, you know, because you got to realize it's your livelihood, too. You know, and that's, that's really what it is. It's your whole livelihood. Conrad Kassin [00:26:27] I think that was everything we wanted to cover. I cannot thank you guys enough for being here. It's been a real phenomenal conversation, I think. Is there anything you guys would like to add? Last words, the final thoughts. Stu Whipple [00:26:39] I appreciate you asking us to come. I think that for young guys like yourself. You know, that's awesome. Because it shows that you're interested in it. So hopefully we can get you into a union and a union job. Over here. �Lynne Mattison [00:26:56] There's labor attorneys. There's, you know, we have labor attorneys. We have labor relations specialists. Right? So it's not just about us, but, like, we have we have attorneys at the CSEA that are, become labor attorney . Stu Whipple [00:27:12] Health and safety people that, which is right now, as you guys know, you know, you see your sign over there. It’s huge. Our health and safety they were fantastic. So I mean, it's not, a lot of people think, oh, that's all the union, that's all it is, is this. No, there's a lot more to it than just that right there, just us. Lynne Mattison [00:27:32] But we appreciate you guys reaching out to us. Stu Whipple [00:27:33] Yeah, absolutely. Lynne Mattison [00:27:34] This was great for us. Stu Whipple [00:27:36] Yeah. Conrad Kassin [00:27:36] Thank you so much. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Conrad Kassin '24 and Giovanni Jacobelli '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lynne Mattison and Stuart Whipple Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 27:44 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Lynne Mattison and Stuart Whipple Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Lynne M. Mattison: I have resided in Saratoga Springs for the past 35 years. I have been active in the union for the past 28 years when I started working for Saratoga School District. I started on committees and worked my way up to a union officer. Union ties run deep in my family. I am currently the Local President of one of the largest Locals in Saratoga County and the Upstate Region 4. I also serve on various committees on the CSEA Region 4 level. Stuart Whipple: Born and raised in Saratoga Springs. My entire family have been and are active union members. I have been a union activist for the past 19 years . I currently am a Saratoga County Educational Local Officer which oversees 11 School District’s in Saratoga County. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9fff4bdecbcbbf9bd15c991bd6d584e6.JPG 2b8bbd76dcf5faf5a23091f07e8bb551 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d162a3421d690ba86c2b9fff1c2dab94.mp3 cd8df9e3e3be98d0c86bd793a82f4bcc https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/acc99933d9f23e7cc21f902862d306ff.pdf 78cb3fc1619cd5371c16e0d6651369e0 PDF Text Text Narrator: Seth Cohen Interviewers: Corbey Ellison ’24 and Christian Giresi ‘24 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Dates of Interview: November 17, 2022 Corbey [00:00:00] Mostly over that. All right. So, it is November 17th, and we are sitting down with Seth Cohen of the Capital District Area Labor Federation. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Seth [00:00:14] Yes. Hi. So I am Seth Cohen, retired teacher from the Troy City Schools and currently the president of the Capital District Area Labor Federation. Corbey [00:00:26] So, I guess, you know, just getting started, getting to know you a bit more. First off, like where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? Seth [00:00:35] Sure. Yeah, I, I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about ten miles outside the city. I have five brothers and sisters. So big family. Did a lot of different kinds of things, you know, played sports. But were also into being near Philadelphia. A lot of history. I graduated from high school in 1976, so we were always considered the bicentennial class. And then my parents had grown up in the Boston area, so a lot of American Revolution, you know, that type of history because it was in and around where we grew up. So we were always very interested in that. Went away to college, to Northeastern University. Studied sciences in Boston, then left there, didn't finish there, transferred out to Geneseo State College in New York. And so I have a bachelor's in geology and so I was interested in geology, environmental sciences. Kind of a roundabout way, I did some work in the environmental field on Cape Cod and New England area and then eventually made my way back to this area. Christian [00:01:46] Excellent. So you said your early careers involved teaching. So was that one of your first jobs that you had? Seth [00:01:52] Yeah, I was kind of teaching and counseling in the environmental field, and so I spent a number of years running an environmental ed center on Cape Cod. We would have kids from the Boston area, Providence, Rhode Island, area. They'd come down and spend a week, and so we, we did a lot of things, usually middle school kids, environmental sciences. And when I got to the, came back to the Albany area, I was doing that as well as doing some counseling and was doing working with students, sort of underprivileged students and realized that I liked teaching and thought, okay, if I'm going to stay in teaching, I should get into the public schools. So I went and got my master's degree at SUNY Albany, master's in science teaching, and then did you know, did a variety of kinds of things and then ended up at in the Troy city schools and spent thirtythree years at the Troy city schools teaching science. Corbey [00:02:51] And did, you know, did your work as a teacher kind of inform your current, like, involvement and interest and views on labor issues? Like were you involved in teachers unions, stuff like that? Seth [00:03:03] Yeah, definitely. So I had in my family, a family history of people being involved with unions. Growing up, my mom was a teacher and she was a little bit involved with her union. But more importantly, my grandparents, my grandparents were from the Boston area, had emigrated to this country at the turn of the century and they were very much involved with unions. So kind of being in unions, my grandparents, my uncles, it was �all kind of always a conversation. And then when, yeah, when I got into the public schools a couple of years in our union was going through contract negotiations and so it got involved in that way, just kind of learning a little bit more about it, hearing about what was going on and very kind of early on, probably three or four years into my career, started getting more involved with the union kind of in our building. And then over the progression of a number of years, probably held almost every position in our union as I worked my way up through. Corbey [00:04:08] What made you first want to get involved in, like, union leadership? Seth [00:04:13] I think one of the things as far as, like, kind of going back to the unions, I always thought that people should have a voice as to where they work to be able to say, you know, this is working for me and not working for me. And really, more importantly, let's say in a teacher union, you know what's working for the school. You know, we want to make sure that things are going well for the teachers, but it also helps with the students. And then I think part of it, as far as the question about union leadership, sort of, I think sometimes is just my natural personality of, of wanting to kind of I see things and it's like, well, you know, I think that could be done a little bit differently. I was really never afraid to put my voice out there and say, “Hey, I think we should try this.” And then a lot of times people would say, “All right, well, if you think. That should work. You take it on,” you know. And so you start with some small job. I did, you know, in the unions in in our district, we had eight different buildings and every building had a couple of building reps. And so, you know, the building rep would do some different things and then you'd get on another committee and so on so often. And then, like I said, I spent a couple of years as a vice president under a couple of different presidents, two women that really did well and kind of taught me a variety of things. And then in early 2000, 2001, I guess, I was elected president of our union. Um, so that was, that was really good. It taught me a lot of things. Christian [00:05:41] Oh, were there any, like, really influential, like, events or sequence of things that happened that made you feel more passionate about labor organizing than teaching per se? Or did you just somehow develop into that path? Seth [00:05:56] Um, I think I would say one of the things was the idea of giving teachers a voice in what they taught in their classrooms. So early on, it was often about, you know, do we have a good contract, you know, the benefits, you know, sort of the bread and butter issues that that all employees and all unions look to. But very early on, as a, as a early and a new president, the New York State United Teachers has a really good program for taking local presidents and giving them some training. And so I know I think maybe I was in local president for a year or so. This is probably twenty years ago. And I went to a training facility and there were talks, conversations about the Regents Exams, and there were conversations about the Regents Exams. And then in the course of that, I really got to understand that the teachers union could make some impacts in how the Regents Exams were written that would benefit students and benefit the teachers. And, and that was sort of new to me. And that idea that a labor union, instead of just working for the teachers and their benefits, could actually impact the students and the educational outcome. And so from then on, I really started to spend more time not, not excluding my teaching, but more time developing my union skills and then doing a lot more things with the statewide teacher's union, which then led me to, I started doing some work with the American Federation of Teachers, you know, on the national level. So I think that idea of empowerment for a teacher leader, not just for the contract, you know, sort of what people normally think of, you know, union benefits, health care and that kind of stuff, but how it can actually help students in the school district. �Corbey [00:07:54] During your time in the union did you have any, like, you know, large, large gains, large acomplishments that, you know, you're particularly proud of that you want to talk about? Seth [00:08:02] Yeah, I want to say one of the things, one of the aspects I always tried to push with in my union and in talking to the people under me was to think about our union, especially in a public school, the idea of bringing community in. And so probably I think we had, I think was around 2008 and we were going back to that idea. We had contract negotiations. But one of the aspects that we really pushed to try to get at settled was to bring the community in. And so we reached out to the other public sector unions, you know, people working in the city. But then we also reached out to the other labor organizations, you know, the building trades people like the Teamsters, CWA, you know, painters union and things like that. And because we were, we were having issues 2008 was, the economy was not that great. And so we were trying to push, but we were trying to make it the idea that it wasn't just teachers, it was, again, going back to that all encompassing kind of thing, so we were trying to get the community behind us. And so we actually, I was, you know, instrumental in putting together a couple of different rallies. And we ended up at our school. We had around somewhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred people from, I think, I don't remember exactly, but about fifteen different unions, not just teacher unions, spend time at our district right before board meetings and then we'd go in and talk to the board and we'd say, look, we're not just talking about the teachers, we're talking about the community, because the students that we teach, their parents, you know, work in these other areas and they understand what a good community would be like and you need a good school for that. So yeah, that was an idea and I've really tried to push that ever since, that whole idea of community building when you're working on unions. Corbey [00:10:06] Now, when you started to get involved in the more, like, national unions, how did that work and that involvement compare to, like, your more local district teacher union? Seth [00:10:18] It was very interesting because, so that that came about by working with the statewide teachers union, being on some committees with them and then being asked from the statewide teachers folks to say, “Would you like to represent New York at the American Federation of Teachers on the national level?: There's a, they have a committee it's called the Program and Policy Council, K to 12, kindergarten through 12th grade. And there are about about 60 people on it from all across the country. And there is usually somewhere between five and seven from New York State. And so where I worked in, in Troy, small city school, about five thousand students, not completely urban, you know, not like a Big Albany or a Buffalo or Syracuse, but certainly not a suburban, was kind of a mixture. So I think I had a unique role in that idea of, of kind of bridge the gap between urban and suburban area. But the thing that I was very interesting in when I went to a couple of the first meetings, really getting to know people from other parts of the country who were in unions, but their statewide unions were not nearly as strong as what's in New York State. And so, you know, here in New York State, it's the most dense union state in the country, something, I don't know the exact number, it's like 25, 30% of people are in a union. I think in the public sector, maybe private sector, it's less of that like 15 or so. Whereas across the country it's less than 10%. And so when you, when I go to those meetings, it was very interesting to hear people talking about that sort of the, the fights or the battles that they would have. And, you know, let's say the people in Philadelphia or the people in Orlando, you know, Orlando, Florida, they would talk about what's going on in �their city. Whereas here in New York, we talk about what's going on in the entire state. So it was much more that, you know, I used to talk to them and they were like, well, you know, we're only doing things here in Orlando or maybe in Tampa, but the rest of Florida is is not even on board with them in some places, the other parts of the state aren't even unionized. So it was very interesting to kind of, you almost get in a little bubble thinking, oh, this is the way it should be. And then you go to these other places, you find out, wow, it's, it's really not like that at all. Christian [00:12:41] So following that, you felt like New York had a much more structured and, like, more complete powerful union organization all together... Seth [00:12:51] Very much so. Christian [00:12:52] Than compared to most other states. Seth [00:12:54] Yeah, absolutely. Because I would say, you know, on the, on this committee, not, I would say they were probably only even, I'd have to make a guess about twenty states represented. You know, other states have pockets of unionization, but nowhere near what let's say New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, you know, some of the East Coast. And then you go to the West Coast. You know, California is very unionized, but, and there's pockets all around. Let’s say you take Texas. You just look at, you know, Houston, Austin, maybe one or two other big cities. They're unionized. The rest of the state, they don't even have unions. Yeah. So it's a very different kind of way of looking at things, even though, you know, you listen to the papers or watch the news, you know, they'll say, oh, all of education across the country is such and such and it's not even close. It really makes you, really makes you think that what we have in New York is, is pretty unique. Yeah. Corbey [00:14:03] And, you know, in terms of New York labor organizing, like, you're now the president of the Capital District Area Labor Federation. How did you first get involved with them? Seth [00:14:14] So I got involved as being a member, so I’ll back up a bit. And so the Capital District Area Labor Federation is a federation of about forty different unions in eleven counties around the Capital District. And so we're, we're an organization part of the statewide AFL-CIO. And so, like our organization, the Capital District Area Labor Federation, there are eight similar ones across the state, one down Hudson Valley, Central, New York, Buffalo, etc. And each of them have a section of the, of the state. And of those affiliated unions, the teachers are one of them. And so for many years, probably, I don’t know, about twelve or so, I was NICE's rep on that board. And so I had sat on the executive board for all of those years. The woman who had been the president of the organization moved up. She's now the president of our statewide Civil Service Employees Association. And so they had an interim come in. He actually had some health issues. And so a year ago, they asked if I wanted to move into that position, and so I did. Christian [00:15:33] So as a president, what is your, what are your current focuses that you're focusing on from issues? Seth [00:15:39] Yeah. So most recently, obviously we were a lot of, very heavy into the politics. So we spent, you know, probably most of the summer in leading up to the elections last week, working with various elected officials. So we always, you know, we do interviews of all the various candidates running for local assembly, state senators, �Congress. We don't usually get involved with small races. Let's say, you know, like, there's the mayor race here that was in Saratoga. We know those folks and some of our affiliates get involved, but as the Area Labor Federation, we just, we work on positions that people are a broad wide area so you know, an assembly person which would cover a whole area or a state senator. So we spend a lot of time talking with the various candidates, letting them know what the issues are for the various unions that are part of our labor federation. And so we've spent, that's where I've been wrapped up for the past couple of months, with all the elections just, you know, trying to get candidates that are, getting them elected to office who are understanding of unions. I don't always tell people, you know, people say, “Oh, you're just getting somebody elected so that they'll favor the unions.” I said, no, I don't want necessarily just to favor the unions. I want them to understand what the union issues are. And if there is legislation that they can pass that will be helpful. You know, one of our big groups is the building trades. So, you know, all kinds of construction sites are around and there's lots of laws that are out there. And we want to make sure that the laws are protecting the health and safety of all those workers. And so we want to make sure that we have candidates and people in that office who understand that as opposed to just, you know, it's great to have a business and they're bringing in lots of tax dollars. But if the people who are working there or building that building aren't going to have a safe environment, that's not good. So we, so we I think a lot of times our issue for the Capital District Area Labor Federation, which is sort of my background, is educating people, making sure that they understand what's going on out there with all the people that are working. You know, I mean, it's, you know, everybody talks about the economy. The economy’s driving the, you know, the prices of houses and gas and then your cost of living and what it's at the grocery store. And we want to make sure we'll all those people, they're working, some of them are in unions and some of them are not, are not. But it's, it's pretty well documented that union wages and benefits drive all benefits of wages, not just people in unions. Corbey [00:18:26] Could you talk about kind of like sort of the specifics of how you're promoting those candidates that are, you know, understanding and favorable towards unions? Seth [00:18:36] Sure. So one of the things we often do is, you know, we'll sit down with those candidates after let's say we've endorsed somebody and then will go through, we'll talk to them about, let's say, some of the public sector people who are, you know, police, firefighters, teachers, public hospitals, you know, what their needs are. Again, going back to talk about what the building trades some of those needs are and to make sure that they understand kind of, as I say, maybe health and safety type laws are. And we get, we will put together education fliers and then, and then our job is to then go out and talk to our members about what these candidates can do for them and to help their, you know, their livelihood and their workforce. Corbey [00:19:27] Mm hmm. And if you had, you mentioned your coming out of the midterm season right now, did you have a lot of, do you think you had a lot of success this season? Seth [00:19:38] We had a decent amount of success, a decent success in getting people either elected or reelected. And then, I think, in even in some of the candidates where we didn't win or the candidate didn't win, the people that we had endorsed, I think in some cases we've made some good connections with people who had been in, I'm thinking of, let's say, the Rensselaer County area just across the river. We had a woman who, very good, she was a public service advocate. She had been on a, you know, sort of a smaller �level government position and she was running for state Senate. She didn't win, but she's not, as she said to me about just a couple of days after the elections, I'm not going anywhere. You know, she's continued doing she works as a child advocate. And so I think we've made new connections with those people. And I think that's always good. And we've made connections with, with those candidates, even if they didn't win, with our unions. And so now they know what we're doing. And I think that's always very helpful, you know, as you move forward, when you're trying to do other kinds of activities. Corbey [00:20:53] And if you have a candidate, you know, that you are promoting and they don't win once their opponent is in office do you ever work with the one who was elected? Seth [00:21:03] Absolutely. There are some candidates that they don't want to work with us. But yeah, absolutely. I've always made it a point, you know, myself personally, and then certainly the Area Labor Federation, made it a point that, you know, those people are elected, they're in office and we need to work through them. Sometimes you know, we have lots of conversations with them and they'll say, you know, “No, I can't support you on these positions,” but at least they understand where we're coming from. So yeah, there are, there are always those kinds of things. You know, like I said, some will just shut you out altogether and they don't want to meet or you always meet with their, you know, assistant to assistant to assistant, you know, kind of thing. But, you know, you kind of keep pestering away at it. And, and that's what our members expect, you know, the members that we represent when we go there, because that's what we always say when we're sitting down with legislators, we meet with them on a yearly basis in the springtime, you know, sort of halfway through their sort of budget season. And we say to them, look, it's not me, Seth Cohen, coming in and talking to you. I'm representing, you know, five hundred teachers in Troy or the Area Labor Federation. We represent about one hundred and twenty five thousand workers in eleven counties around here and their families. And so it's not just me saying this is good. This is on behalf of all these people. Corbey [00:22:33] And do you think that the fact that you're representing like so many people, do you think that has a tendency to make people more receptive to the issues as opposed to if you were just like one, I don't, I don't say lobbyist because I don't know if that's the correct term or not, but if you were just one person trying to meet with your representatives. Seth [00:22:51] I definitely think so. Yeah, it, I think, they, they understand that it's not just, you know, even just me or even that, you know, let's say when I was a teacher president, I would go in and I'd say, okay, I'm representing the five hundred teachers in the city of Troy. But they also know those five hundred teachers have families and they have friends. And that's, you know, families and friends talk to each other. And so it's that whole like that collective idea which really goes back to the whole idea of what a union is all about, being a collective and the strength of many is better than the one. Christian [00:23:32] Were there any surprising ups or downs that happened to you while being the president of the labor union? Seth [00:23:39] Uh, let's see. I think one of the, one of the downs only happened, I'm trying to think now this is 2022. It's about 2018, I guess, in regards to, there is a specific Supreme Court case that affected us. So we're in public sector unions and we have dues. And so when somebody comes in to becoming a teacher or in, you know, works in a public sector, state government, things like that, they join our union and they pay dues to the �union because the union represents them in their contracts. You know, a teacher doesn't have to sit down and say, “Okay, this is what I want for my health benefits or my working conditions.” That's part of the contract that the whole union has put together. And so we charge them dues to make sure that that happens. Somebody in a different part of the country challenged that idea of having to pay dues. And so that, that concept had been around for nearly fifty years, of, if you're part of the union, you pay the dues because they negotiate on your behalf. And so it was challenged in the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court overturned it. And when that happened, all of our members had the ability to say, “No, I don’t want to pay dues anymore.” But the Supreme Court also said if we have a contract, I still have as the president, I still had to advocate on their behalf. And so to me, it was like, well, they're not they're not one of my members, but they get all the benefits of all the things that I'm doing, but they're not contributing. And so, you know, people started calling "Those are freeloaders". And so that was, it was a down because now we, we had the potential to have all these people say, “Well, I'm just going to pull out.” In my local we didn't have very expensive dues because the officers and things got, you know, some small stipends and we had some money to spend on various kinds of things. But you look at the entire state, look at the large country, that can add up to a lot of money. So it was kind of a downer. But one of the things, great things that the state did was we had lots of conversations about and workshops about it, and what we really decided was we need to turn this around to a positive. And so what it actually ended up doing was making us much more aware of the conversations we needed to have with every single one of our members about why it's important to be in a union. And so it was kind of one of the, you asked up and down, it was a downer at first and then we were pretty much able to turn it around to say, “Okay, we need to have a conversation with every one of our members.” So in the city of Troy, like I said, we have five hundred, I had twenty building reps and some officers. There is about twenty people in our leadership. We each got anywhere from twenty five to fifty people and they went individually and talked to them and said, “Are you going to sign up next year to be,” because then you had to have everybody sign in every time on a yearly basis. And so we had those one on one conversations about why it's important to have, be a union. And it really it made a difference. It made a difference in the leadership. It made a difference in the union because then they were like, “Wow, they’re, they're really taking an interest in us.” Out of the five hundred people, we only had one person that did not want to be, join our union. And after about a year he actually left our district, decided to get out of teaching and we actually did that on a statewide basis. I spent a summer, it was probably 2019 going, sort of, door to door to teacher unions, teacher union households, talking to people about the importance of that. So it was a really, actually, even though I said going back to the decision, it was kind of awful at first. We turned it around into this is a really good, sort of, community union building exercise. And I think our union and many of the other public sector unions have actually grown stronger from it. Corbey [00:28:01] And now that, you know, union members, you said, if I’m understanding correctly, don't necessarily have to pay dues. I guess one, like, do the majority of, you know, union members still pay dues voluntarily? And if, you know, if there was a significant drop of revenue, like, what are some of the sources you might have had to turn to for, you know, more funding? Seth [00:28:26] So, yeah, so, so I know for in the teacher unions and public sector unions because the decision just affected public sector unions, not any of the private sector. So, you know, anybody who works for state government, municipal government, teachers, police, firefighters, that kind of thing. And I don't have, I don't know the exact numbers, but it is, there probably still about 95% of what they were before the decision. So it's been very strong. And I think in the areas where they've lost revenue because there's fewer �members, you know, a few members not in, I think most of the unions, they've actually just kind of like done a belt tightening. “Okay. Where can we sort of like look at our budgets, where can we cut back?” And they've tried to scale it that way. In some other cases, they've have, some of the large, you know, let's say the New York State United Teachers, which covers you know, we have six hundred thousand members across New York State, both retired and active teachers. And they look to some other kinds of grant funding. They've looked to some other voluntary contributions or different kinds of things. So I don't think the money aspect has, has hurt the unions. I think it makes them a little more conscious of how they're spending dues money, which is, which is always a good thing. Corbey [00:29:51] Where does the due money tend to be spent on? Like, what are the expenses that come with a union? Seth [00:29:56] Yeah. So in any, almost any union, the majority of expenses of a dues are paid for representing members through contract negotiations, health care benefits, and then I guess sort of in broad terms, the grievance procedure. You know, if something goes wrong or if somebody alleges, you know, my employer has done this to me, I want to file a grievance. And so there's a lot of paperwork involved. There's a lot of legal kinds of things involved. And so obviously all of that takes time and money. And that's where somewhere, you know, you put those three, the salary, health benefits, and the grievances together, that's easily 90% of a union's money. And then the other is, you know, education. There's always newsletters, you know, electronic kinds of things or paper type things. There's membership drives and that sort of thing. One of the things in New York State, let's say for the teachers union I mentioned earlier, I was involved a lot with the politics. None of our dues money went to political type stuff. The only money spent on political things was voluntary contributions. So that's, because that was a big thing. A lot of people would say, “Well, I didn’t I don’t want to be part of the union because I don’t like who they endorse.” And I'd say, “Well, none of your dues money goes to that.” That's a whole separate, it's called vote code. And that money goes to just political type things. And if you don't want to contribute to that, you don't have to. The dues part goes to all that, like I said, the bread and butter kinds of issues. So I think when people understood that, that was another reason people said, “Oh, okay, then I'm fine with that, you know, because I don't want somebody telling me who I have to vote for” type thing. Corbey [00:31:47] You keep mentioning that there are, you know, oftentimes differences between like public sector unions and private sector unions. Can you elaborate on, you know, is there like a political difference between the two make up stuff like that? Seth [00:32:04] Yeah, I guess probably broadly speaking, often times more of the building trades, construction, private sector unions, because their, their livelihood is a little different, it's business driven. And so they work for a company that is a for profit company, whereas somebody in the public sector, you know, if you're a schoolteacher, you work for state government, you're a police officer, you're working, you know, it's essentially like a nonprofit. It's not, it's not an organization that's trying to make some money. So it's just philosophically the kind of, those are two different things right there. And then the other thing that's a little different, most of the public sector unions, at least in New York State, they're part of the various different kinds of state pensions, pension systems. And so, you know, as a, as a teacher, a police officer, firefighter, state worker, you get into a state pension. You know, you contribute for X number of years, you work for thirty years, and when you retire, you have a pension. If you're in the private sector union, let's say you're a, you know, an electrician or steelworker, you are working and you have to, in a sense, many times fund your own pension, sometimes depending on the company. And the �company is matching what you're going through. But it's not always, it's not always the same. And so I think there's some, there's some differences definitely right there. And I think a lot of times the private sector and the public sector have a little bit of a battle over those kinds of things. Christian [00:33:50] You know, as you say, what are some big like intersections that you have with private sectors? Like, are there any like issues that public versus private are both going towards one thing where one gets a larger advantage over the other? Is there anything like that? Seth [00:34:05] A little bit. What I just mentioned about the pensions, I think definitely get more, you know, aspect. But I think recently, I would say in the last five, ten years, one of the aspects has been to try to meld the two and to really work on issues that are beneficial for both. And in, in the Capital District, I think we've been pretty successful bringing in good paying jobs in the sense of different kinds of, let's say, energy, different kinds of energy possibilities down, the Port of Albany has some new development down there. And so when you bring those things in which the public sector supports, all those things being built are being built by the private sector folks in the building trades, in the construction area. So that's one of the things that I've done as just in the year that I've been in, as being president of the Capital District Area Labor Federation. We have both on our executive group. And, you know, we we often have, you know, heated discussions about what's going on. And sometimes it has to do with, you know, what politician is going to favor something. But one of the big things we always come together on is, okay, are they no matter what the politician thinks on X, are they supportive of bringing in jobs that are good for these workers? Because the workers, they're going to send their kids to schools. They're going to have to have, you know, good police in the area. They need good highways and roads that are, that's the public sector kind of thing. So I think once people sort of sit back and realize that the two areas do overlap, they try to come together on it. You know, a lot of times on, you know, environmental issues, you know, there could be environmental issues regarding, let's say, a building. Let's kind of make something up, building a bridge or a highway. And you might have some folks in the environmental area saying, well, this is not really great for the environment, but the construction folks are, “We need this, you know, we need to build this bridge and we need this highway.” And then, you know, once you get people talking about it, you know, is there a way to do it a little better? Because even once you get the thing built, now, the public workers, you know, they need to plow it so there's more jobs for them. There's more tax revenue coming in. Tax revenue helps everybody, schools, hospitals and that sort of thing. So it's, there's a lot of compromise involved. And I think in this day and age with sort of the political climate, a lot of times compromise is not always like the best word is what I hear, even though I always say that's the only way you're going to get things accomplished. Corbey [00:36:52] So I guess, kind of, in your opinion, you know, this can be, like, nationally, locally. What do you think the most pressing issues regarding, like, labor and labor organizing are? Seth [00:37:08] I think the biggest thing today is for the most part, sort of, the change in where new unions or new union workers are coming from. And my experience really is more just in the Capital District. You know, gone are the days where, let's say in the 1960s and seventies, where you had big factories and, you know, there's hundreds of workers, you know, here in the Capital District. There used to be an automobile plant down in Green Island through the fifties, sixties, and early seventies, and there were hundreds of people working there. GE in Schenectady, you know, tens of thousands of people worked there �and they were all good union paying jobs. As those company, or the automobile factories gone, GE is scaling down. GE might even break up into three smaller companies. You no longer have these union organizing where you're trying to bring in thousands of workers at a time. Right now, most of the new unionizing in this area is small. You know, Starbucks workers, you know, fifteen people in one store or ten in another. Even the Amazon warehouse plant, I mean, the one down in Staten Island, there was one down here in Albany. You know, it was a few hundred kinds of workers. And so there's a real shift to the kinds of people who might becoming, workers, you know, McDonald's and all the fast food places if they want to unionize, you know, you're, you're trying to get twenty people at one McDonald's, ten at a different because they're all owned by different people as opposed to trying to say, okay, every fast food worker in the entire state is going to become a part of a union. So it's really a different kind of unionization. It's, it's, it's almost like mom and pop unionizing in, you know, small areas. We have nonprofit places, you know, where there's five or ten people working there and then, and they say, “Well, we'd like to be part of a union.” And so they start looking out and that's really different. You know, there's five people working and one manager or even fifteen people and one manager as opposed to, you know, even in a school system. Yeah. Like I said, I have five hundred people in the city of Troy that's in the school system. That's a lot of people compared to, you know, five or ten here or there. So the way in which we look at unions, I think is going to be changing over the next ten or fifteen years. Corbey [00:39:43] And do you think the fact that they, the new unions that are cropping up are like the, you know, dozen to a couple dozen people, stores and such, do you think the fact that they are smaller, that's, it's obviously possibly a different set of challenges, but do you think overall they're having an easier time because they don't need to worry about collecting, you know, I don't necessarily know the exact process of how this works, but they're collecting like, you know, twelve signatures instead of a couple hundred. Seth [00:40:17] Yeah, I think it's, it is probably a little easier, right. If you have. Okay, there's fifteen people that work here. And if we need to get, you know, whatever, three quarters of them to actually become a union. So we need, you know, eleven. It is a little easier to do that. But, um, it's that so, that, that's maybe a little easier in that sense. But it's also, I think sometimes a little easier for the organization. They only need to target, uh, five or six people to say, “No, I don't want to be a union.” And now you're not going to, they're not going to certify as it as become a union. So it kind of has pros and cons. And I think the other aspect is, you know, when you become a union, you want to become part of something bigger. And these individual stores so that all the, the Starbucks in the area, I don't know how many there are in the Capitol District. There's a lot of Starbucks shops. And I think right now I think there's four or five that have voted yes to become part of union, but they're all their own little union. Even though there's one organization, the retail workers, that are helping to organize them, they're all still individual. It's not like, you know, Store A is combining with store B and they, they talk to each other. They're, they're these little pockets. So trying to bring them all together is one of our jobs in the Area Labor Federation is to try to let them see that they're part of a big group, even if it's just, you know, they only work with these ten people at this one store. So it's definitely presenting challenges and I think it's happening very quickly. And so the people who've been in unions for a long time, this is new for them as well. And so we actually had our annual meeting about a month ago and we brought in someone from state organizing to talk about that, to kind of give some, here are some things that she had worked with some people down in Staten Island and a couple other areas. And so the big unions are trying to reach, and they're trying to stay ahead of the curve in the sense of, okay, we know this is happening. So we now have to, you know, people like myself who have not had that �opportunity to try to organize, you know, just a few people. How do you go about doing that? And so it's an interesting challenge. Um, and so I think that's going to be the, sort of going forward, the future. Christian [00:42:48] Are you guys happy about that? Are unions collectively happy about more companies wanting to be part of one community together, like for example, the Starbucks. Seth [00:43:01] Yeah, I would say probably any union organizer is definitely happy when people want to become a union or part of a union. It just there's, just the challenges about how to go about doing that. And I think the other thing that makes it a little more difficult, the definitely the unions there or the companies that are anti-union, um, you know, with the Internet and the ease of that kinds of communications, it's very easy to shut things down quicker than, than in the past. It's easier for them to get to individual people by, you know, text messages or whatever it might be to shut things down a little quicker. So it's kind of the challenges on both sides. Corbey [00:43:50] So what, uh, you know, you mentioned the changing in unions and now especially that you're coming out of the midterm election. Is there any, like, one particular thing that the Capital, Capital District Area Labor Federation is focused on? Seth [00:44:08] I'm trying to think. We've been, we’ve been so heavily involved with the federation. I think probably one of the big things, one of the things I didn’t mention that we have been doing, we, obviously, I kind of mentioned we do a lot with community. And so one of the aspects that we had been doing for well over two, two and a half years is we’ve been running food distributions. So people go to food pantries, you know, when they’re short on food or they need, need support that way. During the pandemic, people were just, you know, really hurting because they were out of jobs. So we partnered with the Regional Food Bank and Catholic Charities, an organization that helps people in a variety of ways. And so we, we were setting up these food distributions where the regional food bank would come. They drop large pallets of food. We got union volunteers, regular volunteers, and we put together bags of food for people. And then they would drive up and we just took down their ZIP code, asked how many people in a household, and gave them bags of food. And so we were doing them, and we've been doing them now for two and a half years. And then any one drop you might have a family feed or handout, I should say, food for anywhere from four to seven hundred families. And we really, as the pandemic went on, that got bigger and bigger. But the amount of food that was available to us to do that distribution has really dropped off. So one of the aspects, one of the things that we've been trying to work with our legislative people is how can we make this ongoing? It's, not it's really not sustaining for us to kind of six or seven times a month in various areas set up these food distributions, have people driving up and getting food. How can we, making the food distribution better out to the pantries, those kinds of things. So trying to work on those things. In fact, actually, next, Tuesday, myself, the gentleman who's our executive director of the Regional Food Bank, the executive director of the Area Labor Federation, we're meeting with Senator Gillibrand, the New York senator, at the Regional Food Bank, just to have a conversation with her, talk to her, show her what, what they have, what we've been doing. And so, you know, is there a way on a statewide basis, can we make sure that basically people have enough food for them? And, and that's, that's the other aspect of unions, definitely, you know, sort of nonpolitical. Doesn't matter where you’re coming from. We want to help people. And so, so that, that's an area that we're going to be focusing on. �Corbey [00:47:04] That’s wonderful. We are, you know, starting to come up on the most amount of time they want us to run for. But before we go, is there anything you want to add, like, that we didn't talk about that you think, you think would be beneficial to bring up? Seth [00:47:20] Um, well, I think the, I think this is a great project because when I talked to your professor, one of the things that he and I had talked about was most students and, I’ll just ask you guys directly, do either one of you have anybody in your family who is part of a union? Corbey [00:47:38] No, quite the opposite, actually. My dad's a CEO. So… Christian [00:47:41] All my friends are in unions. Seth [00:47:44] Okay. So one of the, because one of the things that we talked about was that families don't often have that interaction because the number of unions households has dropped so much. And so this is a great, great kind of thing. One of the other aspects that, that I do, there's an organization called the American Labor Studies Center. And it's actually housed in the city of Troy in a nineteenth-century house. There was a woman who, in the 1860s was the first woman who was the president of a laundry union. And so we, that's our area there. And they have developed lessons over the years for high schools and things like that. And so that's another aspect that when I'm talking to other people who are in unions, it's like, you know, talk to your friends, your kids, your relatives and things about being in a union and how it's beneficial not only for the union person but also for the company, and that they can work together. So just throwing in a plug for the American Labor Study Center. Corbey [00:48:51] Well, thank you so much for sitting down with us. Seth [00:48:53] Oh, you're welcome. Yeah. Good conversation. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Cobey Ellison '24 and Christian Giresi '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Seth Cohen Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 48:59 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Seth Cohen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 17, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Seth Cohen is a retired high school science teacher from the Troy City Schools. He spent 33 years in the classroom as an educator and labor leader. He holds a BA in Geology from SUNY Geneseo and a Masters from SUNY Albany. As President of the Troy Teachers Association, he negotiated a half dozen contracts as well as advancing the profession for the 500 members of the union. He also served on the Program and Policy Councils for the New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. He is currently the President of the Capital District Area Labor Federation; the Federation is affiliated with over 40 unions from the NYS AFL-CIO and has approximately 100,000 members in 11 counties surrounding the Capital District. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3d315bfa54a05937323786925c442481.jpg e01d0182326b8ab1875f4d1eb8a0dd8c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/66bb262ad4c1c55176cc4c7c528b7eea.mp3 32a3d81ffd927dfa4e5e03c5643c0ff5 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/48d693eeffba411e5daca4114e9bf83e.pdf d7d8508d019f55133e20a8550d4e427f PDF Text Text Narrator: Sean Collins Interviewers: David Guo ‘25, Chloe Hanrahan ‘24, and Elena Shostak ‘24 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 4, 2022 Chloe [00:00:01] Testing. Testing. Sean [00:00:03] Testing, testing. Chloe [00:00:05] Testing, testing. Elena [00:00:07] Oh, yeah, that's better. Chloe [00:00:09] Cool. So. Hi. Sean [00:00:13] Hi. Chloe [00:00:13] Welcome to your interview. Sean [00:00:16] Yes. Chloe [00:00:16] We just wanted to start off by getting to know you if you feel comfortable on more of a personal basis. Sean [00:00:21] Sure. Chloe [00:00:22] So introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your community, like, was growing up. Sean [00:00:29] Sure. So my name's Sean Collins. I'm organizer and representative with the Service Employees International Union Local 200 United. I am also the Treasurer for the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO. About myself, oh, gosh, I've been, I've been with the Local, now as a staff member for, going on ten years in February. How I got to be here, I was telling you before, Elena, right? Sorry. And David? David [00:01:02] Yep. Sean [00:01:02] David. I was telling Elena before outside. I come from a military family. My father was a, was a marine, an enlisted Marine for 23, 24 years. And my mom worked various jobs when I was younger and through my adolescence. She was a flight attendant when she was pregnant with me and into, into, you know, the first year or two of my life and then worked other odds and ends jobs, as you know, due to my, wherever my dad was stationed, you know, wherever we were living at the time. So I was born in Bethesda, Maryland. But I lived in upstate New York—I've lived in upstate New York most of my life. I'm 32. And I would say of that, of those 32 years, about, like, 20, 21 of them have been in upstate New York. I live out in, up in Plattsburgh, out in Oneonta, and lived in the capital district for 14 so years now. I went to Califorina, I went to high school in California and also lived some time in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, you know, a couple of times as well. But once I graduated high school, my grandmother, my nana who lives in Binghamton, New York, where my dad is born and raised, she has a New York address, so I used her address as if it was my address to get in-state tuition at SUNY Morrisville. And I think my dad as a marine, he could sort of keep his residency as, �you know, wherever he wanted, even though he was stationed wherever. And so a combination of that I was able to use, and I don't think it's illegal, but it's probably not kosher, if you will. Sean [00:02:39] But I used, I went to SUNY Morrisville for my first year of school studying journalism technology, which was a sort of a new program geared towards, like, you know, at the time it was like 2007, 2008 where they thought, like, blogging was the future was like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias and like Andrew Sullivan, you know, all those, like, now they're now I realize, like, really obnoxious bloggers. That was, it was the, it was the thing at the time. And so I was studying that, and then I immediately got, like, bored with it. So, I transferred to UAlbany to study political science and, you know, sort of when I that's how I came to the Capital District. And yeah, I studied political science, political theory at UAlbany until I left UAlbany. I say left; I didn't graduate. I never completed my bachelor's degree. I got a job with Citizen Action of New York, which is a, you know, grassroots, depending on your perspective. But as it says and as it says on the website: it's a grassroots organization, membership organization that works on, like, left, progressive issues. I did communications and, like, PR work for them and then I was kind of more of a desk job and I got tired of talking, you know, on behalf of working people. And I wanted to sort of have them have their own voice. And so from, you know, the opportunity, I'm skipping some stuff, but the opportunity arose for when I was at Citizen Action to start as an organizer with the local, Local 200. And I've been here ever since. Chloe [00:04:19] You touched on that you studied political science, I think. Right? You touched on that. You studied political science. And I think Elena or David, if you want to ask the question that we have in relation to actually your political affiliation, if you're cool with talking about that. Sean [00:04:32] Sure. Elena [00:04:34] So on your KeyWiki it describes you as involved in with the Albany Democratic Socialists of America. And we were wondering if you could describe yourself as a democratic socialist and what that means to you? Sean [00:04:48] Yeah, I would, yeah, I am a member of the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America. I would never, I would never describe myself as a democratic socialist. I think that's just, like, an unnecessary redundancy in terms I would consider myself a socialist. What does that mean, right? As, you know, socialism essentially is is that, you know, workers on the means of production and democratically operate them and determine how they, how they function. Right. And then there's no competitive markets as this is just those markets exist to serve the motive of profit. And so that's, that's what I consider, that's what I consider myself. I think it took me some time to sort of develop that. It definitely started in college doing student organizing and working, you know, through that student organizing, working alongside unionized faculty and unionized graduate instructors, unionized staff on campus, you know, in the most, like, union dense, one of the most union dense parts of the country. It's like, it's like New York City, and then the capital region is, like, up there, in, like, the top five, if not top three. And so it was through that, through those studies, through those interactions with those professors and all those folks that it sort of came to that. And, you know, I joined DSA, you know, like, a lot of folks, you know, in the, in the lead up to the 2016 election and not so much motivated by Bernie, but, like, definitely that in the lead up to when it was increasingly obvious what the outcome was going to be, that Trump was going to win. And it felt like even if I didn't necessarily agree with the DSA, you know, in the totality. It's, you know, a socialist who's not, you know, �who's not a part of an organization. There's, you know, it's they're not, they're not doing, they're not doing socialist organizing and they're not doing socialism because it's right there in the name. It's a social exercise. Chloe [00:06:55] That's awesome. So from what I understand, from what you just said, that kind of like your work with unions, your education, and all of that has kind of played into not just like what you do for a living, but also like your personal beliefs. Would you say that that's accurate? Sean [00:07:09] Yeah. You know, another thing I always, I, so my mom was a flight attendant. She was a unionized flight attendant. And, you know, later on when I say I come from a union family, so I certainly come from a working class family for sure. My dad was an enlisted Marine. You know, my paternal grandmother was, was a union nurse who worked for the state for years, still works for, like, you know, as a substitute nurse, or at least until very recently worked as, like, a substitute nurse for the Binghamton schools. And so, where was I going with this... So, yeah, I definitely, definitely I sort of, as I sort of got started studying these things, I start to pose these, these questions to, you know, to my parents or to my family and stuff like that and start to pull back the, you know, layers of the onion. I was, like, oh, yeah, there's my mom was the flight attendant; my grandmother was, you know, was a nurse; my, my grandmother worked for, you know, as a, you know, civil employee, civil service employee for the State Department and did, like, refugee work for a long time. And then, you know, I had mentioned that my father was a marine and I, setting aside all the issues of American, the American military that we don't need to go into, like, gratuitous detail, you know, on its face there is, there's a, it's a, like, maybe not its face, but, like, there is a noble, you know, notion to that that, you know, here is he is signing up to serve, you know, his country, right? And for me, it's something that I came to glean, like, through high school and into and definitely into college. Is that, like, well, why is that? Why is that particular form of service so, you know, so unique when, you know, I mean, teachers, you know, that the binmen, you know, pick up your trash like all these folks are contributing to their country, to their communities and stuff like that. Sean [00:09:04] And, but that's not, it doesn't, it's not attached with the same sort of value and valor, valor, like, or military service, even, even though, like, especially now, like, I would say, you know, someone who's working in a public school, you know, setting, you know, as a teacher or a teaching assistant or whatever is in an uphill battle one way or the other. And so that sort of, that sort of that, that notion of, like, service on my father's part and also being, you know, subject to the state, you know, it's just, like, I lived where they sent him. I went to school was based on that. I interface with communities based on that, and so I worked and I, you know, when I was a, you know, teenager, I worked on base. I worked at that grocery store. I worked at the exchange like the, like, which is basically I don't know how familiar you are with, like, a military base with the PX is basically like the Macy's on base with like a Rite Aid, you know, it's like but so I, you know, I worked those places and it just sort of that's where I was. And I sort of didn't realize it until much later on, when I was filling out all the paperwork, I was, like, as a federal government employee, I was a member of the AFGE, didn't even realize that that was the thing I had signed up because I was 16 and wasn't thinking about it in those terms. And I come from a sort of somewhat union family, but not like one that was like, you know, it's not like I, my father worked for like GM and his father worked for GM. It's a little bit different. David [00:10:32] Okay, thanks. So,you talked about how you moved from a desk job to essentially organizing, so what was the process like for you in that, like, step up? �Sean [00:10:48] Right. David [00:10:49] Was it, like, difficult? Sean [00:10:50] Well, yeah. So, you know, when I was working at Citizen Action, I was doing, like, other organized, community organizing. And just by nature of, like, these organizations, you always sort of, you know, interfaced with, like the members of the organization or the other coalition partners and their members and their activists and their leaders and stuff like that. And so in that way I was doing, like, organizing, but it was more like, you know, back at the house type of thing, preparing press releases, helping folks draft, like, letters to the editor, you know, updating our website, you know, tracking our press and taking pictures at the rallies. And so I was, I was, you know, I was acting as a—I was organizing. And I was also still involved with, like, the student organization that I was a part of in college, which no longer exists, but, you know, I was, I was still, like, engage with that and, but, you know, I, so it was, it yes, it was a desk job. But I what I mean is, is, like, you know, some of my mentors that I met with there were more, they're doing more of the nuts and bolts organizing of, like, talking to folks, you know, bringing folks into the organization, having those one on ones, really building those relationships. Whereas my role was sort of I say this, you know, thinking back on when I was 21, 22, but I was the sort of topic expert as to, like, how to coach them on how to talk to the press, something that I barely knew how to do, but, like, you know, how to write letters to the editor, you know, these sorts of things. And, and, but I just, you know, I still do a lot of that stuff, but like now I also get to do these, like, one on one conversations with workers and doing, you know, identifying their issues and interest. And, you know, they're, they're in many ways like the essential qualities they have of being a leader or being an activist or being whatever. And they're in their workplace or in their communities. Chloe [00:12:38] Yeah. We were really interested in some of the work that you've done for unionized workers at, like, Capitol Roots. Sean [00:12:45] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:12:46] And so we were wondering because Capital Roots, from what we understand, is like a nonprofit dedicated to food access and sustainability, but it's fostering a workplace that's not conducive to its employees. It's retaliatory. And we were wondering what it's like to be unionizing or fighting against a system where it's something that the public might view as, like, a good, like, oh, it's a nonprofit, it's helping people, but it's also not helping its workers. So what is that kind of that tension or that struggle or what has that been like? Sean [00:13:24] It's been it's honestly it's been incredibly perplexing. You know, I've you know, again, living having lived in the area for, like, you know, ten, 15 years, you know somewhere in there, now 14 years, I, I've lived, you know, and within, you know, rocks, you know, a stone's throw of, one of their community gardens. And over the years, I had heard stories from past staff about, like, the issues at that, at their workplace, and it was always, like, you know, as an organizer, an union organizer, every, you know, we keep a list of, like, the non-union workplaces that we would like to organize and for various reasons and Capital Roots was there because it does have this and, like, a lot of nonprofits, it does have this, like, sort of stated mission. But I always think, you know, around, like, sustainability and food access and, you know, care for its community. But I always think that the thing is with those things is that, like, you can't really genuinely and authentically perform that service or whatever it is to the community without starting, you �know, without starting at home. Which is not to say that, like, I don't recognize, or the staff don't recognize, the struggles of a nonprofit organization that probably would always want to do more. Any, you know, just taking Capital Roots out of the equation, any nonprofit would probably like to do more for its employers because it doesn't have that, like, profit motive. But, it, it doesn't. You know, I think it's, there are, it becomes, then, a sort of an internal question of, like, what's, you know, what's more important on balance, you know, for the management and its donors or its board, I should say, is, you know, doing this work internally or projecting that we're doing it internally and also, you know, doing an externally, that is a really sloppy way of putting it. But, yeah, it's been, I think, you know, and I think I actually said this in, like, one of the, one of the, to one of the reporters who came to our rally at the beginning of July is just that, like, we understand, these folks aren't working for this organization do not expect to make you know, you know, you know, six figure salaries or anything like that. There's, you know, there's a recognition that, like, nonprofits, you know, do have that, they do rely on grants and funders and foundations and donors and volunteers. Sean [00:15:37] And there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, set aside the financial stuff, there's other things that the employer can do that, you know, can confer respect and dignity in other ways in terms of how managers and directors talk to their staff and deal with their staff and interact with their staff that they don't do. And that doesn't cost anything to sort of be nice and respectful. And the last thing I would say, too, you know, as a, as a, you know, as a union, our local 200 United, virtually all of our employers are nonprofit employers, colleges and universities, which we have about six, seven thousand members in that division of our union. They're all nonprofit employers, different kind of nonprofit, but they are still nonprofit. A lot of the human service agencies, you know, that provide care and services to, and, you know, day habilitation programs and these sorts of things to the developmentally disabled and in different parts of the state. You know, they're nonprofit employers that we have a lot of public sector workers in school districts, towns and villages. I, you know, in upstate New York, they're, they're nonprofit workers. So it's, it's, you know, they're different, but we, you know, one of the things that we've had to actually convey at Capitol Roots at the bargaining table is that, like, we don't need you to lecture us on nonprofit. We get nonprofit, but it's just that, you know, it's that other stuff that we were, I was talking about before that is, is missing there. Elena [00:17:09] So when a workplace like Capital Roots puts out a statement with buzzwords like valued staff, how does that impact the workers and the union workers fighting for their valued staff? Sean [00:17:21] I'm sorry, say that again. Elena [00:17:22] Oh. So how do these buzz words like valued staff impact workers and union workers fighting for a truly valued staff? Sean [00:17:30] Yeah, I mean, they see stuff like that. I see stuff like that. And knowing everything that's happened and they're all you know, they've all, I mean, the thing about a union, right, is that it, it's the workers coming together to, you know, obviously need to, to bargain and negotiate their terms and conditions of employment. That's what happens. That's the contract. That means the end result, hopefully. Right. But in that, in those interim stages, what happens is, is they're talking to one another, they're communicating, they're creating. I always, you know, just explain it to workers. Is that, like, management, any manager, you know, administration, whatever, they have a system of being able to communicate information and get information back from, you know, and they control it. �That's the beautiful thing about being, you know, the management administration. And so when we're forming a union, we're doing the same thing and we're sharing information across, you know, departments or across, like, job titles and, you know, different, like, programs in the case of Capital Roots. And then, you know, that filters back out to, like, the union leaders and the folks in the negotiating committee. And then we exchange that obviously with the, you know, with the employer, you know, like at Capital Roots. And so what is it? What does it mean when they see stuff? Is that like what I think the managers, you know, at Capital Roots and other places fail to realize is that, like, it drives them crazy because it's just, like, that's not true. Like, it's not, that's demonstrably not true. Just as like a, like a case point with like Capital Roots when we first started organizing there back in, like, May, late May, early June, there's 29. Yeah, 29 directors and staff as of today. As of, what time is it? It's 3:58. So Melissa's last day ends in an hour and one minute. And so with her departure, they're down to 12 staff and 12, you know, 12 staff and directors. So a 50%, like, loss. And it's, and they don't value they don't. She had an exit interview. It was, as she described, it was a very cold experience with her, the HR manager as just, like, barely acknowledged, like, thank you for your three... no, there's no thank you for your three years of service. Not in a genuine sense. And, and that's it. Sean [00:19:38] But what's happening and the reason why I have a hard stop here at 4:30 is, is that they're meeting up at Rare Form Brewing. All the current remaining staff and the former staff are going to get together to have a drink and send, you know, Melissa off. That's where, that's, that's an actual demonstration of value. But what's happened as staff have left, you know, there, in respect to, but what's happened as those folks have left is that, like, if you were liked if you were, to be candid, if you were one of the kiss asses, you got, you got the doughnuts in the morning and the "goodbye"s "was really nice knowing you". And then Melissa, who's been there for three years in their Gardens program, you know, has a cold, you know, exit interview. And it is otherwise just like it's not acknowledged at all. And I went out, you know, I'm just reading between the lines and all that. I imagine there's relief that she's gone. There's another one down, which, you know, I think, again, is just like if you valued her, especially someone like, her, who's been there for three years, I mean, you not only value her, the relationship, the personal relationship, the professional relationship you have, but particularly her as professional three years of experience working for this organization, which is a long time in Capital Roots terms, three years of, you know, knowledge and institutional memory of about how the organization works. All the relationships she has with the gardeners and the volunteers that she works with across their 50 some odd 55 gardens across like Saratoga Counties, Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady County. Those are all relationships that she's built, not singlehandedly, but she's been a part of building over, over three years. And it's just, like, well, good riddance, because you and this one regard, you went too far. David [00:21:16] It's a bit of a topic switch, but could you elaborate a little bit more about your work with the non tenure track professors at Skidmore and what specifically is your role in that fight? Sean [00:21:27] Yeah, yeah. So I, SEIU 200 United and SEIU, the, you know, our international union which has locals across the country and members 2.1, 2.3 million members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. That's what makes us an international those, those two. Back in like 2012, 2013, they launched what was at the time called, like, adjunct action and then became, like, faculty forward this, this nationwide organizing project to organize first adjunct faculty and then all faculty off the tenure track primarily, but where possible, all faculty. So what makes Skidmore different from, like, other like public schools, like the SUNYs or your CUNYs in a place like New York is that �public sector, you know, employees are governed by state law. And so there they can, faculty that have access or have tenure are eligible to organize, whereas non tenure track faculty at private colleges and universities, the faculty that are on the tenure stream that are in the tenure streams, rather, they are...there's a 1979 Yeshiva ruling, Yeshiva University of New York City that says that because they have access to tenure, they are, they have their they have a managerial role in their colleges and universities in terms of the budget and the finances, in terms of curricular design, in terms of personnel in hiring and hiring faculty hiring adjuncts or non tenure track faculty or filling tenure vacancies and then tenure in promotion itself. So setting aside that, like, the Yeshiva ruling is, you know, you know, as it's applied today doesn't really, it doesn't make sense in the contemporary college or university that we started organizing SCIC or SEIU the royal way, if you will, started organizing faculty across the country, particularly non tenure track faculty. Sean [00:23:35] And so our local, we started, we launched our campaign at Marist College because like I said before, we have we already had about, like, four or five thousand members in higher education. And if you throw a dart at a college or university along, like, the New York State Thruway corridor, we have members on that campus. So, like, I represent members at, like, Vassar College and Bard College in the Hudson Valley. We have members at Marist as well, and then other colleges across the state, too. So we started at Marist because there was, like, at the time I think it was like five hundred or six hundred adjunct faculty and we were, like, well, we already have these, like, two hundred plus, like, janitors and building and grounds workers who maintain the campus and we have, like, it's it's a, it's an incredible contract that those workers have. I mean, they're making you know, it it's just like I think starting rate for, like, a janitor is like $22 an hour, like premier, like health insurance benefits, a pension. It's a good, like, union job. And you can say and then those folks, you know, a lot of our members who, you know, are working as a janitor, they don't themselves have, you know, college education, but they can send their kid to school at a place like Marist or in a place like Vassar for free. And so it's, you know, it provides, you know, that sort of social mobility for their, for their children. Sean [00:25:22] So we started we were, like, this is a great contract, you know? And, you know, of course, of course that will win this campaign at Marist. We did not. It was it was it was. Marist is a very interesting college. I, what's his name? Bill O'Reilly is an alumni from there. So, it sort of gives you a little bit of a taste of what the student body is like. And we, we, we, we lost that election. But as part of, like, a lot of the press and sort of attention that the campaign got, not necessarily lost, but the campaign got a friend of mine, our acquaintance who became a friend through organizing here in the Capital District. He's like, "I am an anthropology professor at Saint Rose, and they just canceled one of my courses and I'm pissed about it and I want to organize my workplace". And he just fired off an email over like the college Listserv and, and then got a bunch of responses and started meeting up with them for drinks and so on and so forth. And then they won their union like 3 to 1. Then we organized SUNY Schenectady Community College. We organized Siena. There's a bunch of other organizing victories across the state from there. Fordham University. Ithaca College, Wells College out in the Finger Lakes. So we, you know, we won a lot of, you know, victories across the state at about in 20. I forget the actual timeline. Now it's some say 2018, some say 2019. I'll just agree with the folks who said 2018 because they've been right about most everything else. We start, we had a conversation at that cafe over in the, that Fresh Market Plaza. You know, over here I met with Pete Murray, who's a philosophy professor here at Skidmore, and Kate Paarlberg, who at the time was a history professor in International Affairs and History. I think her background is, like, in Latin American and Caribbean studies. And I met with them and that, you know, they were like, this is, these are, these are various, you know, issues and concerns. One �of the ones that they talked about was the pay disparity at the time, I think it's been chipped away a little bit. But the pay disparity between men and women, you know, faculty where so again, philosophy Pete Murray and then Kate, history. So, you know, the liberal arts, you know, the humanities, sort of generally equally valued or undervalued by college administrations. Sean [00:27:09] He made $10,000 more than her, something like that, again, it was 2018, so I might be inflating that a little bit, but there was a pay discrepancy, nonetheless. And then looking into data that the administration has done, that the faculty have sort of dug up themselves through surveys and talking among their colleagues and identified it, too. So, like, whether it's 10,000 or not, the point is it's demonstrable and it's across the, you know, across the college. And so we started having conversations and it was very slow going at first. And, you know, but you know, it, we sort of got, got some heads, you know, some steam into 2019 and then, then the pandemic interrupted everything. And then last semester, well, not last semester, the fall of 2021 semester, we sort of had a conversation at the beginning and it was like, you know, things were starting to open back up. All the frustrations that we've seen across the, you know, economy in across the workforce, you know, sort of they played out here, too, in their own sort of specific way to faculty. Sean [00:28:09] And, you know, my role, to answer your question right, is as the organizer, is to sort of push them to talk to their colleagues and to build support for the unions to, you know, sort of execute, you know, a plan to win that we sort of developed together. But that is informed by, you know, my experience at other places and, you know, what I've seen at other colleges and universities across the country. And so we had a conversation that beginning of fall 2021, which is that, like, if this is going to happen, if we're not going to continue to burn ourselves out, you know, reaching a certain threshold and then, you know, new faculty come and go and we are back to square one in many ways, and we really need to just put our shoulder into it. And that means like having, you know, conversations with as many faculty, if not all of the, at the time we thought it was about 180 non tenure track faculty. You need to go out and have like if you think about it, there is like ten folks in the cause. Like if you each have two conversations and identify two supporters a week, you know, two times ten times, you know, sixteen weeks in the semester, you know, you go from there. And so that's, that's where, you know, we did that through the fall into the spring. And then in May, we reached the threshold that we set of 60% support across the college. And that's when we went public. Sean [00:29:28] And then there was the election. Well, initially, the college was sort of reticent. They were, you know, allowing the election to go forward. We were able to reach an agreement. I'm sure you might have a question about that. We were able to reach an agreement. They had an election in September, and then they won their election, you know, 2 to 1, at least in both the full time and the part time unit. And so now, you know, my role transitions from organizer, solely organizer not that I'm not still an organizer, but, like, now I'm, like, transitioning to, like, being the representative. So helping them set up, you know, a negotiating committee, identifying who wants to serve in that negotiating committee, identifying what the bargaining priorities are through surveys, and then preparing those as with, with the response to those surveys, which is, like, all right, well, now we know what folks are looking for. Now I help them memorialize this into, like, an actual, like, contract proposal. And then we go to the table with that committee that they elect from among their peers. And I serve as the chief spokesperson for the committee. But, like, they develop the proposals and help develop our counterproposals and counterproposals to counterproposals. And again, I think it's, you know, it's in many ways, it is like the organizing drive, too, though, is that, like, I, you know, I always describe my �role as is that, like, I'm a mouthpiece, but a mouthpiece is nothing without the person who is the voice. And that's you all. It's the workers themselves. And so I can help sort of translate it because, you know, Skidmore can afford a, you know, a pricey attorney. So I could sort of translate it into their language. But I don't, what I can't do is I can't, like, provide the narratives of the day-to-day experience of the faculty or any worker. And so that's where they come in. So I'm the chief spokesperson, but that's really inflating the role. It really, I would really be nothing without, like, I would, I can't accomplish anything on my own because I don't work here. They do. And they have to be able to talk about their experiences and what changes and solutions they think need to be in place. Chloe [00:31:20] Yeah, I am. I am. I know of one adjunct professor. She used to come to the German club that I'm a part of. Ruth McAdams. Oh, yeah. And she's. She's wonderful, very kind, warm. And I know that she had a hand in. Sean [00:31:34] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:31:34] A big hand in this. Sean [00:31:35] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:31:36] And I was just wondering a little bit about, like, the, the power dynamic between a non tenured track professor speaking out and, and advocating for herself, theirselves, themselves, himself and, and also what you think of the overall shift in academia to adjunct professors. Like, there's this big wave of it's becoming solely adjunct and lecturers. These tenure track positions are fading away. So those two questions and then if you see this, this shift in any other fields to more, like, add on people than actual salaried guaranteed health benefits, all those kinds of things. Sean [00:32:19] I first, I should say, like, Ruth McAdams is, is an incredible organizer and as near as I could tell, also an incredible professor and instructor. And I actually, I didn't even realize until, like, I think it was about, like, two or three months ago that she also speaks German. I was, like, “Oh, this is crazy.” And she's an English professor too, I think that's wild. So, she's great. And the rest of the committee and there's so many folks on it. Diana Barnes, Pete Murray I mentioned before, Mike Paulmeno here in the library a lot of, you know, I just and I'm, Eileen Sperry in the English Department and I should stop because I’m going to forget somebody, but they're all incredible. The question of, like, the role or about, like, the risks that they take as non tenure track faculty in organizing. You know, I think it's it's, it's, it's, it's, a little, it's, it's interesting because, like, I think in many ways, like academia is no different than the rest of the workplace. Right. They, they a boss is a boss is a boss. I tell workers this all the time. However, there is the, the thing that is unique to a Skidmore college compared to like Walmart or Starbucks is that this sort of, the, the culture of academic freedom in the university or the academy as a, as a place of the free exchange of ideas. Sean [00:33:40] And to be able to arguably say, and this is changing obviously a lot, but like the, to say the controversial thing or the, the, the, or maybe the unpopular thing or in the case of organizing, I think the undesirable thing, at least in the eyes of the administration, they would prefer, like any other boss, they would prefer to have unilateral discretion to set the terms of conditions of employment. Right. And so I think so that's the sorta, like. So I think in the case of is, is Ruth taking a risk or any of those committee members taking a risk? Of course, absolutely. Any worker who organizes their workplaces but is engaging in, what I believe it to be, like, the most courageous thing that anyone �could do is to basically risk the thing that pays their bills by trying to organize it. But it's, it's a I always say it's a, it's the best gamble you can make because if you do it, I mean, the sky's the limit from there. And so, however, like, I do think that there are, there's sort of the culture of academia make it a little bit, a little bit not safer, but like, you know, it's, it's, it's there's, it dulls the edge to that risk. A little bit, just a little bit. And I think, you know, you could see similar trends of that in, like, other organizing that we're seeing. So we've seen a lot of organizing happen in, like, the not for profit space, like a lot of, like the Guttmacher Institute as, like, a, like, a pro-choice, pro-choice or pro-abortion, like, you know, advocacy and research organization, where the workers organize. Now, the boss, like, was, they were, came out really strongly against it, very harshly against it. And there was retaliation there as a part of that organizing drive. Sean [00:35:17] But, I think that nonprofit space is, you know, is a place where that is, that, that instances like I don't want to say rare, but it's like a little bit it's not as, not as likely as, like, what you would see at Starbucks, right. Or Amazon or what have you. I mean, so there's nonprofit organizing, a lot of, been a lot of newsroom organizing, which is interesting. So, like, the Los Angeles Times, a few years ago, they organized and it had been for the number was, like, a hundred and forty seven years there had been, had been a non union newspaper. Compared to, you know, other side of that on the right coast, on the cool coast, the east coast that the New York Times one of the, like, the longest, you know, running union newspapers in the country. So, you know, I think these, these workplaces where they're more, like, liberally minded or, you know, and, you know, or, you know, progressive oriented. There's, there's been I think we were seeing just there's been more propensity of them to organize. But, you know, there's still risks at any of these places. What was the other part of your question was like what makes colleges and universities like sort of different, right? Chloe [00:36:29] Yeah, like if you, if you, what you, sorry. If you see, what do you think of the field of academia moving towards this? And then if you see the trend, oh you just answered the question, you see it in other places. Sean [00:36:43] Yeah you do see it I think in terms of, like, I think what's happening in academia is like they've been toying with this, experimenting with this for the better part of, like, let's say forty, fifty years. So, you know, Sodexo is on campus, right? Even though the workers here are direct employees of the college, Sodexo is a subcontractor. You know, so it's, it's, you know, the college is nonprofit, but it's brought in this profit, you know, oriented for profit corporations around it's dining halls. That's pretty common on college campuses. You have a lot of subcontracted employees in not here, but in other places like janitorial building and grounds, the facilities maintenance of a college, the dining halls. So there's, there's that I think that, that is. But with adjuncts I think it's, I mean, I just think that is just like corporate logic, you know, in academia and, and it's not, it's not in any way dissimilar. Not really. In the end of the day, in terms of the result, in terms of like what we're seeing in charter schools and, and the charter school movement, it's just like, you know, like what happened in New Orleans, you know, it's just, like, oh, you know, there was a historic hurricane that, like, flooded the city, you know, basically they shed, like, what, like, half their population over the course of a year from everybody, you know, that was affected by that moved to Houston and they never came back. And they're like, we'll get to the levees. But first, we're going to completely charterize our public schools. Sean [00:38:07] And, and that is just to get out from underneath union contracts and to bust unions and to, you know, to cut pay, cut benefits the whole year. And I think the same, like, the same thing is happening with adjuncts. It's just that, like, you know, even, �even within our union, right? With that recently formed union there's Ruth who is a full professor, not a full professor, but as a full time professor, you know, teaching a full course load, making, you know, north of sixty thousand dollars something like that, whatever her salary is, like, I don't recall offhand. And then, you know, there's an English adjunct who is teaching maybe two courses this semester who is making forty-five hundred dollars a course. So if she if, if she's teaching a full load or full and also doesn't have any service obligations like Ruth, even though Ruth and others engage in service, they don't have any service obligation. So if you do the math there, I mean it just like as a I mean, it's a that's, that is not even, you know, a fraction of what Ruth makes for teaching that exact same course. And Skidmore said, maybe setting aside Skidmore for a second and thinking about a place like actually, like, Marist, where there is, you know, it's, there's, it's a little bit more they have a, like the full-time professors have, like, you know, they have a heavier course load than the faculty here do. And, then the, the faculty here do, I mean, I mean, you're talking about like a six thousand dollar, sometimes, thousand dollar difference between in terms of the pay parity or lack of pay parity between a part timer and a full timer. And that's, that's just it's not profit extraction necessarily, but it is like inherently exploitative. Elena [00:39:50] So you're sitting here with three future members of the workforce? Sean [00:39:54] Oh, yeah. Elena [00:39:55] How do you think we as our generation can fight against our labor being co-opted? Sean [00:40:00] Oh, I love this question. I always, I always listen to this whenever I talk to students. Unless you're like a Vanderbilt like or something like that, like, unless you're like, you know, like Anderson Cooper and you have a you know, you're going to have a boss when you graduate college. You have a boss now in college. I mean, I don't know if you any of you do like work study or anything like that. So you're already engaging in, you know, work, I mean, and, and are already experiencing it even if you don't have a work study, you know, obligations. But if you're, you're already being taxed essentially to get an education that they tell you is essential by having to take out student loan debt, that you will probably, you know, once you enter the workforce, will struggle initially and maybe over the long term, too. I mean, I went down to Albany and I, you know, as we said before, I sort of cheated my way into in, in school to in state tuition and then left. And I have twenty-eight thousand dollars in student loan debt for, you know, a piece of paper that I decided not to get, but like ostensibly, you know, whatever. But so, like, you're already, you're already being taxed to sort of enter the workforce because they tell you that this degree is essential and then you're going to get into the workforce. And it's definitely not going to be, you know, at worst, it's not going to be, you know, consistent with the cost of living in the area. Most likely you're not going to be in it, most likely because it's the United States and you're not going to be in a democratized, you know, workplace where you have a right to representation, where you have just, you don't have just cause, you don't have just cause protections. You, you don't you can be terminated at any time. You're an at will employee. And, and so I think, I think the, the thing I always tell students is that your, if you're not currently a worker now, you're going to be a worker, you're going to have a boss, and that person is going to have, you know, and it's, it's, it's an unbalanced relationship. They, it's asymmetrical. They have all the power, all unilateral discretion, all arbitrary authority. And you ask “how high?” That's your, that's your role. Unless, of course, and that's why it's important to organize a union so that you, let's say when they say “jump” well let's talk about how the hell we are going to jump first and why are we jumping? You know, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the point of a union. �David [00:42:14] So last question. Do you have anything else you'd like to share about yourself or your work? This archive? Sean [00:42:21] Sure. Anything else that I think, so as a, as a, you know, as a union organizer and then as we talked about initially, as a, as someone who identifies as socialist, I find it, you know, it's as it is right now. The two things are sort of, you know, or they're sort of at odds with each other. Not at odds with each other, they struggle with, there's a tension between them. Whereas as a socialist, I believe that, like, you know, management as a whole is in the way of workers being able to, I think, truly and efficiently, like, you know, perform their, their jobs in the service they provide to the community, whether it be educating, you know, future workers, or, you know, you know, providing fresh, you know, sustainable food to, to folks, whatever the case may be that management is in the way. But yet my job inherently requires me to interface with management and, you know, sort of bite my tongue and say, like, “you're kind of worthless.” I can't say that to them. That just wouldn't go over well. Not worthless, but, like, you are, you, you're kind of the bigger waste here than the workers are. You might think our demands are excessive or whatever the case may be, but you especially, you know, at a college, you know, you make two hundred thousand dollars and you have, you know, you can, you look at us and you talk about, like, our demands around like staffing. So I also represent a lot of building maintenance workers, like I was saying before. And so they look at our demands around, like, we need more janitors. How can you have a thousand acre plus campus that has so many millions of square footage to, to clean so many bathrooms, so many stairwells, so many, you know, trash cans to empty, all these different things. Sean [00:44:00] And we're talking about staffing and you're saying, “oh, it's a, is it, that's, we can't afford that.” It's, like, well, you have, you know, this human resources office has, like, six people to basically one of them set your schedule, likem, you're not working efficiently, efficiently by that, by your own logic, you know, compared to us. And so that wouldn't go over well, that would not, that would, that would be received poorly. And sometimes you do get an opportunity to say that. But sometimes you just have to bite your tongue or at least rather than, like, I had to bite my tongue and just like, yes, you're a socialist, but your job is also to, to, to try to do the most for, for your, for our members. Right. And so I have to ,I have to be at it. It's an interesting tension to, to tell, so that that's one thing. And then I just about myself and I think this is, it applies to anything, any job you're going to do, whether it be working in the labor movement or, you know, you're saying physical therapy, right? You know, so care work. Right? History is, is imbued in everything that we do. It informs everything that we do. And the more you know about whatever the thing you're doing. So I read a lot of labor history just as, you know, as interest, but I also just read, like I have a thing with monarchs. I just read about, like, I just finished a book about King George III. And I, you know, I'll just, I'll just dart around. My, my wife got me, like, a book on, like, Sultan Mehmed, that was, like, incredible. And so just like, it's not relevant to labor history, but history itself imbues, it informs, it blazed the trail that’s behind us. And there are lessons from it to apply to what's what we're going to try to do ahead. And that applies to the labor movement, that applies to care work. There are lessons from those historians from, you know, folks doing stuff like yourself and documenting these narratives. It's all, it's all really important. And so everyone should and I know you were saying this before you. It was this class got you interested in history because history is fucking cool and you just got to find the right stuff that, you know, speaks to your interest. And that's something, you know, I just think is always important to think about. So. Yeah. �Chloe [00:46:14] Thank you so much Sean. Sean [00:46:16] Thank you. This is awesome. Chloe [00:46:18] Four Minutes early. Elena [00:46:19] Yeah. So thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview David Guo '25, Chloe Hanrahan '24, and Elena Shostak '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sean Collins Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 46:25 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sean Collins Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 4, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Sean Collins is a union representative and organizer with Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 200United. He also serves as a delegate and President of the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He lives in Troy, NY, with his wife, Ashley, and their son, Benjamin. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/be3d11da4d31402361d4d3a49f4d9070.png e68324fba5645bc4c24155098ef80269 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1f2e0ba5b66caf8530d73ce86f0ebc64.mp3 f9f2620c062ba2aa4784da2671be9b60 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a2919d894375fef3fea1efd2c113e1de.pdf e27e92ed12e6e1ad4c5f328b25ea4a27 PDF Text Text Narrator: Sandie Carner-Shafran Interviewers: Max Chelso ’24 and Sophia Delohery ‘25 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 2, 2022 Max [00:00:01] Today's date is November 2nd, 2022. This is Max Chelso speaking. Sophia [00:00:07] And I'm Sophia Delohery. Sandie [00:00:08] And I'm Sandy Carner-Shafran. Max [00:00:11] So Sandy, what was your experience growing up? Where did you-- where were you born? What was that like? Sandie [00:00:18] Well, I was born in actually Hartford, Connecticut. My parents divorced. My mom lived the rest of my life, I lived in Waterbury, Connecticut, and went to school there, East Farms Elementary, and then moved on to Crosby High School, where I ultimately graduated. It was during times of very, a lot of unrest. That was when there was forced segregation and that kind of stuff going on. Max [00:00:56] So this is a bit of background we have, but, since you became an educator, what was your schooling experience like? Sandie [00:01:03] Schooling-- my experience going to school? Okay. So I, I completed high school in 1968 and I went on to post junior college in Connecticut and I took a little over, but didn't quite get my associates. So, uh, cause I ran away and got married, silly girl. And that's where I stopped. Then I went on after I got married, kids came and I kind of went back to school and got a few more credits. Still didn't quite complete my associate's degree. Life got in the way. Max [00:01:47] So after that or during that, what was your first job? Sandie [00:01:52] Well, my first job then was basically helping out at my husband's family's hardware store. Um, that wasn't so much fun. I dusted and put orders away. Not much in intellectual, you know, stimulation. It was basically very rote. And my brother in law was the owner, so it wasn't like we could really change stuff there. So I didn't have a lot of power, which I seem to crave at times. Back in those days, it was the seventies. So, you know, there was a lot of changes going on. Vietnam, I had a child, the news was not good on at supper time. It was pretty, pretty devastating to watch and to hear. And a lot of stuff was going on. Max [00:02:50] So after that, what was your continuing experience with employment? Sandie [00:02:58] So I went on. Ultimately, we took over the store and then then stuff went down and we sold it back. I ended up, you know, I had three sons by then. My youngest was going back to school, was going to kindergarten, and it was time for me to get a job and get out of the house. And I happened to be at a Little League game and a colleague that I knew socially came up and said, “Hey, you like kids?” And I said “somewhat.” And they said, How about subbing at the BOCES in Saratoga? And I said, "Well, what does it involve?" And they said, "Well, a bunch of us carpool every day to go down. You could always ride with us. And basically you help with kids with disabilities and they're looking for help." And that was like in May. And so I said, "Okay." And they called me and I worked �every day in May and in June until school stopped. And then the exciting news was I just was in love with the kids, the staff, the whole idea, making a difference. The kids were incredible and they were pretty severely, profoundly, you know, handicapped at the time. We had a lot of wheelchairs, supine boards, all kinds of physical equipment to work with the kids. But I still loved it. I loved everything about it. Every day was an adventure with the kids and gym and cross-country skiing with kids that would have a seizure. But we'd pick them up and we'd keep going. And the kids laughed about it and sledding and doing all kinds of fun things, taking them swimming and everything. We even camped with some of the kids at one point later on in life. But the big thing was I wanted to continue and the principal, Mr. Crowley at the time, called me in, early in August, late in August and said, “I have a position at the BOCES. Would you consider working in special ed full time?” And we talked about it. My husband and I and I agreed to do it. I was real excited. So September 1982, I became a full time employee as a teacher aide at the SaratogaWashington-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES on Henning Road was called the Meyer Center, and that started my career. I made $3,000 that year and I had full family matrix health care, which was unbelievable at the time. That was worth like $25,000, $28,000 back then for family health. And that was because I was working there. Didn't get a lot of money in my pocket, but that was wonderful. I think that eventually my husband started to get upset because I wasn't making any money and he kept telling people in our circle that, "Costs me money for her to work there," which he was right. You know, gas, different clothes, you know, timing. The kids were in school, so we didn't pay a sitter. But it was it wasn't very I could have made a lot more money if I worked in Corinth, where we lived at the grocery store. But my argument was I'm not making a difference stacking cans. I'm making a difference in the lives of the kids that I touch at school. And I'm going to make it worth it, for me, because I didn't want to quit and have to work at a grocery store. Sophia [00:06:37] Yeah. Sandie [00:06:37] That's when my union kicked in. Sophia [00:06:40] Yeah. It's great to hear how much, like, love you had for that job. Sandie [00:06:45] Well, I just adored the kids. I so. So I did, you know, we made costumes, we did all kinds of stuff. We…I made a huge Christmas Santa Claus costume for one of the big kids to wear one time. And the teacher that did, uh…rying to think of what they called it back then, he did woodworking and he taught, they built a big sleigh. So we took pictures with the kids, with Santa. And it was just always something, always something that was a little extra because these kids needed it and the staff just ate it up. Max [00:07:23] So I get the sense that you enjoyed your work. But were there any challenges be it at the daily level or at a more structural level that you faced on the job? Sandie [00:07:38] Well, there was. There wasn't enough hands. We did get breaks, but sometimes we ate lunch with the kids, which could be kind of, I would say, difficult because, you know, they had feeding problems and it wasn't the most hygienic or fun place to eat when you're trying to feed children that could choke or have a seizure and stuff. So there was times when our breaks were ignored. There was times when we were lifting without help. You know, there was a lot of stuff that, that kind of took some of the joy away from the actual job because you felt frustrated, you weren't being supported. We didn't have a lot of training back then. I can remember them bringing in some speaker one time, and it was an older woman that talked about, you know, prioritizing your jobs and, you know, kind of really not pertinent to what I needed to learn. I actually read my contract �thinking that that two pages was going to tell me something how to help a child in a seizure or help someone drink from a sippy cup that was cut out and, you know, different things to do my job better and it wasn't there. I was lucky that our occupational therapists, physical therapists and special ed teachers were more than willing to give us some help. But they had work to do and they couldn't. It would be like having another student because, you know, you just didn't know, some of the things we needed to do. And that was, that was becoming more frustrating to a group of us. A bunch of us got hired that September. So it was probably a good 20, 30 of us that got hired because special ed was just blowing up. They had done, I believe the Willowbrook decision had come down at that time, just prior, and they had to start taking some of these handicapped individuals out of the main big giant institutions and putting them in group homes and taking them to schools. So that kind of changed the landscape for schools. So we housed them in the main center. There was another center up in Glens Falls. We didn't merge those two centers until later on. But so there was some dissension in the troops, and there was some frustration as to how can we make it better, both financially and educationally, too. If I'm trained, I can do better with the kids. That was my main goal. Max [00:10:25] Uh, you gave some explanation about this, but could you just tell me exactly what the Willowbrook decision is? Sandie [00:10:31] Well, I'm not great with the year. We'll have to go back and think about when it was. But there was a big exposé that news gentlemen put on TV and it was Willowbrook was a downstate asylum for people with, supposedly were supposed to be unable to function in society. But when they went in and found the deplorable conditions they were unclothed, filthy, soiled, and many were put there because maybe they were just a little unruly back then. They were maybe maybe they're just delayed, but could certainly function in society with the correct supports. But they were-- it was a dumping ground. There were people there that had been there 30, 40 years from, you know, being a young child. It was really horrible. Horrible. And that's when it came out. And they broke up these asylums, and they weren't just there. They were in other places. And they made it a law that they had to put them in society, in smaller group homes, to be more like families was a wonderful thing. I actually had an aunt and they…an aunt through marriage that were put in one of those situations, because they were 14, and they were a little bit boy crazy, and they spent their life in an institution. We were little kids. We didn't know what was wrong with them. So it was it was profound as a teenager to know that if you didn't obey your parents, that they could send you a place like that. Scary. Sophia [00:12:29] Yeah, that's, that's really heavy. Sandie [00:12:31] Yeah. Sophia [00:12:32] And that had, I mean, you talked a little bit about this, but that caused, like, an influx of more kids on your work, and that kind of..? Sandie [00:12:38] Yeah, yeah. Ultimately, people couldn't hide their children. You know, so many families back then were probably embarrassed. Oh, our son can't talk, oh, our daughter is, you know, crippled or, you know, can't communicate. So they kept them home and they kept them in rooms and they didn't help them. They couldn't thrive in that condition. So then they ultimately, if something happened to the parents, these children were put into these asylums, it was an awful, awful thought. And quite frankly, if you put them into smaller group homes, as we know today, many of them thrive. They go on, they �do jobs in the community and become active citizens. They pay taxes, and…just like you and me. Max [00:13:32] So you touched upon this, and I can see how the situation would be exacerbated by this Willowbrook decision. But how was that you got into labor organizing? Sandie [00:13:46] Well, that's when I told you I was getting frustrated with lack of training, lack of just understanding that we needed a better pay because I wanted to stay in that job. That job was something that was dear to my heart. So I ended up going in early during the day, every day because of the carpooling. And I ended up sitting in the career and tech faculty room, a career and tech program. Those folks, mostly men, came out of the, quote, real world. They were teachers that became teachers, but originally they were welders and home builders. They had been out in the real world. They understood unions. They understood, you know, a contract. So they would talk about stuff and I would be listening and paying attention. And then they talked a little bit more about, oh, there's going to be a a picket in Stillwater or Mechanicville. We're going to meet out here. And I thought it was kind of important for me to go with them. So I would come down, get in the car with a group of us, and we'd go picket. Now, that was probably, you know, 40, 40 some years ago. I ended up working 38 years, but early on, so that was like the early eighties and NYSUT, New York State United Teachers Union, the officers would be there at those pickets, and they would be helping to organize people to get better contracts. And the more I heard about it, the more I realized that, why can't we fight to have a better contract, more pay so that I can keep this job? So I started asking more questions in the faculty room, getting more answers. And then one of the presidents came up to me and said, “Hey, you want to be a negotiator, be on the negotiating team?” And I said, "What is it?" And they told me, "Oh, you'll love it. It's fun." Negotiating is not fun unless you have a little bit of a legal mind. And evidently I did, and I enjoyed it. I got right in and learned the ropes and pleasantly surprised. Very frustrating at times. Sometimes they swore. And that was a little bit of a shocker. You know, I wasn't supposed to, you know, you don't swear at people in their suit jackets, but they were swearing and it was getting pretty rough in there at times. And I had taken a few workshops. The president and the union officers had taken me to a couple of things that NYSUT put on and how to bargain and stuff. And I started realizing that I had a voice and they could have a suit jacket on, but we had the same power when we came to the table, which really shook me up and made me stand a little taller. And I said, “okay.” And one time I just had about enough from the business agent. He kept telling us that teacher aides, secretaries, all of us that weren't teachers were similar and could not get paid any higher than a nurse, his wife, at the hospital. And I said, “but that's, that's apples and oranges. That has nothing to do with what I do.” I was working right alongside a teacher. I was teaching a small group. I was doing all things before they changed the rules, but I was doing everything, plus changing diapers, taking them to the nurse and doing all kinds of stuff. So I fought it, fought it. And the one time he started giving me a lot of trouble at the table and I said, “I'm…I'm just going to call a stop.” And I said, “I'd like to caucus. I'd like to stop.” So we did. And they said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I'm tired of your old song. Sing me a new tune." And I walked out. I couldn't believe I did it. I was like, "Oh, my, I'm in trouble now." But I wasn't. Because when I came back in, he was all red in the face. And we ended up getting a 29% raise, which was unheard of. Of course, 29%, which I wasn't really good at math, remember I told you that. 29% of nothing is not much. But it still put us on the map. It showed them that we weren't going to just go away with two pages of paper. We were we ended up with everything the same as the teachers, the same breaks, the same insurance, the same amount of sick time. And we got a raise. We even had longevity put in there, eventually, over the years, we got longevity. Eventually, down the road, we fought to get career enhancement for �education purposes. We could get money to take college courses. If we were preapproved and we passed with a good grade, we could get the money back. So that's sort of where it got me going. Sophia [00:19:17] Yeah, that's incredible. And what was the, like, what did you feel the public support was, at the time when you were doing this initial work? Like in the eighties? Sandie [00:19:27] Well, the public loved the, you know, the teachers back then. They loved anybody that worked with their kids, we used to get beautiful presents from the parents. And I have ceramic Christmas ornaments and all kinds of things from the parents. It was really good up until, you know, really recently when the whole country kind of got a little crazy before COVID and started blaming grades on teachers. And it really isn't. And of course, now it's far from that. And they've disenfranchized a lot of young people like yourselves from going into education because, you know, granted, you can get a lot more money out in the tech field or other places. You can get respect. But the bottom line is, can you love your job as much as I did? Probably not. I loved it. I love the kids, like I said. And I keep saying the kids made it worth it. You know, you could have a terrible day. You could feel like you had a bad hair day. You go in and I had a young man named Charlie. He had so many things going, you know, kind of against him. But every time he saw you, I'm telling you, he'd say, "Oh, Miss C., you look beautiful today!" And your day just instantly became great. The kids would say they were sorry if they had a bad day. It just was like if one little boy couldn't draw five, couldn't draw five, and then all of a sudden one day he did a five. And I cried, because he was so excited. He wrote fives, like, almost all day. He just was so excited. And I told my kids when I came home, my sons, and they actually…my ten year old came to school, you could bring your child to school back then for, and he was so impressed and he said, "I'm never going to feel upset again about something I can't do when I see how hard those kids work to just do their alphabet or to even stand up at the bulletin board. I'll never complain again, Mom." So, that tells you something. Sophia [00:21:43] Yeah. And can you tell us a little bit more? I'm curious about how COVID has impacted the work that you're doing, but also the work that, like, teaching assistants are doing in the classroom. Sandie [00:21:56] Well, during the first wave, I was in the building March 16th. That's when it all started coming down. And then we were told on the 17th to pack it up and go home. And then we had to report online through Zoom, Google Meet, whatever the principal decided at the time. And we had to meet every day and we tried to meet the kids that way. Some kids, I worked at that point, I was working with high school kids more, middle school, high school, and some of them were in classrooms with numbers six to two to one, four to two to one, which means they were severely impacted, emotionally disturbed. Some students needed a lot of support from adults. They were bright. Don't get me wrong, they're very, very smart kids. But they had a lot of baggage and a lot of issues. So they would come. I was working in the in-school suspension room, which is an awful nice sounding place. We called it the alternative learning environment. Kids would come to me from the entire school and get help. So now they're home. And you could see through the Zoom that some places, some kids were sleeping on couches and that's where they were trying to do their work. And they could you could hear animals, you could hear brothers and sisters, you could hear parents. It was not conducive at times. Sometimes they would shut off their camera so you couldn't see where they were, and sometimes you couldn't tell if they were really there. It was frustrating. Then when we would do some fun things on Wednesdays to try to get the kids to come and let's let's see your pets and let's we actually did a, what do you call it, like an Instagram thing where we all did, like, a crazy �dance, you know, and everybody did it and then we put it together, and then we did posters and we went to some of the home schools. And I had my husband had to videotape me doing something in front of Saratoga High School. So the kids that went to Saratoga High School would see me, you know? And we did a lot of crazy things. We visited, we did a carpool thing for graduation. We met at the Meyer Center at 7:00 in the morning and got home at 9:00 at night. We drove like over 3 or 400 miles to every kid that graduated from our program and brought them their graduation cap and gown, took pictures and did stuff. And we had a carpool with police, ambulance, you know, fire trucks and police and everything. And we just would pull up to the house and take pictures. It was always so exciting to see the kids and I would warn my husband, I think I'm going to get hugged here. So beware, you know, we were supposed to be in masks, you know, but I'm not going to tell the kid they couldn't hug me. They were so excited. Sometimes they would swear and say, "Holy blank, it's Mrs. C!" you know. And my husband was laughing. The kids were it was it was so hard, but it was so rewarding to actually have that moment with those kids. It really was. It was. Sophia [00:25:12] Yeah. It sounds like your job was getting harder, but at the same time, like, public opinion was kind of getting worse around support for teachers. Sandie [00:25:22] It was. I think the political scene was, you know, they were questioning, you know, we have the tax cap, we have things going on where, you know, money's tight. People don't want to pay taxes. That's how you fund education. It just got ugly at times. And they of course, you know, if you buy a real expensive car, you expect that car to do well. They weren't really paying for the the Cadillac. They were paying for a beat up car, and expecting Cadillac stuff. And, you know, our kids were trying really hard, the ones that could and then our kids, many of our kids really needed the physical support. They needed that person next to them. They were getting very, very sad. Public opinion, you know, test scores weren't going up. There's a lot of time competing for kids attention. That's not schoolwork. A lot of parents think the social aspect of playing soccer and being playing instruments and doing this and being in clubs, but sometimes it's just too much for kids. And the expectation from State Ed at times was kind of high. Some of the expected readings were not age appropriate for kids. Kids don't need to read some stuff about war when they're in fourth grade. I mean, the Civil War, that's one thing that was kind of whitewashed. You didn't really hear about the bloody body parts and stuff, but some of the reading that was expected for fourth graders. And we, we at the union and went to State Ed and complained that it wasn't age appropriate. Our kids couldn't wrap their minds…they weren't emotionally mature enough for some of that reading. And I think that as we grew as a society, we started forgetting what was important in education. They don't do nursery rhymes anymore. Fire alarm [00:27:26] *Fire alarm goes off* Sophia [00:27:27] So building off of your previous work, can you just give us an overview of kind of what you're doing now or if you want to talk about even what you're heading to today? Sandie [00:27:36] So right now, I am retired, after 38 years of being a teaching assistant at the Saratoga-Warren-Washington-Hamilton-Essex BOCES on Henning Road. 38 years of a lot of memories and a lot of battles, union battles, many contracts, many union positions. I'm currently the Labor Ambassador on the Executive Board of my local, which is Saratoga Adirondack BOCES Employees Association. I am also, in that capacity, I attend the Greater Capital Region Teachers Center. I am the only, was the only one ever, that's a �teaching assistant. As a policy board member, they've only ever had teachers. I am on the NYSUT board of directors. I sit on the executive board. We meet monthly with the officers and I have been on the executive board, come this spring, it will be 25 years. So that's unfounded. I mean, it's just not something normal, people, I just been very lucky. I was put on the executive board under several…most of the presidents. The first one I was, I was able to become a board member and the rest of them I've been on the executive board, which is a total honor. And I just recently, in the past couple of years was elected to the presidency of the Saratoga Area Labor Council and second vice president of the NYSUT Retiree Council Ten. So, I have a lot of hats, and I'm a grandmother of five, recently. We started to build a home on the Sacandaga, and my husband just retired. So we're, we're busy all the time. Like I said earlier today, we are, I am heading down to the Labor Temple off of Everett Road and we will be meeting with the governor, with Governor Hochul, uh, lieutenant governor, the attorney general and probably many more dignitaries, to hear her talk about why she should be elected. We…it's a no brainer if you're in education. You know, she's the one governor we have endorsed in probably, it's probably been well over 20 some years. We have not endorsed any other governor because they haven't been good for education. She has put money in education and backed us on many issues for workers in education. Sophia [00:30:32] And just kind of expanding on that, what are you hoping to see from, like, politicians in support of the work you're trying to do? Like what would be ideal for them to give you guys? Sandie [00:30:43] Well, we want to get rid of APPR. And that's you know, it's it's an evaluation tool that's kind of, not fair to teachers. Not really fair to kids either, because kids get tested and really the results don't get given to that teacher for instruction, it goes to the next teacher. And then it's sort of irrelevant at that point, you know, usually, I know when I was in school, we got a spelling test and then if we didn't do well, the teacher knew what we needed to do, to do better, you know, the next week. These tests were punitive. And I don't…I think that it's with the pandemic, kids have lost. The teachers know the kids have lost. Just like, you know, if you play a game and you didn't do 100%, nobody has to tell you you didn't give 100%. We all know kids had a hard time. There's no sense in making them feel worse. Let's, you know, we're hoping to get rid of that. We want to take care of Tier 6 for people that are in Tier 6. Uh, teachers aren't going to, kids are not going to go into education knowing that they're not going to have a decent pension. They're going to basically lose money by the time they get up in the part of the time for their retirement, they've lost money, the way Tier 6 is laid out. So we, we want to do something with Tier 6 and we want to fix, fix it so kids want to become teachers again, to get into education. It's so rewarding. And there, I think the policies now are coming out from the politicians are starting to realize how important it is. Now all of a sudden, “oh, wow, we have a bus driver shortage? Oh, wow. We have, you know, school staff, we can't get teaching assistants, we can't get teachers.” Well, maybe if you paid them and respected them and give them the supports they need, we'll have better results in school. Kids' grades will go up, because the climate, the education, climate, the environment will be better for everybody. Sophia [00:33:01] Can you tell us a little bit, I know since you've had such an extensive experience in it, it'll probably be hard to pick. But like, can you pick out some moments that were really important in your organizing work or where you felt were huge accomplishments for you guys? Sandie [00:33:19] Well, we had some, you know, a lot of fun events that the union helped me to get involved in. Like we did this book challenge. It was a truck full of 42,000 brand �new books, and it's AFT's program, First Books. And because of the position I hold, I kind of talked my president into going to NYSUT and talking to them about maybe getting some books. Well, we took the challenge. We got 20,000 signatures. We did interviews on the radio and TV, all kinds of stuff. And we ended up having Congressman Tonko and a lot of people come to our school to watch this giant truck come with, just, boxes as big as this room full of brand new books. And then what we proceeded to do, they delivered it into a bay in the career and tech end. And then all the children, we had them working, it was hysterical to see kids in hardhats, big, burly guys that normally do the heavy equipment training, were directing some of our students with disabilities, "The princess books go over there. And this is where the Tommy the Truck book goes over here." And they were helping each other. It was a blur of craziness, but it was all orchestrated. Kids were making boxes, kids were doing this, staff was helping. Some of the kids were running, you know, a forklift outside and taking boxes up to the cafeteria where we had all, everything labeled and out. We had retired librarians, we had the police department, we had the servicemen from the Navy. We had all kinds of people in the community come and help sort books. Our culinary department made sandwiches because this took a week to sort all those books. And then when the day came, when they came to come get their books, I had teachers sitting on the floor, not much older than you guys, sitting on the floor in tears, getting new books to take back to their classrooms because there was no books for the kids. I had little kids coming and taking bags of books and, so excited…the books were heavier than they were, but they were taking books home for their sisters and brothers. And I finally went in to watch and I was teary eyed because I was busy doing other things. We had a rocking chair set up for Congressman Tonko to read to some of the kids. And it was an amazing accomplishment. My superintendent, Jim Dexter, at the time, was very supportive. He gave me six days to do this. I got my regular pay. I was the person, the person in charge, the logistics person. Don't ever accept that job. It's brutal. Brutal. And we just…I wore a Wonder Woman cape, and the kids loved it because I met them at the door and they go "Where we flying to!" I said "Down the hall!" And we gave him breakfasts and pizzas and stuff. And it was, it was a highlight. It was amazing to see. We did a lot of organizing for it and it was positive. There was times that we also had to go, you know, walk a picket line. And that's, that's a different kind of feeling. You know, and hopefully, like we just went to Starbucks. My husband and I went down to Starbucks and I wore my union shirt. And on the back it says, vote yes for the union, check yes. And I walked around the Starbucks store quite a bit with the shirt on. And then when I ordered my drink, I said, they said, "Well, who…what name?" And I said, "Say yes to the union, Sandy." So they had to yell it out. And they did. And the kids were excited, the workers. And they did vote yes, they did consolidate. They did, with the union. So, we've had a lot of young people start realizing that what their grandparents had is what they want. They want a pension. We always thought that the younger folks were looking for the big bucks and not thinking about their future later. But in talking to some of the kids from Starbucks who are going on to college and, you know, working there, too, they said, no, we want what you have: a pension. We want to be able to work at a job safely. We want to be able to have rights. And we like our job. We actually love doing what we do, but we don't want to do it unsafe and we want to do, we want to have a pension when we're done. So it's enlightening to me to hear that. And it's heartening. It feels really good to know that the kids are getting it. And I think with our president that we have now, he's a labor guy. You know, he's definitely trying. All we can do is hope that Americans come together and, you know, labor built this country. Let's hope we can keep it going. And I'm always here. Just tell me where. *laughs* �Sophia [00:38:38] Yeah. Wow. Well, what do you think is important going forward then for people, both organizers and kind of the general public, to kind of get things to where we want them to be for your field. Sandie [00:38:53] You have to listen to each other. You really have to listen because, yes, there's people that are pro-choice and, you know, anti this and pro that. We lost a big thing this year. We lost Roe. You know that Roe v. Wade is going to forever make me cry because it that was something that my kids and you kids had and now it's been taken away. My granddaughters won't have that. We have to start finding ways to communicate with those that are totally against something and some people that are totally for and find some kind of middle ground. That's what the union always did. We tried to do a win-win thing. We tried to make it, you know, give a little take a little. But today, it seems like it's all out war against the middle class. And we need to really look at the unions, go back, see what we did, see how we built this country. You know, with the infrastructure, everything we have to start protecting our water, protecting our air, protecting the rights of each individual to their own body. I mean, really think about it. I, I'd love to see what some of these men that are making the rules for women would consider if they were told they had to have something done so they couldn't…stop having babies, or they you know, I mean, they don't even like to have vasectomies. They get all freaked out, think about it. And yet they want us to give birth. What if you really, really don't want to experience that and then you're forced and especially with children. I guess that's huge right now. It's the personal bodily privileges that we, myself, as a woman that is on in age and I have no problem saying I'm 73. I could utilize and have an abortion if I needed it. Maybe it wasn't something I would have done, but I had the right to do it. I don't want less for my children and my grandchildren. And I think that unions have to step up. And we are. We have a Women's Committee at my local and we have a Women's Union Committee at the state level and at the national levels. And we are fighting, fighting hard. And I know there's a lot of men that are behind us and standing beside us. So that and we have to do something to recruit and retain teachers and people to work in education and in hospitals, because hospitals are under attack, too, with this Roe v. Wade. Doctors, nurses. So we have a lot to do, a lot of work. And because I am 73, I'm expecting you guys to step up. So I'll be there beside you. But someone's going to have to carry the flag at some point. So thank you. Sophia [00:41:53] Can you talk a little bit more about I had watched an interview with you where you talked about how working on an LGBT task force had kind of impacted your work as well. And now you're talking about like the intersection of, like, women's rights, too, with labor rights and what you've noticed in your work with those kind of things. Sandie [00:42:13] Okay. So our union, NYSUT, has an LGBTQIA committee, and it consists of teachers and union people in schools, higher ed custodians. There's a swath of everybody. And we come together virtually and in person and we have meetings and we talk about different things that legislation and issues that pertain to same-sex marriages, gender identity, gender identification and expression, gender neutral bathrooms, all kinds of issues that prep and things that everyday human beings, and that's what we are. Doesn't matter whether I identify as a male, female or non-gender. We all have certain rights and should be able to express and feel safe in those environments, whether at school or at a hospital and we're treated correctly. I had a cousin that was gay, and he was horribly treated back in high school. He went on to go out to California in the seventies when that whole thing came about. He developed AIDS later in life and he passed away. So it's my way of helping my cousin that was older than me. You know, I try to step up for him through this committee. We've done a lot of work. We had a book tasting and that was all books around how to talk from a toddler up. You know, like, I'm a yellow crayon and I �want to be a blue crayon. And you know, all these different books; Josie, all these different books that have titles that, you know, "I Have Two Mommies" or "I Have Two Daddies" or 'I Have a Blended Family" books to help kids. And what we did was we had them all around in a room, we had food, and you could go taste the books, look at what they were about. And then we had QR codes next to them with a curriculum attached, so a teacher could take that book and do a lesson around it if they chose to do that. We took some of the books to different events, too. I teach a workshop on LGBTQ, you know, safe schools, and we hand out books there, too, so teachers can take them and help their kids. So, it's just more work that I love. We, I recently went to the Latino... I don't know the title of the place, but it was in Albany and it was a center for all people that needed help. And mostly people that speak different languages come. And we did a culturally responsive food pantry. Our union put it together and we gave out books that were in Spanish. And we did a food pantry where one adult could come through with a cart and pick up food that was something that they would eat. You know, we have a lot of these drive thru food things, lots of them because of the pandemic. We realized that some of the folks that are getting peanut butter and jelly and canned chicken and canned SpaghettiOs, they're from Colombia, they're from South America. They don't know what to do with peanut butter and jelly. They don't know what to do with a canned chicken, or canned ham. It's not something that they worked with. So in this culturally responsive pantry, we had dried beans, we had canned salmon. They like that. And there was a lot of eggs and chicken and food that they could use, fresh vegetables, stuff that they knew and would cook. And it was... It brought a tear to your eye to see these families coming and getting this food and actually being vulnerable, to say, "I need help, I can't feed my family." We…I don't speak Spanish. You folks should learn another language. And I'm sure you are. I, I wasn't good at it, and I just gave it up, but I wish I did. But the language of love and caring came through, and we all could get along. And I understood what they needed, and they knew I wanted to give them what I could. And it was, even my husband was totally blown away with that activity. Our union does a lot. We also had hygiene kits put together: toothbrushes and combs and toothpaste and soap and shampoo and comb in Ziploc bags. And they took them. They needed them. That's an activity you guys could do from school. You could always get a hold of me and you could come and help at that place any time any kids wanted to do some civil and human rights kind of work. You can always reach out to NYSUT. We have higher ed folks there and myself and we do a lot of that. So I love my union because of that. Sophia [00:47:35] Yeah, that's really incredible work that you guys are doing. Sandie [00:47:38] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Sophia [00:47:39] It sounds like so much of what you do is just born out of, like, a genuine love for your community and working with these kids. And that's really important. Sandie [00:47:47] It is. It is. I did not want to leave this earth without having an impact on the greater good, you know? Yeah, I could go out and leave a chunk of money for my grandkids, and I will. But the bottom line is, I want to make it a better place. I don't want to destroy. I try to do everything you're supposed to. I think my kids, they're grown. They know what I do. They were there when I got a legacy award. I've been given awards through the teacher union, NYSUT. I was School-Related Professional of the year. I was given the Albert Shanker Award at the American Federation of Teachers. I was up for the National Education Association's award for the ESP of the year. There's hundreds of people that get put in, but just being nominated for those positions shows that you can, you can impact a lot of people by just doing something from your heart and asking �questions, listening to people. What do they need? The big impact that I heard and I heard a lot was don't presume, you know, what a poor or disadvantaged family needs. You need to ask them. Ask them what their needs are. Pay attention, listen, because maybe it's a coat or maybe you gave them a coat and all they really wanted was a bag of beans and some rice and some money towards heat or help with getting a car so they could go to work. You know, we have to listen to the people in our communities. We can't just judge or go in and think we're going to take over. There's a lot of these associations now, you know, that are being like, I know Albany's got a citizens' group together. They want to be heard. "Don't come in and tell us what our community needs." So as young people, always ask before you presume that someone needs something, you know, ask, "What can we do? What do you need from us?" And listen. And sometimes they're, they could be embarrassed and they might not…so if you listen and let them just talk, they'll tell you a lot. Sophia [00:50:04] So well. It's been amazing to hear about everything you're doing, but before we wrap up with the interview, I just want to ask if there's anything else that we didn't ask that you wanted to add about what you're doing. Sandie [00:50:16] I think that, as I do my daily job as a retiree, every weekend I'm busy. I find things that we need to get done through some of the committees I do. And like tonight, I'm going to go see, you know, the governor. And I'll have a meeting Wednesday night with the labor council and there's phone banking. There's always something to be done to try to make the world a little better place. Find a place that you feel comfortable in helping. Listen to people. Give back where you can. And it comes back, like my husband used to be a little, can I say, cheap or tight? And he'd see me give $10 to something or do something. And I…and then one day, you know, I won something. He goes, "You always win." I say, "But I always give." And then it seems to come back in a different way. Sometimes it's just a big thank you or an award, but it's, it's not something I worked to get. I work because it gives me inner satisfaction. And that's what you need to find. As college kids, you need to find what makes you tick, what you're good at, and I hope it's something to do with labor. I hope it's something to do with the greater community. I have a feeling it will be if you're taking this course. Sophia [00:51:40] I mean, after this interview. Yeah. Sandie [00:51:43] Thanks a lot for having me here. Sophia [00:51:45] Oh, it was amazing. Thank you so much for coming. But I think we're good to... Max [00:51:50] I think so, too. Thank you for your participation. Sandie [00:51:52] Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Max Chelso '24 and Sophie Delohery '25 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sandie Carner-Shafran Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 51:56 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sandie Carner-Shafran Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 2, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource I worked for 38 years for the Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex Boces as a Teacher Aide and then a Certified Teaching Assistant. I recently retired and currently serve on the Executive Board of my Local union as the Labor Ambassador & Co-Chair of our Saratoga Adirondack Boces Employees Association Women’s Committee, Second VP of the New York State Teachers Union Retiree Council 10, President of the Saratoga Labor Council and The Greater Capital Region Teacher Center Policy BOD member. I continue to be involved serving on various Steering Committees at NYSUT. Union For Life in my motto! Language A language of the resource English (en) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a275d8c7a87173af01059cdbe36b3fc3.jpg a074bd82cd05aa4316f3a5d3e91b2afb https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2fbc252c5aea73bfa9ed2151f69f7657.m4a 74ebdcb5df6115f9bc3ed3b6e4d2984f https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1159c2c8043b62d63f9aab6a77bd4e11.pdf 234c4fd7be4fa9d5320561ed29b0f5cb PDF Text Text Interviewee: Sandra “Sandy” Welter Years at Skidmore: 1984 - 2017 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: 4/21/2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:28 Raised East Haven, CT; 1st in family to attend college. After Elmira College graduation in 1971, married & moved to Ballston Spa so husband could work at Skidmore. 00:02:05 Next, earned Masters in English & a permanent teaching certification (SUNY Albany). 00:02:30 Then, taught Saratoga Springs Jr. High/7-9th grade writing to atypical students; developed a creative curriculum featuring special projects — unusual at that level in 1970s. 00:03:25 Paused teaching to have 2 children; wanted to return to teaching part time, but the public school administration was “… just not there yet in terms of …” the job-sharing concept. 00:04:19 Therefore, became curriculum developer and director of the Beagle School and created programs for the public schools Gifted and Talented program while also caring for young sons. 00:04:49 In early 1980s was recuperating from a stroke when friend Bob Miner invited Welter to observe his class at Correctional Facility in Comstock, NY, part of Skidmore’s University Without Walls program. Welter loved it; Director Bob Van Meter invited Welter to teach. 00:08:57 The Comstock students were “intensely interested … they were connecting what they were reading in ways that … I was not used to with younger students. [I] found it extremely stimulating and I thought, ‘I think I could make a difference here. I think I can help.’ ” 00:09:55 Program expanded to include a second correctional facility, over 40 faculty, classes four nights a week, almost 200 students involved, many graduates. 00:10:30 Welter’s role expanded to include advising on curriculum, helping develop final projects, running a skills lab in math, writing and reading, and then being the Director. 00:11:15 Gov. Pataki (elected 1995) removed all of the funding; Welter still ran program for nearly two years, with volunteer teachers and extra books, but then it closed. 00:12:33 Welter stayed on as a UWW advisor for regular, on campus, students. 00:13:00 New Masters of Arts Liberal Studies (MALS) program created, in 1997 Welter joined. 00:13:40 Skidmore, one of earliest MALS programs, attracted students from all over the world. 00:15:30 In the early 2000s, greater pressure on faculty to publish and serve on committees led to decline in faculty participation in MALS, so MALS closed. 00:18:28 Welter granted administrative sabbatical to go to China; “Taught English composition to junior level university students who were being trained as English teachers in China.” 00:19:08 Skidmore had a formal arrangement with the University of Qufu for many years. Initially established by Murray Levith; Skidmore graduates and faculty went to teach there. 00:19:48 “A wonderful year experience. Incredible. And lifelong friends — I’m still in communication with several of my students there and a couple of the faculty who I taught with.” 00:20:04 Welter taught English composition (103, 105) for last four years working at Skidmore. 00:20:30 Skidmore was “… an institution that always seemed to be able to look outside the box, and I am an educator who was always looking outside the box.” 00:20:56 Because Welter ran programs, biggest challenge was nurturing faculty interest in them. 00:21:43 “Murray left the China program and I took on the directorship until it closed.” �00:22:07 “When we first started, there were … no Western influences in the Chinese university system. … By the time we left, the universities were able to train their own teachers to come back and do the work that we were doing, and very well, actually.” 00:23:10 “I actually had thirty three years of bliss! [laughs] I hardly had any problems at all other than struggling to make sure that we had interesting and new and exciting faculty always working with our students.” 00:23:32 Fondest memories? “Mostly center around the students. … Because I dealt with so many different kinds of students at Skidmore.” 00:23:55 At end of Skidmore career, teaching in the English Department was also a positive experience, “…wonderful to watch them come into their own…” 00:24:15 Had ESL experience so worked with international students & HEOP students. 00:25:12 Taught Summer Institute for many years, teaching extra skills to prepare students for Skidmore. “So I guess the students were, are kind of my central focus.” 00:26:15 Also had wonderful colleagues at UWW, MALS, and in the English Department. 00:28:14 “Skidmore went co-ed right when we arrived. And so the men who were at Skidmore [explained in counseling that] their problem was that they were not getting enough food. So Bob, my husband, had to go to the dining services and explain to the little old ladies who were working in the dining facilities that they needed to give the boys more food!” 00:28:55 “And that seemed to me like such an innocent kind of kind issue to be dealing with in the early days at Skidmore” compared to the complicated issues students face now. 00:29:40 Dining was not buffet; was served family style, but not enough for the men’s appetites. 00:30:10 Also, the beds were too short! Led to sore backs and hurt knees “because they were scrunched into these little beds.” “Growing pains” that Skidmore needed to address. 00:30:55 In 1971, classes had moved up to the new campus, but students still lived on the old campus in town, including Moore Hall, “the big ‘Pink Palace.’ ” 00:31:44 A years-long transition process for the old Skidmore campus. Many buildings, now homes and apartments, still have the Skidmore names. Empire State College also owns some. 00:33:20 First experience of Saratoga Springs was so dreary, Welter hoped her soon-to-behusband would not get the job, but he did, and “…here I am 50 years later, very, very happy.” 00:36:51 Welter arrived in China in August 2001, so was teaching in China on 9/11. “I didn’t come back at all during the whole time I was in China; … A year later [I] found that, coming onto campus, … I was going through what everyone went through the year before.” 00:38:28 Different presidents … Joe Palamountain, David Porter, Jamienne Studley, Phil Glotzbach. “David … he was one of the most remarkable human beings. … He always remembered my name. … He came to every department … and sat in everybody’s office and wanted to talk to you. And he came into my teeny little closet of an office in UWW and wanted to know all about it, with huge enthusiasm, and caring and kindness!” 00:40:00 Over the years, faculty regularly raised questions about curriculum, issues of diversity and inclusion, the role of a liberal arts college in the world, how to stay relevant — “I was glad that Skidmore was asking those questions, … I think it kept Skidmore viable and fresh and … I was always impressed with their sincerity and seriousness about our role, our job, as educators.” 00:41:35 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/41a4b4a33275503c3fda918082ab710c.pdf 5afbdc93158b15d8191ceef9f191d82e PDF Text Text Interview with Sandra “Sandy” Welter by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, April 21, 2022, Saratoga Springs, NY. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber for the Oral History Project of the Retirees, and I am with Sandy Welter. It’s April 21st, 2022, and … Sandy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, and … SANDY WELTER: Sure. Thank you so much for inviting me to this exciting project! I grew up in southern Connecticut, outside New Haven, in a small working-class town called East Haven. My Mom and Dad were factory workers, I was the first in my family to go to college. So, it was a big deal when I went off to Elmira. I went as far as I possibly could from my hometown — I was accepted at Conn College and at U Conn and several other closer colleges and universities, but I really was a … had wanderlust, and I wanted to get as far away as I could, because we never really travelled very far. So I went to Elmira, out in the western part of New York State, got a very, very good education. Went junior year abroad, so I studied at the University of Leicester in England. Met wonderful international students there, was planning on returning to England to do graduate work in linguistics. But, when I returned to Elmira in my senior year, I met my future husband, who was teaching at the college. And so, after I graduated in 1971, I immediately got married and he got a job as the first Director of the Counseling Center at Skidmore College, so my … the day after I was married, having no honeymoon, we actually came to Saratoga Springs and moved into our apartment in Ballston Spa. My husband at the time started his job, and I applied to the graduate program at SUNY Albany, and I got in. And that started my future here in Skidmore. LG: And the graduate program was in …? SW: I was in English and Secondary Education. So, I did a masters in English with a focus in Secondary Ed — so I got both a Masters in English as well as a permanent teaching certification. So, the first seven years after my graduate degrees at SUNY Albany, I taught in the Saratoga Springs public �schools. I was in the Junior High School. I taught 7th, 8th and 9th grade, and I taught writing, most particularly. I also taught more — I taught both, two extremes. I taught all of the Junior High School kids who were kicked out of all their other English classes, ended up in my class, and I also taught all the gifted kids who were bored in their classes. So I developed a journalism class, we developed a newspaper in the journalism class. This was all stuff, in the early ’70s, that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen in the Junior High. We did music analysis, we did a newspaper, we did … you know, we did all kinds of things. And so, I had a lovely five years in the public schools, and then I had my children. I tried to go back to the Junior High because I was very happy teaching in the secondary school. I was tenured at that time public school tenured. But I only wanted to work part time because I had two young children at home. And that was early 1978, ’79, and the administration in the public schools were just not there yet in terms of being able to figure out how one could job-share. I was suggesting, there must be another woman — again, very sexist, but it was — well there must be another woman who wants to job share, so I would work part time and this person would work part time and we would cover all of the needs of the institution. “Nope.” So, I said “fine” and I walked away from my teaching position there. I then was a curriculum developer and a director of the Beagle School, which was an independent nursery school and kindergarten. I worked for the Gifted and Talented program in the school district, the whole district, and I developed programs there, all the while taking care of my younger … my growing sons. Um, in early … in the early ’80s, a friend of mine approached me. I had had a serious medical problem. I had actually had a stroke. With two young children. And I was recuperating at home and quite depressed because I was afraid to do anything. And this gentleman came in to visit and he said, “You know, I think that you should come up … there’s this program that I just started teaching in at Skidmore. You might be really interested - you could be, I think you would be great at this,” and it was … LG: Who was that? �SW: That was Bob Miner, and he was suggesting that I come up and observe his class at Comstock. And he wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching in the Skidmore prison program through University Without Walls. And I, at that point, was looking for a new lease on life, really. I was looking for a new focus. It was one day a week, you know I thought, “This is perfect for me.” It was getting me involved. I had been doing some part-time work for the University Without Walls with many of their adult learners — I was doing prep, composition prep for many of their international students. They had Qatari businessmen who were coming to get their UWW degrees, and when they came to Skidmore they were working on their final projects, and so I worked, I did a lot of work with them in terms of editing and writing and communicating and helping them to get a more academic spin on their final projects in writing. So, I was … LG: Who connected you to UWW? SW: Um, I think … hmm, who connected me? Maybe, um, Mark Gelber? Maybe Barry Targan, maybe … I mean, these were all friends I knew through Sam and Bev Mastrianni, and so they were people in the community but they were also very Skidmore connected. And then I met Bob Van Meter and he heard that I had been doing work with writing and remediation with writing, … LG: At the prison? SW: At … well, in the community. I was doing some community work, and he heard that. And then when Bob Miner recommended me, he said, “Oh I’ve heard of this person.” And I went and I met with Bob Van Meter … LG: Who was, at that time? SW: He was, at that time, the Director of UWW. And then met Larry Ries, who �was the Assistant Director, and Ken Klotz who was the … um, Director of the Prison Program at the time. LG: When was this? SW: Early … it was, um … 1988 maybe? Something like that. LG: Ok. SW: As it turns out, I … actually went up with Bob Miner to observe his class at Comstock, at Great Meadow, the maximum-security prison, and I loved it. I came back and said … LG: And the guys must have loved it too. SW: Well, I mean I sat in the back of the room, didn’t say a word, I just watched, and it was … I thought, this … because these … these inmates, these students, were like sponges! They wanted to know everything, they were so intensely interested in everything they were reading and everything they were writing. They were connecting — because they were adults, they were connecting what they were reading in ways that were so unique, that I was not used to with younger students. And I just found it extremely stimulating and I thought, “I think I could make a difference here. I think I can help.” So, I went back and I talked to Bob Van Meter and he said, “You want to do a comp course?” And I said, “Sure, I’ll do, I can do a basic comp course, I can do a second, you know, like the 103 and the 105, equivalent to what we were doing on campus.” And I did that, and, in fact, we expanded during the next ten years into Washington Correctional Facility and so we had two programs, we ran faculty up to the prisons, those prisons, four nights a week. We had over 40 faculty hired every semester to teach up there. We had, you know, more, almost 200 students involved in the program, many graduates each year, and it was a really dynamic part of the Skidmore community. LG: And your role expanded? �SW: It did. So I went from teaching just the comp courses to becoming a full time advisor up there. So I was doing advising on curriculum, I was helping develop final projects, I was running a skills lab and we set up a computer lab up there so I was doing a lot of basic skills in math and in writing and in reading. And eventually I was asked to take on the Directorship. And so, the last four years of the program I was the … LG: This would be…? SW: Around … we closed the prison program because of lack of funding. If you remember, Governor Pataki came on board and the very first thing he did after he was elected was to close down all of the college prison programs in the state of New York. So, he removed all the funding, closed all the programs down, said this was not, you know, “state TAP money and federal Pell money was not going to educate inmates.” And so, he pulled all of the funding, and because of that, we ran our program with volunteers. Our faculty went up there voluntarily. We had extra books that we could use until they all ran out, and I ran the program for almost two years after that, on a voluntary basis. Um, we weren’t giving credit because we couldn’t, but we were up there still involved with the students who were our students, until we couldn’t any more. And that was between the years of about 1988 to 1998. I think we closed the prison program in about 1998 or 1999. So, then I’m … now I'm at Skidmore, having spent 10 years in UWW, not as much, certainly not much time on campus, I spent most of my time up at the prison. Um … and the question was, “What now?” And so I stayed on as a UWW advisor for regular students for a couple of years, and then, the masters program conception was being developed through Larry Ries and the state of New York and a variety of other people. Lots of support, I think … LG: That’s the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies? SW: That’s correct, thank you Lynne, a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies. It’s an �interdisciplinary degree so the framework of this graduate degree was to, in fact, bring in at least two disciplines in to the, sort of, core curricular components. And that was unusual at the time. There were several MALS programs across the country, we were one of the earliest and we were also part of the national organization, the Consortium of MALS programs, and that’s in two thousand and something … um, no, I don’t have the dates, but we hosted the national convention here in Saratoga, at Skidmore. We housed everybody at the Gideon Putnam, we had our sessions there … we couldn’t have them on campus because there wasn’t enough room … It’s a national, we had a lot of people coming in. We had several hundred people here, so … . And we had keynote speakers and we had themes and, you know, so it was a … Skidmore was very involved in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies movement. We had graduates who came to us through the UWW program but also from other places, so most of our MALS students were graduates of other institutions from around the world and around the country. And they had a residency, but it was only a one month — a one-week residency — and then another two or three days at the end to have their final projects approved. So, they didn’t have to be on this campus, so we had students all over the country, and the world, actually. Um, so that was a great next step for me at Skidmore. MALS was a great deal of fun, and it grew into a very viable program. Um, the fabric of the college began to change in the early 2000s. And faculty who used to, either because of a need, a desire to, explore pedagogies with other kinds of students other than 18 to 21 year olds, or, because they had particular interests that were not necessarily — did not necessarily fit in to an undergraduate curriculum, they were really very interested in teaching at the UWW and the MALS program. They loved to teach there, they liked the kind of students, they liked the diversity of subject matter, they liked the depth of inquiry that happened at the graduate level. But … and for many, in the early days, it was a very helpful bump in their salaries. I mean, we did pay well and we paid in addition to their Skidmore salary and in the early days of Skidmore, you know, people, faculty, didn’t make a lot of money, so it was a good way of supplementing. By the time the programs were, the UWW, closed and MALS was still involved, faculty had a different agenda. �They really needed to publish, they needed to publish, publish, publish, they needed to be on committees here on campus. Um, more so, I think, than maybe in the past. I don’t know because as an administrator I didn’t, I was on committees but I didn’t have the requirements of that. So, it was more and more difficult to get faculty to help, to be faculty advisors, to supervise independent studies, to oversee final projects or theses, and it got to the point where, I think, Larry Ries, the Director, and some of the later Directors of the Masters’ Program, had to ask, is this really now the mission of the college? And I think eventually the answer was, “No.” It was not. So, the Masters’ Program closed, um … LG: Do you remember the year that it closed? SW: Oh, you know, I … I don’t. I came into the Masters’ Program in 1997 and I retired from it … so, whenever … (uh no, I didn’t because they closed) before I retired. Because then I went on to the English Department and I taught in the English Department full time. So, yeah, and in between there I went to China! [laughs] I nearly forgot to tell you about China! I took a sabbatical, I took an administrative sabbatical, and …while MALS was still running, but when it was struggling, and I was feeling a little frustrated and working very hard and not being able to get much support, and I finally decided, “I think I may need a break.” So, I asked for an administrative sabbatical for a year, I was granted one, and through Murray Levith, I went to the University of Qufu in Shandong Province in China, and I taught English composition to junior level university students who were being trained as English teachers in China. LG: Now did Skidmore have a formal …? SW: Yes, we had a formal arrangement with the University of Qufu, for many years. Initially established by Murray Levith and then we had graduates of Skidmore as well as faculty who went to, over, every year, to teach there. Doretta Miller taught there, Murray Levith taught there, I taught … I think Marty Canavan in the Business Department taught there, and probably �several other people. Lots of graduates of Skidmore College went over and taught as well. So that was a wonderful year experience. Incredible. And lifelong friends — I’m still in communication with several of my students there and a couple of the faculty who I taught with. So. Yeah, so I actually retired … after UWW and MALS and China, I went to the English Department full time, at the very end of my career, and taught composition, English 103, English 105, for the last four years of my Skidmore career. So … and that was great. So I was, I kind of came back to a very traditional academic environment. I’ve had a very storied experience at Skidmore and I thank Skidmore for that, because they were an institution that always seemed to be able to look outside the box, and I am an educator who was always looking outside the box. LG: So, what do you think your greatest challenges were? During all those years? SW: Hmm, well, probably … because I was in the administration, per se, having always done, had to run a program, whether it was UWW or MALS or China, I think it was just … nurturing, my biggest challenge was always nurturing support from the faculty. That was a big job of mine, always. Um, new faculty — I would go to new faculty receptions all the time, introduce them to the MALS program, to the University Without Walls, to the China program, because, again, that was where, possibly, faculty would be interested — I was, by the way, Murray left the China program and I took on the directorship until it closed. The Universities were now, Universities in China were, now having, had enough of their own graduates who could then come back and teach in their institutions. When we first started, there were very few Western, - no Western influences in the Chinese university system, so … we were kind of on the, we and Yale were the two institutions, Skidmore and Yale were the two institutions that were in China at the very early days. Umm, before Tiananmen, you know, during that period. By the time we left, the universities were able to train their own teachers to come back and do the work that we were doing, and very well, actually. So, I guess my biggest challenge was always nurturing faculty interest in these kinds of — I don’t want to ever use the word marginal, but certainly the more peripheral … not necessarily the central mission of a small �undergraduate liberal arts college. I was always doing work in areas that were slightly, um, different in definition of that core mission. So that was my major struggle. I actually had thirty-three years of bliss! [laughs] I hardly had any problems at all other than struggling to make sure that we had interesting and new and exciting faculty always working with our students. LG: So, what are your fondest memories? SW: Ah, fondest memories … mostly center around the students. I mean, I … because I had, because I dealt with so many different kinds of students at Skidmore — I mean, I dealt with the traditional, you know, 18 to 21 yearolds at the very end of my career at Skidmore, when I was teaching in the English Department, and those students were fabulous! I loved them! I always taught freshmen … freshmen or sophomores, and so they were always a little green and they were always a little bewildered and it was always wonderful to watch them come into their own, because they would stop in my office four years later, as seniors, and here were these fabulous grown-up young men and women who made me proud! I worked with a lot of the international students at Skidmore, so … LG: What did you do with them? SW: Again, ESL work. I did a lot of personal, my own personal ESL training, and then brought that to some of my writing courses. So, I did a lot of work with the international students and a lot of work with the HEOP [Opportunity Program] students, who were coming to Skidmore from, um … underprepared, underpreparing High Schools. They were very smart men and women, very, very smart, but their basic skills were not as strong as the kids coming out of, like, Country Day School, you know, or some of the great prep schools that our students come from. So, these young men and women needed a little bit of a leg up, and I taught in the summer, to the …yup, I taught in the HEOP Summer Institute for many years. �LG: That’s the Higher Education Opportunity Program. SW: That’s, thank you, it is the Higher Education Opportunity Program, of which Skidmore had, still has, I’m assuming, a very important program, a very important branch in the both state and federal level of Higher Education Opportunity Program. So, I taught in the Summer Institute for many years, doing a kind of “Boot Camp” with them so that when they came in September they would be prepared, more prepared than they would have been had they just spent the summer at home and then gotten out of their high schools and come to Skidmore. It would have been a bit of a, not only a culture shock but an intellectual shock for them. So, they were able to, we would do, you know, reading skills and study skills and some of the basic cultural experiences of what it was like to experience college in the classroom as well as in the dormitory. So, I did all of that, as well, in the summer. So, I guess the students were, are kind of my central focus. I had wonderful colleagues, both at UWW and MALS, and in the English Department. Again, that was a plus as well. LG: Ok. Are there other things that we didn’t cover? SW: Let’s see, talked about China, my sabbatical, umm, … I don’t know, I mean, it feels like I, … I mean I had such a rich experience at Skidmore, and I … LG: You talked about some of the changes… SW: Yeah, I mean there’s … LG: Can you expand on that? SW: Yeah, sure. When I, I mean … this will be a story that will be interesting to consider what, in terms of change … When I first came to Saratoga, I was not involved. I mean, I was in graduate school, my then husband was the Counseling Director at Skidmore. And, of course, I didn’t … and I met lots of Skidmore faculty through that, we were the young couple, you know, the new young couple at Skidmore, back in the day when those — they were �new young couples who would show up every year and we were it. So, we went to lots of parties and met with lots of faculty, all of whom were extremely warm and very welcoming. I was in graduate school so I didn’t have a lot of connection to Skidmore, but my husband would … of course, being in the Counseling Center, couldn’t talk about his discussions, although, at one time he did share something, which I thought was classic. And, of course it was because he had to share it with the larger Skidmore community, and he said, “Well, Sandy, the boys…” This was when Skidmore went co-ed. Because Skidmore went co-ed right when we arrived. And so the men who were at Skidmore had just started to arrive, and they were in classes, and they would come to the Counseling Center and they would sit down, and, in the Counseling session, their problem was that they were not getting enough food. So, Bob, my husband, had to go to the dining services and explain to the little old ladies who were working in the dining facilities that they needed to give the boys more food. And Bob said, that seems to be the major problem [laughs] that I’m dealing with in the Counseling Center right now is that the men are not getting enough to eat. And that seemed to me like such an innocent, kind of kind issue to be dealing with in the early days at Skidmore. And when I think now about all of the issues that our students face, the complicated issues of, you know, relationships and gender identity and issues of drugs and alcohol and all the stuff that face our students now, it seemed like that was an awfully innocent time when I first got here, to be thinking that these poor men needed to get more food. [laughs] LG: This was at a time when there were not, it was not buffet, in the dining hall. SW: No, they sat and they had to be given food, that was not buffet, absolutely. This was early days when you sat — dressed, you got dressed — and you sat in the dining hall and the food would come and it’d be in family style and there’d be a little bit, and by the time the men got the food, there wasn’t anything left! And they were being, you know, they were starving! [laughs] So … �LG: Were there also complaints about the beds? SW: Oh, the beds were too short! Beds were much too short, and now the … every guy was like, walking around with a sore back and hurt knees because they were scrunched into these little beds. Yeah, there was all these things that Skidmore needed to … there were growing pains, that’s… LG: Did they hang out the sheets? Out the windows, to complain? SW: Oh, I don’t remember that! Oh, I don’t remember that, no, that must be somebody else’s story. All I remember is the story about the food. LG: Yeah, the trustees were on campus. SW: Oh, no kidding! Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I think that’s, just the … and of course, when we first came, when I came to Skidmore, we were still on the old campus. There were still half of … the busses were still going from Moore Hall, the big, the “Pink Palace,” from Moore Hall to Johnson Campus, because there were still classes going on down in the old campus. Which, that, within two or three years … well, not, no, not the residences… . Classes moved, almost always, all up to the new campus, but the residence halls, Moore Hall, still used, still was functioning, for many, many years, until they finally built enough dormitories for all of the students to … LG: So, did that impact what you were doing? SW: Um, no. No, it did not. I mean, I just, it was just an interesting transition and it was one in which, for someone who was also involved, because I was teaching, I knew the community, the Saratoga community, having been a teacher, I was very involved in many of the Saratoga projects. I worked on the Art in the Park project and many of the other kind of community-based projects for kids in town. It was interesting to see what Saratoga was going to do vis-a-vis the Skidmore, old Skidmore campus. And that was an interesting conversation for many years. Actually … well, not anymore, but �was for many years, as to what to do with those buildings, how to best repurpose them, were we going to tear — should they be torn down? Et cetera, et cetera. Verrazzano College, which no longer exists, bought most of the old campus … LG: That was Verrazzano? SW: Yeah, that was Verrazzano, and they set up a college, just where the old Skidmore campus was, but they did not last, and therefore many of the buildings were sold to private individuals. And so, we now see that, if you go on the east side, many of the old Skidmore buildings, even with the Skidmore names on them, are now either private residences or apartments, et cetera. And now Empire State has taken over many of those buildings, those buildings as well. So, there’s been a lot of change. When I, the day that I came to Saratoga, … in 1970, March … no, March of 1971, I was not yet married, I was engaged to be married in July, and my soon-to-be husband was up here for an interview for this job at the Counseling Center, and I came up to see what, if we got this, if he got this job, where we would live and what would be, where I would be. And it was March! And we all know what Saratoga looks like in March. It’s muddy, it’s gray, it’s dirty, there’s old snow everywhere, and in 1971, three quarters of Broadway was barricaded. There was … no stores. They were papered over … there was the Church Street News, the Farmer’s Hardware, Glickman’s Store, General Store, and that’s about it. There was very, very little, in terms of … LG: How about antique stores? SW: No, that was Ballston Spa that had, I mean, we had a lot of just open store fronts, barren open store fronts. Um, and I sat in the Red Barn, I don’t know … you won’t remember the Red Barn. The Red Barn used to be where Fingerpaint is now, which used to be where Borders was. While my soon-tobe husband was in his interview with Claire Olds and, … LG: Who was then Dean of…? �SW: She was Dean of the Students, because he had to meet with her regarding the Counseling Center, and then he met with President Palamountain and he met with Dr. Mastrianni, who was doing partial counseling work at the time. And I sat in the Red Barn and was looking … thought, well I could go up and down Broadway, I could go in the shops, I can see what’s going on … Hmmnn. [laughs] Nope! There was nothing! It was freezing, it was cold, it was dreary, I sat in the Red Barn drinking a cup of very bad coffee thinking, “Please don’t get this job! Please don’t get this job! This place is horrible! Oh, my goodness!” And he came out of that and he got the job and here we are, here I am 50 years later. Very, very happy. Happily, Skidmore was a huge part of that happiness, and I raised my two children here and they had a fabulous education in the public schools and went on … LG: What year did you retire? SW: I don’t remember! I have no idea. In fact, I was going to ask you that because it’s not on my piece of paper! You must have it on a [laughs] I can’t remember what year I retired! Four years ago? Maybe? I don’t remember. LG: I’ll check on that. SW: It’s terrible, I … really, I’m sorry. I’m sure you know what it could have … um, twenty … it was December of, I retired mid-year, so it … LG: Was it 2000…? SW: No, oh no, no, because I was … LG: 17 SW: 2017, that makes sense. Yes, 2017. Because I was in China, teaching at the University, in … on September 11th. And … I had just gotten to China. I had gotten there two weeks earlier. I had gotten on the plane and gone over at the end of August and I taught in China from 2001 to 2002 and then I went back in 2004 and 5 to follow up on some things that I had started over �there. But my teaching year was ’01-’02, and I’d been there, and three weeks later, 9/11 occurred. And, I came back after a year, I didn’t come back at all during the whole time I was in China, I was back a year later and found that, coming onto campus, I was … I was going through what everyone went through the year before. And it was fascinating to watch me. I watched myself, I’m going, “Why am I so emotional? Why am I having all these feelings about this?” Because I wasn’t here. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see anything. And they had the anniversary and I was there and I was … you know, Skidmore did some wonderful things during that period for their faculty and their students, so … Anyway, what else? Anything else? LG: I was about to ask you. SW: Oh, I’m very sorry! I think … anything else? I don’t know. I’m sure that when I’m done with this, I’m going to think of twenty things that I wanted to tell … I wanted to talk to you about. Um … LG: So, you saw a number of different presidents? SW: Yes, I did. I came in under Joe Palamountain, and then, … was it Jamienne…or, … LG: David? SW: No, Jamienne…? Oh, David was first. Ok. And David, oh! Whom I adored, adored, adored. He was one of the most remarkable human beings. And he remembered my name, and there’s no reason why anybody should ever remember my name, I was kind of a small cog in a very big machine and he always remembered my name, always came … he was the president, if you remember, he came to every department. He came around and sat in everybody’s office and wanted to talk to you. And he came into my teeny little closet of an office in UWW and wanted to know all about it, with huge enthusiasm, and caring and kindness, oh! He was a wonderful man. A great loss for us, for every… for the world, actually. And then, Jamienne Studley �had her short tenure, and then President Glotzbach, and now President Conner. So, yes, I’ve seen a lot, through many, many. Um … LG: Lots of changes in the administration … SW: Lots of changes. It’s interesting. You know, again, as someone who was totally invested in Skidmore College but I didn’t have a part, I was invested personally but I didn’t own anything because I was always in these programs that were kind of um, different, aside from the main mission of the College, I couldn't really … I had an interesting perspective and I kept watching every five or ten years or so, the same questions — that the faculty were raising the same questions again and again, about curriculum again, about issues of diversity and inclusion, about the role of a liberal arts college in the world, and how were we going to stay relevant. These are all questions that we went around and around for many, many years in different iterations, and I think they’re still valid, I was glad that Skidmore was asking those questions, because it kept them, I think it kept Skidmore viable and fresh and … I was always impressed with their sincerity and seriousness about our role, our job, as educators. LG: Thank you so much! SW: You’re welcome. This is my pleasure, and thank you for inviting me. And I’ll call you up when I have five more things to tell you! [laughs] � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sandra "Sandy" Welter Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit February 3, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sandy Welter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 21, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Sandra Welter began at Skidmore in 1968 as a teacher in the University Without Walls (UWW) program at the Washington County Correctional Facility. She later became a full-time advisor for that program and finally its Director until the program closed in 1998 due to a lack of NY State funding. She then advised in the regular UWW program and, in 1997, in the MALS graduate program. She also taught writing in the Skidmore program at the University of Qufu in China in 2000-2001, as well as in the English Department on campus. She taught ESL to foreign students and worked in the Summer Institute with Higher Education Opportunity students. In addition to her work with these various programs, she discusses in this interview the transition to the new campus and changes in campus life as men matriculated.  Before retiring in 2017, Welter had experienced the college under Presidents Palamaountain, Porter, Studley, and Glotzbach. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Bob Van Meter coeducation ESL Ken Klotz Larry Ries MALS Opportunity Program Prison Programs Qufu-Normal-University-Program UWW https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/562d637b96311cf28c5bb454cc7bf1d2.jpg 2ba9fbee0ebc28177fc0e830914cb842 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/ec5417e100df540a4a9e67d4549dcddb.m4a d1e887704740c2e3889bbe1608cc27a9 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/defbc0c36a98e1dfa801964d3b3c4941.pdf 28ea757456b1732d49063ae89aea3ec0 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Sue Van Hook Years at Skidmore: 1992-2010 Interviewer: Andrea Wise Location of Interview: Cambridge, NY Date of Interview: June 3, 2021 00:00:00 Header 00:00:31 Fall 1992 hired as part-time Teaching Associate. “It was so important to me that I personally drove my application to campus.” 00:01:42 Realized “This is a college in the woods. This is home for me!” 00:02:32 60% fall labs were taught outdoors 00:03:15 Previous career was in land conservancy, 5 years in CA and 5 years in ME 00:03:40 1992, North Woods very quiet; by 1995, mountain bike race, other unsustainable uses 00:05:00 Argued that North Woods is irreplaceable “living laboratory.” 00:06:05 With support from Pres. Glotzbach, Mike West, and Mike Hall, Campus Environment Committee was allotted money for creation of a North Woods stewardship plan. 00:06:25 Prior to Van Hook’s time at Skidmore, the North Woods had been used for teaching (for art, literature, geology, music, physical education, etc.), but while she was there, academic use became more extensive & formalized. 00:07:35 Karen Kellogg hired at Skidmore and Environmental Studies major was born; she brought Northeast Regional Climate Summit to campus 00:08:15 “Because of our North Woods, … academics from all over …willing to come and …were very, very jealous." 00:09:16 Mike Hall attended Campus Environment Committee meetings and listened carefully supporting the creation of the North Woods stewardship plan. 00:09:40 Van Hook wrote stewardship plan in summer. Also showed staff woods as explanation. 00:10:09 North Woods home to water snakes, redwing blackbirds, foxes, owls, prehistoric horsetails, yellow ladies’ slippers, 33 of the 36 species of ferns in NY state, etc. 00:11:00 “…those things started to disappear as more and more people came … the tragedy of the commons story.” 00:12:08 Van Hook told Glotzbach & West, “The environment really needs to be part of every decision the college makes.” 00:13:10 Therefore, Glotzbach & West invited chair of Campus Environment Committee to attend Institutional Policy and Planning Committee meetings. 00:14:25 Once on campus, Van Hook considered getting PhD. However, realized would have to give up many community and parenting activities. Decided “I had the best of both worlds” being involved in community and teaching the fun part of classes. 00:17:07 Skidmore had been hiring TAs on adjunct, one semester at a time basis. Teaching quality suffered as adjuncts were unfamiliar with the labs. With Phyllis Roth’s support, Department chair Dave Domozych formalized one-year contracts, then three-year contracts, and eventually a Senior Teaching Associate position for long-term TAs. 00:19:20 Curricular changes in 18 years — in first 8 years, 4 required lab courses before students could specialize. Then, demand for specialization sooner, so 4 courses combined to 2. �00:20:16 Spent a summer learning Cell & Molecular Biology lab techniques. Challenging at first, but then became fascinated with the microscopic world where “molecular engines … send things around inside the cell.” 00:22:09 One-on-one research opportunities led some undergraduates to publish papers. 00:22:53 Effects of digital age on writing quality, plus combining foundational courses, led to loss of student abilities for cross-disciplinary thinking, making connections on their own. 00:23:39 Climate change has increased student awareness of environment and related interests in gardening, outdoors, etc. 00:25:00 New science wing allowed for grant funded collection of specialized microscopes; also, atrium led to more connection between science faculty because more mingling. 00:26:10 Phyllis Roth - in addition to being supportive of TA professionalization, also extremely personally supportive during Van Hook’s breast cancer. 00:28:10 Roth unique, easy to talk to. ,one of a kind; when being treated for her breast cancer, Roth wore many different wigs, saying “let’s make it fun.” 00:29:30 Van Hook had 3 young children, 30 minute commute, and multiple community activities when starting as TA. Work-life balance? Schedule corresponded well with children’s school, and no pressure to research/publish, but encouragement to do so. 00:31:09 As the children grew older, worked at Skidmore for summers.” Skidmore Life Science Camp for Girls - taught 8 or 9 years, “awesome experiences.” 00:32:24 Camp teaching evolved into summer independent study work with Skidmore students, which then evolved to working with Ecovative & continuing research with Skidmore students. 00:33:55 Technology changes: Did “chalkboard teaching” while grad student, then overhead projectors in first years as Skidmore TA, then whiteboard/smartboard teaching along with two younger peers (“Charlie’s Angels”). 00:35:21 When Blackboard tech arrived, where providing syllabus, giving assignments, grading lab reports was all done through software, “it was really a big part of my decision to transition and leave.” Preferred grading outdoors. Zoom has advantage over Blackboard because can see students. “I really rely on energetic exchange between people — to know how they’re doing, to know how I’m doing, who’s struggling, who has a question…” 00:38:15 Working with HEOP students (Higher Education Opportunity Program) — saw student potential, many challenges for them, much extra help in office hours. 00:39:45 One student, with much mentoring, is now health care professional in El Salvadore. 00:41:01 Was once called at 2 am from very stressed student, worked with HEOP to help him complete semester; “I … learned their life stories,” gained trust. 00:42:00 Students with major life challenges — need to start supporting them earlier; HEOP students arriving on campus earlier. “Some of my best experiences … pre-orientation trips.” 00:44:22 Only one woman faculty when Van Hook was in college in 1970s. Saw her in Albany airport years later; now very close. “She was my role model for being a female scientist.” 00:44:50 At Skidmore in 1992, a few women faculty in department, a few people of color, all of the TAs were women. Now changes - some more diversity. Still, a need for STEM pipeline. 00:45:55 Eg. Soul Fire Farm teaches African American’s how to farm, providing a pipeline. 00:47:45 Science “frontiers” - currently shifting away from the microbiology frontier (previous frontiers were space and oceans). Now it’s soil! 00:48:15 Agricultural practices as far back as Mesopotamia are wrong. Soil mycorrhizal systems of fungi and bacteria shouldn’t be tilled because leads to off gassing of CO2. 00:50:05 Climate change can be reversed with better soil management. �00:53:35 Story of transition to Ecovative: dreaming techniques, “life is mushrooming.” 00:55:00 Mycorestoration and mycoremediation workshops with Paul Stamets. 00:57:12 Thursday Naturalists (octogenarians) - saw face in Chaga mushroom. 00:59:23 Snake death dance/heart shape, message to “do what I love most.” 01:02:55 Phone call with Eben from Ecovative - told about dream exercise, chaga & snake. 01:03:37 Began mentoring Ecovative staff. 01:04:55 Won EPA grant, collaborated with Skidmore students (research). 01:05:50 Fall 2009, because of recession, Skidmore needed to lay off 70 people - offered voluntary incentives, provided Van Hook with “graceful transition” to Ecovative. 01:07:00 “The message for me in my whole healing journey from the breast cancer has been to listen to your heart more.” 01:07:55 Taught Ecovative employees fungi/science, first company grew slowly, then 60 employees during a recession! Mushroom packaging was ahead of its time, now catching on. Now Ecovative exploring alternative meats. 01:10:10 A thread through her careers was to care for people; misses the students tremendously. 01:10:48 One more Skidmore story - transformative experience of student with cerebral palsy. Mattress in car to get to experiment site in North Woods, photographed slides at different magnifications so she could see what other students saw. She now has “PhD in neuroscience so that she could understand her illness.” “Those are the things you teach for… I miss the students.” 01:13:00 End � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7d5aa65f6eed3a4fe29863d1cbf5e72e.pdf 6f41583bee6f5da22ed932054f8144dd PDF Text Text Interview with Sue Van Hook by Andrea Wise, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Cambridge, NY, June 3, 2021. ANDREA WISE: Good morning, this is Andrea Wise interviewing Sue Van Hook on the morning of June third, 2021, at her home in Cambridge, New York. And now I’m going to have Sue introduce herself and tell us how she first got involved with Skidmore College. SUE VAN HOOK: Good morning, Andrea. It’s great to see you again, after 11 years, since I left Skidmore College. So, I came to Skidmore as a Teaching Associate for a part-time position teaching Population Biology. And I had a two-year-old at the time, and two other girls in elementary grades, and my husband came in one day and said, “It’s time for you to go back to work.” So, there was an ad in the paper, the Albany Times Union, for this part-time position in Population Biology and I said, “Well this fits pretty well.” And I was applying for another job, with American Farmland Trust, at the same time. And, I went to two — both interviews, and as it turns out it was great that I got this job and not the other one. [laughs] But I remember that it was so important to me that I personally drove my application to campus. AW: Oh wow! SVH: Since I lived nearby. And I drove in to the main entrance there and I was just overwhelmed with the allée of, not even a formal allée, a woods, of trees, for quite a distance, as the first impression that this college was making on anyone who entered it. And then I turned on to the perimeter road to get to the Dana parking lot, and I got more into the woods. And when I turned into the parking lot there were tons of trees in the parking lot and I got to park near the trees and they shaded my car and I thought, “This is a college in the woods! This is home for me!” The woods are my home. I feel more comfortable there than anywhere else, so I felt really really good about that first impression. And then I went in and met Bernie Possidente, and he was wearing red sneakers and it just got better from there! [laughs]. They ended up giving me a very informal interview that day — they were desperate for someone for this position and, um … I think I got a call within a couple of days — “You’re hired.” [laughs]. Very, very fun. So, as it turns out, I was teaching for Monica Raveret Richter in Population Biology, and it wasn’t exactly my field — I was a botanist and mycologist, but it was okay. And the best part of the class, for as long as we could in the fall we went outdoors for the labs. And we did three weeks of labs on bees — testing bee preferences. We made, the students made their own bee feeders, we kept beehives in the lab, they learned how to paint bees, we were almost handling bees, and we did it all in the North Woods, so I was, like, “I get to teach the fun part of the course with the great students in lab, hands-on, for three hours, outdoors!” AW: [laughs] SVH: “Outdoors again, next week too!” And so, I would say a good 60 percent of our labs in the fall semester were outdoors in the North Woods, and it was amazing! It was amazing! And so the reason it’s so important to me is I came from 10 years background of land conservation before that. On both coasts. I was a preserve manager for the Nature Conservancy in northern California �for five years, where I did my graduate work, and then I was a director of stewardship and land conservation for Maine Coast Heritage Trust for the whole coast of Maine. And that was my entrance into this great new campus with woods! So, it got challenged right away. I came in ’92 and it was in 1995 that the first championship mountain bike race was held for New York State in our precious woods. And that changed, sort of, the course of history for the North Woods. They’re still a wonderful place to be, but it’s, um, it’s harder for me to go there every year. AW: I’ll bet. SVH: Yeah, but the beginning part was, I would be out there by myself scouting, preparing, and I would be there for hours and never see another person, and … besides the carriage roads, you know, which had been maintained well for a hundred years or more, the small trails were small! Really small! You really felt like you were in the woods! And so … lucky. AW: Yeah. So, tell us a little bit, please … I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about just how you opted to embrace the North Woods as a teaching lab and formalize it a little bit more for all of Skidmore. I mean, there was a great deal of work that went in to development … I hate to use the word “development,” but to embracing the North Woods and having it become a teaching opportunity for you and others on the Skidmore Campus, of course the students as well. SVH: Yes, so, that is a long story … and it goes through three college presidents. And, what I saw there was a living laboratory, and the argument I made after this threat from the biking championship, was that we could build 10 science buildings and we could take wrecking balls to them and we could still rebuild them — we wouldn’t lose too much, other than money. But what was occurring in the North Woods was, if we were wrecking it with inappropriate uses on slopes and willy nilly trails being created, without any stewardship — we couldn’t replace that ever. So we’re looking at tens of thousands of years of evolutionary history in the fauna and flora, and now the funga … there’s a new word for fungi kingdom, it’s called fun-ga. Love it! We could never replace that, and that was the argument I made, and I thought to a classical scholar such as David Porter, he would hear that argument. Didn’t. To Jamie Studley — she didn’t hear that argument either. And finally, it was actually Mike West and Phil Glotzbach together who heard that argument, and we were able to finally get some level of protection for … in the shape of a stewardship plan that we ended up writing through the Campus Environment Committee, to sort of formalize this as a living laboratory. And in the meantime, well, even when I got there the woods were being used. They were being used by art students, they were being used by literature classes — they were studying Thoreau. They were being used by the geology labs. They were being used by music … and some PE teachers were, you know, Physical Education had their students out there. So, I think there was always a history of students using the woods, but not as extensively or formally as what we did over the course of the 18 years that I was there. AW: So at some point you became involved with the Campus Environment Committee. Your love of the North Woods, your sensitivity to the concerns surrounding overuse of campus resources, led you to a broader appointment or a broader position on the Campus Environment … so tell me a little bit about that. �SVH: I don’t remember how I got invited to that committee, but [laughs] it probably was after the bike race. Umm, Eban Goodstein, from Economics, was chairing the committee at that point, and I just sat in on a couple of meetings and then I went, “Yeah, I need to get involved in this.” And … its fuzzy where the leadership went, but Eban Goodstein, …well I guess one of the monumental things that happened during my tenure there was shortly after Karen Kellogg was hired and ES was born — the Environmental Studies major was born. Eban brought … no, Karen actually brought — Eban had left and gone to Lewis and Clark, and he started the first Climate Science Summit among 40 academic institutions — and this would have been the early 2000s, and Karen went to that on the west coast and then she brought it back to Skidmore and we had our first Northeast Regional Climate Summit on Skidmore Campus. It’s pretty awesome! AW: Yeah. SVH: Yeah. It was very empowering to know that we had the awareness building there. And because of our North Woods, all of these academics from all over New England and the Northeast were willing to come and we went out there with them and showed them our living laboratory and they were very, very jealous. Turns out there were only seven college campuses in the Northeast that had adjacent properties, and ours was one of the larger ones. The biggest one is at Williams College, with 2,500 acres, but it’s not immediately adjacent to campus. AW: When you say adjacent properties you mean wooded properties? SVH: Yeah. Walk out the door from a classroom into the woods. AW: Okay. SVH: At Williams you have to get in a car or take a bus to get there. But ours was one of the next larger ones, and that was an important fact for me. I mean, I said to the admissions people, “Mary Lou, this needs to be featured. You want to attract good students here? We have one of the largest living laboratories. Put it in the admissions information!” And so, so that was an interesting progression. And I guess I just got more and more involved in the committee, as a member of the committee. I remember Mike Hall being on the committee, and Mike was really good at listening. He was really good at listening, and he represented a lot of the financial constraints for the Institution but he was also very supportive. So we got money to do the Stewardship Plan, and over the summer I wrote it and did all of the research, and I took Karl Broekhuizen out there; he’s like, “What is this all about?” And I said, “Why don’t you come on a walk with me, Karl?” and it was the middle of a hot summer day and I walked him on every single trail out there in an hour and a half, and he was quite [laughs] quite exhausted by the end, but it, it drove home the point. Because a lot of the people sitting on campus in offices just see the edge … right? They just see the edge. Step in a couple of feet and you’ve got water snakes three feet long in the Wilson Marsh, and the redwing blackbird territories, and you’ve got the horsetails, which are prehistoric, dinosaur-type plants, growing around the water tower! And you go a few more feet over the hill and you’ve got the yellow ladies slippers, which only grow on limestone soils — very, very rare populations in all of New York State! And eventually you get �deep into the woods and you get 33 species [of ferns] — of 36 total species in New York State, 33 of them are on our campus! AW: That’s awesome. SVH: That’s what they didn’t see. AW: Yeah. SVH: That’s what they didn’t see. They didn’t hear the bird, they didn’t see the owl, they didn’t see the fox family that we showed students — with the pups — they didn’t see that, and all of those things started to disappear as more and more people came to the campus for biking, for dog walking, you know, it’s the tragedy of the commons story. SVH: So eventually my good friend Sue Rosenberg, in your department, became the chair of the Campus Environment Committee, and she was chair when we wrote the Stewardship Plan. And we were able to hire some students. We were able to create a Director of Sustainability in the Facilities Department, who was housed there, who lived there, and at first it was a student, Mary Patterson, and eventually it became a full-fledged position after I left. So, after Sue — I can’t remember the transition with Sue, but it went from Sue to me. And, the Campus Environment Committee included one faculty member that was the liaison to the Institutional Policy and Planning Committee, the highest committee level of the college. And that person never showed up at our meetings, … I mean, just rarely. I don’t even remember; it was a bunch of different faculty members in the time that I was on the committee. And so finally I went to Phil Glotzbach and Mike West and I said, “So, this arrangement isn’t working.” And I said, “You know, the environment really needs to be part of every decision this college makes. Every single decision. Whether it’s about students, whether it’s about student housing, whether it’s about curriculum, whether it’s about physical plant — there’s an environmental component, and especially as climate change is facing… growing more and more in our faces, we have to plan for this. And I said, “You know what, this woods we have is a carbon storage facility. We can get paid for this woods! Have you thought about that?” Mike West, at the time, had just arrived on campus, and he came to our meetings. He came to our meetings — a lot of them! And he heard the issues we were working on, one of which was energy, renewable energy; and Karen was very, very involved in pushing that. He investigated geothermal and look what happened! I mean the whole campus is geothermal now, and we led the academic community in that effort, absolutely led it. So, they heard me and said, “Ok, fine, let’s take the chair of the Campus Environment Committee and have them come sit on IPPC,” and at the time it happened to be me so … you know, me, little TA in the Biology Department, sitting with all the deans and …! [laughs]. It was great! I loved it! And I sat quietly for six months and listened, and then I started using my voice. So that’s sort of the trajectory of my time with Campus Environment Committee. I don’t even know if the Committee still exists, frankly, now that we have a Director of Sustainability, I have a feeling it’s been subsumed under that umbrella? AW: Yeah, but it has assumed a prominence that it would not have without all this foundational work that you led. So, tip of the hat to you, Sue. �AW: I wonder now if this is a good opportunity to, it sounds like it might be, to lead into your work in the sciences. The challenges and the rewards of being a Teaching Assistant in the Biology Department, not only incorporating the North Woods in much of your work, but also other opportunities in the classroom and beyond. SVH: Yeah, thanks for that question — that’s a great one. So, I have to tell you that I got back on campus. I was sharing an office in that — remember that weird hall down from your office, it was just windows and they put up a board. I was in one of those [laughs], the first one — with another woman who was hired part-time, a teaching associate … who didn’t do very well, she was gone in one semester. But, … so I got there and I’m like, “I’m back in academia! Oh, this feels fun!” I started unpacking all of my science books, you know, we’d moved to Cambridge two years earlier and I’d just left them boxed up in the attic, and I brought them out and I put them on my shelves and I’m like, “Ok, maybe it’s time for me to go back to school and get my PhD!” AW: Oh, my goodness! SVH: “Maybe that’s a really good idea. The kids are kind of all in school and taken care of in daycare; I can manage this.” And I thought of it for about six months, and then I watched all of the biology faculty, [laughs] and I saw that if they had children, they had one, and if they had any social life, it was with one another — you know, maybe Friday-night pizza, that was about it. And I was, meanwhile, coming … I was in a part-time position, I was coming home and coaching pee-wee soccer, pee-wee softball, I was coaching with my kids, doing dance classes with them at the Dance Center. AW: Sorry to interrupt, you have three children? SVH: Three daughters, yes, yes, yes. And I thought, “Well, I’d have to give up all of this community involvement that I have in my community here. Head of PTA Environment Committee, you know, lots of things… I was involved with singing in the Chorale. And I thought about it for a long time, because I was always a really good student, at the top of my class, and I was like — the PhD trajectory, I was accepted to a PhD program or two and I chose not to at the time and I went with my husband’s dreams instead of mine, and so I was like, “Yeah, I’m really supposed to go down that path,” and I really made a very conscious decision that I had the best of both worlds. And teaching labs was like definitely the funnest part of the course. I felt that students retained more of those experiences than they did from lectures, and I thought, “Just be happy with this. This is enough. This is fine. This is awesome.” And, the way things grew — and this is where Phyllis Roth comes in — she was Dean of the Faculty at the time when Betsy Franz left, and passed the baton to me. We taught together for one semester and Betsy left. After 25 years she said, “Sue, I feel confident enough that you are going to fill my slot here. This is good.” [laughs]. Almost did. I didn’t make it 25 years. But, at the time they had been hiring a lot of adjunct TAs, you know, one semester at a time, and they were "less than” … they were “less than” in delivery to the students. They were barely able to teach the labs in terms of following directions of what the lab exercise was or experiment was. And so, the Department made a conscious decision to up it, to up the standard. And, you know, a �lot of research institutions, the labs are all taught by graduate students, right. So Skidmore is different in that regard, we didn’t have a graduate program. So we actually hired people. So, I was part-time for fall semester; for spring semester they asked — I went from part-time teaching two labs, I think, a week, to an overload spring semester. [laughs] So they … they saw a good thing when they got one. I was very broadly trained with my natural history education at Humboldt State University in Northern California in botany and mycology. So, I did the overload and then by that fall I’m like, “Okay, that was not fun! [laughs] And you’re paying me $2,000 to do this? No, I don’t think so.” So we really made the TA positions more formalized, and we were on one-year contacts at least. And then when Dave Domozych became the chair and his wife was one of the TAs, along with me, she had her PhD, Dave went to Phyllis and said, “You know, can we give them three-year contracts?” And so that happened through Phyllis’ support. And so there was an evolution, and the other … the next step, was, “Can we give them any promise of a promotion? Anything? Can we give them anything?” Well at the time Loretta Parsons had been there over 25 years and … she, you know, that’s a long time. Can we at least make her a Senior Teaching Associate?” Which they did, and she got a big chunk of change, and then, we had to go through the process but there was at least that opportunity to get one step higher. Ok, so we did it! And then, the three of us that were there used to joke about the new people coming in and say, “You know, we’d make more money if we quit and reapplied.” [laughs]. AW: [laughs] I don’t know [laughs]. SVH: [laughs] Well, they always started way higher than we did. I started at $18,000. AW: Oh wow. SVH: Yeah, for a full-time salary. Yeah, so…But, I don’t care about all of that, and part was that it was the most fun! And I went through several curricular changes. So, we had single courses for two years straight — students had to take Population Biology in the fall, Plant Biology in the spring, Cell and Molec in the next fall and Animal Biology in the following spring. They had to do two years of required courses before they could get in to electives. And after eight years of that — this is the changing in the student, incoming student expectations and standards, right? They want … there was more specialization happening sooner. Right? So, they want … the Cell and Molecular thing, track, was like really hot stuff, right? The genetics and doing the PCRs and identifying the genes and … that was just hot, a hot ticket item. Field biology? Ehh, not so much. [laughs] Right? So there was pressure on the department to shorten that requirement phase from two years to one year, so we crammed those four courses into two courses. So all of a sudden, I had to teach Cell and Molecular Biology, as a field biologist. So I had a very long summer training with Pat Hilleren, [laughs] learning to do PCRs, and I failed about seven times and I said, “You still want me to teach this?” [laughs] AW: And help us … PCRs are? SVH: Polymerase Chain Reactions, right? So you’re extracting DNA and then you’re subjecting it to a bunch of enzymes and chopping it up and replicating it really fast in a heated up little machine — this is how much I remember [laughs] — not very much! And you amplify the DNA �so you have a big enough chunk that you can run it on a gel and spread it out so you can actually see the different genes. AW: Okay. Oh wow! SVH: This was like — I had done plenty of labs, gel technique with auger and Petrie dishes, so handling the auger gels was fine, you know, I knew all of that, but working with the DNA part! But then I had my eyes opened to this whole other world, this microscopic world, and how these molecular engines act like little Pac Man and move, send things around inside the cell, and I eventually became totally fascinated with it. AW: Um, so obviously this is a response to student expectations, student preparation, and just changing methodologies in academe, right? I mean there’s a whole bunch of things at work, forces at work on this, but in terms of student outcomes, the preparation they got at Skidmore did led to some pretty awesome achievements on behalf of our alumni, correct? SVH: Yes, correct. The super-achievers were still there. And Nicole Donofrio published several papers as an undergraduate, doing research with Dave Domozych. There were a few others, we had, there were a few whiz kids that just took it very far, as far as they could, because they had that one-on-one research opportunity, which continued all through the 18 years I was there. That was very special, and we emphasized that to the Admissions Department, too. Very, very rarely can you go to an institution where your kid is going to get one-on-one research experience, if they choose, with a faculty member. Not a TA, a faculty member. We TAs expanded those opportunities, too, over the years, for more independent study. But, the writing quality declined. You know, it was really the digital age taking hold, right? Screen mentality, not having whole conversations, not learning language, not learning how to write it, not learning how to speak it. Everything getting shrunk to bite size. Not being able to synthesize and not being able to use cross-disciplinary thinking. So for me, the shrinking of the courses from four into two, we lost all the depth, and all that depth allows you to do the crossdisciplinary thinking, to make connections on your own — “oh THAT is really connected to THAT?” That all disappears. And so that was hard to swallow because you want to impart all of it. You want to say, “No, you need to know this much!” I would say the environment and the awareness of science literacy increased. Right? So you have more kids that are interested in the outdoors, more kids interested in gardening, more kids interested in environment, more kids interested in climate science …. So there was a student movement for environmental awareness, but I don’t see that the science requirements followed that. Now I think it’s shifted, so you can fill me in on … AW: Well, actually I’ve been gone now for a few years myself, but I believe you’re right, I think it has shifted. And then there is also, actually, the growth of Environmental Studies, which sort of emphasizes what you just mentioned, I mean, growth in science in a different area. But now, more important than ever, we have a brand-new science building at Skidmore. Have you been to that new building? Do you know much about it? SVH: I have not been there. [laughs] I’ve been back on campus a few times to teach for a few �people, lead some walks in the woods. Umm, you know, that said, I witnessed the new wing being built, at the tune of $4 million at the time, which allowed for the super-duper microscopy facility to be built. Again, Skidmore’s on the map because of Dave Domozych and that, and the grants he obtained for that — every kind of microscope we have. And undergrads get trained on them and get to use them, that’s unbelievable — no one gets to do that at undergraduate anywhere else. So I witnessed all that. And that, because of the atrium on that wing, being able to see all the floors brought the geosciences and the physical sciences and the chemical sciences and the biological a little bit closer. A little bit closer, because before we were isolated on floors and we didn’t really go between floors but the atrium we used and we walked down through there and we saw each other that way. AW: Sure, that makes sense. So you talked a little bit about Phyllis Roth, initially, and I’m just interested since she was Dean … and Interim President when you were there? I’m trying to remember. SVH: Yeah. AW: So I think you had some pretty good interaction with her, maybe you could give me a sense of how supportive she might have been of the sciences and of your work? SVH: Yeah, I love to talk about Phyllis. A wonderful character. [laughs] I miss her. So initially Phyllis, as I said, was very involved with Dave Domozych in upping our positions as Teaching Associates and giving us the opportunity for one promotion commensurate with salary increase, too, so that was very much appreciated. And then Phyllis did something really, really, personally wonderful for me. So I was diagnosed with my breast cancer on September 9th, 1998 — nine, nine, nine, eight. And I had told Dave Domozych, chair at the time, that I was going to give him a call the next day when I got my results, and either I was going to come or I wasn’t going to come. And the reason I was going to be able to tell him that was because Phyllis said I could take a year off paid. She gave me full pay for six months, she introduced me to someone in the English department who had just been through this, right away, and I went and had lunch with that person right away, Jo Devine, and we had a wonderful lunch — took away a lot of my fear. And then I was on disability pay for the other six months. It took that whole level of stress, that whole level of stress away. She knew I had to focus on me, and I don’t think I could have gotten through that year with my little children — my children were 7, 11 and 14 — and … not having to worry about finances, and my husband is a self-employed artist, so there wasn’t a whole lot coming in from that stream of revenue, and so this was a really, a huge meaningful, supportive act on her part. And then it was just too ironic that she then had to go through this herself. It was just too much. So, I will always hold Phyllis very dear to my heart, for that and many other reasons. I mean, she was someone I could just talk to, and I didn’t feel that way with a lot of people in the upstairs, on the fourth floor, but I felt very comfortable going to her with any kind of faculty-related concerns or student concerns. And she was just a pip! I mean, she approached her breast cancer by wearing a different kind of wig every day! I mean, I thought, “God, you’re so awesome!” I didn’t … I went bald and turbaned, you know, I couldn’t put a wig on my head! She goes, “Oh come on, let’s make it fun!” AW: I remember that. I do remember Phyllis’s many wigs and I’m not surprised to hear about �this powerful expression of personal and professional support for you and I’m glad for you and I think we all feel the loss of Phyllis, even now…. This sort of leads me into matters of gender and work-life balance, and obviously a health crisis is above the line here, but I’m just wondering, you had three children when you started teaching at Skidmore — you still have three children — your children were young when you started teaching at Skidmore. You had a 30-mile commute to Saratoga. You had engagements in the community and other interests. How did you balance all of this with a pretty demanding job as a lab teacher at Skidmore? SVH: Once I made the decision that being a lab instructor was enough, it eased. And I realized that I’m really only there eight months a year, right? I get pretty much three months off in the summer and I get January kind of off, although we are doing a lot of prep. So it corresponded very well with the kids in their school years. When they were really little, I took my summers off, and then I couldn’t resist the wonderful opportunities that Skidmore afforded me in being able to do research if I wanted to. So there was no pressure to publish and do research, like tenure-track faculty have, but I was certainly encouraged, and that was a gift, too. So I could use the facilities such as the autoclave in the microbiology lab, or the greenhouse, you know, to do experiments. And … and my love was fungi! So, one of the first, well, and we also had a sabbatical replacement for population biology for Monica one year, and his approach was to let students do independent research right from the get-go, right the minute they walked in the door as first year students. And Laurie Freeman and I were co-teaching the labs at that point and so we said, “Yeah, bring it on! We’ll create a 12, 15, 30, whatever many students out of 120 want to do this.” So, out of 120 students we had 10 percent — we had 12 students that wanted to do this. So, I felt glad that I had time off, but, as the years evolved and the kids grew older, I was able to go back there for summers, and one of the draws was the life science camp for girls, the Skidmore Life Science Camp for Girls, sixth grade to eighth grade. AW: Right. SVH: And … for one year we had it for boys, too, it was co-ed, because my daughter went one year with her co-horts who were guys. And the boys at sixth grade to eighth grade — oh my gosh, not worth it! [laughs]. Wayyy too hard to handle. So we decided, we made a decision that this is just going to be a girls science camp, you know, we’re just going to do STEM for girls. And I think I did that for eight or nine years, and … awesome, awesome experiences for the girls! It was pulling garlic mustard, we had them all in hip-waders in Wilson Marsh pulling out purple loosestrife and while we were in there, we saw the snakes and the turtles and the birds nesting and it was just awesome. So, that evolved from that camp in the summer, which was a two-week camp, into then working independent study with students. And then, my connection with Ecovative, the last four years, or three, four, five years I was there, presented a new grant funded opportunity — it was for students to get paid to do research for the EPA and the USDA, and then after I mentored two students, two of our students in their senior years for those capstone research projects, both got hired immediately upon their presentations at the end of the summer over in Murray-Aiken, and worked for Ecovative for a number of years. I started working just independent study with anybody who wanted to, so I got a lot of ES students who were really fascinated with mushroom packaging and what Ecovative was doing for the environment, and worked with just a lot of different extra kids that way, as I was transitioning. �AW: I will talk a little bit about Ecovative in a minute, but I want to ask, also, if you can tell me a little bit — we talked about this before the tape started running — about IT, and changes in technology and how that may have affected you, expectations for you as a teacher, expectations of your students. Did it change the way you taught? Did it help/hurt? Some of the challenges? SVH: So, my first response is, I got out in time [laughs]. That said, my graduate work was done — and I TA-ed for seven years as a graduate student — so I did a lot of chalkboard teaching and I was very comfortable doing that. Then we started to get … we were still using overhead projectors in the labs … AW: I know, I remember [laughs]. SVH: … for eight years with Monica. I don’t think we got beyond overhead projectors in Plant Biology. Overhead projectors! I still have all of those mylars up in my filing cabinets. I just can’t throw them away, thinking someday they’ll be useful again. And then it evolved, and my exposure to it was through Environmental Science, through teaching. I eventually went to teaching half the year in Environmental Science, ES 105 labs, with Kim and Karen, which was — the nickname for the three of us, by the students, was the Charlie’s Angels! [laughs] And so, we got some pretty cool imitations from our students, I must say! But they started using the Smart Boards because they were younger faculty who had come in with it, right? I’m teaching up here with all the old faculty who don’t know how to do this, and they’re coming in with this whole Smart Board technology in front of the classroom and so I had to adapt to it. But by the very end, they introduced the Blackboard …? AW: Whiteboard? SVH: No, the Smart Board was the whiteboard, but the Blackboard was a software program where you interface with the students on the software, like you give them their assignments on there, you give them the syllabus on there, you read their lab reports on this thing, on this computer thing. I’m like, oh no, I do enough time on the computer screen, I do not want to be reading student papers on the computer screen when normally I go up in the field where my husband’s painting for a weekend and I look out over this beautiful landscape of fall leaves and I grade papers up there. That’s where I’m grading papers. I am not sitting at a computer grading papers. So it was really a big part of my decision to transition and leave. Yeah, I just did not want … and then they were just beginning to teach online courses and like, “Sue, do you want to teach this online course this summer?” “N-o, n-o.” AW: But of course, and I understand what you’re saying and I’ve felt it myself and I’ve heard it from others, but this past year of COVID has taught us, more than anything, the ability to pivot and use online resources. It’s the thing that kept many of us going. I mean, did it make you think, “Oh, should I have done more or should I do more, or …?” Any regrets? SVH: No regrets, but I did adapt, right? And Zoom was very different than what we had available 10 years ago. So Zoom you can see each other and you can put up your slideshow, your PowerPoint slideshow, and interact that way and see them, you know, you can at least see people. You know, I’m an energy worker, as well, I do healing touch, so I really rely on �energetic exchange between people — to know how they’re doing, to know how I’m doing, who’s struggling, who has a question, you know I just … the in-person thing will never be replaceable really, but Zoom does a pretty good job of making it available in this pandemic. And I think we will … you know, I really don’t ever want to drive to another meeting! [laughs] I do yoga four mornings a week, which I did this morning from my living room with my yoga instructor on the screen, and I may not ever transition away from that, actually. AW: Yeah, it’s true. SVH: Yeah. AW: So I want to briefly pivot here, myself, and just … you’ve sort of alluded to this a couple of times, you’ve mentioned students, and I’m just interested, over your 18 years at Skidmore, some thoughts about changes in the student body, or any particular student stories stand out in your mind even now? SVH: So one big elephant in the room is BIPOC. We haven’t talked about that. And during my tenure there it was the push across the board for multiculturalism to increase, multiculturalism on campuses. And I was certainly part of that. And HEOP [Opportunity Program] was a big piece of that, and HEOP in the sciences was definitely a challenge. So I always had HEOP students among the 48 or 50 students I taught every semester, and I was on the phone with the HEOP people over in Starbuck a lot, because they kept telling me, “Don’t alter your expectations, don’t alter the way you grade papers, don’t alter a thing. We’re bringing these kids in, we’re giving them extra help.” And, so, okay, so I gave the extra help in my office hours for making up a lab or redoing a lab or … and yet, I got into a real fight one time about this because I said, “They’re still pouring through the cracks. This isn’t working! This isn’t working. We need to do something different here.” And I remember we had one African American student, he was in my Population Biology Lab and Plant Biology Lab for the first two semesters — it was like, we had a department-wide discussion at one of our department meetings saying “We’re going get this guy through. He has enough potential, we are gonna get him through.” And we did. I had one student from El Salvador, who happened to be an exchange student here in this town and who my daughters adopted and gave all their clothes to because she arrived with no clothing. We went through the attic and among the three daughters we outfitted her with all her needs for the year. And she was playing soccer with my middle daughter and then she had the opportunity to stay and she came to Skidmore, and she was in my lab in Biology, in Plant Biology and Population Biology. I spent a lot of extra time with her and I knew her. I knew … she came here not knowing English, you know, as a high school student, eleventh grader, and even when she wasn’t in my courses, she was still in my office hours, you know, because she knew me and she could trust me and I mentored her, and I mentored her, and I mentored her, and I mentored her, and she went from being a C minus student finally up to like a B plus and got through. And she and I have stayed in touch and she is now back in El Salvador, living with her family, married, with kids, and is a health-care professional. AW: Oh wow. That’s awesome. �SVH: It’s a great success story. I had another situation where I was called at two o’clock in the morning from one of my students who had been admitted to Four Winds, and he was begging me not to flunk him, you know, to hold on, it was near finals time and the pressure was just too great and he collapsed. And in talking … I’m like, “Why are you calling me? I’m not the right person you should be calling.” He said, “But I can trust you, I can trust you, and you need to do this for me.” And so I got on the phone with HEOP and we came up with solutions. But I, in my office hours, had learned their life stories, and these are kids who are sending back money to their families, who took care of all their siblings all through high school, with single parents, I mean, their stories were just phenomenal! So, we need to do better, younger, we need to start at … three years old! You know! And it’s hard to force it at this level because you mentally see the need and want it to happen, but it doesn’t happen that way, you have to grow it. And so we started bringing the HEOP students on campus a whole month early, the whole month of August, to prepare them. Some of my best experiences were, Kim and I led pre-orientation trips to … and we did the Environmental Studies one. And so we took kids backpacking through the woods at Merck Forest. And I did that for eight years and we had a lot of HEOP students come on those, a lot of international students come on those, and one of the best times was [laughs] … Abdullah Bah did get through the program as well, and he came from Senegal, and we’re on this field trip and we’re working forestry all day long. We all have hardhats on and we’re clearing brush from the trail crew and we get to the end of the day at the cabin and I say, “Ok, it’s time to go for a swim in the lake.” That was our shower, right? And so everybody comes, and one girl got really hurt that day, she fell from the dock — that was an emergency we dealt with. And another girl that trip forgot her contacts, so that was another psychological emergency — I’m doing healing touch for her, [laughs] giving her my lavender oil to get her through the night, for her anxiety attack. Anyway, so we get back from the lake and then he shows up to me with this little towel and this little bar of soap and he says, “Could you please show me where the showers are?” [laughs]. And I said, “We were just there! Somehow that didn’t get communicated to you. I’m so sorry.” And I said, “But, down here in the creek there’s a little pool and it’s far enough away you could sit down there and do what you need to do.” AW: So you talked a little bit about changes in student diversity. Similarly, for faculty and staff, I mean, I’m not sure if this was a change that you noticed when you were there. You left Skidmore in … 2010 and you’d been there for 18 years so … 92? Yeah, ’92. So, you know, just … gender, cultural, and other diversity issues, as far as faculty and staff go. Anything there that comes to mind that you want to share, particularly in the sciences? SVH: So when I was in college in my Department of Botany, there was one woman faculty member in the ’70s. She taught Zoology and I took it from her. And she and I met in the Albany airport 40 years later, because she was from Albany, NY, and I didn’t know it! [laughs] Now we’re really close. And she went through breast cancer too, and she was my role model for being a female scientist. So, um … when I got to Skidmore there were … one, two … two of the tenure track people were women and … um, maybe five were guys. Chemistry … I don’t think there were any women chemists at the time. There were TAs — most of the TAs were women … I would say all of the TAs were women! All four floors, the TAs were women. Um, right, so we can do with less salary and we want to be Moms, and … so. But that changed, that definitely �changed. I think there was a time there were more women faculty in Biology than men. In terms of diversity, we had one Latinx … and that might have been it. Umm, and I don’t think that’s changed since I’ve left. I don’t think there’s anyone there that I know of. ES might be different, but …yeah, I know ES is different, I know they have two people of color. So, yeah again it’s that pipeline, right? It’s that pipeline, that STEM pipeline. And, um, where did I just see … oh, the whole organic regenerative farming movement is altering this. So there’s a farm nearby here somewhere called Soul Fire Farm that is run by African American people for African American people, to teach them how to farm. Think about that connection to slavery, right? So, they were the ones doing the farming, right? And where did that disconnect happen? Because we shoved them all into ghettos and cities where they couldn’t farm, or they were too poor to own land and they couldn’t farm, or they were still indentured, …. So that shift is fascinating — that deserves a PhD right there. But this farm is focused on bringing them through the pipeline, and that’s what we have to do in the sciences as well. And the science … what I’m seeing now is that the shift is away from molecular and cell science, the microscopic level, and back to big ecosystems-based science. I mean, climate change is forcing us there, right? And the more we’ve learned about fungi, I mean … fungi, my babies, have exploded since Paul Stamets, right? So, I brought Paul Stamets to campus in 2008, and it was Muriel Poston who had heard him speak at a botanical conference and said, “Sue, get this guy here!” [laughs] And, I got huge backlash because he was not an academic. She didn’t care because she saw he was doing science, but my department didn’t even frickin’ come to the talk. Yeah. So that’s a little aside, but anyway. So we’re seeing this push and the fungi … because we’re now going underground, right? So there’s always a frontier in science. So the frontier while I was at Skidmore was into the cells, into the DNA, right? And now the frontier is, we’ve gone to space, we’ve gone to the oceans [laugh], now the frontier’s beneath our feet. It is soil. We know nothing about the soil. And our farming and agricultural practices, way back from the fertile crescent in Mesopotamia, was wrong. To plow the earth destroyed all that mycorrhizal fungal thread network. And all the carbon plants … I just learned this year! I was a botanist — I just learned this year that plants are sending 40 percent of the sugars they make through photosynthesis to the roots! We’re all above ground people, we just see what’s above ground, right? “That’s a tree! Who cares about the roots! We know they’re there, okay!” No, 40 percent of what’s manufactured, the manufacturing plant is, which is making the sugars that the rest of life depends on, is being sent to the roots, and not to the roots but to the fungi and the bacteria in the root system, the mycorrhizal connections. And that is why our carbon dioxide in the universe is out of balance, right? 70 percent of carbon dioxide belongs in the soil. And because of … not because of burning fossil fuels, that’s only 5 percent, but because of our agricultural practices, where we till and we lay bare — you drove over here today, you saw bare fields, driving over here today — we lay bare fields, that means there’s no microbial life in those fields, and if there is any, it’s off gassing CO2 like crazy through respiration. That is where the CO2 is coming from. That’s where the bulk of it is coming from. I’ve spent the last five years reading my head off about this and studying this, because it ties my whole life together. And so … we need to stop the fossil fuel emissions, right, to stop the source, one of the sources, from going up in the atmosphere, but doing that doesn’t do anything with the carbon that’s already there. It’s going to take another 800 years for that carbon to go somewhere. So, putting it back in the soil, within two years, if we put two percent of the carbon, two percent, that’s all, back in the soil, we can bring the parts per million back down to 350 parts per million within 10 years. We can reverse �climate change in 10 years. And guess what? Our new president understands this. And this trend into the soil, this new frontier, is happening fast. Within five years it’s happened. Normally it takes … so I mentioned the first climate change report about excessive carbon dioxide, went to President Johnson’s desk in 1965! I have known about it since then. I have been teaching about it since then. That’s 50 years! And it took us that long, and it’s like kinda too late, right? But it’s not too late, because this whole soil story is catching on like wildfire, and there are bills in state legislatures and there are bills in Congress now and it’s just exciting. And guess what? It’s because of the fungi!!! AW: [laughs] So, as if you weren’t excited enough! [both laugh]. Um, you left Skidmore after 18 years and began yet another career. You’ve had a multi-career lifespan, which I think is very fascinating, and you went to work on fungi with Evo-cative? Evocative? SVH: Ecovative. AW: Ecovative, excuse me. It’s a challenging name. So, I want you to tell me a little bit about that, and maybe, it sounds like that sort of encompasses a lot of — it drew a common thread through a lot of your experiences. SVH: I’ll tell you how the transition happened, but just two days ago, I came full circle with that company. I’m writing a book about it and I’m nearing …progress, nearing ending progress on it, but two days ago I got up really early, 6:30, and I drove up to Merck Forest, and — I mentioned Merck Forest before, up in Rupert, Vermont — a 3,000-acre preserve. And, I’m becoming the new president of the board there in another couple of days. [laughs] AW: Congratulations. SVH: Thank you — my fifth career [laughs]. And I picked up the farm truck and I drove the farm truck down to Troy to Green Island, where Ecovative is, to pick up their waste product, which is spent oyster mushroom substrate that they’ve grown the new “My bacon” meat alternative on. So, I’m holding in my hands this mushroom that I brought out of the woods, by myself, in 2007 … brought it in to culture. That is now getting cloned into “myco-bacon,” “my bacon” and being sold at Honest Weight Food Co-Op in Albany for six months, and is now getting scaled nationally, in the next year, with a hundred million dollars of new investment. And I’m holding this thing, this strain, … and saying, “Yeah, I knew you had potential!” [laughs] AW: That’s great! SVH: So … so the way I got there is just the best story, and it will be in the book, is in the book, and it’s also in the New Yorker magazine article about Ecovative that came out on March … on May 20th, 2013, called Farm and Function, and there’s a big part of that story. And also, this story is also in Fungi Magazine — I can’t remember what year — it was a couple of years after that. So, I’m a lucid dreamer and I’m studying dream … dreaming techniques with an international dream teacher who’s written all the books, Robert Moss, who happens to live in Albany. And I’m at one of his workshops up at Gore Mountain, and the message I get at one of the exercises that we did, which was creating a synchronicity card deck, was “life is �mushrooming.” And I picked my own card out of the deck, and he said, “If you pick your own card, it’s serious business — you’d better do what the card says!” AW: [laughs] SVH: So I had … my question was — this was November 2005. My question was, “what is the next creative phase of my life?” I was already feeling that Skidmore was dwindling. And, “what is the next creative phase of my life?” Now maybe I’ve got one more shot at one more career. That was my question and I picked my own card, “life is mushrooming,” that I’d written. And, so I’m like, “Okay, what does that mean for me?” So, that Monday I called Paul Stamets in Washington State and I said, “Paul, you don’t remember me from 30 years ago but we were in 4H together” and I said, “I want to take your Mychorestoration and Mycoremediation course on how to heal ecosystems using fungi. That’s what your book is about. That’s what I want to do. I have enough background; I can pull this off. It marries my environmentalism with my mycology.” And he said, “Yeahhh … no, no, you’ve got to come take the beginner seminar first.” I said, “Paul, come on, I have a graduate degree in mycology. I know how to culture fungi.” He goes, “Yeahhh, but there’s some little tidbits you need to know. You need to come do the beginner’s seminar.” So I go out there in March of 2006, borrow my sister-in-law’s car in Portland, Oregon, drive up to the Olympic Peninsula, take the course — I’m practically teaching lab, he says, “Sue, can you help out those people there? Sue, can you help out those people there?” Thirty people! And I come home with 12 fungi that he gave us, in test tubes. And so I went back three months later, in June, to take the other course, and came home with even more. So I thought, “Ok, I’m going to now go out in the woods and build my own strain library.” And David had given me a little cinderblock room in the back of the greenhouse [laughs] that I could call home. We were actually doing our slug experiments in there, too, [laughs] so I’ve had it for a while. And I said, “I just need a refrigerator please,” and so I got permission to be in somebody’s refrigerator and I started collecting fungi and building a strain library. And, low and behold, Karen sticks an article in … a year later, in June of 2007, on my door, at the end of the semester: “RPI Grads Grow Mushroom Insulation Board.” And I walked past it for four days, because I was busy with summer school or whatever, and finally on Friday I sat down and read it and went “Oh my God! I have to meet these people!” [laughs] So I found them through the staff directory, they are faculty members, and got hold of them and, in the meantime — my first email with Eben, one of the two guys, was on Wednesday and we’d arranged for a call on Friday, and on Thursday, in between, I went out to the North Woods with the Thursday Naturalists, who’s a group of octogenarians, average age octogenarians, who I’ve been botanizing with for years — and Skidmore woods is one their favorite places to come — and that particular day was in June, we were going to look for the 33 species of ferns, and we found them all. And, not only did we find them all, but I’m having this conversation with Win Bigelow, he says, “Sue, what do you know about chaga?” and I said, “Well I’ve just learned about chaga because Jackie Donnelly picked me up and took me to this thing growing on a tree and we had, and we…” you know, did that. So, I’m talking to Win about the chaga and we get down to wayyy back in the corner of the woods by the Middle School, and we are going into this one glade to find silver spleenwort. And I’m at the end and the person in front of me is 96-year-old Sally Ingalls, with her walking stick and her hand lens, and I’m looking at her and I’m going, “You’re my idol, you’re my idol! I’m going to be you; I’m going to be you!” [laughs]. So I’m the last person in line and we’d just talked about chaga and here’s this yellow birch and there’s a chaga mushroom right there! And �it’s low on the tree — usually they’re up high, and it’s low! And so I had my little Canon Power shot, and I knelt down and I’m looking at this chaga and it’s like, “Hmm, this looks like a portal, there’s like a chunk of it over here and a chunk of it over on the other side and there’s like a little black frame around in the middle — I’m going to just take a picture of this!” So I knelt down, I looked through my camera, and this face appears! I’m going to show you the picture, I have it upstairs. This face — you can put it in the article — this face appears and it’s this Indigenous elder with big bushy eyebrows and a pointy chin and a beard and it passes through the portal in my viewfinder, it just moves right through there, and I snapped and I got the face. And I’m like, “Whooo, I’m getting chills! The fungi are talking to me! They’re giving me some big information here!” On the heels of my dreaming thing and on the heels of going out to Paul, who’s very dreamy, and has done his share of hallucinogenic tripping [laughs]…most of where his ideas come from. And, I’m like, “Okay, I’m really getting a hit here!” And so I just, I just keep it all to myself and I go up to the other people and they found the silvery spleenwort and we look at it, dah dah dah, and I come home. That night I go for a walk at ten o’clock at night because there’s a full moon and I… you know my husband and I had just had an argument about determinate versus indeterminate tomatoes and which ones we’re going to plant and I said, “This is ridiculous, I’m going for a walk.” And I’m going out to the cemetery, where it’s my favorite place to walk, and there’s this snake on the side of the road doing this “death dance.” It’s a snake I’ve never seen before but I instinctively know it’s a milk snake, it was broad white and brown banded. I said, “I think you’re a milk snake but it doesn’t matter, you’re a snake and you’re doing this thing and … straight up in the air and then falling on your head and straight up in the air and falling on your head," I’m like, “this is kind of like … what is going on?” So then I just, I said, “I’m leaving,” so I go to my tree, I’m hugging my tree and leaning on my tree and I’m watching the moon and then “Okay, time to go back.” And I come back and I’m like a little bit afraid to see where this snake is next. This snake … freaks me out. This snake has made itself into the shape of a heart, which snakes don’t do. And I get down on my hands and knees to see where the head and tail were. It had bit its tail with its head, and the middle of the snake was the groove in the top of the heart. I’m like, “You shouldn’t be bending right there like that.” So this is like a special message to Sue from snake medicine spirit … and I thought it was just, “Go home and be loved, be loving to your husband, forget the stupid argument.” No, it wasn’t that. I mean I did that anyway, but it wasn’t that. [laughs] This, you know, so snake medicine is about shedding your old skin, transformation, new life ahead, all of this messaging coming through. And we had seen a giant water snake on that field trip that day. And it wasn’t in Wilson Marsh, it was way up on a rocky outcrop where it shouldn’t have been so that it caught our attention. Anyway, so two snakes in one day, and then, so I'm like, “This message is, ‘be what you love. Do what you love the most.’ This is what the snake is telling me.” So, that’s Thursday night. So Friday morning I’m driving to Skidmore, I’m going to have this first phone call with Eben, this cool guy, this cool young guy, and I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to go see the snake.” [laughs] And the snake wasn’t there, it was up this friend’s driveway, in a straight line, it had crawled out from underneath a little juniper bush, and I’m like, I got down on my knees and, “Are you alive or are you dead, snake?” It was dead and little ants were feeding on it. I’m like, “I witnessed your death dance, you gave me a message before you died. [laughs] You’re telling me to do what I love. This is pretty cool.” So my first conversation, right out of the blocks, I just said, “Hi. Why are you using a commodity, a food commodity and not a waste product?” [laughs] That’s the first words out of �my mouth, because they were using … they had taken flour and water and pearlite, you know, the white stuff in potting soil for holding water, and oyster mushroom spores they ordered off the Internet to make this board. I said, “You shouldn’t be using food. This feeds people.” They go, “We already switched. We already switched. We are using agricultural crop waste.” I said, “Oh good.” I said, “So what are you looking for…” And they’re looking for … “in your strains? Like what are you looking for?” And they’re, “We want it to be dense, fast growing and really strong.” I’m like, “Do you know anything about fungi?” “No, we’re engineers.” I’m like, “And you’re starting a company to grow fungi, is that correct?” “Yes, it is!” [laughs]. And so, I said, “So how far are you along are you?” He said, “Well we filed the provisional patents and we have some lawyers and we have business plans,” and I said, “Oh that’s good, because I don’t know any of that stuff and nor do I want to. But I do know the part about the fungi and I’d be happy to work with you.” And so by the end of an hour and a half call, …and I told him the whole story about the snake and the chaga, because if he didn’t … if he balked at that then I didn’t want to work with these guys. But he is a lucid dreamer too, so he was like on the edge of his seat on his end of the phone line and I could tell. And like, “Okay, we can do this. We can marry our interests here.” So I worked for them. I grew … so when I went upstairs to Bill Tomlinson, we arranged a transfer of biological materials agreement between the two colleges, because they were in the incubator at RPI still, and I grew their spawn for the first two years. So I grew all their fungi, and I grew them with my strains, and … in our autoclave. [laughed] I processed them in our autoclave and then I delivered them or they’d come up and pick them up. I taught them all of their sterile technique and I taught them all the names, all the biology of the fungi, and I mentored and mentored and mentored and mentored and mentored. For nothing! [laughs] Because I’m a teacher, right? I kick myself — if I had any business sense whatsoever, I would have charged them for all of this information. [laughs] AW: You would have been a partner. [laughs] SVH: I would have been a full-fledged third partner. How dumb was I? Where are my spirit guides now, like, “You’re supposed to be helping me here!” [laughs] So anyway, I gave it all for free, and … whatever, I’ve never been about money in my life, ever, in anything I’ve done. In fact, every … of the four jobs I’ve had has been the trail-blazing position. I’ve been the trail blazer and I’ve left and the next person makes two or three times what I made. So it’s not, it’s not what I’m here for on the planet. AW: Right. SVH: So anyway, this story got better and better. So, I’m still teaching, so this is 2007 to 2010. I’m still growing their stuff, teaching them, engaging our students, and then … 2008 we applied for our first EPA grant. And they tried once on their own and didn’t get it [laughs] and so they called me up and they said, “Ahh, we need your gray hairs.” [laughs] And, so I was the PI on the first EPA grant, and then we got a Skidmore student, Dawn Harfmann, Tom Harfmann’s daughter, from IT, and she and I worked on it for six months and then she came and worked with us, upon graduating. And now I got Gordon MacPhearson to do the USDA grant the following summer. So I was still using Skidmore facilities, Skidmore students, and it was just a wonderful situation. And then, I … we got the grant, so I had to go do the grant, right? So I had to take a leave of absence, unpaid, because we didn’t get sabbaticals as TAs. And so that was all arranged, �and I went in January of 2009 through the summer and did the grant. I got paid a little more than I would have teaching kids at Skidmore, that was fine, so that’s good. And then I get back on campus and the first faculty meeting in the fall of 2009 and Phil gets up and says, “You know we’re in … we’ve had an economic recession for 2007, 8 and 9 and we just have to lay some people off — we have to get rid of 70 people.” I don’t know if you remember that? AW: I do. SVH: Yeah. And he said, “But, we’re going to be able to do it voluntarily with a little bit of a bonus incentive for getting out the door.” It was a great … it was a big bonus, as it turns out. “And, in order to apply for this voluntarily you have to be at least 55 and you have to have worked here for 15 years. So I was turning 55 the next month and I had 15 years, no I had 17 years in. I had 17 years in then. “Ahhhh, spirit, you told me it’s time to shift. Ahh, this is like a pretty graceful way to do it with a little extra cash on the way out the door. Am I supposed to do this?” “Yeah, you’d better apply.” [laughs] There were six of us in the Bio Department who could have applied. I was the only one who did, and it was competitive — more than 70 people applied. So, I got it, and I still smile at the grace … this graceful transition that was no stress. And so the message for me in my whole healing journey from the breast cancer has been to listen to your heart more. I mean, I get to see my heart beat every day, because I’m missing one, and so it … you know, in academia we are so in our heads all the time, it’s like, balance your head and your heart, people. And when you do, things are easy, they’re not hard and challenging, the spirit is on your side. They want this abundance for you, they want this thing that you’re on the earth to do, for you. Stay out of the way! Stay out of the way! And when you stay out of the way it is fun! It’s like magic! You get snakes doing dances. And you, I mean, you meet chaga men in the woods, and … it’s just beautiful! And so that was my fourth transition to this new thing I’d never done called business! AW: [Laughs] SVH: And it turns out that I was, like, teaching all the science there, mentoring all these people. I mean, we grew slowly at first and then it was like, boom! Up to 60 employees. During the recession, we were up to 60 employees, which was pretty … Paul Tonko came and cut our ribbon. [laughs] And so this company is coming into its own now. We were, 10 years before its time in growing mushroom packaging to replace Styrofoam. Completely compostable, 100 percent plants and fungus, no waste product, throw it in your garden, throw it in your mulch, thing. That’s taken a decade to catch on and now it’s really catching on. And it’s now, all that has been licensed to a company in California. They don’t even do it any more here. So now they’ve moved on to alternative meats, and that is going to be mind blowing and successful too. So. AW: Um, Sue, we have been chatting for quite a while and it’s been wonderful, it’s been fun. I’m just, I just want to ask you if there’s any … we’ve only touched on so many things, but if there’s anything that I didn’t mention that you feel is particularly essential to mention now, this is the moment! [laughs] You’ve had a very colorful, very innovative career, and a big chunk of it spent at Skidmore for the enrichment of the college and the student community. I just want to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything that you’ll think about later and say, “Oh gosh, I wish I’d �mentioned this.” SVH: Well I feel really honored that I’ve gotten to share what’s kept me really excited and engaged in this retirement. And I retired from Skidmore in 2016, so I didn’t really retire until then. And I was a healing touch practitioner at the office of Ecovative. I saw 60 employees on my massage table. They realized the benefits of caring for ourselves. And so a big, one of the big things I did there, and I think I did at Skidmore and I think I did everywhere I’ve been … “Oh hello helicopter!” [laughs] [loud helicopter flying overhead] Um, I’m just going to wait … So one of the biggest things I’ve done all throughout my career is care for people. And, I miss the students tremendously, every one of them. You know, I had a big transition, a BIG transition when I went to teach in Environmental Science. Because I came, …you know, you gravitate to people who are most like you, right? So I was a top A student, I mean I was the top grade in my class all throughout my career. And so I gravitated to those kids, the super performers in our labs, and I took care of the other people, but like I really gave a little extra encouragement, I wanted them to really succeed. There was one other student I want to mention, that was transformative for me. She had cerebral palsy, and she was also the daughter of a staff member. I had her for two semesters and … I was told, “Do what you can to accommodate her.” She could barely walk and I had to have a bed in the lab. And in the fall lab we were doing the bee experiments outside, and I said, “I’m going to find a way to get you into the woods to paint bees.” And at the time I had inherited my mom’s old Dodge K-car station wagon, which was kind of on its last legs, so I put a mattress in the back of the station wagon, and we got her down the elevator and got her into the back of the car and I drove her out into the woods. And it was a time where the roads were in good-enough shape, it was down where the new student dorms are now, it was down in that section of the woods, and the roads had not eroded, where I could drive her right to where we were doing the experiments. And then for the next semester her lab was in the prep room in the Plant Biology class, and I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours … digital photography in the microscope was new, and I put the camera in the microscope and I scanned every single microscope slide that we looked at the whole semester, at low magnification, middle magnification and high magnification so that she could see absolutely everything that the students saw. And I filmed all of this, so that took me hours of my own time, and then I … while she’s lying in bed I’m talking her through it, so I taught another three-hour lab to her every week individually. She invited me to her PhD graduation party … where she walked, was walking beautifully. PhD in neuroscience so that she could understand her illness! And … it was at the Parting Glass down in Saratoga, and I brought my whole family with me. I said, “Kids, you’ve got to meet this woman. You’ve got to meet this woman.” So those are the things that you teach for. And … yeah, I miss the students. AW: That’s an awesome story, and very moving, Sue. I want to thank you for sharing that, I want to thank you for being a good teacher and a great colleague for many years at Skidmore. I’ll sign off now. END � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Andrea Wise Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sue Van Hook Location The location of the interview Cambridge, NY 12816 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:13:01 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit October 25, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sue Van Hook Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 3, 2021 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource A member of the Biology Department faculty from 1992 to 2010, Sue Van Hook was a senior teaching associate specializing in botany and mycology. She was a leader in campus sustainability projects and in the stewardship of Skidmore’s North Woods. In 2007 Sue produced "Treasures in the North Woods: A guide to the natural campus at Skidmore College" in collaboration with students, staff, and faculty spouses. This interview was recorded on the porch of Sue’s home in Cambridge, N.Y., on June 3, 2021. [The interview has been slightly edited for length.] Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Biology Department Campus Culture Campus Environment Committee Collaborative Research Curriculum David Porter Diversity Growth in Science North Woods Opportunity Program Phil Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Student Faculty Relations https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/878e3a4fa806b9605ac6f26942f32606.jpg 128109595eac0e28fe95caae0b107653 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/481f4b8849648292837e96bc57e93349.m4a 69d3219334afbfa528baa2511fdfdb5a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/0015f5078efa840e8d501ff9137ae0b5.pdf f91bf649c477a6c5293ca2442c876b1b PDF Text Text Interviewee: Patricia Rubio Years at Skidmore: 1985 - 2016 Interviewers: Lynne Gelber and Susan Bender Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: April 14, 2021 00:00:00 Header 00:00:33 Born in Valparaíso, Chile; lived in Viña del Mar; attended small, multilingual, private K-12 school in Valparaíso. 00:01:28 Attended Universidad Católica de Valparaíso - 5 year program for a degree in Spanish 00:02:12 Applied for/received Fulbright Scholarship to attend University of Minnesota 00:03:00 Planned return to Valparaíso to teach, but 1973 military coup changed University situation and prevented return. 00:03:35 March 1974 joined Juan Carlos in Spain and they married there in June 1974 00:03:50 Lived in Barcelona for a year and a half; applied to graduate programs in Canada; attended University of Alberta/lived 5 years in Edmonton. 00:04:41 Came to Skidmore September 1980. Juan Carlos taught and Paty completed dissertation; both applied for green cards; daughter Camila born June 1982. 00:05:35 Because couldn’t return to Chile, had intentionally staggered dissertation completions, so if 1st MLA search unsuccessful, they could stay in Canada while Paty completed dissertation. 00:06:28 In 1984 Paty taught a semester at Middlebury College, VT. Paty & Camila moved to VT, Juan Carlos spent weekends there. 00:07:34 Paty applied to positions at Skidmore and Russel Sage. Offered both; chose Skidmore. 00:08:02 Visa and citizenship processes expensive, time consuming. 00:08:53 Now hiring institutions pay the fees; that has helped Skidmore draw foreign faculty. 00:09:39 Taught 101 - 300 level classes in Spanish American literature and culture. 101 is favorite “because students are a clean linguistic slate and they have a sense that they’re really making progress throughout the semester.” 00:10:33 The few Hispanic undergraduate students at that time “gravitated towards Spanish.” 00:11:30 The Spanish-speaking students had stronger oral skills than grammatical; therefore different needs than the non-Spanish speaking students. 00:12:41 Other roles: 1987-1990 coordinated Self Instructional Languages Program (SILP). 00:14:11 In SILP, students develop oral skills using recordings, a curriculum, and meetings with tutors, most of whom are native speakers. 00:17:00 Also: directed Women’s Studies program, chaired Foreign Languages & Literatures Department for 5 years; Associate Dean of the Faculty for 7 years, was Acting Dean when President Phil Glotzbach went on sabbatical. 00:17:50 Helped move Women’s Studies program from a minor to a major, establishing a curriculum in Women’s Studies. 00:18:31 Goal of Women’s Studies 101: provide overview of the field and current/evolving issues, so covered wide range of topics - theoretical, historical, sociological, political. 00:19:27 In June 1997 brought National Association for Women’s Studies’ annual conference to Skidmore. Collaborated with Special Programs and with Women’s Studies faculty to create program. Great ideas - art exhibits, a film program, a book show, presentations, keynotes, etc. 00:24:44 Challenging, but “I discovered I could do this!” Phyllis Roth empowering influence. �00:25:30 Also, administrator roles were empowering — could improve things for the department. Example - stabilizing adjunct courses by making full-time adjunct positions. 00:27:55 Became Associate Dean when Muriel Poston was Dean. Learned to look at things from broader perspective. 00:30:00 Rubio (from Humanities), Poston (from Sciences) perfect team b/c balanced qualitative & quantitative. Learned how to put problems in context to see various repercussions of small decisions for the departments and college. 00:31:32 As administrator, saw Skidmore as a whole Institution,… possibilities, strengths, weaknesses, places to concentrate, who to talk to, who can help? 00:32:00 “It’s fascinating! … those seven years that I was in the Dean’s office, I liked every single one. … I just loved every minute of it.” 00:32:38 Interest in diversity arose first with students — realizing how the Latino students felt… that one of the reasons they came to study Spanish is because they found people like them. 00:33:53 Latino Cultural Society was first Latino student organization - evolved into RAICES. 00:34:17 Another source of interest in diversity was the program itself - Foreign languages … by definition [a] diverse topic …foreign languages, foreign cultures. 00:34:35 And Muriel Poston herself; the first Black Dean of the Faculty in a mostly white institution & white community. Had to go to Glens Falls simply to get hair done. When Poston interviewed at Skidmore, she asked to meet with faculty of color. There were only 5 or 6. 00:35:17 Once Dean, Poston asked faculty to examine department hiring processes to determine usefulness in attracting faculty of color. 00:35:40 When Beau Breslin became Dean, he appointed [Rubio] Associate Dean for Diversity. Skidmore hired consultants to improve hiring processes. Success in that effort due in part to great support from Deans Muriel Poston and Beau Breslin and President Phil Glotzbach. 00:37:35 A position description/ad exhibits “the seriousness of the institution … in terms of hiring faculty of color.” Hiring processes changed, following consultant’s advice. 00:39:12 Retired 2016 00:41:03 Since retiring, annually travels to Chile for several months to help sister run her restaurant and to visit lifelong friends; in summers volunteers with Saratoga backstretch workers, teaching English as a second language; plays golf; on board of Saratoga Film Forum and Saratoga Chamber Players; passionate about working in yard and garden. 00:43:06 Also reads a lot. “Now I’d rather read than write. Juan Carlos taught me that. …at some point he said, ‘I’m done with research. I don’t want to write any more, I want to read.' And that makes sense to me now. It didn’t then but it makes sense to me now.” 00:44:21 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c65a837e139652e712cc71568c96093f.pdf d1c119146a7bb209bf72eb7cb8c16e85 PDF Text Text Interview with Patricia Rubio by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, April 14, 2021. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. I am with Susan Bender. It is April 14th, 2021, and we are interviewing Patricia Rubio for the Oral History Project. So … PATRICIA RUBIO: Thank you for having me. LG: It’s our pleasure and thank you for doing this. PR: Well, my pleasure. LG: Patty, why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you were born and brought up and your early schooling. PR: Sure. I was born in Valparaíso, Chile, but lived from ages six to 23 in Viña del Mar. Valparaíso’s twin city. My three sisters and I went to a small private school in Valparaíso. There were about 600 students between kindergarten and 12th grade, and most of the instruction in elementary school was done in German. So, I was introduced to a foreign languages at age 5 in kindergarten. and graduated from this school thirteen years later with additional solid instruction in English which was introduced in seventh grade. I was very fortunate to have had access to that kind of education. Classes were very small, never more than fourteen to fifteen students; there were seven students in my senior class most of whom I had known since kindergarten or first grade. I interrupted my studies in my junior year to come to live with a family and attend high school in Storrs, CT. in 1962. This was also an important experience in my upbringing. After high school I entered college. LG: In Valparaíso? �PR: Yes. The college system in Chile follows the European model, which means that one has decided in one’s two last years of high school the career one will pursue. From very early in high school I knew that I wanted to teach and I liked literature and history so I pursued a degree in Spanish. So Spanish and Latin American literature and culture with a very solid foundation in syntax and linguistics. It’s a five-year program that included one year of Latin and Greek, theoretical linguistics, syntax and normative grammar. The objective of the program was to prepare students to teach the Spanish high school curriculum which included Spanish, Chilean and Spanish American literature plus Spanish grammar and writing. I had also made up my mind while in college, to pursue graduate study, at least a Masters degree. So, in my last year at the university, I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship which I received. LG: And that was at Valparaíso? PR: Yes, at the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. In those days, this 1969-70, Fulbright assigned prospective students to graduate programs at Universities in the U.S.. In Chile I had begun to pursue an academic career through teaching assistant positions in Spanish American literature. I was approached to teach General Literature, and so a degree in Comparative literature was appropriate. The idea was that I would return from the U.S. with an M.A. to a position that included General Literature as part of my teaching duties. But things happened. The military took over the government in 1973, during my first semester at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The situation at the University in Chile changed and I never returned. Instead of Chile, I left for Spain in March 1974, and married Juan Carlos in June of that year. �LG: In Barcelona? PR: In the Barcelona area. We lived in Barcelona for a year and a half, knowing that it was just a stop in the voyage, and went to Canada to pursue our PhDs in Hispanic literatures and the University of Alberta. We lived in Edmonton for five years which despite the extreme harsh winters we really enjoyed. We staged it so that Juan Carlos would defend his dissertation before I did so that we would have two possible hiring rounds for finding jobs in this part of the world. Jobs were not easy to find. Lynne, you were the chair of Modern Languages and Literatures then and you hired both of us. Thank you for having done so! LG: The rest is history! [laughter] LG: So, when you came here you were not initially teaching but then …? PR: Well, what happened is that Juan Carlos came with an H-1B visa, which allowed him to work and I had a visa that allowed me to live in the country but not to work. We applied for the green card in Juan Carlos’ second year here, had Camila, and waited patiently for the INS to do its work. The process was successful, and we became citizens five or six years later. LG: You came to Skidmore? PR: We both came to Skidmore in September 1980. LG: OK. PR: When we came, I was ABD, Juan Carlos had finished his degree. I had been awarded a thesis scholarship, which would have allowed us to stay for an additional year in Canada. In our first year here I completed the dissertation. I taught at Middlebury College in a one semester replacement in 1984. Camila, who was a toddler, and I moved to Vermont. LG: Camilla was born here. �PR: Yes. Remember LG: I do remember because we decorated the office. PR: [laughter] Yeah. Yes, she was born in June 1982. You gave Juan Carlos a really good schedule according to which he started teaching late on Mondays and ended early on Friday afternoon so that he would be able to drive to Middlebury to spend the weekend with us. It was a tough semester. I had never taught in the US; they had hired me because they needed someone who would be able to teach Spanish American Culture and Civilization. Every class was a new prep. I remember spending every Saturday at the library preparing classes, while Juan Carlos took care of Camila. Sunday was a family day. After we obtained our permanent visa, I applied for several positions in the area, including Skidmore. The faculty had changed the curriculum and passed a foreign language requirement. So the department needed to hire two additional faculty and, as I said before, you hired me. I also had an offer from Russel Sage but of course I chose Skidmore. LG: Thank goodness! PR: Either before or after Middlebury, but during the visa process during which I was allowed to work, you hired me to teach part time: one Spanish language course each in the fall and the spring. If I remember well, it was Intermediate Spanish. LG: As I recall, we were able to use the services of the lawyer for the College, in Glens Falls. PR: That was in order to get the renewal of Juan Carlos’ H-1B. We hired a lawyer from Albany to help us with the application process for the residency visa. In those days, the Institution didn’t have to pay for the process. After the immigration law changed, the hiring institution is responsible for the fees �which are very high. We are fortunate that Skidmore has been able to do that because it explains in part the success the institution has had in hiring foreign faculty in the past five years. A good number of the foreign faculty come with an H1-B visas which is the entry way to permanent residency. LG: I vaguely remember that. PR: Yes. LG: So what courses were you teaching? PR: Where? LG: At Skidmore. PR & LG: [laughter] LG: Thank you. PR: That’s O.K. Well you know that in our department, everyone teaches the whole gamut of courses So I taught beginning Spanish and all the way up to 300 level classes including Spanish American literature and culture. LG: And what were your favorite? PR: My favorite? I always liked to teach 101, because students are a clean linguistic slate, and they have a sense that they’re really making progress throughout the semester. The more fortunate ones, during Christmas break, would travel to a Spanish speaking country where they realized that they could read a menu, could be really helpful to their families in negotiating the cities, reading signs, etc... This was a powerful experience and they would come back really energized and ready for more. LG: How many Hispanic students were there in the undergraduate population at that point? PR: Few. They gravitated towards Spanish courses, thinking that being Latino also meant being Latin American; and some were immigrants themselves. It was very nice to have, particularly at the upper level, students from diverse �backgrounds. They contributed points of view and diverse ideas to class discussion. At the upper level, that is in literature and culture and civ courses, there were always a number of native Spanish speakers, and that was also nice. In these classes we read sophisticated materials and they were able to help their classmates to plough through the texts. Nowadays Latino students are aware of their identity as citizens of this country. Many take Spanish classes because they want to increase their language abilities and learn about their cultural and family backgrounds. LG: As I recall, those students had an oral knowledge. Is that correct? Yes, they did. Their oral skills outperformed their ability to write correctly in Spanish. Often first or second-generation students had the most difficulties because they were fluent but their knowledge of the language was not normative; their grammar was not accurate. Our curriculum back then was mostly intended for non-native speakers and those courses were in many ways not well suited for students who had leaned Spanish at home without formal instruction. LG: And they didn’t have any grammar skills? PR: Most of them did not. The grammar accuracy was all over the place [laughter]. LG & SUE BENDER: [laughter] SB: Spanglish. PR: [laughter] Well, a lot of Spanglish, like, “How are you?” “Nada mucho,” which in Spanish means, “he or she swims a lot.” Very difficult linguistic habits to undo. But this was the Spanish they heard and spoke in their communities, and it worked for them. Many of them were eager to learn normative grammar. �I also very much liked teaching mixed populations of students: US majority students with Latino students. LG: So you had other responsibilities in the course of your career? PR: Yes. it started with the Self-Instructional Languages program. You appointed me as coordinator in 1987 a position that I held until 1990. Sonja Karsen had established the program in the seventies and coordinated it until she retired. LG: Sonja Karsen, who was the … chair of the department? PR: For twenty-two years, right? LG: Until … PR: Until she stepped down and you became chair. LG: Yeah … PR: The Self-Instructional Languages program contributed to the language offerings of the department. It included, LG: Arabic and Hebrew. PR: Yes, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Russian. LG: Russian, how could I forget? PR: We then added Korean and Sanskrit. SILP was and continues to be a very successful program, it allows the College to offer twelve languages, which is impressive. And it is popular program with students. Years after I had stepped down and began to chair the department, the program was enrolling close to 80 students. The SILP languages continue to be a venue for the fulfillment of the language requirement. LG: Say one or two words about what the Self-Instructional Language Program is. PR: Sure. The focus is on developing aural and oral skills. Students meet with a tutor (most tutors are native speakers), twice a week for an hour. Students have to have prepared the material before coming to the tutoring session, �thus the name of the program. At the tutoring session, they discuss and practice material, and agree on the assignment for the following week. Tutors guide and monitor students’ progress. During my time with the program, students had a textbook and tapes as learning materials. They followed the curriculum developed by the Self Instructional Languages Association. Tutoring groups are small, not to exceed 5 students per language section. When the number of registered students exceeded five, as it often happened in Hebrew, for example, students were placed into parallel sections. This allowed for ample time for discussion and practice and ultimately students had more one-on-one time with the tutor than in a regular class that met three times a week with 15 students. LG: And the instructor is a native speaker except for Sanskrit. PR: And Arabic and Hebrew PR: The person who tutors in Arabic, has a doctorate in Arabic linguistics, and the person in Hebrew, although she was not from Israel, was very successful and probably the longest serving tutor in the program. Both were there when I took over the coordination of the program and remained long after I had stepped down. I believe that Regina Hurwitz still tutors Arabic. LG: Well … PR: At the end of the semester students were tested by an outside examiner. The SILP Association helped us to identify potential outside examiners when necessary. The Japanese examiner came from Cornell, the one for Hebrew from the State University at Buffalo, the examiner for Russian from the U of Albany, etc. LG: And what was your role? PR: As coordinator I met with each student interested in the SILP language before �they registered in order to explain how the program functioned and what their responsibilities would be. It was important for them to understand, for example, that the grade they received in the final exam was the grade for the course. That they needed to work diligently during the semester even if they were not being tested periodically for a grade. Any testing given during the semester was only diagnostic. The program was not open to first year students. The thinking was that there are too many claims on their time that could interfere with the independent study of the language. I also coordinated the tutoring schedules and liaised with the Registrar’s Offic. I hired the examiners and set the final exam schedule. Examiners often were not local. I was also the person to go for tutors and students in case of grievances or problems. LG: What other roles did you have in the course of your career? PR: I directed the Women’s Studies program for four years, succeeding Mary Stange who had been the first director of the program. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. A number of my courses in the Foreign Languages and Literatures department counted towards the WS minor and the major. During my time as director, the faculty approved the major. During my time as director, we expanded the WS curriculum to include one intermediate level course and the senior seminar. The WS faculty was very supportive of the various initiatives that we pursued and contributed to various tasks when necessary. Although the program had existed for over a decade, it cemented its place among other interdisciplinary programs once the major was approved. The generation of women faculty that preceded me, and most of whom were tenured professors before I joined the College in 1984, had worked hard in building the program. Most of them were very committed to �enriching and delivering the curriculum, advising students, supervising theses, and in mentoring incoming women faculty. . When I stepped down from WS I became chair of the FLL, a position I occupied for five years. I then became Associate Dean of the Faculty a position I held for seven years. LG: What was, do you think, in all those years, your biggest challenge? PR: Every administrative position brought different challenges; that is what made each so interesting; everyone presented opportunities for professional and personal growth. For example, when I became WS director, the program was ready to move from a minor to a major. The proposal for the major was a collective WS faculty undertaking spearheaded by Kate Berheide and myself. Kate, a professor in Sociology, had experience in WS program design. The WS faculty, had a central role in the discussion and approval of the final proposal. The process took over a year from start to finish, that is from when we began to work on the proposal to college faculty approval. We needed to have all our ducks in a row as we knew that we would face some opposition from a number of principally male segments of the faculty. Although the vote was not unanimous the proposal passed by a sizable majority. It would be interesting to revisit the minutes of that Faculty Meeting. As a result of the major’s approval, student interest in WS grew so that it became necessary, for example, to offer two sections of WS 101 every semester. This was huge because we were able to increase the number of students interested in pursuing the major or minor. On average, during my time as director, we majored about 8 students per year, which was not small for an interdisciplinary program. �LG: Did you teach the 101 course? PR: Yes, I did for the four years I headed the program. It loved the course; the curriculum was broad and interesting; student interest was high and 101 engaged them in a journey of discovery regarding their own identity as women. Although the majority of students were women, there were one or two men per year who were curious took it. There were no male majors during my time s director. LG: And generally, what kinds of things did you cover in that course? PR: It included the history of the US women’s and feminist movements; women’s political struggles and involvement in the fight for the vote, the ERA. Their participation in the antislavery and temperance movements. We studied feminist theory; the history of women’s pursuit for the control of our bodies; the political, social and personal consequences of women’s social roles in patriarchal societies and in the patriarchal workplace; the intersections between gender, race, ethnicity and class. We also read literature, notedly Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale; some poetry. The objective of the course was for students to understand the discipline; the areas of knowledge that define Women’s Studies. To provide a solid base for the rest of the curriculum. LG: Now, what do you recall from those years that you were directing the Women’s Studies program? PR: I recall many things. I recall the importance for the institution of having a vibrant, energetic community of female faculty. We built community by means of, for example, weekly brown-bag lunches, two WS potluck dinners per year which were open to students and staff as well; faculty meetings to discuss issues pertaining the program: curriculum, staffing needs, program objectives, invited speakers, etc. These were always occasions to welcome and recruit incoming faculty, to learn about each other’s teaching and �research. Students were involved in several of these activities: they were part of the Steering committee, and as I have said6 invited to WS sponsored activities. In terms of challenges, the four-day National Women’s Studies Association meeting, in June 1997 was huge. Phyllis Roth, then Dean of the Faculty and Vice-president of Academic Affairs. was approached by Marjorie Prise, then President of the NWSA, about the possibility of hosting the 1997 annual meeting. Marjorie was then Professor of English at the University of Albany, and I was incoming director of Women’s Studies. Phyllis consulted with Mary and me, and we decided to accept the challenge. And a challenge it was!! Mary went on sabbatical and I attended the NWSA 1995 meeting at the University of Oklahoma, in order to meet with members of the NWSA leadership, and to observe how the conference was structured and ran. There were over 500 participants at the Tulsa meeting, and we needed to plan for similar attendance at Skidmore. It exceeds the scope of this interview to detail what the planning and organization for the conference entailed. Suffice it to say that central to its success was the active involvement of the WS faculty, and the collaboration with Sharon Arpey in Special Programs. The Women’s Studies faculty and I worked on the ‘academic’ program, while Sharon Arpey undertook the ‘non-academic’ aspects of the event (housing, food, infrastructure, etc.). She and I worked closely for two years. The conference included a film program, a sculpture show in South Park, a women-faculty art show in Schick Gallery, a large book exhibit in the gym, dozens and dozens of presentations, several keynote speakers, and a healthy dose of minor controversies. �LG: So you were coordinating, what, with the library and with the Tang? PR: The Tang did not exist back then; we had an exhibit at the library on women in Skidmore’s history organized by Mary Lynn who, with some of her students drew materials from the College archive. LG: OK LG: It sounds like it was most fun. PR: Yes, it was. I also discovered that I could successfully work on a large project. At first, when Phyllis said that it would be my undertaking, I said, “Sure, why not” and when I left her office I thought, “By golly! What did I just get into? LG: Very empowering, isn’t it? PR: Yes, it was, and I thank Phyllis for having given me the opportunity and for having confidence in me. Typical Phyllis: she gave opportunities for people to grow and develop. I remember in my first year chatting with her while we walked across campus; at some point she said, “Well, you know, in the future you’ll be chair of the department,” and I thought, Really? Am I hearing right? So going back to your earlier question, Lynne, of major challenges, every one of the positions presented worthy challenges. Chairing the FLL was also a huge challenge. But by then I had discovered that I could be an effective administrator and I wanted to be chair. I had also learned that I could work with various individuals, even with those with whom I was not particularly simpatico. All of that was very empowering, as you said before, and I needed every bit of that experience as head of the FLL. You were chair of the department for a good chunk of time, you know how complicated it is to head a multi-section department; every section has its needs, the whole is �larger than the sum of its parts. I always thought that one of the main challenges in the department was the imbalance of its structure: two large section, French and Spanish, and four smaller sections, Chinese, Japanese, German and Italian, three of which were unevenly staffed. So when Chuck Joseph who was Dean of the Faculty interviewed me for the position, I told him that one of my objectives as chair would be to stabilize the small sections. So that they would feel better in the department, not overwhelmed by the two large sections. It was hard to keep the department engaged in everything, knowing that colleagues in the small sections, often felt that their voices were not as strong as those in the large sections. So I said to Chuck “There are three sections — Japanese, Chinese, and German — that only have one full time faculty and also adjuncts; it is always a problem in Saratoga find good adjuncts for those positions. I told him that I wanted to upgrade the second position to full-time. It would also free tenure and tenure track faculty to participate in the delivery if the all-College requirement. He agreed, and we created a second full-time position in German, Japanese and Chinese. Italian had been stabilized when Giuseppe became chair; at that point we hired a second person into a tenure track position. PR: So that objective was realized, and I still feel proud of it. The other major undertaking was guiding the the self-study necessary for the 10-year review, so once the review was done, I was ready to go. You know? There were other colleagues wanting to be chair and, who had other ideas for the department, and that’s important. PR: Then Muriel became Dean, and after … LG: Muriel? PR: Poston. Muriel Poston became Dean, and after her first Associate Dean, Mark �Hoffman, stepped down — he had only made a commitment for two years, — there was a call for interested faculty in the ADOF position. I threw my hat in. Ultimately, Muriel offered me the position which was an entirely different ballgame. In all the other administrative positions I dealt with specific, more or less narrowly defined tasks: hiring, the schedule, tending to faculty needs, mentoring incoming or pre-tenure faculty, connecting to the DOF, etc. In the Dean’s Office, one gets to see the institution from a very different venue. It was, like, “Wow, this is really something that I’ve never done.” Muriel had a broad and deep understanding of US higher education. She had also worked at the National Science Foundation, was a member of a number of associations of higher ed, was very interested in educational policy, in diversity issues. I learned enormously from her. During the three years that I worked with her she sent me to conferences, encouraged me to meet other ADOFs from different institutions, to get involved in various groups and tasks. For the first time I understood how narrowly I had understood my position and responsibilities at the institution; how little I knew of the big picture of higher education writ large. This is not just the department, this is not just my course, this is not just my research, but this is the institution, nationally. LG: So … ok, when …oh, alright. So when you are talking about writ large, are you talking about things like finances and, are you talking about …? PR: Mmm, I am mostly talking about the academic area. As the ADOF, one of my responsibilities was academic space: labs, research areas, classrooms, studios, etc., When we hire, particularly in the sciences, can we accommodate that person in terms of their lab needs? Finance, not directly, but most everything that one wishes or needs to do is budgetarily possible or not. One of my tasks was to try to find the money; talk to folks in financial �affairs. The same with faculty positions. I was in charge of all non-tenure track hiring. Every one of those positions needed approval from Financial Affairs. What was incredibly interesting fin working with Muriel is that she her disciplinary training was in the natural sciences and for her data is central. So, I would bring an issue to her, and she would say, what is your data? We would discuss it and at some point it became clear that we were interpreting it differently. She, from a quantitative and I from qualitative perspective. She would frequently say, “but the data, Paty, suggests that…” and I’d said, “yes, but not everything is data, Muriel.” Right? “What do you mean?” “Well, there are ambiguities, you know. Look at the data from this perspective” And because she was very smart, she would say, “Oh, ok, fine. Let’s then rethink it.” The process was fascinating. She had the ability of seeing both the particular and the general at the same time. Discussions would begin at the micro level and often by the time she was done with it, we were able to understand the larger implications. I had never worked with a person like Muriel. PR: I wanted to help Muriel to understand the culture of the institution. She came to us from the National Science Foundation. She was an outsider; the only black woman in the upper administration; she had not worked at a small liberal arts college before; and she needed help on how to … and so how to get people to get to know her; she was shy. And I was not always successful in creating opportunities for her to know the faculty. I mean, you know, I was part of the administration, but I was unable to solve the problem fully. So, in that sense, I failed, if you will. My experience in the Dean’s Office, however, was amazing. For the first time I understood the institutional �possibilities and the limitations. When Muriel left, Beau Breslin stepped into the Dean’s position. My job changed in interesting ways as faculty development and diversity were added to my duties. I had learned much from Muriel about the importance and need for hiring diverse faculty across the institution. It would be too long to detail what we did. Suffice it to say that Beau moved along what Muriel had begun; after four years the profile of the Skidmore faculty was beginning to change. It wasn’t easy. Departments were not always ready to shed their old procedures. “We shouldn’t do it this way”, “We have never done it this way”. But finally, everyone bought into it. It was fascinating. LG: Icing on the cake? PR: Icing on the cake, yeah. (00:32:25 ) SB: Could I ask a question? PR: Sure. SB: Talking about the institution, … LG: This is Susan talking. SB: This is Susan talking, yeah. [laughs] We were talking about your Institution wide perspective in engagement, Patty. I know that diversity was a topic near and dear … maybe Lynne was heading in that direction, but near and dear to your heart, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the source of your commitment to diversity and what you believe, over the years, how Skidmore changed in that regard? What some of the successes, challenges were and some of the challenges that still remain? PR: The source of my initial interest was connected to students, really, specifically to the Latino students. When I came to Skidmore, a steady number of them, particularly Latinas took my classes, my lit and culture classes mostly. And as a result, I developed relationships with students, and realized the cultural �confusion of many of them. I taught language courses and Spanish American lit and culture. We did not then have courses on LatinX studies which is what they were really craving for. Mine and other courses in the department could only partially fulfill their need for understanding part of their cultural identity. So, with a little bit of guidance they created the Latino Cultural Society which was the first Latino student organization at Skidmore; it then became RAICES. It helped then to consolidate their position at the institution which was and still is majority white. They brought speakers, organized social and cultural events. They were a diverse bunch with various backgrounds. And then, of course, came Muriel. Muriel Poston, again. You know, the first Black Dean of the Faculty in a mostly very white institution. LG: And white community. PR: And white community. In order to get her hair cut she had to go to Glens Falls … to get her hair done. There aren’t any men or women hair stylists in the Saratoga area who know how to cut or style African American hair. When Muriel visited Skidmore, she asked to meet with faculty of color. Chuck Joseph, then Dean of the Faculty, asked me that morning to put together a group to meet with her in the afternoon. There were five or six of us in the room. One of the first things she did as Dean was to ask chairs and program directors to look at their hiring processes, to interrogate whether it was a friendly hiring process or, whether that hiring process was useful in order to attract faculty of color. We had never been asked to include diversity into our hiring processes. PR: And, … but things really got working when Beau became Dean. SB: Beau? �PR: Breslin. Because Muriel could only take it so far and she was in the office for five years only. Right? As Assistant Dean of the First-Year Experience, Beau was part of Muriel’s staff and part of the discussions we frequently had on diversity. So when he became Dean, he embraced diversity as one of his agendas. And then when he became VPAA and Dean of the Faculty, he appointed me as Associate Dean for Diversity. And we hired Pat Romney Associates, in order to streamline across departments, the hiring process. Uh, there was a lot of screaming and shouting [laughs], “We don’t want to do it this way. We’ve always done it this other way. Why do have to do this?” and Beau was firm. I mean, the success of the diversity agenda is not necessarily mine. I would never have been able to do anything as Associate Dean without the Dean really pushing for it. And Phil also was very much on boar; it became a priority for him. LG: Phil PR: Phil Glotzbach, the President. There were budgetary implications. Pat Romney came to campus twice a year to run a workshop on diverse hiring that began with “this is the way that the ad needs to be written. The diversity statement is not at the end, the diversity statement is in the middle.” I mean, things like that. Because diversity is not an afterthought. Faculty of color, domestic faculty of color are very attuned to how the ads read. The ad says a lot about how serious the institution is in terms of hiring faculty of color. I was in charge of the process, in terms of making sure that every single ad was appropriately written, that it followed the guidelines; there were also protocols regarding the selection of finalists, for the campus visits that every department needed to follow. I was very passionate about this work. It felt so meaningful. I worked very hard with departments and programs and it was a job that I loved and it was successful. I mean, look at the diversity of the �faculty now. It’s huge! And so … but if it hadn’t been, early for Muriel, next for Beau, my interest would have been just my interest, but it would of not have translated in real changes for the Institution. LG: Are there other things that we haven’t covered that we should talk about your career? When did you retire from Skidmore? PR: It’s been five years, so I’ll …[laughs] No, it’s in 2015. But really, I retired in 2016. What happened is, I was due a sabbatical which delayed by retirement date. It was time. Seven years in the DOF, it was time. And I had to choose. You both know this well … as interesting as the work is, it becomes a chore, and the chore for me were the CAPT cases particularly having to read the student teaching evaluations. One year there was a candidate in the dance department where most faculty teach only one and two credit classes. That year I read thousands of student evals. And I knew that the coming cohorts would be larger. We had been hiring over ten new faculty per year: too many evaluations. I just couldn’t do it again. It’s like, “Why did you retire from the English Department, or History, or you name the department?” “I don’t want to read another composition or essay.” Exactly that. So it was time for somebody else to do it. And, … so seven years was a long time. How long were you in the DOF? SB: Four PR: Four, yeah. LG: So, what have you been doing since you retired? PR: Oh, depending on the time of the year. I go to Chile for three or four months or sometimes twice in one year. I help my sister in her restaurant in Santiago. When I am there she can take a vacation; I run her restaurant for �her; it’s a lot of work but also great fun. Most of the time we work side by side which I really enjoy. I’ve lived for 40 years in the United States, and one of the things that I decided when I retired was that I wanted to go back to Chile a lot to visit my sisters, my family. And, I’ve done that. Also I still have a number of good friends I have a dual identity. LG: Friends here or in Chile? PR: In both places but I meant in Chile. Many of them are school friends. The classes were small we made life-long friendships. With four or five, we’ve been friends for what, 67 years? I also read a lot and I do some volunteering, particularly in the summer for the Backstretch at the horse racing track. A large number of the backstretch workers are Latin American. I’ve also taught English there also, in the summer. LG: As a second language? PR: As a second language. Umm, I also play golf. I love the game; I started playing golf with my father when I was 12. LG: Oh? PR: He was a sports person so as he grew older, he gave up tennis for golf. I started playing it again here in the US after not playing it for about 15 years. It brings really good memories from my late childhood and as a young adult in Viña del Mar. When I retired, I first thought that I would complete some research projects that were interrupted by the time I was in the administration. But after a bit I thought: what’s the point? Who will read what I write? �LG: You’ve turned the page. PR: Yeah, I mean, I’d rather read than write. Juan Carlos taught me that. You know, at some point he said, “I’m done with research. I don’t want to write any more, I want to read.” And that makes sense to me now. It didn’t then but it makes sense to me now. LG: Now of course you are on the board of the … PR: Of course, yeah, well, yeah, and I was on the film board when the Film Forum existed, and then you invited me to be on the board of the Saratoga Chamber Players, and that’s been great. And I work in my yard, my garden, which is my passion. [laughs] LG: And how does your garden grow? PR: Oh wow. It does sure grow, when… LG: This time of year. PR: Yeah, this time of year. LG: Anything else we should cover? SB: Nope. LG: Good? PR: Good? Ok. LG: Alright. Thank you sooo, so much. PR: Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. END � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Patricia Rubio Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 44:21 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit October 24, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Patricia Rubio Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 14, 2021 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Patricia Rubio began her career at Skidmore in 1983 after graduating from Valparaiso University in Chile and, after arrival at Skidmore, her PhD at the University of Alberta in Canada. She filled many roles at Skidmore - coordinator of the self-instructional language program, Director of Women’s Studies, Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures, and Associate Dean of the Faculty. Since retirement in 2016 she has helped run her sister’s restaurant in Chile, taught ESL to backstretch workers at the Saratoga track, played a great deal of golf and serves as chair of the board of the Saratoga Chamber Players. In this interview she also discusses the complexity of the self-instructional language program, changes in the Women’s Studies program and its evolution to a full major, the influence of Dean of Faulty Phyllis Roth, her work with Dean Muriel Poston, and issues of diversity. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Beau Breslin Diversity Emigration to U.S. Latino Students Latino Studies Muriel Poston Phil Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Self-Instructional Languages Spanish American Literature Women's Studies https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f9bce7006c931b2eaed235784e38d6e5.jpg 18883315413995f40af946c047c4a9cb https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8b26d55b932f59a5ef2abbca8a10c621.m4a 5f1678d9abc1289ccfbb2f9fc74d1024 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/98de521eb464ccd78387d86597f88d65.pdf 4ae6bb3425ed95228a9f361a028a0f9e PDF Text Text Interviewee: John Cunningham Years at Skidmore: 1967-2017 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: April 4, 2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:39 Grew up in Greenwich, CT; uncle, who was painter, lived with family, normalizing notion of career as artist. 00:01:21 As child, always interested in creative projects, science, & math. 00:01:38 Earned Bachelor’s degree in Physical Chemistry from Kenyon College (OH). 00:02:12 In senior year at Kenyon, took first painting class - discovered the excitement of art:“every mark was unique.” Subsequently decided to apply to Yale to study art. 00:03:24 Kenyon painting teacher Joe Slate supported decision & helped get Yale interview. 00:04:45 Yale interviewers thought it “cool that a scientist …wanted to be an artist.” 00:05:45 Cunningham had no sculpture experience before Yale, though his uncle had studied w/ Jackson Pollock. 00:06:20 “I really loved college! …I didn’t …get all As. I got As in those kind of things that interested me, mostly the strange things that everybody else flunked [laughs].” 00:06:55 Two degrees from Yale: BA in 1963 & MA 1965. 00:07:10 Chemistry background led to job in Yale Geology department neutron activation lab. 00:09:12 After Yale, worked for kinetic sculptor George Rickey; physics knowledge helpful. 00:10:42 A couple of years later began to seek teaching positions & hired at Skidmore (1967). 00:12:18 “At that point, Yale graduates …[were known for creating] teaching experiences that produced … extraordinary results … individuals with just staggering skills.” 00:14:16 In early years at Skidmore, there was a lot of socializing between faculty & parents and faculty & students. When Cunningham interviewed w/ Alice Mosher, she mentioned some faculty who had married students. That wasn’t shocking then. 00:15:55 Also, there was a strong collaborative working atmosphere among the art students. 00:18:20 When Skidmore all women, much student travel; after men began to attend, less travel. 00:19:45 In first few co-ed years, the women voted the men into the offices/leadership positions. 00:20:47 Before became fully co-ed, male RPI & Colgate students attended Skidmore courses. 00:21:02 One Colgate medical student, Ben Cohen, also interested in art. Cunningham insists, “I did not flunk him! [laughs] … He was a really great guy.” 00:22:55 “I was absolutely staggered by the accomplishments and skill of the women at Skidmore… stunned at how high the board scores were… impressed by the accomplishments … and still am, actually.” 00:24:45 The Great Race: originated with donation of huge amount of styrofoam; realized it would be great for making boats, opened up community contest to make boats out of anything and then race them across a pond out in Greenfield. 00:29:12 The old campus had problems with security. New campus building is beautiful, but we lost the faculty studio space, which had been a focal point of student-faculty activity. 00:31:04 During planning for new building, Cunningham spoke to architect and suggested a way to expand his office without expanding costs, so ended up with huge office! �00:32:56 While at Skidmore, “I started my own business, I had patents, I kept going on my scientific pursuits, I published in Nature magazine, … and I was very involved with my teaching … I just generally loved my teaching. My students were great, absolutely great.” “My goal was to present students with really exciting and interesting materials and circumstances where they could really just fulfill themselves, and my goal was to help them do that.” 00:34:41 In 1967, Skidmore art dept. didn’t even have a drill press. By 2017, had 3-D printers. 00:35:33 Upon starting, ordered many tools and taught students to use them. The existing faculty didn’t think it appropriate for women to use tools like bandsaws and compressors. 00:36:52 While sculpting one day, discovered method for craning force; published & patented. 00:40:19 Started company that built Seicon isolator, a device to absorb vibrations. 00:41:10 Started the business because he had presented info about the isolator to Caltrans, who offered to support a bridge project if he could raise $ for it. 00:41:47 No bridge, but raised over $3 million, learned a lot, enjoyed science and art combo. 00:43:12 After the business, time writing about conceptual art. Not yet published, but might. 00:44:41 In retirement, enjoying beach driving and fishing. Also doing 3-D printing sculpture. 00:45:38 To do 3-D art, one must know how to draw well. … “I’m having a lot of fun with it.” 00:47:05 Unlike riding a bike, the software is challenging to get back to after being away. Overall, the CAD (Computer Aided Design) software is “more difficult than you’d think." 00:49:00 “I regard myself as an incredibly lucky man.” I don’t …recall actually having a boss … I came from that generation where faculty would shout and argue with the president at faculty meetings.” Remembers one meeting where “Somebody took a swing at somebody else!” 00:51:30 On introducing students to using computers in the creative process, started incrementally. 00:52:56 Once when there was difficulty getting budget approval for supplies, met with Dean. “He was just so amazed at what I was showing to him … we got some neat stuff, really wonderful stuff.” 00:55:42 “It was just an extraordinary privilege. I had a lot to do! You know what I mean? I had a lot to do!” [laughs] 00:56:08 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/90a540b6ae834d682d09265a71f9886a.pdf 41169655b458e6632df97302f7647052 PDF Text Text Interview with John Cunningham by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, April 4, 2022. JOHN CUNNINGHAM: This is harder than I thought it was going to be. [laughs] LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber. It’s April 4th, 2022. I’m here with John Cunningham, retired from the Art Department, and our wonderful helper Susan Bender. And John, welcome. It’s really nice to see you after so many years. I just want to ask you to tell us where you grew up and how you came to be at Skidmore. So why don’t we start there. JC: Ok. I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. My uncle was a painter and he lived with us for years. So, when I was small, growing up, the smell of oil painting, like, just filled the house, and one of the things about it was, I guess when you grow up that way, you know, the idea of being an artist is just truly a real thing. There’s nothing odd or strange about people being artists — it’s just a thing that people do. I also wonder about the oil fumes. I always kind of feel, looking back on it, who knows? I could have been really intelligent [laughs] if it weren’t for those fumes! And I guess I was always interested in what I thought to be creative stuff. I did lots of projects when I was younger, and I was very, very good at science, and particularly mathematics, and so when I went off to college, at Kenyon College in Ohio, I was a … physical chemistry was my speciality. And I was … [laughs] actually, looking back on it, I tell my students about this and they feel it’s a little bit sick… I was remarkably good at it. I was remarkably good at the math. I could walk up to a blackboard in those days, and write out — actually I needed two blackboards — and write out the proof of the �Heisenberg uncertainty principle. And … I didn’t think of it at the time, I look back and I don’t even think my professors could do that. My senior year in college [laughs] I took a painting course. And that’s when I discovered that being creative really had nothing, necessarily, to do with science. One of the things about science I always thought was interesting, that for a thing to be real, for a thing to actually be considered to have happened, it has to happen more than once! [laughs]. If a thing happens just once — well I guess the Big Bang happened once, so I guess we have to accept that — but if things just happen once, scientists just assume it just really didn’t happen because it must be duplicable and be observed by others. And, and then I discovered art. Did that, you know. You reach out to that canvas and you blot your brush to that surface, every mark was special, every mark was unique, and I discovered that being creative had nothing to do with putting on a lab coat and mechanically reproducing experiments that hundreds of other people had done before. So, I took that one painting course and … LG: Was it the professor or people in the class who inspired you, or … the material? JC: It was me. Oh, and I had a great teacher, very imaginative, Joe Slate, very imaginative and… LG: What was his name? JC: Joe Slate. Joseph Slate. He was a Yale graduate, and one day in the spring of my senior year, Joe said to me, he said, … no, actually, I started it, because I said, “Hey Joe,” I said, “You know, I’m thinking of changing from chemistry and maybe focusing on art.” Joe goes, “Really?!” He says, “You know, I was going to ask you about that,” he said, “but I didn’t want to �change your opinion. I didn’t want to be forward,” he said. He said to me, would you like to go to Yale?” [laughs]. So I said, “Yeah, sure I’d like to go to Yale!” Because at that point it began to dawn on me that being creative was something far more exciting than just donning a lab coat and mechanically reproducing events that were well known and experienced before, but rather there were aspects of being creative that were tremendously exciting, really, really unique, and I was sure art was one of them. LG: So, you went to Yale for an MFA? JC: Yeah, and, with … but I went to Yale. Well first, Joe Slate set me up with an interview at Yale, see — because I had taken no art courses to speak of! [laughs] This one painting course! And I was applying for entrance at Yale Graduate School! But Yale in those days offered a BA and a BFA, and so I went up for my interview and the people there thought it was so cool — this was the old days, you could never get away with things like this nowadays — they thought it was so cool that a scientist person wanted to be an artist. I went up there, met a bunch of people, walked around, talked, and they said, “Okay, you’re in.” [laughs] And for the next 3 years I thought I was a special student, you know, but I wasn’t! I was just a student but I was a student who had absolutely no art experience whatsoever and I was in graduate school, see. LG: But you had had experience with oil painting? JC: Well, I’d done a little bit of, yeah, a semester of oil painting LG: But with sculpture? JC: No, I had no experience at all. Although my uncle, my uncle did study with Jackson Pollock at the … at the Munson Arts Institute in New York. He was a student with him. He said that the most intelligent thing he heard Jackson �Pollack ever say was “Gin is a great cathartic.” Now, I knew what gin was, I’m not sure, even today, I know what a cathartic is, [laughs] but it sounded really funny at the time. So, anyway, I loved … actually, looking back, I have to say, even when I was at Kenyon studying science, I loved college! I really loved college. You know. Although I have to say I wasn’t, I didn’t certainly get all As. I got A’s in those kind of things that interested me, the strange things that everybody else flunked. [laughs]. LG: John, what kinds of … well let me ask you, when did you get your degree from Yale? JC: Well, I have two degrees from Yale. Let me see, one was, I think, in ’63, to my surprise, they gave me a BA, and then in ’65 I got my MA from Yale. Actually, when I was at Yale I got a job — most of my fellow students at Yale got jobs in the Geology department doing, you know, drafting work in the Geology department. And so I went to the Geology department and said, “Hey, all my friends are working here. Have you got a job for me?” But I knew nothing about drafting! And they said to me, “What can you do?” And I said, “Well I know something about chemistry.” Turned out I knew a lot more about chemistry than anybody in the Geology department [laughs] who were accustomed to studying rocks! So, they put me in charge of a neutron activation lab, because that was my speciality when I was in college, and I was really very good at it. And, as a consequence of that — neutron activation is when you bombard a molecule with neutrons, and you create an unstable isotope and that emits radioactivity that’s proportional to the amount of that material in a substance. And we were working on processes where if you took a tablespoon of alcohol and mixed it in Lake Superior, we could measure it. [laughs] But, during the process I got very radioactive, and after my third … third, no second year, or so, my son was just born, the chair �of the Geology department called me into his office and he said, “John, I have to tell you something. You’ve just recorded more radioactivity than anybody else has ever recorded at Yale university!” [laughs] So, that was …I used to think it was funny, I brought my friends to the lab and I would wave my hands in front of the Geiger counter and I always thought it was funny. But you know in those days, who knew! We didn’t know. I always … I wondered a little bit about what the effect was on my health, but here I am at an advanced age and I seem to be doing alright, so! [laughs] LG: Ok, so when you left Yale, what year was that? JC: I think that was in ’65. But I went to, after I left Yale, I got a job working for a sculptor, a kinetic sculptor by the name of George Rickey. LG: And how did you meet George? JC: George sent a letter out to all of the graduate schools saying that he was looking for an assistant. He was looking for somebody who could weld, who could solder, who could do metal work and all these other things, and I could do those things so I responded. And, George and I, we had the most amazing relationship because George was an incredibly educated man, classically educated, and what we would do, he was a kinetic sculptor — kind of think of Calder, in a way, things that balance, you know, center of gravity, period functions, things like that — and we would sit around George’s table, right, in the morning drinking coffee, and on a napkin George would talk physics to me, back and forth, and he would draw these things out on a napkin and then I would go out into the studio and I would make them. And I was very good at the science part of it. One of the problems with George, he had other artists who were assistants and these were people who could make things but they never understood the science of �it, and so I was the first person he ever worked with who understood, you know, things like center of gravity, movements, you know, and so forth. LG: So how come … you only stayed with him … one year? JC: I worked with him for about three years, and at one point, I guess I walked in and I realized it was time for the little bird to fly the nest, you know? And I could easily see that I was getting too comfortable. And so what I did … [laughs] talk about, you know, well luck, talk about luck, and maybe that’s the secret to life, is luck, and being ready to act when that coin flips your way, you know. So, I sat down and got a map, and I was living in a house where, fortunately, we were paying very little rent, and I drew a circle on that map of commuting distance, right, and LG: And where was that house? JC: The house was in Chatham, NY. And … big circle of commuting distance, and within that circle were three colleges with significant art departments. And one was SUNY, one was Williams and one was Skidmore. And, so I just fired them off letters, saying, “Are you looking for a sculptor?” [laughs] And all three of them were!! Can you imagine that? And… LG: Well there was also a significant Yale presence here at Skidmore… JC: Oh yeah, but that wasn’t necessarily a welcoming thing in those days. LG: Oh? JC: Oh yeah. Oh boy, there were politics involved in that decision. Everybody was amazed at Skidmore that they hired me because those other three Yale guys [laughs] were very controversial. And yet, here again, they hired a fourth one, you know! Although I have to say I was a little bit of an outlier. Although come to think about it, I’m thinking … at that point, Yale graduates, with Josef Albers sort of background and direction, flooded the country with ideas about design and creativity that were aesthetically �magnetic, and these people put together very, very teachable experiences that produced just extraordinary results, just extraordinary results! There was a horrific flaw in the entire process, though, … and early on I kind of, I knew exactly what it was, because these people believed, truly believed in their heart of hearts, that they had defined creativity! They truly believed this. And, of course, if you just think about it for a second, the moment you define what being creative is, it ceases to be creative. I can’t understand why more people didn’t see that, you know? Although, as far as a teaching vehicle goes, they were able to produce individuals with just staggering skills. People who could manipulate color and form. We produced students who could draw with skills that you just don’t see nowadays. Our students could sit down with an H pencil and sketch you while you sat and talked to them, you know, they were that skilled. And … LG: So now are you talking about Skidmore students? JC: Skidmore students … well I’m talking about the Yale courses that were developed all across the country. And, of course, I was a part of that, so in that kind of context, I’m probably, as far as a teacher goes, more attractive, you know. LG: So, what courses did you teach when you started here? JC: Well, I taught … LG: And you started here in, again, 19… JC: ’67. 1967. It was an all-women’s school… it was an all-women’s school… Oh, can I tell you …? Okay, so, my very first interview with the chair of the department, Alice Mosher, who was this wonderful, wonderful, brilliant, brilliant woman. So, she sits down and she’s talking about the department and she’s, “Well…” and she describes the department and the faculty, and she’s “Oh, four or five of the faculty,” I can’t remember how many, �“married Skidmore students.” I said, “Oh really,” I said, you know, “That’s interesting.” [laughs] You know, didn’t think anything of it! “That’s good, I guess,” you know? Years later, I can remember talking to my student assistant and I said, “Yeah, when I came here it was really interesting, in my first interview the chair of the department said there were a number of faculty that married Skidmore students,” and the guy went, my assistant went, “What!?” He was horrified! He was shocked! And I, when he was shocked, I was shocked! I thought, “What did I say?” You know, “What did I say?” [laughs]. To make a long story short, there was a period when we started, Lynne, you must remember this, the faculty and the students were really, really close. Really close. The faculty were also close to their parents, the parents would come visit on the weekend, we’d have them over, we’d have Bloody Mary’s on a Saturday afternoon, you know, the drinking age was 18. We had “beer crits” [laughs] every Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock in my studio. And … it was an exciting time. Oh, another thing about it that I thought was interesting, as opposed to my view of artists today, is that we all shared. It was a sistership, it was a brotherhood, it was like, we were all engaged in this wonderful, exciting venture together, you know? Nowadays it’s every man or woman for yourself, you know? There’s not that sense of sharing and communication that existed then. LG: I think that may have been your department. JC: And, oh yes. Yeah, in particular. LG: Not all departments were like that. JC: I think that’s probably true. �LG: There was considerable sharing across departments, by individuals, though. JC: Yeah. No, I think you’re probably right on that. But it was also because, that Yale background, we had this project, we were all engaged in this dream, pursuing this dream, it was truly magical, looking back at it. There was a soul to our involvement with the class, and with teaching, that I think sort of evaporated over the years, you know? I feel privileged to have been able to be a part of it. LG: When you interviewed, did you interview with anybody besides Alice Mosher? JC: Oh yes. Edwin Moseley, who was Dean of the College, and uh, this was funny, so Edwin says to me, in our first interview, he says, “John, have you ever been to Skidmore before?” And I said, “Yeah, yes I have.” Well, I had because my brother’s girlfriend called me up at Kenyon once, I think I was a junior, called me up, this was my brother’s girlfriend, and she said to me, “Would you like to come to Skidmore’s dance weekend with me?” JC: I said, “I’m in the middle of Ohio, I have no way of getting there. Although I have a friend with a car. Can you get two or three of my friends dates and we’ll all drive up together?” And she said, “Sure.” So, we threw a case of beer in the back of a car and drove up to Skidmore. And, LG: Now this was a time when you could drink at 18 in New York but not in Ohio, is that correct? JC: Well, that didn’t slow us down in Ohio. I look back on it now, Kenyon was an all-male school, okay, so all we had to do was drink, you know? Skidmore was an all-women’s school and all they had to do was drink, I think, looking back on it. Davis, Tom Davis, was the chaplain. He told me once, he did a survey at Skidmore, probably a little before I got here, and he said, �“You know, we did a survey and discovered that at any given time, 50% of the girls were at other schools” because it was not that much fun to be, you know, all by yourself alone here at Skidmore, “and the other 50% wanted to leave but couldn’t!” [laughs] And while I was at Skidmore that changed, I have to say. We got co-educational; all of a sudden it was really, really rewarding, it was fun to be at Skidmore. LG: What difference did it make in your department to have men in the undergraduate classes? JC: Well, I have to tell you the first men were really kind of … chancy [laughs]. You ask yourself, Skidmore goes co-educational, what kind of guy would make that choice, right? So, our first candidates weren’t that strong, looking back on it. And I’ll never forget one of my good friends saying to me, “Boy,” she said to me, “You know, you really know when you’re hard up when those poor guys start to look good to you.” [laughs] And the first few years, you’ll remember this, the Skidmore girls voted men into all of the offices — do you remember that? That was also, I thought, really very revealing. But anyway, over the years things sort of evened out. It was a rough time for the college, but I think for those of us struggling through, it was a tremendously exciting time of flux, experimentation, and it was very, very alive. I’m not the only one looking back and feeling privileged being able to participate in that experience. LG: When … before we became a fully co-educational institution, there was four one-four, and, do you remember that men from Colgate would come over? JC: Four-one-four, I think, happened after we were, I’m pretty sure it did, we were co-educational, I think, by then. No? No. Because I was active … yeah, four-one-four. �LG: Because guys from Colgate would come over… JC: Yeah, and I had classes where guys from Troy came over, too. Troy — RPI. Yeah, I had a huge bunch of guys from RPI who would come. LG: Because one of the people who came from Colgate was a medical … well, he was studying to become a doctor, and his name was Ben Cohen. JC: Oh, I remember Ben Cohen! Oh my God, Ben Cohen was this … Ben, oh, it’s annoying, because Ben Cohen, Ben Cohen told the whole world that Cunningham flunked him! [laughs] in three dimensional. And I, here’s my chance to publicly set … I did not flunk Ben Cohen. [laughs] I gave Ben Cohen a permanent incomplete! [laughs] But, ah, no, I remember Ben Cohen very, very well. LG: And I remember Ben Cohen (*see note) because his father said he could not …um, he would not underwrite his college education if he left Colgate and decided not to be a doctor. He wanted to be an artist. JC: Yeah, yeah. LG: And I just am remembering that he then went into UWW instead. JC: Yeah. And I remember Ben Cohen at parties. We used to have student faculty parties, and I can remember on occasion stepping over Ben Cohen [laughs] at parties. But, I did not flunk him! He, actually, that was published in the magazine! I was shocked to see that published! [laughs]. But, no Ben was a great guy, though. He was really a great guy. LG: What were some of the other highlight moments of becoming co-educational? JC: Uhh… I will say this, that when I came to Skidmore as a young man, I grew up in a family with… I have two brothers, I went to Kenyon — it was all male, you know, and so when I arrived at Skidmore I was, as far as women go, I was I think rather shy, and I was absolutely staggered by the accomplishments and skill of the women at Skidmore. I remember going �through their college board scores as an advisor, and I was stunned at how high the board scores were — just absolutely stunned. And, that took me a long time … I got over that shyness, you may have noticed that [laughs]. But I was very, very shy. So, I started from a point of view where I really was impressed by the accomplishments of women at Skidmore, and still am, actually. And I think the guys came to Skidmore and ,all of a sudden, the college environment became whole and healthy, and men brought a very different sort of an attitude toward it, and we all grew, sort of, accordingly, but I have to say, looking back on it, some of my best friends today are women that I met, kind of back then as a consequence of shared activities, you know, and stuff… and men, too. LG: John, what are some of the other highlights from your experience at Skidmore? JC: Well of course we did the Great Race. Do you remember the Great Race? LG: Oh yeah! Why don’t you explain it? JC: Well in those days, see, if you really wanted to get a big crowd of people, all you had to do, since the drinking age was 18, was to get a keg of beer and a huge crowd would show up, see? So, if you had a project [laughs] that you wanted to do, getting it off the ground was really easy! So, about the time we started this I had arranged with — what is it, Monsanto? One of the big chemistry companies — to donate to Skidmore a boxcar full of Styrofoam. And, you have to see a boxcar to really understand how much Styrofoam that is! It’s a huge amount of Styrofoam! And I hadn’t considered how much it was. So anyway, the boxcar arrived at a siding and we had the Skidmore grounds people to take it … the only place we could put it on the old campus was in the steam room, the steam house, where they packed it in there in this great big industrial space and you went in there and you could just barely get �through and all the rest was Styrofoam! So, for years we made Styrofoam stuff. So, there we were in class one day and we’re thinking, “Hey, we’ve got all of this Styrofoam. It’s the perfect stuff to make boats. Let’s have a race!” [laughs] So it started in my class. So, we put posters up and I went and I talked to this guy Braim, who’s a local lawyer who owns — actually there’s a street named after him, and it’s Braim’s Pond; it’s up here in Greenfield, I think. And he gave us permission. In fact, he actually went and hired himself a master of ceremonies, which I thought was really kind of funny, but he really supported us. So, I put signs up and my assistant put signs up, and … I can remember my assistant, at that time, Mary KeatingLeahey, is her name now. So, we got a couple of kegs of beer, we put the kegs of beer on the side of the road where this pond was, and we sat there wondering, “is anybody going to show up?” [laughs] Feeling a little bit silly, but then, again, we had a couple of kegs of beer, at least we could drink beer [laughs] and then all of a sudden, at one point down the end of the road, we saw this car driving around the, it was an old dirt road, driving around this corner with this strange contraption strapped to the roof, and we knew we were good. And all these people showed up! And the pond, a week before, had been frozen, so the water was really, really cold. And so, for a series of years we held the Great Race! And we … what the hell was the prize? I’m trying to remember what the prize was. There was a whole series of rules, and the last rule, I think, was the best — the last rule was that you could cheat! [laughs] We made it very clear. LG: So, the idea was to make something with Styrofoam? JC: With anything. With anything! And the idea, we had a course laid out, see. And one time, since you could cheat, some guys from RPI came in wet suits and, in the middle of the night, and they laid a rope from one end of the lake �to the other, see, [laughs] and they had this contraption that they then tied the rope to and then when we said “start” the people on the other were like pulling on the rope! LG: Now did that ever continue on the new campus? JC: We did it for a couple of years and then I, you know, I … I thought that it was inappropriate for me to continue to be the prime mover of it and I just sort of tried to encourage the student body, just to take it over and sort of step out of it and it did happen, gosh, it still may be on the calendar, The Great Race, and they put this little notice up, I don’t think anybody shows up! But for years they would do this…[laughs]. LG: Let’s talk about the move to the new campus and how that affected you, how you adjusted to new space. JC: Oh well, the old campus was just a horrible, horrible thing, and the art department was the last to move. And we had terrible problems down there with security, so moving up here was a, just a wonderful opportunity. And, of course, the new building was beautiful. But, there were lots of things that we gave up. On the old campus, because you had all these old buildings, all the faculty had their own little studios. Now, the studio wouldn’t necessarily be a room any bigger than this, but it was your place to work. It was on campus. And, it was very funny, the plans always, always included faculty studios, as part of the future, and it’s sort of remarkable how, over the years, that was just forgotten. But I have to say, one of the things I greatly missed was the fact that my, our studios, the faculty studios, became just a focal point of student-faculty activity, on the old campus, and that we ended up losing. Our colleagues, outside of the department, always kind of … they would look at our building and see the teaching studios we have and somehow assume that those were our spaces, you know, but, really, they �weren’t — we couldn’t create our own work in the spaces reserved for students, and with supplies reserved for students, either. So, in the end I created my own studio, and many of the other faculty did, which meant that activities that used to — professional activities that used to involve Skidmore and my students ceased to exist because I was, you know, elsewhere. So that’s a price we paid. LG: Did you have any role to play in the planning of …? JC: Oh yes, oh yes. [laughs] So, my office was designed between ceramics, and there was another wing that was sculpture. And there was this little space, in between part, was my office, and I remember talking to the architect, “Hey look, do you realize that you could take that front wall of my office and move it forward another 20 feet [laughs] and all we have to do is just pay for a little bit more ceiling [laughs].” I said, “Furthermore, we can cut the expense by not putting any ceiling in, just leave the pipes open,” and so forth. So, I ended up with, I think, the biggest office on campus. In fact, Palamountain came to visit once and he’s looking around this brand-new building and somebody says, “Yeah, and this is John’s office” and Palamountain sticks his head in and then he goes, “How in the hell did Cunningham get this big space?” [laughs] I just happened to be there talking to the architect. [laughs]. But no, it was a beautiful space; I loved my office. And, in fact, when I retired I … for 50 years, I had a place on campus, you know, for 50 years, and it was always there. And that’s … LG: And you retired in what year? JC: I retired in, when did I retire … 2017? Yeah. Is that 50 years? Yeah. Something like that, yeah. So, I miss that office. I really do. Any place in Saratoga, I always had my office. And go hang out, go read, you know. But, �in fact, I haven’t been back to my office. It would make me feel sad. I’m hoping John Galt is in there….laughs] LG: So, were there other highlights that, you know, special moments for you, in the course of those 50 years? JC: Well, I think that, as I was saying before we started the formal part of the interview, I think …for me, I was really involved in doing things. I started my own business, I had patents, I kept going on my scientific pursuits, I published in Nature magazine, … and I was very involved with my teaching, I mean I just generally loved my teaching. My students were great, absolutely great. Wonderful, wonderful people. And, as I got older, I became very selfish, as I may have said, and if I could be on a committee and I thought I could make a difference I’d be on a committee. Otherwise, the hell with it. I think much of the stuff the faculty has to do involves jumping through hoops and I had already jumped through 50 years of hoops, so I just pursued my own heart and what I saw to be my students’ best interests. One of the things with my discipline, by the way, is that, as opposed to my friend who taught Physics, where much of the time he had to regretfully inform them that they just got a C minus, and hence their career as a doctor [laughs] was in question, you know, and suffered terrible phone calls from angry and hostile parents, my goal was to present students with really exciting and interesting materials and circumstances where they could really just fulfill themselves, and my goal was to help them do that. And at the very end I got heavily involved in three-dimensional printing, you know — computer processes. And, in fact, if I would be …one of the things that disappointed me a little bit about retiring is that in the three or four years just before I retired I was really able to bring sophisticated technologies like 3-D �printing to the Skidmore sculpture area, and just as we were getting off the ground I sort of left. [laughs] But I guess it’s ongoing now. In that same respect, when I came to teach at Skidmore the sculpture area had … like, a drill press [laughs]. No, wait a minute, it didn’t have a drill press! When I came, I ordered a drill press! I think they had a hand drill, you know! And that was the only tool they had. LG: So, you had to teach the students how to use the tools? JC: Yeah, oh, and that was … oh I remember the existing faculty were very upset because they didn’t think women should be … it was appropriate for women to use tools like that. Especially when I was ordering things like bandsaws and compressors. So, anyways, usually what I did was, I kind of outfitted Skidmore the way my own studio was outfitted … with like, well, in the end plasma cutters, welding equipment, woodworking stuff. My kind of work sort of spread over a variety of interests. Here is the interesting thing, though, my studio is bigger than my house at home and it has all of the kinds of stuff that Skidmore has, and now that I do 3-D printing, I don’t need any of it. [laughs] I don’t need any of it! I sit down in front of my computer, you know, and I create these drawings — which, by the way, is much harder than it sounds — hit a button, and a couple of weeks later a big box arrives on the front porch. And … I’m thinking that’s the future. That’s the future. That’s sort of the next step that I would have loved to have been able to see. LG: You mentioned that you had patents? JC: Yes. LG: Do you want to talk about that a little bit? JC: Uh, one day I was … I said that science sort of followed me around … I was making a piece of sculpture, right, and so I was reaching down my hands and had these little screen parts and I’m pushing them around, and, all of a �sudden, I saw a way of creating force that I knew nobody had ever seen before. I also knew for [sure-ity] certainty how the pyramids were built, how Easter Island was built, how Stonehenge was put together, and … but it seemed to be such an abstract, difficult thing … I was invited to be a guest lecturer at a Mensa convention once, and I brought all my models and things and at that point I hadn’t figured out the mathematics of it and I invited all of these intelligent people to look at this and see if they could help me kind of figure it out. You could see how it worked! You could see how you could lift something HUGE with a minimum of force, but mathematically I wasn’t able to see the picture until, [laughs] and every time I always say “whatever you do,” I say to my students, “Don’t throw away your old physics book.” [laughs] So I took my old college physics book, put it down, and discovered that I could figure out the math. And in those days, I don’t know if they still have the program, but NYU, which had a “premiero” physics department, had a relationship with the art department, or with the school, with Skidmore. You could go down to NYU and they would give you library services and stuff and help you do research and I went down there with the physics department at NYU. I sent them all my papers about how you could generate, or magnify, force using this principle, and I sent them all my mathematics, and I went down there. And I’ve since discovered that Larry Spruch, who was chairman of the department, was a world famous … world famous physicist! So, I went down to see him and I went in his office and there were four or five guys, and Larry Spruch was sitting in his office, and so I went down there and they were interviewing me about this process. And Larry, who by the way, had the deepest, strongest, most powerful voice of any human being I’ve ever met, he said, “John,” he says, “We’ve looked at your materials,” he says, “and John, it’s just garbage!” he said, “And,” he �said, “we almost just threw them in the trash!” and he actually threw them in the trash! [laughs] So I stood there … and … actually, looking back at all my projects and things, I always had … knock on wood, because there’s always an end to the story, you know, knock on wood, … I always had an ability to know what I didn’t know. Some people don’t have that ability at all, but, so far, I’ve always had that ability, you know, to know what I didn’t know. So, Larry … I’m going, “Yeah, but Larry, you see, you go like this, you go like this,” I go with my fingers, “and it’s an equilibrium and you … that is forcing that…” And Larry goes, “He’s right! He’s right!” [laughs] He says, “John,” he said, “you’d better publish this. We’ll help you publish it in Nature,” he said, “because if you don’t publish this idea,” he said, “somebody else is going to steal it.” That’s what they told me then. So not only did I publish it, but I also patented the constructions derived by it to build seismically isolated bridges and so forth. And I started a company — we marketed, for years, a device that would … absorb all the vibrations from your washing machine, you’ve got a washing machine it goes [wobble sound] like this. Our device would just totally solve the problem. In fact, Consumer Reports tested it, and they said, “We tested the Seicon isolator,” the washing machine isolator, “and it’s the only one we’ve ever tested that actually works!” [laughs] they said. But then they said, “but it’s very expensive!” [laughs]. Which pissed me off, you know? Caltrans … I went and made a presentation at Caltrans. Caltrans said that if I could find the funds to build a bridge, they would supervise it and they would test it, and I made arrangements to do that, but I had to raise the money to build the bridge. And not being a scientist, I didn’t have access, you know, to it. If I’d tried to write a grant proposal ,I didn’t even have the �vocabulary, you know, to do it. So, I decided to start a company — hopefully, my idea was, that we’d earn enough money to do the necessary research, but we got sort of sidelined … involved in other things. But anyway… Learned a lot being a businessman, though. Raised over three million dollars, actually, as part of the project. It was always funny, it’s like, people … I can remember prospective freshmen coming into my office, and usually, often, the father would be openly contemptuous of art as a future …[laughs]. The conversation would come up, “What do you do? What are you doing?” And at one point my company was invited to Bath Ironworks to see if we could apply the isolation system to the drive systems of Navy warships. So, I would say, “Yeah, this is what I’m doing.” [laughs] Only to get an angry letter from this guy saying that I’m supporting the military [laughs] establishment, see! I think it’s really cool, warships are really cool things! Oops! Anyway, so the science things, I sort of, I guess I never did separate it from my other interests, you know. LG: So, does that company still exist? JC: No, it sort of faded … faded out. It faded out. Well, when I was running it, it was going really well, but then I sort of lost interest in making money, and … I had other things to do. I’m really, super glad I did, too, you know, because I think I did … I ended up doing some really, really interesting things that I never would have done otherwise. LG: Like what? JC: Ah [laughs], well a lot of writing that hasn’t been published, okay. For example, I have written, I think, a staggering article about conceptual art, you know, based upon many of my experiences. And one of the things about getting older that I find really interesting, I have lots of things like this that I �haven’t published and I think they’re really, really important — it’s like my article for Nature, you know. LG: So where are you publishing? JC: I haven’t. It’s just living on my computer. Oh, little bits of it, little bits of it kind of go out into the world. But again, since I’m an artist and a sculptor and I didn’t come from a world that published, and things, and I think as a consequence I suffered from that. And I often think that since I’m retired now, I should be taking these efforts and I should be … because I may be gone [laughs] and it will all be forgotten and nobody will care! There’ll be this ton of stuff, nobody will even go through it, they’ll just put it in the garbage. [laughs] LG: So, what have you been doing since you retired? JC: Well, I just bought a brand-new Jeep Gladiator so I could really do substantial beach driving and fishing. [laughs] Okay. And I’m doing three-dimensional printing. I just ordered a work that’s done in stainless steel. It’s sort of an interesting process, it starts off with a powder, a bed of powder, and this laser fuses the powder, that’s how it makes it. And the interesting thing, since it’s in a powder, the form is supported so you can do delicate things, and I’m really interested to see that you could do stainless! It’s a modest size, it’s only about this big, and I’m really looking forward to seeing that. Although, this is interesting, I have, maybe, alluded to this earlier — I truly believe this — I look at the things I make, and they’re made with computer aided design programs, right, which are horrifically difficult to learn, you know, but to use any of these programs, to do them well, you have to kind of know how to draw, alright? And if you don’t know how to draw, you’re forced to lean on clip-art, and other methods, right? And so the quality of the artwork takes a huge hit. Nobody knows how to draw anymore. The people �teaching drawing don’t know how to draw any more. [laughs] Very, very few artists today can draw a flower pot and make it look like it’s sitting on a table top, for example, you know? And that’s one of the things that we used to do at Skidmore incredibly well, years ago. So, even with threedimensional printing, I have a feeling that the kind of work you’re going to see coming out of it is going to be limited, you know, in a way, because you are going to be limited by the innate skills of the creative minds making it. But, I’m not — it sounds like I’m discouraged, I’m not discouraged, I’m having a lot of fun with it. I should have brought some to show you, actually. LG: Will the artists have to learn code? JC: No, no, and I think that’s a huge mistake. I think people think they’re taking the off-the-shelf processes and using them, but they’re devilishly complicated. One interesting thing about software, I remember it being said that you never forget how to ride a bicycle, and that’s kind of true. You never forget how to ride a bicycle, but software, you forget how to do! [laughs] And one of the people my company was doing business with, one of the engineers remarked — he worked for a very large engineering firm — when their designers, when their people who worked with CAD programs, went on vacation, there was always a couple of weeks of down time for them to get back into the drawing because you forget! There’s something about the nature of using the software that, even if it’s sort of intuitive, it does not, it doesn’t stick with you. It’s very, very hard to do. And it’s funny because they have, Skidmore has started the, what is it, the Makerspace? And I always laugh because the people putting the Makerspace together haven’t really been doing three-dimensional printing or using the technology, and the biggest problem with the Makerspace is going to be how are you going �to get somebody to give you a drawing, a CAD drawing that’s adequate to create significant objects. And, I’ve never had a student come to me with those skills. So, it’s very, very... it’s much more difficult than you might think. Anyway, so that’s what I’m doing now. LG: We have about five more minutes left, so I’m curious to know if there’s anything we should include that we haven’t touched on, or that I haven’t asked about. JC: Well, no. Otherwise I should say, I may have said this already, I regard myself as an incredibly lucky man. That I’ve spent my whole life and I don’t think I ever recall actually having a boss, [laughs] you know? Surrounded … LG: I wonder how people like David Porter or subsequent art department heads would [laughs]… JC: I came from the, you know the generation. I came from that generation. I came from that generation where faculty would shout and argue with the president at faculty meetings. Do you remember that? You know? And, life has changed. Life has really, really changed. So, I always, I just assumed those prerogatives. It was a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And, uh, I have to say I … LG: Whom did you shout at? JC: What’s that? LG: Who remains in your head that you shouted at? JC: Oh, I remember one of our colleagues. Were you at that faculty meeting? There was this fight and this argument and I was looking at this sea of people, you know, and all of a sudden over the crowd I saw this fist go up in the air! Somebody took a swing at somebody else! I don’t know who was the swinger and who was the swingee! [laughs] �LG: What was the topic? I mean what was the controversy? Do you remember? I don’t. JC: Do you remember that Sue? It was when we were meeting in … LG: Was it Filene? JC: No, that hall over here in, what’s its name, LG: Palamountain? JC: No, no down, where are we here … LG: Starbuck? JC: No, no, Starbuck, yeah. One of the, uh …. no, not Starbuck, in, let’s see… LG: Oh, on the new campus? Originally, we were meeting in Filene and then we were meeting in Palamountain. JC: But in Starbuck isn’t there, there’s a big, big meeting room that was big nough for all of us and we were in that room. LG: I think it was Filene, JC: No, no, it wasn’t Filene, for sure, I remember. Anyway, oh tempers! And it’s funny, I have seen a change. When, I think the faculty used to say they were the college and I don’t believe you can say that now. I’m not sure it was a healthy thing to say that, or believe that, but nonetheless I think they, we thought that in those days. LG: Anything else we should ask, Susan? SUSAN BENDER: Yeah, I’d be interested — when did you start introducing students to using computers in their creative process? JC: I started … oh, I actually gave a talk, one of those alumni talks, recently, and I showed some of the work my students did, and, so I started, oh my gosh, eight or nine years ago? But I started off gently. Now, of course, I send off a file and this beautiful finished thing comes back. But we started off with doing things like, um, we have a plasma cutter and you can program that �plasma cutter to cut two dimensional shapes out, okay? And you can create a virtual three-dimensional object and you can cut slices through it, threedimensionally, and with that plasma cutter you can cut out these cross sections. And, you can then — oh the plasma cutter you could cut out your signature, I mean, it does a beautiful, clean job — and, you can weld them all together. So, I got into, we got into the computer thing kind of incrementally, to the point where I am now, where it’s like, yeah, I do the whole CAD program and I will do a three-dimensional thing, and like, little by little by little. Oh, there was one thing, it was about four years ago, where I would submit a budget for the supplies, and nothing would happen, you know, and I was getting so frustrated because it’s like, time was passing and we were missing out, and so I decided to make an appointment with the Dean, and I would bring the Dean all the stuff… LG: Who was that? JC: I probably shouldn’t say. [laughs] Anyway, so, I went into his office, right? And, you know he knew me and I knew him and we’d seen each other around and I would speak up and stuff, and finally I said “Ok, listen, I’ve got to talk to you about … this is who I am and this is what I’ve done.” I showed him my Nature publication, I told him I was a scientist and … he was horrified! He was just shocked. Because his attitude towards artists was that artists just simply weren’t that intelligent. I just got that sense. He was just so amazed at what I was showing to him, because like out of the blue this guy comes up to him and says “Hey, listen this is what we are doing and this is what I want to do with it.” I was saying to him, you know? And I have to say he picked the ball up. He picked the ball up and we got some neat stuff, really wonderful stuff. And then I had to retire. [laughs]No, I didn’t have to �retire, but I did step down at … I’d like to think at the height of my game. [laughs] SB: Get out while the getting’s good? JC: I think I did, yeah. LG: John this has been a delightful hour to spend with you, thank you for sharing some of your stories. JC: I have to say that the entire experience, I think it was staggeringly significant in that it also had a lot to do with people and personalities, it had to do with the times. I know a lot of people, I remember, who was it, the Dean, ahh, what’s her name, … I remember asking her, why so many people retired embittered? So many of our colleagues, I thought, would retire, kind of … just embittered, angry, you know? And I vowed I just wasn’t going to do that. And she said, “Oh well, the student evaluations,” you know, all these sorts of reasons. I never felt that way. I just … it was just an extraordinary privilege. [inaudible] I had a lot to do! You know what I mean? I had a lot to do! [laughs] SB: Thank you John, this has been delightful. JC: Well, you’re welcome, you’re very welcome. END *NOTE- Ben Cohen started Ben & Jerry’s � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Cunningham Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 56:08 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit October 24, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with John Cunningham Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 4, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource John Cunningham grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. In this interview he discusses how he combined his interest in physical chemistry and math with the art influence that surrounded him since childhood.  After receiving a BA and MFA from Yale, he joined the Skidmore art department in 1967 when Skidmore was still an all-female institution.  He discusses the influence of Josef Albers and the Yale approach to art that was prevalent among the 3 Yale-trained art professors already on the faculty, the effect of the transition to coeducation, the “Great Race” project to build a floatable object and the move to the new campus.  He further explores the introduction of the computer and later 3-D printing to art students.  Before and since his retirement in 2017 John has pursued science projects including an article published in "Nature" and presentations at science gatherings on building the pyramids.  John has received a patent for the Seicon isolator, favorably reviewed by "Consumer Reports."  Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History 3-D Printing 4-1-4 Academic Calendar Art & Science Campus Move coeducation Edwin Moseley Great Race on Braim Pond Josef Alpers Skidmore Social Life Yale Influence on Art https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8d0b9143230256c97c3fbed06a4f374d.jpg ed01d954424e8d184307e264db8d3ce3 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c02ab030e3e9195f9e23127654e2546b.m4a 0bf25d81fb7629f9a9820e3562df5a9b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/657f7b7b3ddb54cc266c51baa3734da1.pdf 3dc664538e36423b499fe2e46c9356c6 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Larry Ries Years at Skidmore: 1979 - 2004 Interviewer: Lynn Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: September 24, 2019 00:00:00 Header 00:00:30 Grew up poor, one of 9 children, in Kentucky; attended a Catholic high school in Wisconsin and graduated top of the class — “gave me a new lease on life.” 00:02:01 After HS, worked 2 years as migrant farm laborer, then attended a small Catholic college in Conesus, NY for 2 years until ran out of money, then moved home and finished English degree at Thomas Moore College in northern KY. 00:03:24 Next was awarded a teaching fellowship at Southern Illinois University; earned Masters in English. Then taught for 2 years in Italy at an international high school. 00:03:59 Returned to US and earned Doctorate in English at Southern Illinois University. 00:04:15 Family moved to Albany, where Ries taught English for 7 years at SUNY Albany, and then was an administrator for 2; wife worked reviewing doctoral programs for the NYS Ed dept. 00:05:25 During time at Albany wrote Wolf Masks, a book on contemporary British poetry. Despite publishing, didn’t get tenure, so after working administration, took advising position in 1979 in Skidmore’s prison program. Joe Bruchac was running it at that time. 00:06:00 Program at Great Meadows Correctional Facility was part of the University Without Walls (UWW), an external degree program originally funded by the Ford Foundation. 00:07:20 Originally the program offered both inmates and guards opportunity for 4-year degree. 00:08:12 Also was an on-campus element for paroled men who had done well in the program. 00:08:48 Combination of inmates & guards in same classes led to problems, so dropped guards. 00:09:18 Ries was also a lecturer on campus in the English department. 00:09:30 Ries led prison program from 1980 to 1985, then became Assistant Director of UWW. 00:10:23 Next became Director of the Skidmore Masters Program, another external degree program, though it did include an on-campus element. Ideal was 15 students; sometimes had 25. 00:13:07 Promoted to Skidmore grads and in Adirondack region (b/c few opportunities there). 00:15:03 Many factors led to end of program, including “a changing of the culture,” less focus on external programs, more on campus. Also, remote learning became more common; less need. 00:16:56 Loved teaching Liberals Studies 1 because of the wide range of reading and the opportunity to be educated and then to learn how to transfer that to students. 00:17:45 Working in the prison could sometimes be traumatic, being locked in with tough men. 00:19:30 Still, the men loved many teachers - eg. Betty Balevic, Helga Doblin — “they revered [Helga Doblin] because they never had good discipline before, they only had bad discipline so when someone did that for their betterment, they recognized that and they appreciated that.” 00:22:26 Once while Ries was teaching Death of a Salesman, “we were acting it out and …[one student] says, “But Pop don’t you understand, I’m a failure! I’m a failure!” and all the guys �started crying because it was their life all of a sudden you know, this sense of being a failure … it was such a moving moment.” 00:23:19 A difficult moment: when Skidmore financial support of prison teaching faculty wasn’t as strong as it could have been, considering Skidmore got PELL, TAP and HEOP money for it. 00:26:04 Recruited faculty by personal invitation and word of mouth from other faculty. 00:26:49 Even science courses were taught, although not with labs. 00:27:33 Received grant to bring computers into the prison; 1st program in NY to do that. 00:28:14 Some problems with faculty incl. inappropriate dress; not submitting grades on time. 00:31:40 Special experiences in the Masters program included working with elderly students, including Frank Crone, who did a thesis in religious studies and later funded a scholarship. 00:34:30 Students worked with a faculty advisor aligned with their area of study. 00:34:50 Sometimes hard for adult students who had other obligations, eg. a troubled child. 00:36:44 During initial on-campus seminar, students met with faculty advisor to design their program, which sometimes involved independent study credits, other times students would take classes at schools near them and apply transfer credits toward their Skidmore master’s degree. 00:38:06 Also added some evening classes for local students in the master’s program. 00:38:30 Different experiences than daytime classes, eg. taught “Growing Up In America” to seven women and one man; the man had been seeking his birth mother and found her during the course, and they “mothered” him and “it just worked beautifully as part of the course.” 00:39:31 The night courses allowed the students to “come and have actual discussions rather than work totally on their own and … that’s a better form of education usually than doing something completely independently.” 00:40:08 Enjoyed career at Skidmore, felt fortunate to have different positions and head a number of committees, “which gave me work with the wider community.” 00:40:35 One challenging one was the Benefits Committee, with which Ries had worked for a year to present recommendations that were challenged in one meeting; fortunately, President David Porter backed Ries up and it worked out. 00:43:15 One last memory from the prison program, interviewing one potential student, Robert Chambers, who “was just horrible, just terrible, and we rejected him and he sued the college, on the grounds of discrimination,” Fortunately, Chambers got transferred so suit declared moot. 00:45:23 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fee65f9b6fb5bf9c3d8f1b3988a1ebb9.pdf 286d3ac9ad4b8869290b650a97e7ff47 PDF Text Text Interview with Larry Reis by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, September 24, 2019. LYNNE GELBER: Good Morning, this is Lynne Gelber interviewing Larry Reis, with technical assistance of Sue Bender. It is September 24th, 2019. So Good Morning Larry, nice to see you. LARRY REIS: Good Morning Lynne, good morning Sue. SUE BENDER: Good Morning Larry LG: Let’s start off by telling us a little bit where you grew up LR: Oh wow (chuckles) I grew up in Kentucky, one of nine children to a German Catholic family, South of the Ohio river not too far from Cincinnati, and we were very poor and when I was 12 years old I got sent to a Catholic seminary up in Wisconsin where I went for four years of high school, which kind of changed my life. LG: How did it change your life? LR: I got an education I was always in trouble as a child and I kinda found out for the first time that I was smart (chuckles) never knew that before, the nuns weren’t very good in the school where I was LG: In Kentucky? LR: In Kentucky, and so I graduated first in my class up there, so it just gave me a new lease on life LG: Was that a different culture? Going to Wisconsin? LR: (laughs) Totally, they made fun of me all the time LG: Because of your accent? LR: Because of my accent, the teachers made me stand up in class and pronounce words that they laughed at when I pronounced them, so it was a weird experience, but it was a good one overall �LG: So where did you continue your education? Did you do that right away? LR: Uh no, I became a migrant worker for two years because after high school, I couldn’t go back home. My father was an abusive alcoholic father who shouldn’t have had any kids, but he had nine and so it wasn’t a good environment. We had a two-bedroom house for eleven people um so I just started working whatever work I could get. So I picked potatoes, picked grapes, you know for $2 before I started going to college. LG: So how did you decide to go to college? LR: (laughs) I didn’t want to pick apples and grapes for the rest of my life um so I um started out in Western, NY. I was out picking the depth of potatoes, and grapes in south of Rochester. There was a little community college down there at the time, a Catholic college called St. Michael’s. I don’t think it’s there any more in Canesus, NY and I went two years there, ran out of money, went home and finished up at Thomas Moore College in Northern Kentucky, a very good, little private college in Northern Kentucky. LG: And from there, where did you go? LR: I went to Southern Illinois University, I got an assistantship - had no money still LG: What did you major in, in college? LR: English, um went to SIU, Southern Illinois University and had a teaching fellowship so I taught two courses and um, got my Masters in two years and then went to Italy to teach for two years, went to Rome and taught in Rome at an International High School for two years and then came back to Southern Illinois. In the meantime, I’d gotten married and had a child in Italy and then came back and got my Doctorate degree at Southern Illinois University in English LG: And what brought you to Skidmore? �LR: Well, I started as an Assistant Professor at SUNY Albany and I was there for 9 years LG: Did you get that job through the MLA? LR: Uh yes, actually it was because of the MLA. I was late that year and they couldn’t go to MLA because Albany got snowed in and that year, (that was the year they got a 30-inch snowfall and the airports were closed) and so they didn’t do their interviews at MLA that year, so they did them later, and I was in the market so they invited me to Albany. So I came up, they offered me a job in the English department and I taught there.- It was a terribly political place at the time. It was just horrible and my wife was reviewing doctoral programs at that time for State Ed and they took away the doctoral program in English at SUNY Albany (laughs) and that put me in a terribly awkward position so they didn’t give me tenure the year my book came out. Then they took me in administration though for two years. LG: What was your book on? LR: Contemporary British Poetry, Wolf Masks was the name of it. So, they did take me in administration for two years, but it just left a bad taste. So I wanted to get out of there and since my wife was working still in Albany at State Ed, we wanted to stay in the area because she had her career fully started and uh so Skidmore had a job opening for an advisor in the prison program and in ‘79 I came up and interviewed and was offered that job. LG: With whom did you interview? LR: Who? LG: Yes LR: Don McCormack, Bob VanMeter, and Joe Bruchac. LG: Okay, and Who was the? That was under the Office of Special Programs, right? �LR: Yes, uh huh when Mark Gelber was Dean LG: Okay and what was Don McCormack’s position at that point? LR: He was head of UWW LG: So, this was part of the University without Walls? LR: University without Walls and Joe Bruchac was running the prison program at that time, so I was hired to work under Joe Bruchac. SB: Larry, could you explain the prison program for folks that might not know about it? LR: Okay, as part of the University Without Walls, which was an external degree program originally funded by the Ford Foundation. Before I got here they had started a program at Great Meadows correctional facility which is in Comstock, New York and it was set up to offer inmates and guards at that time a four-year degree. And when it began they had guards and inmates in the same classrooms and Skidmore faculty would go up there five nights a week to teach a three hour class. One night they would teach one class for three hours and I don’t know how it was before I got here but once I got involved, we had five faculty members going up there five nights a week. It was a big group of faculty offering classes up there and it’s 45 miles away so it was a good trek for anybody to go up there to teach. And in addition to that program, which graduated quite a few students, there was an on-campus element of the program where men who had good records inside the prison and who had done well in the program up there would be paroled to Skidmore campus and they would live on Skidmore campus and complete their education here, and there were quite a few. When I first arrived, there were five men on campus at that time. LG: Was there a problem with the guards being in the same classroom as the �inmates? LR: Yes, so it was a big problem. It turned out that many of the inmates were brighter than some of the guards (laughs) and that caused quite a conflict and that program fell apart quite quickly so by the time I got here, it was only open to inmates LG: Alright, did you have other positions at Skidmore? LR: I was a lecturer in the English department as well LG: Okay, how long were you with the University without Walls? LR: The second year, they made me head of the prison program and I think I did that for five years and then… LG: And what years were those? Do you remember? LR: Well, I came in ’79 so I think in ’80 - ’81 I became head until ’85 I believe then in ’85, I became the Assistant Director of University Without Walls under Bob VanMeter. Don McCormack moved up to be Dean of Special Programs. Bob VanMeter moved up and they made me the Assistant Director, so I got out of jail finally (laughs) after 7 years and so um, then I stayed in that position until whenever we started the masters’ program and I’m not sure what year that was when we started the master’s program because I became the first Director of the masters’ program. LG: Explain a little bit that masters’ program please. LR: Okay, the masters’ program was built on the model of the University Without Walls, which was an external degree program for adult students. And for many years, there had been talk of doing a masters’ program at Skidmore and finally, it was put together by a faculty committee, of which Phyllis Roth was a member, plus a whole host of other people LG: Was Phyllis Dean of the Faculty at that point? �LR: Yes, uh-huh and they put it together, went through all the faculty channels, etc. through State Ed and it became a program. The difference from UWW is that we did have an on-campus element of it. When students began their program, they had to come to Skidmore for a week and take a week-long graduate seminar and I always thought of that as kind of a bar-raising element to see if students could actually do the kind of work that we were going to ask them to do. And they had a research paper to do as an element of that seminar and it was a good way to find out if they had the basic skills that you need to do graduate research. And we washed out maybe 30% of the students at that seminar. In other words, if they couldn’t do that kind of work, there was no way they were going to do it independently afterwards. LG: On average, how many students then would be in a seminar? LR: In the early years, we were almost (laughs) we were almost too successful. We had 20, 25 a couple of times. We wanted to have 15. We thought 15 was the ideal size but there was always pressure for enrollment around here and so if we got 25 (laughs), we would keep 25 and try to make it, but we did really well I know in the early years. I know after a while, they had more trouble filling those seminars. LG: Why was that do you think? LR: I don’t know, I don’t know um, I know we did a lot of advertising. I used to send letters out to alumni of Skidmore. I would send out letters because I thought some of them would like to get a masters’ degree from Skidmore and we did, we got quite a bit. Our first graduate of the masters’ program was someone who had graduated as an undergraduate from Skidmore. And we also advertised…. LG: Do you remember who that was? LR: Katie..oh, I can’t remember her last name, I think it was Katie (laughs) and she �worked with Jeff Segrave and sports psychology was what she was doing, her program. And we advertised extensively throughout the Adirondacks also because people up there didn’t have access to graduate programs, and we were successful in bringing people who had degrees but didn’t have any graduate degrees LG: And these were primarily liberal arts? LR: Yes, they had to be interdisciplinary liberal arts programs…I always thought the program was quite successful I thought especially it served women, the women who got dumped by their husbands after graduate school (laughs) after they worked to put their husbands through graduate school you know, and then the husbands would split. They got their careers started and then these women were left, they had gone to college, but they had nothing else. We had quite a few of them coming back to get their degrees so they could launch their own careers and I thought that was a great use of the program. LG: So, was it low enrollment that made the program disappear? LR: I think it was a whole lot of things including changing of the culture here at the college LG: Can you explain that a little bit? LR: I get this more second hand because I wasn’t here any longer LG: What year did you retire? LR: I retired, well, in 2000, I went on a phased retirement and I retired fully in 2004 and they had four or five directors after me of the masters’ program, but people told me that the college became more inward as time went on instead of out, just the way that UWW collapsed and the masters hung on for a few more years but then that… and the faculty seemed more inward centered I would say, rather than the external programs weren’t as important and maybe, there was a lot of competition in these areas too. When we �started UWW, we were one of the few programs that offered that kind of education and the same with the masters’ program when we started that. We were an exception and I think that as time went on more and more people especially with online learning could do it in a whole host of ways. You could go to SUNY Albany and do most of your work as an external student, so people didn’t need this kind of learning as much anymore either. So I think there are a lot of factors engaged in that plus money (laughs) which is a whole ‘nother issue. LG: what do you think were some of the outstanding moments for you in your career at Skidmore? LR: I enjoyed teaching in Liberal Studies, the original liberal studies program. I taught every semester in LS 1 and I just thought that was a terrific program. I felt that it educated me as well and it helped me learn in a way to transfer that to students and I just loved that. I thought that was terrific, I loved the wide range of reading. If I was a student (chuckles), I would have taken a course like that if they had had it when I was around, so that was it. Working in the prison program is traumatic, you go up there everyday like I did for five, years - six years and hear those bars clank behind you and you’re in there with men, many of them. Comstock is like… LG: A maximum security? LR: It’s a maxi max you know, it’s one of the worst prisons in New York state where Silent Sam was kept, people like that um, and it’s filled with hardened criminals and these are not nice men I mean they (chuckles), they are tough and there are times when you feel your life threatened. One time they had to sedate a man because I told him he had to take a Sociology course and he said I’m not gonna take one of those nigger courses. His father was killed in the New Jersey riots in the black riots and his father was killed there. He �was a big, huge stevedore, he worked on the docks. His arms were that big! And Danny, he told (me), —he was (laughs) an Irish guy with a high-pitched voice —and I said, “Danny, if you wanna get a degree, you gotta do your social sciences requirement.” And he’s like, “Mr. Reis, I’m not gonna do that,” and I said, “Well you don’t have to get a degree, that’s your choice but if you want the degree..” and he just went off, he went crazy, and then they came down and put a needle in him right away, because I don’t think anybody could have handled him if he really got going, and there were things like that, and you know, it was always tricky having women going into that environment. It was always….most of the time, it worked well. I mean Betty Balevic was such a trooper, she was such a… she went up there from Schenectady every semester LG: She was in the Business Department? LR: Yes LG: And what did she teach? LR: She taught Business Management and Betty would go up there every semester and she had to drive from Schenectady up there, which was a long way and the students loved her. Helga Doblin would go up there and the students loved her, they needed good discipline LG: What did Helga teach? LR: She taught Latin and Greek up there and one time (chuckles) I was up there, we have a little office and I see Helga marching down the corridor *boom,boom,boom*, the only way that Helga could do it and I rush out and I said, “Helga what’s wrong?” and she says, “I gave a man a bathroom pass,” it was like high school, they had a pass you know, and only one could leave at a time because with three-hour courses so everybody had to get out the door. And she says, “He’s been gone ten minutes!” and I said, “Oh, you �want me to go and check on him?” “No, I do that!” (chuckles) and she walks, I would never walk into a bathroom in a maximum-security prison. Helga marches in and then a minute later, she has this guy by the ear and she’s brining him back, “You come back to class!” and she brings him back. This guy was a triple murderer (chuckles) and they revered her because they never had good discipline before, they only had bad discipline so when someone did that for their betterment, they recognized that and they appreciated that so she was special that way so.... But the prison, working in the prison was a special time for me here. I think it took its toll over six years, it was very exhausting work and it was night-time work in addition to day-time work, plus I taught a course up there once every other semester. LG: In? LR: In Literature LG: In Poetry? LR: No, well I did teach poetry courses, but I tried to do the general literature you know, poetry, drama, and fiction LG: Was it an Introduction to American Lit or something like that? LR: It was kind of a hybrid course like an Introduction to Lit, but I remember teaching “Death of a Salesman” one time, and we were acting it out and the guys were playing the different roles and one (chuckles) one of the guys was playing Biff, the oldest son of Willy Loman and he says, “But Pop don’t you understand, I’m a failure! I’m a failure!” and all the guys started crying because it was their life all of a sudden you know, this sense of being a failure I mean, it was such a moving moment. I was tearing up but I didn’t want to (laughs) show them that. I was being moved but also the boy there. So it was really great moments like that. LG: What were the most difficult moments? �LR: (long pause) I think the sense that at times, as a prison program we were cut loose on our own and didn’t get the kind of support that we wanted LG: From the Faculty or from the Administration? LR: Both, both and Rick Rosenfeld was my assistant in the program for a while and when we taught up there we would get paid a stipend. We didn’t get paid much, I mean to begin with, I don’t think we ever got paid equivalent to what the faculty got paid so you know, we weren’t paid really well, so when we taught we would get paid $1500 or something like that back in those days and then Don decided that he didn’t think that we should get paid anymore that we should just do it as part of our regular work. So Rick and I decided to go on strike (laughs) and we said, “Well, okay then we’re just not gonna teach anymore in that case!” Why would we do that? You know you work all day doing administrative work, and then you gotta prepare a class and then you gotta go up and teach three hours and you gotta travel an hour to get there and an hour to get home, and you’re just dead! Why would you do that? So they backed off of that, but that kinda thing, I mean, that was kinda..and UWW was turning $100,000 back to the college every year in surplus money LG: And the money was coming from? LR: The prison program LG: State money? Or Federal money? LR: Well, they got Pell and TAP right, every student got a Pell and a TAP grant plus a HEOP grant so there were three sources of funding coming in for every student and you know, we paid our faculty, but there was a huge surplus every year, and we turned that all back to the college, so when they didn’t want to pay us (chuckles), that was like a slap in the face like that’s what I felt maybe when you say difficult, those kinds of things it’s like for �me it would have been a no brainer to say this staff is important in what they’re doing and we got all this money, let’s support them as well as we can, and that didn’t happen all the time. LG: How did you recruit faculty? LR: Personally, I went around and sat in people’s offices all the time and said listen, I got this program (chuckles) I’m trying to run and it’s exciting and I got a lot of faculty that do it, and I think you’d really enjoy doing it. Phyllis (Roth) did it for a semester. LG: Teaching? LR: I forget what she taught. Her field whatever, you know, area of literature she taught you know, but it was mainly personal salesmanship and I think word of mouth from other faculty. Faculty who did it, had good experiences, who talked to other people. LG: Were there any general science courses? LR: Yes, Dick Lindeman taught every semester, taught Geology all the time, who else did we have? LG: Figured field trips would be a problem LR: (laughs) Yeah, a big problem, but Ken Johnson taught up there also. We had a number of people who taught science courses up there. There was no lab, although, when he taught Geology, he would take a lot of samples up and everything but there is technically no lab. They wouldn’t let us do that, and we got a grant finally to bring computers into the prison. We were the first program in New York State to do that. There’s a grant from a foundation in New York City that Special Programs still gets $20,000 a year from them, and I think it goes towards the Jazz Institute and things like that now, but they supported us for many years with money that allowed us to put computers in the prison. That was a real step forward. �LG: Alright, are there any other moments or interactions with faculty that come to mind? Or Administration? LR: Um, I remember I had difficulties at time with faculty. I had a female faculty who refused to wear a bra in the prison (chuckles) and I said, I can’t let you go in anymore. I said that’s cruel and unusual to the men in there and she finally changed but it was so obvious you know, and one of our faculty members with the guys that came out of prison, she would seek them out for sexual activity… stuff is always difficult (chuckles) you know. You’re dealing with adults first of all, who really can do whatever they want, and yet you know it’s not in the best interest of the people that kind of thing. Our last payment to the faculty was always dependent on them handing in their grades, their final grades, and we had some guy in Economics who didn’t stay here and he simply refused to hand in his grades. This was when I was assistant director. Ken Klotz was then directing the prison program at that time, and I don’t know why he was doing this, but he wanted to be paid and Ken said, “Well, let’s pay him and maybe he’ll…” I said, “No, if he’s not gonna do it with good will now, he’s certainly not gonna do it with good will after he gets his money.” And I had a talk with the guy and I said, “This is their money that’s paid for their education and they deserve their grades. If you’re angry at the administrators or something, you can’t hold their grades (chuckles), cause they’ve earned that and they deserve that and they’ve paid for that with their TAP and Pell money.” And Mehmet got real angry with me one time too. Mehmet and I are close friends. LG: Mehmet Odekon in Economics? LR: Yeah in Economics, and Mehmet wanted me to take off that rule about holding the grades until you pay. He said because we’re professionals! And I said, “I know you’re professional but Mehmet, we still have problems with �getting grades out of people. This is the only hold I have to get the grades.” And he stormed out of my office and Mehmet didn’t talk to me for a year after that. We’re very close friends now (chuckles) but he thought I was just being stupid and a hard ass or something and he was a faculty and I was an administrator and he wasn’t gonna take that from an administrator, but that kind of interaction happened a lot. LG: I wanna go back to the Masters program and ask what were the most fruitful experiences in that program? LR: There were so many. We had an older gentleman, he died last year in fact, it was in his nineties, but Frank Crone was his name and he was a donor to the college. He sat on fifteen boards and he wanted to do a program in Religious Studies. He was an old, Jewish gentleman, who wanted to…he had a firm belief that if people could (chuckles) only understand that Christianity and Judaism are really the same thing, that they grew out of the same seed, and he actually wrote a book about this later on, about the book of James, which was one of the apocryphal gospels and he worked with Sheldon Solomon, whom he finally had a blow up with, and Joel Smith was his faculty advisor LG: In Philosophy? LR: Right, in Philosophy and Religion LG: And Sheldon in Psychology? LR: Yes, and Sheldon in Psychology and this guy did a wonderful program and then he funded a scholarship program for the Masters program afterwards and we named it after him. The Crone Scholarship so that was really nice to happen LG: And he got his degree? LR: And he got his degree, and he didn’t need it for anything. This was just pure, he needed guidance in how to approach the subject he wanted to do �LG: And what subject did he want to do? Do you remember? LR: It was just called Religious Studies, I think. You know, it was the overall Master of Liberal Arts in Religious Studies LG: And there was a final paper that they had to write, a thesis? LR: Yes, that’s what he did his paper on, Christianity and Judaism being the same thing. He worked with Phil West also a lot at that time.. He was in English, passed away my goodness, ten or fifteen years ago now, Phil. LG: Okay, any other interesting theses that came out of that? LR: Let me think back, that’s a long way to think back (laughs) There were so many good students and they worked really closely with the faculty which was really good. Every student had their faculty advisor from a department in which they worked. It was just exemplary the way it worked when it worked well. Like all external programs, I think there are times when it doesn’t work at all for a student. The student can’t get through his or her own motivation. I had a student who called me one time and said she had an adopted child from Russia and the child was psychotic, that it been in one of those orphanages. She said sorry, I just can’t find time to do any studies, I’ve got to take care of this child and I said, you really need to take time for yourself, don’t worry about your studies, you got more important things to do. There was this old, Jewish woman who came into the program, she was from Florida. And Rose must have been between 65 and 70 when she came to the program. She was the sweetest woman in the world. She volunteered for everything down there. If any committee or any social work unit needed help, Rose was there. She couldn’t do academic work and she came, and she did our seminar and I looked at her paper and it was just terrible. It broke my heart, but I made the phone call and I talked to her for about an hour and I told her how much I admired her that she didn’t need a degree to do all the �good work that she was doing, that she ought to continue doing everything she’s doing, and just forget about(chuckles) getting a masters degree, and it went well, much better than I thought it was going . I thought I was gonna wind up with this woman crying on the phone, but she finally thought that was the best advice. LG: Larry, it occurs to me, we haven’t said how that program works. There’s the initial seminar and then what? LR: Okay, and at that time they meet with a faculty adviser to set up kind of an ideal program so, if you want to do religious studies, you might take a course in the Bible etc. and then it was up to the student to find the resources for those courses now, one of the major resources is simply, go to a university near where you live and take a course and then have it transferred into Skidmore LG: And that would mean just presenting the transcript? LR: A transcript, official transcript. The second thing would be to do an independent study with a Skidmore faculty member. In other words, if there is material you wouldn’t find in a normal course, the faculty member would help you put that material together into a special course, an independent study, I’m sure the same way undergraduates do at times here LG: And the faculty would be reimbursed for that? LR: Yes, as well as for mentoring the student as the advisor. And the third thing we did, we started after a while, was to start evening classes on campus for local students cause we always have a cadre of maybe 30 students in the program who were roughly from the Albany, Saratoga area and so one night a week we would have a course in which students could come on campus and study. I remember teaching that course one time. I taught a course called Growing Up in America, and I had seven women and one man, and �the man was a man who taught in the music department at the time. He was a classical guitarist and during the course of that course, he was looking for his birth mother and he found her during the course and we were reading all this Growing up in America with “Huckleberry Finn” and all that literature we were reading at that time and the seven women just mothered him like (laughs) he was a lost child and he would come in and tell us where he was in this search and it just worked beautifully as part of the course. LG: And the purpose of that evening course was to build a sense of belonging? LR: Well, it had to fit into their individual programs first of all but it came from a place where they could come and have actual discussions rather than work totally on their own and as all of us know, that’s a better form of education usually than doing something completely independently LG: Is there anything else about your experience at Skidmore that you would like to share? LR: I had a very good career at Skidmore, I enjoyed myself immensely. I always felt like there was a lot of work to do and I was fortunate to be able to have over my career, four or five different positions and I also headed a number of committees while I was here also, which gave me work with the wider community LG: What committees? LR: Benefits committee, what else would I be on? Benefits stuck out because that’s the year we totally redid benefits for retirement at one point and working in the Karl Broekhuisen era and Steve Harren era was quite a challenge (chuckles) when you’re working with money, but we did and that was good LG: And who was president at the time? �LR: David Porter was president because I remember an incident when we had worked a year and we brought out these recommendations LG: On benefits? LR: On benefits and it went to Financial Policy and Planning committee and Karl changed it in one meeting after our year’s work and two faculty members came to tell me this and I was so angry, I kicked him out of my office. I called David Porter and I said, “You asked me to chair this committee and I said I did, and we did this” David intervened, and it got changed back. I was so angry at that time with what Carl did. LG: Do you want to share what the changes were? LR: I forget what they were LG: It was important at the time? LR: It important at the time. It was like the number of years of service you needed, the strange combination of years of service and age before you could retire and get benefits, medical benefits and you’re like tiptoeing through crocodiles working through all this. Pat Lee won’t talk to me either at that time, because we were giving benefits to families and she argued with me that it should only be the faculty members themselves and no one else and I said but our sense of community is different than that but it was that kind of thing so to work a year and try to come out with something then have it changed in a two hour meeting was like Oh” LG: So the impetus was mostly financial? LR: Of course, yeah LG: Anything else you wanna share with us? LR: No, one good thing as an interesting story is that, do you remember the preppy murderer in NYC, strangled a girl having sex in Central Park? His name was Robert Chambers, he applied to our program up at Comstock and I was �assistant director at that time, I wasn’t in charge of the program, but Don McCormack, he was dean at the time, he said, “I want you to go up and interview this guy because it’s gonna be a kind of a touchy interview,” so I went up and interviewed him and it was just, he was just horrible, just terrible, and we rejected him and he sued the college, on the grounds of discrimination, because we would let all these Blacks and Hispanics in the program, and he was like good White boy and he wasn’t gonna sit and take this. So for many weeks, I had to meet with the college lawyers about this cause I was being sued personally as well as the college being sued, and it was just about to go before the judge and he got in trouble and got transferred out and the judge declared his suit moot cause he wasn’t there anyway so we just dodged a bullet on that one (laughs), but that was a big case at the time, little anecdote but kind of interesting LG: Good, well I wanna thank you very much for taking your time to share all these reminiscences with us LR: Thank you, it was interesting LG: The walk down memory lane? LR: Well, you know, the memory isn’t always real accurate all the time so it’s kind of fun to go back and think about things like that LG: Okay, thanks LR: Thank you LG: It’s been a pleasure � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Larry Ries Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 45:24 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 29, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Larry Ries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 24, 2019 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Larry Ries came to Skidmore in 1979 after teaching and working in the administration for 9 years at SUNY-Albany. His initial job was as an advisor in the University Without Walls prison program at Great Meadows Correctional Facility. He later became Assistant Director of UWW and then the first Director of the Skidmore’s Masters’ program, which was based on the UWW experience but required an interdisciplinary approach to study. He also taught as a lecturer in the English Department and Liberal Studies I, required of all first year-students at Skidmore. In this interview he describes his circuitous route to obtaining his PhD and provides vivid accounts of his experiences in many roles at Skidmore. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Cornstock Correctional Facility David Porter Interdisciplinary Collaboration MALS Phyllis Roth UWW https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4a696fa9e7d8091291cc5b0f17a55ece.jpg 0b1a271aa15ea6e7640b7210f8e52221 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/083c43768d6b0471e14b8b6cfe7cab8a.mp3 5178aa558a7baa964e9b5a5259be9ecc https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/235e628838ef9c872ea98d4f21e9a76c.pdf 0fbc3df74bf344cf48cada071e507b30 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Terry Diggory Years at Skidmore: 1977 - 2010 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: September 10, 2019 00:00:00 Header 00:00:35 Born outside Philadelphia, after 5th grade moved to Long Island through high school. College at Yale and graduate work at Oxford University. 00:01:10 Oxford schedule faster than US graduate programs, therefore started first tenure track teaching job (Skidmore fall 1977), at relatively early age, 26. 00:02:12 Had visited Saratoga Springs as a teenager and “liked the people that I met in interviewing” at the Modern Language Association in NYC. 00:02:32 “a big MLA … the face-off between M. H. Abrams and Hillis Miller … famous event.” 00:02:52 Taught modern poetry [specialty] and “Western Literature: The Classical Period.” 00:03:25 Interest in classical literature from broader interest in literature and in languages. Major at Yale: History, Arts and Letters program. Took Greek, Latin, and other classics courses. 00:04:36 Favorite courses to teach? Different over time. E.g. modern poetry and contemporary poetry. “…joke … everybody I was teaching in contemporary poetry was now dead.” 00:05:15 “Enjoyed the Classical World course … got me involved in…the Classical Studies Ecclesia … a group of people in various departments who were interested in classical studies.” 00:05:53 Included Tom Lewis (English department), Helga Doblin (was teaching classical languages at that time) Penny Jolly (Art History), Darnell Rucker (philosophy) 00:07:00 Highly involved in “the further development of interdisciplinary courses in the Liberal Studies program.” Taught in both Liberal Studies 1 & Liberal Studies 3. 00:07:46 Liberal Studies 3 was the humanities-based division "but all … Liberal Studies divisions looked out from their base to embrace some sort of interdisciplinary work.” 00:08:04 Taught Liberal Studies 3 course on the New York School painters and poets — “interdisciplinary in terms of the arts.” Also team-taught course on Darwinism in Liberal Studies 4, the science-based division. 00:08:42 Chaired Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, (CEPP), “…at the time when the faculty instituted the Liberal Studies program … I’d long had an interdisciplinary interest, and … Skidmore had a culture that was very open to interdisciplinary work.” 00:09:30 Resistance to Liberal Studies? Some simply resistance to change, some departments felt stretched, staff-time wise. “So, it was an interesting political shift in that sense.” 00:10:35 “And many departments really did strongly invest in Liberal Studies … placing themselves in the broader context of service to the college and to all students…” 00:11:15 Also twice English department chair, frequently on department Personnel committee, plus some ad hoc committees including a Presidential Search Committee. 00:13:30 The Presidential Search Committee that hired President Glotzbach. 00:14:08 1970s many big, risky changes for Skidmore “I came at a time when I think a lot of people at the Institution felt that that was at a low point. It very quickly picked up after that, but, because I was new, I didn’t really sense that as a low point because for me it was all new and exciting.” �00:15:29 Low points? Tensions surrounding controversial personnel decisions. “I valued the collegiality, the friendship, that I had with people who were on different sides of those issues.” 00:17:00 Also on the Dean of Faculty search committee that appointed Phyllis Roth. 00:17:14 Tang Museum planning group. “…commitment to making… the mission of the museum … interdisciplinary … That was a spirit that I was very much on board with.” 00:18:20 Toured other college museums and interviewed people about programs there. 00:18:58 Interviewed architects, brought Antoine Predock to Lyrical Ballad bookstore. 00:21:47 Also special: Liberal Studies program and the learning for both students and faculty. 00:23:40 Liberal Studies 1 “a team-taught course drawing on faculty from all different departments. … The faculty teaching in the course would share lectures.” 00:24:49 “Students would meet twice a week for the large lecture and then twice a week in seminar to discuss the reading and connect that to the presentation in the lecture.” 00:25:11 Occasionally featured a guest lecturer with a particular expertise. 00:25:30 David Porter was a regular guest, delivering a piano performance and lecture on creativity and human expression; playing music and being playful. 00:26:43 Retired in 2010, age 59, because college offered early retirement as a cost saving measure during recovery from the great recession. 00:28:19 Involved in and convener for Skidmore’s Retiree Initiative Planning Group. 00:29:14 A coordinator with the Saratoga Immigration Coalition (immigration support). 00:30:12 Service component - recruiting volunteers for English Language Learning programs or drivers to appointments. 00:31:20 Also legislative advocacy work at state and national level. Eg. “Drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants … speaking to the transportation need.” 00:32:41 “Phyllis was really devoted to the institution, … it seemed like she never slept! …She was up in the wee hours of the morning working on her email.” 00:33:15 “That devotion to the college and the sense that our best interests as a faculty were being closely looked after, I think was really important.” 00:33:29 “And she had a sense of vision. She was certainly engaged in the nascent ideas for … the Tang museum.” 00:33:58 “She was thinking about the full arc of faculty careers and so was very interested in developing retirement programs.” 00:34:20 “Phyllis … interdisciplinary mindset … so I think she was very interested in supporting all the divisions of the college.” 00:34:58 The Ren (Renaissance) Group, “an informal group of faculty who gathered to talk across the lines of the humanities and the sciences.” 00:35:35 “I think Phyllis, having been involved in those conversations, was in a very good position as Dean to not only listen to but also to speak for, let’s say, the sciences, as well as the humanities, in developing programs at the college.” 00:36:02 Faculty dining space… “many iterations of that.” 00:37:01 Faculty social culture change “…small village … everybody knew each other.” 00:37:46 Also, “fewer courses were offered during the lunch hour … gave a time when faculty were available to come together.” 00:38:39 "Later… scrambling to eat a bag lunch in my office … made all the more important efforts such as Phyllis’ to develop a dedicated place that was all about faculty coming together.” 00:39:15 Different now. “Of course small villages have their disadvantages as well as their advantages … but … something lost in … bigger institution where people don’t know each other.” �00:39:45 “That even changed in terms of operations like purchasing … with the growth of the college has come a more formal institutionalization.” 00:40:38 Growth in student body, faculty, administration, and “the mode of administration.” 00:41:21 Some nostalgia for the laid back, interpersonal approach 00:42:29 Moseley Lecturer (1992-3). Presented research on Grace Hartigan’s collaborative work with New York School poets, done in conjunction with an exhibit in Schick Art Gallery. 00:45:15 “The flexibility, the willingness on the part of many offices to pitch in to that project … how lucky I was to be part of an institution where that kind of collaboration was possible.” 00:45:56 “The core of the show was a particular series of paintings that Grace Hartigan had done where she had actually written text by the poet Frank O’Hara into the paintings, but … only one of those paintings was in a public collection.” 00:46:53 Skidmore art professor Harry Gaugh suggested contacting Hartigan directly for locations. “…in some cases the person on her list no longer had the painting and I had to do some further detective work.” 00:49:54 “It was interesting … seeing this one set of work by this one artist … in a very different setting … the context in which we first saw them is always part of my memory.” 00:50:31 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bc7ac2d0f9fba423300a6d08360b0f74.pdf 39bd3e5eb57ee4670f03ac8339575ff4 PDF Text Text Interview with Terry Diggory by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, September 10, 2019. LYNNE GELBER: Good morning, Terry. This is Lynne Gelber. It is September … TERRY DIGGORY: Tenth. LG: Tenth, 2019, and I am with Terry Diggory and this is the Oral History Project for Retirees. So, would you like to tell us when, or where you grew up and what brought you to Skidmore? TD: Oh, that’s going way back! [Laughs] LG: Well, that puts it in context. TD: I was born outside Philadelphia, spent time there until, through the fifth grade, and then my parents divorced and I moved with my mother and sister to Long Island. Went through high school on Long Island, and went off to college, and after graduate … LG: Where? TD: I went to college at Yale and then did graduate work at Oxford University. And that put me on a fast track because they have a different graduate system so I spent less time in graduate school than would have been typical if I had spent time in America. Which meant that I ended up at Skidmore, my first tenure track teaching job, at a relatively early age. I was 26 when I started teaching at Skidmore. It was the … LG: And you started when? TD: In 1977, fall of ’77. LG: Ok. Did you have other posts before Skidmore? TD: Um, I taught for two years at Yale while I was completing the graduate work, the dissertation, at Oxford, mostly because I couldn’t afford to stay in England much … much longer. �LG: So what brought you to Skidmore? TD: Well, it was a job offer, it was the best job offer in prospect. I already knew … we had visited Saratoga Springs when I was a teenager so I knew something about the area. I liked the people that I met in interviewing and it looked like a good place to start. LG: You interviewed at the MLA? TD: Yes. Yup. LG: In? TD: New York City. It was a big MLA because it was the face-off between M. H. Abrams and Hillis Miller. LG: Oh yes! TD: Famous event. LG: Ok, so, when you came to Skidmore, what were you teaching? TD: Well I was brought here to teach modern poetry, that was my specialty, but … LG: Is that what your dissertation was on? TD: Yes. But, because of the nature of, well Skidmore as a college and our department, of course I taught in a variety of areas. I also had an interest in classical literature so I taught what was then our “Western Literature, the Classical Period” course. LG: Where did your interest in classical literature come from? TD: Well, a broader interest in literature and also an interest in languages. So when I was in college … I hadn’t studied Greek and Latin previously but when I was in college I took both Greek and Latin. In fact I, I was not an English major in college; I was a major in what Yale called the History, Arts and Letters program. And I ended up taking, I took some English courses but �most of my courses were not in English, in fact, and they included courses in the classics. LG: Hmm, interesting. So, who was the department chair at the time, when you came? TD: Well, Bud Foulke was the chair but actually the year that I was hired Bud was on leave and Ralph Ciancio was acting chair at that time. So Bud came back to the chairmanship in the first year that I was actually teaching. LG: What were your favorite courses to teach? TD: That’s tough. Do you mean in terms of my entire career? Because there were different … different courses developed over time. I certainly liked modern poetry and contemporary poetry, although we had a joke about the fact that the longer we waited the more outdated the contemporary poets and contemporary poetry became until finally I realized that everybody I was teaching in contemporary poetry was now dead. And so those two courses. I very much enjoyed the Classical World course that I taught as well. And in fact that got me involved in one of the first interdisciplinary programs that I was connected with at Skidmore and that is the Classical Studies Ecclesia, we called ourselves, at first; it was just a group of people, there was no Classics department at that time, it was just a group of people in various departments who were interested in classical studies. LG: Who made up that, the Classical Ecclesia? TD: Well, Tom Lewis in my department, was a big supporter of that. Helga Doblin was central because she was actually the person who was teaching classical languages at that time. Even though, again, in her case, that wasn’t really what she was brought for but that was a strong interest of hers. And there were people in Art History … oh, I’m trying to think who … let’s see, oh, Penny Jolly, when she came, early on, I believe she was involved in that. People in, of course, philosophy. So … LG: Darnell? TD: Yeah, Darnell. LG: Darnell Rucker �TD: Right. LG: Good. So what other courses besides those did you really enjoy teaching? TD: Well, as the college evolved, one of the big developments that I really embraced was the further development of interdisciplinary courses in the Liberal Studies program. And, that became a big investment of my time and I really enjoyed teaching in both Liberal Studies 1, the introductory course that for a while all first year students were required to take, and then also in the Liberal Studies 3 division. And, again, kind of like … LG: Was Liberal Studies 3 division-wide? TD: It was sort of the humanities-based division but all of them, all those Liberal Studies divisions looked out from their base to embrace some sort of interdisciplinary work. So the course that I taught in that division was on the New York School painters and poets. So in that case it was interdisciplinary in terms of the arts, but I also taught in Liberal Studies 4, which was the science-based division, and I taught, team-taught, actually, a course in Darwinism as part of that. LG: Ok, the Liberal Studies program - when did that start? TD: Um, early ‘80s. And I was the chair of the, of CEPP, the curriculum planning committee, at the time when the faculty instituted the Liberal Studies program. So in that sense, even before the courses were created, I already had an investment in it. But, as I said, about my undergraduate work, I’d long had an interdisciplinary interest. And I had a sense, too, that already, because of my work in Classical Studies and so on, that Skidmore had a culture that was very open to interdisciplinary work. LG: Did you have any resistance to that? TD: Oh sure, yeah, yeah. LG: Which consisted of what? TD: Well, of course, in some cases there’s simply resistance to change. You �know, “this is different. We don’t like it. We like what we’re doing now and we want to keep it that way.” So there was that kind of resistance. There was resistance on the part of departments who felt, in terms of their staffing restrictions, that they were already stretched to offer the courses that they needed to staff their major requirements, let’s say. Um, and they didn’t feel that they could, what they saw as, quote, “giving up staff time” to teaching a course which they regarded as being outside of the department. So, it was an interesting political shift in that sense, in that, I think, to the extent, and many departments really did strongly invest in Liberal Studies, but they were, by doing that, they were placing themselves in the broader context of service to the college and to all students rather than saying “We’re here for our particular discipline.” And I think that affected what was already here in the spirit of interdisciplinary work, but I think that it had a broader effect as the Liberal Studies program took root. LG: In addition to the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, CEPP, were you on other committees that were significant to you? TD: Yes, especially in my department. CEPP was the major committee that I had several stints on at the college level, with the exception of some ad hoc committees like Presidential Search Committee and things like that, which are obviously important but not a standing committee. But given the fact that the English department is a large department, we have a pretty complex committee structure internally. So, for instance, I, in addition to being department chair at two different occasions, LG: When was the first time? TD: When I was department chair? LG: Yeah, do you know the date? TD: Um, I’m very bad on dates. [laughs] LG: Ok. TD: We could look that up. But, of course the department chair involved me in personnel work, but we also have our own Personnel Committee within the department and when I wasn’t chairing the department, and the chair exofficio sits on the Personnel committee, I was frequently serving on the �department Personnel committee. And that’s one reason why … some people are surprised when I tell them that I never served on CAPT, the College Appointments Promotion and Tenure committee, which is certainly, and rightly so, considered a major if not the major committee for the college. But the reason is simply that, in my case, that I didn’t serve on CAPT was that I was doing so much personnel work at the level of my department that I felt that, you know that’s where, that part of my energy was being channelled and I didn’t have the extra resources, personally, to commit myself to CAPT. LG: You mentioned presidential search. Which president search ended up with you on it? TD: Um, I was on the search committee that brought the current president, President Glotzbach, here. LG: Ok. And your role was just as a member of the? TD: Yeah, yeah, yup. LG: What was the lowest point for you, as a faculty person or as a member of the Skidmore community? TD: Umm, … that’s hard to say because I don’t really think of a lot of low points. Interestingly, even before I started at Skidmore, when we … we moved to Saratoga the summer before I started and we had a house right near the race track but also right next door to the Dean of Students, who was Claire Olds at the time. And I was just getting to know more about the college and I remember talking with Claire, kind of over the garden fence, and this was in August and she said, “Well, things are looking pretty good. It looks like we are going to make our class for this year.” And this was still, at the time, during the 1970s when Skidmore had gone through a lot of changes, risky things like building the new campus, going co-ed, and it was struggling to attract students. So, I came at a time when I think a lot of people at the institution felt that that was at a low point. It very quickly picked up after that, but, because I was new, I didn’t really sense that as a low point because for me it was all new and exciting. TD: I think the low points probably, … again, involved some personnel decisions, �some hiring decisions that were controversial. Some tenure promotion decisions that were controversial. I don’t regret my role in those decisions, but they were always personally difficult because of the tensions that were a part of that, and, you know I valued the collegiality, the friendship, that I had with people who were on different sides of those issues and, you know, you always wonder, “So, am I gonna lose some friends because of these issues?” And I have to say that on the whole I’m very grateful that despite those controversies, that I felt that I was able to maintain friendships with people who were on the other side of the controversy. But it was tough-going through those times. LG: That’s remarkable … umm, what can I say,… ambassadorial work. Were there other committees outside of the department that you served on or other functions that you had while you were here? TD: Well, I was also on the Dean of Faculty search committee that resulted in the appointment of Phyllis Roth. I was on the planning group for the Tang Museum, and that was a really exciting time. I mean to me … LG: Tell us a little bit about that. TD: Well to me, in the time that I served at Skidmore, having the Tang Museum develop here was certainly a real high point. Again, it also speaks, of course, to the interdisciplinary interests of the college, because, right from the beginning of the concept of the Tang there was a real commitment to making this not simply an adjunct of the art department — it was certainly going to feature the arts — but the mission of the museum was very early on determined to be interdisciplinary. So, again, that was a spirit that I was very much on board with. LG: Did you meet with the architects? TD: Yes, we met with the architects. We also did, the first step, actually, other than, you know, just planning meetings, was doing some touring to other college museums to see how they were set up physically, to interview people about programs there. So I remember we visited Colby College, Williams College, Dartmouth, umm, and those were very interesting experiences. And then we did, also, interview the architects. In fact, I think I may have been one of the first Skidmore people to meet the eventually appointed architect, Antoine Predock, when he first came to campus. He came, this was before �he had been selected, but he wanted to get to know more about Skidmore and he came during the summer and, interestingly, one of the first things that he wanted to do was to go … he said, “Is there a good local bookstore?” So we went down to Lyrical Ballad bookstore, in downtown Saratoga Springs, and he just bought a lot of books about area history, Saratoga history and the history of upstate New York and so on. And it turns out that what he was doing with these, he went back to his studio and he used the materials from these books to develop a kind of conceptual sense of the spirit of the community. And, so again, it wasn’t in terms of practical design, but it was almost a visual collage that would symbolize to him something that he would then translate into the design of the museum. And he was very committed, I think, both in terms of his own theory of architecture, but also because he was an architect who had been primarily associated with the west and the southwest, and he was conscious that this would be a commission for him in the northeast, and he … LG: Was he aware of the climate and the snow? TD: Yes. Yes … yes he was. And he wanted to really show us that he understood who we were as an institution and what this region was all about. And I think that was the factor, really, that got him the commission to design the museum. Because, unlike some of the other architects, who basically came in and said, “I’m a famous architect. You’ll have one of my buildings and you’ll be lucky to have it,” what Predock said was, you know, “This is not about me. This is about Skidmore. I want to make sure that the building that we build is really going to be integrated with the overall mission of the college.” And that was, that was very persuasive. And I think that’s what we got. LG: I’m glad you talked about that. Other special moments that you can recall? TD: Well, again the special moments, not so much the committees but the special moments would be going back to the Liberal Studies program and what, especially Liberal Studies 1 meant for those who were involved in it. And again I think for the college as a whole, in terms of faculty development. I mean, obviously the goal was to introduce students to liberal arts education, but in the course of doing that, I think the faculty learned from each other a great deal. And again, there was resistance. You know, some faculty felt, “this is a real stretch for me.” But of course, one of the things that we learned from each other was a broader range of pedagogical strategies. And �the Liberal Studies 1 faculty would meet on a weekly basis and talk about what the topic was for that week, what approach we might take to dealing with the material in our seminars, and then of course there would be the large group lectures and we would be exposed to our colleagues lecturing, which, again, was not something that would normally have been available to us. So that was a real highlight, to me, for the college. LG: Do you want to mention how the Liberal Studies 1 was structured? TD: Sure. LG: For those who aren’t familiar with it? TD: Sure. It was a team-taught course drawing on faculty from all different departments and because every student, every first-year student, was required to take it, we had to have a lot of sections. And there were sections, about 15 students per section, and a faculty member was assigned to the section but then the faculty teaching in the course would share lectures. So, actually because we didn’t have a lecture space at that time, big enough to fit the entire class, we divided up, at one point we actually did three lectures — we did the same lecture three different times. Then we got it down to two times and we, the last space I think we used was the theater, and students would meet twice a week … LG: Palamountain? TD: Palamountain Hall, right. Students would meet twice a week for the large lecture and then twice a week in seminar to discuss the reading and connect that to the presentation in the lecture. LG: And who gave the lectures? TD: It was mostly the faculty who were also teaching seminars, but occasionally, if we felt that a particular expertise was needed that wasn’t already represented by the faculty teaching the seminars, we would ask for a guest lecturer to come in, from another department. LG: Who were some of the guests? Do you remember? TD: Umm, well … �LG: Was David Porter one of them? TD: Yes, David Porter loved to give a presentation … there was a section … LG: He played piano, right? TD: That’s right, there was a section about, it was about creativity, basically, and human expression, and he loved giving a presentation that he thought of as about play, and by that he meant both, you know, playing a musical instrument, but also being playful. And, so, yeah, he would often do the prepared piano — a la John Cage — and show what could be done with that. And he was, of course, a wonderful lecturer as well as a performer, and that was a very special guest appearance that we relied on. He did that a number of years. LG: Ok. Umm, tell us what you’ve been doing since you retired, and when, exactly, did you retire? TD: I retired in 2010, which was early retirement, by most standards, but that was during the period of the, or at least the recovery from the great recession, and Skidmore had offered early retirement packages because they were trying to offload some of the more … senior members off the payroll, as a cost saving measure. And I had not been thinking, frankly, of retiring at that time. Although, you know, I was beginning to look at when retirement might come, say three or five years in the future. LG: How old were you? TD: Well, I was actually 58 when I made the decision and then 59 by the time I retired. So anyhow I decided to take the early retirement package. LG: And that was what, that package? TD: It was a salary plus enhancement, that is, you got a portion of salary on top of your regular salary so you … LG: As opposed to phased retirement. TD: Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t … I went cold turkey. Right, I simply quit teaching �at that point. although I did not stop, cut ties with the college. And one of the things that I had already begun to become involved in was an evolving retiree group, which hadn’t existed at the college. But my colleague Phyllis Roth had been very interested in this as Dean, and when she retired, just a little bit before me, a fund developed in her honor which was designed to fund retiree activities of some sort. And out of that grew what we now call the Retiree Initiative Planning Group. And I’ve continued with that and serve as the convener for that group. So that’s been one of the things that I’ve been doing since retirement. LG: What are some of the other things? TD: Well the main preoccupation right now, since the last presidential election in 2016, … immigration has come into the foreground of national debate, and I became involved, initially through the church that my wife and I attend in Saratoga Springs, in immigration support work in the community. And a number of faith communities and one civic organization, Saratoga Unites, came together to form what we call the Saratoga Immigration Coalition, and I’m one of the coordinators for that. And we do a whole range of support activities, advocacy activities, for … LG: What kind of support activities? TD: We work with local service providers like the Saratoga County EOC, the Economic Opportunity Council, in recruiting, let’s say, volunteers for English Language Learning programs that they offer. We also collaborate with them in a transportation program, because a number of immigrants in our area, especially if they are undocumented, cannot drive, and yet they have children in the school system, they need to get to school appointments, they need to get to grocery stores, they need to get to medical appointments. So we have a cadre of volunteer drivers so that somebody can request, through the staff member for the Saratoga EOC, a ride at a certain time coming up next week, and we will get a volunteer driver to take them to that appointment. So that’s one, that’s the service component. But we’ve also been involved in advocacy work, both at the state and, to some extent, also at the national level in terms of legislation. We were … our coalition was a regional partner in the local, recent effort to get drivers licenses for which undocumented immigrants in New York State would be qualified. So again, that was speaking to the transportation need. �Susan Bender: Terry, I’m going to … this is Susan Bender, I’m going to insert my voice for a minute. I’m just the tech person, but, reflecting back on your interview and what you’ve been talking about, you mentioned that you served on the search committee that ultimately ended with Phyllis Roth’s appointment as Dean. I wonder if you could reflect back on Phyllis’ Deanship and talk a little bit about her contributions to the college in the years that she was here. TD: Well Phyllis was really devoted to the institution, so … she was notorious for, it seemed like she never slept! You would look at the, when she would send out emails you would look at the time stamp on it, and you could see that she was up in the wee hours of the morning working on her email. So, I think just that devotion to the college and the sense that, our best interests as a faculty were being closely looked after, I think was really important. And she had a sense of vision, she was certainly engaged in the nascent ideas for the museum, for the Tang museum. I’ve already mentioned the fact that she was thinking about the full arc of faculty careers and so was very interested in developing retirement programs. And I think she, although of course there’s always suspicion when somebody comes out of the faculty into an administrative position like that, is she going to play favorites? Is she going to…, you know, favor, in the case of Phyllis, the humanities over other divisions of the college? And Phyllis, and I know this personally because of other informal projects that I was involved with Phyllis in, that she, again, embodied that interdisciplinary mindset that I’ve already spoken about, so I think she was very interested in supporting all the divisions of the college. TD: The informal project that Phyllis and I participated in together was another interesting manifestation of the interdisciplinary work, or the interdisciplinary spirit of the college. We called it the Ren group, which didn’t stand for the bird but stood for Renaissance, and the idea that, you know, the renaissance person was somebody like Leonardo da Vinci, who was an artist, a scientist, all disciplines wrapped up in one, and it was just an informal group of faculty who got together especially to talk across the lines of the humanities and the sciences. And I think Phyllis, having been involved in those conversations, was in a very good position as Dean to not only listen to but also to speak for, let’s say, the sciences, as well as the humanities, in developing programs at the college. LG: As a support for that initiative of getting faculty to talk to one another, were you involved in her decision to create a faculty dining space? �TD: Well yes, and of course there are many iterations of that, but I wasn’t involved directly in the planning but I was certainly aware of her interest in developing that. And, you know that’s come and gone, alas. I mean the, each iteration of that plan has come and gone. LG: It was started first in Falstaff’s. TD: That’s right, yeah. LG: Because the students were no longer using it. TD: Yeah. Well actually, early on I think there was a version of it in the Surrey, and then it really took off in Falstaff’s and then for a while it was over in Case Center. TD: Yeah, yeah. That’s been something, that’s also an interesting topic to talk about, and that is faculty social culture. I mean in the time that I’ve been at the college that’s changed quite a bit. We were, when I first came here Skidmore was a small village, and everybody knew each other. The Dean of the Faculty at that time, Eric Weller, was very conscious, also, as Phyllis was later, of promoting the social life. He would always have a big faculty party at his house. I also remember, kind of nostalgically, that, I think, actually, fewer courses were offered, and so the registrar was able to actually kind of schedule a lunch hour into the schedule of courses. So that, maybe … I’m not sure if no courses, but fewer courses were offered during the lunch hour and there was a time, that gave a time when faculty were available to come together. Right. And we would come together in the Spa and you would just show up at a table, and so that wasn’t formally a faculty/staff club or anything like that, but it was just a time when faculty could just sit down and, you know, chat with each other over lunch. And I remember, later on, both because of the pressures that had accumulated on my shoulders but I think also just part of the changing culture of the college that I ended up, for the most part, scrambling to eat a bag lunch in my office, you know, in between meetings or in between classes or something like that. And so I think that made all the more important efforts such as Phyllis’ to develop a dedicated place that was all about faculty coming together, yeah. And, you know, we are a different institution now, we’re not the small village. And of course small villages have their disadvantages as well as their advantages, you know. There’s always that sense that somebody’s �looking over your shoulder and, you know gossip abounds. But, and now there’s not that kind of hothouse atmosphere, but I think there is something lost in the sense of a bigger institution where people don’t know each other. But that even changed in terms of operations like purchasing. I mean I remember early on at Skidmore if you needed supplies for the department office, basically the department chair or the secretary would go out to a local store, you know, buy a bunch of pencils and then walk into the business office and present the receipt and get reimbursed, and that was the purchasing procedure. And of course now you have multiple forms that you have to fill out and you have to go through authorized suppliers and so on, so with the growth of the college has come a more formal institutionalization. LG: When you say growth of the college are you referring to the student body or the administration or the faculty? TD: Well overall. Yeah, the student body has grown, faculty has grown, but also certainly the administration and the mode of administration has changed as well. So, it’s gotten more, you know, obviously some would say more professional, you know, we follow best practices for tracking finances and business measures and so on, which, I’m sure, is certainly to the good in terms of the financial security of the college. But, again I’m still kind of nostalgic for the laid-back, kind of slap-dash approach of doing things. LG: The interpersonal relationships? TD: Yeah, absolutely! Yeah. Because you, … yeah, and that was a personal relationship. I mean, when you walked into the business office, you knew the person that was processing your reimbursement. Or you knew who to call … you know, something … a problem was coming up you’d say, “Oh, well, so and so,” you wouldn’t even think of it in terms of the office, I mean now that’s what you say, “Well, I have to call Facilities about this,” but in those days it was all personal, “Oh, I have to call so and so, she’ll know how to fix this,” [laughs]. SB: Rose Verro. TD: Yeah, right [laughs]. Yeah, absolutely. LG: Are there other things that you want to include in this interview? �TD: Um, no, I think we’ve covered a lot. Umm … LG: Anything that sticks out in your mind? TD: Well, a moment that, you know, personally sticks out in my mind that I’m very grateful for, and again illustrates the collaborative nature of the college, is the opportunity that was presented to me — I was named the Moseley Lecturer one year, and I had been working, the research that I had been doing was, again growing out of my Liberal Studies course on the New York School poets and painters, and I had been researching a particular artist named Grace Hartigan, who worked with poets like Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, people now known as the New York School poets, and I had gotten interested in the possibility of doing a show of her work, and so when the invitation to deliver the Moseley Lecture came I asked if I could use that as the occasion for not only giving the lecture but also doing a show at the Schick Art Gallery. And of course that required the agreement and full collaboration of the art gallery. At that time David Miller was the director of the gallery and he really embraced the idea. So again here’s this, there was no sense of guarding turf, but …you know, this English professor wanted to put on a show in the art gallery, that was fine with him, and we worked it out and he invested a lot of his own effort. LG: When was this? TD: Again I’m bad at dates. Early nineties? [laughs]. And so that required the full collaboration of the art department, but also, because the dates when the show could be done and also the dates we brought Grace Hartigan to visit the college, at that time in connection with the show, but I think the Moseley Lecture had been typically delivered in the fall, but we could only do it in the spring, and so I think my doing that threw off the Moseley calendar, because then it got shifted to the spring, but again the college administration said, “Ok, so we can do this.” So the flexibility, the willingness on the part of many offices to pitch in to that project, it was certainly a highlight for me. And to me it also illustrated how lucky I was to be part of an institution where that kind of collaboration was possible. LG: So the art department was responsible for bringing her work, for guarding them? �TD: Well the art gallery, yes, oh yeah. They brought, it had become a fascinating project for me because the core of the show was a particular series of paintings that Grace Hartigan had done where she had actually written text by the poet Frank O’Hara into the paintings, but the challenge was that only one of those paintings was in a public collection. So, my wife and I went on a cross country tour tracking down where these paintings were and then we had to negotiate with each of the private collectors to bring them to this show. So, you know that, the background there, that was quite an experience in and of itself, going around. LG: Tell me about that a little bit more. Whom did you meet? TD: Well, again, first of all, to start with the idea of collaborating at Skidmore, the first person, when I began my interest in this series of paintings, the first person I actually talked to about it was Harry Gaugh, who was a member of the Skidmore art department and had worked in that period. He had written a book on Frantz Kline, written a book on de Kooning. And I explained to him this problem, so I’m trying … “Harry do you have any ideas how I could begin finding these paintings?” And he said, “Well, why don’t you just write to Grace Hartigan?” [laughs] The artist! [laughs]. You know because he had, again through his own research, had been involved in that world, I think he had met Grace Hartigan. And he said, you know, start with the source. And that was already something that I had learned from my PhD dissertation, which was about WB Yeats and American Poets and my supervisor at that time said, “Write to American Poets and just ask them,” you know, what their relationship to the poetry of WB Yeats was, and how, what they think the influence might have been. So the idea of just going straight to the source was already in my background. So I wrote to Grace Hartigan. Luckily she was very open to the possibility of my working on this project so she was able to give me a list, to the extent that she was aware of where the paintings were, of who had them. It was somewhat out of date, so I … I could work from that list, but in some cases the person on her list no longer had the painting, and I had to do some further detective work. And so we would then get in touch with the individuals and say, “Can we come and photograph the painting?” And so it was interesting, again, seeing this one set of work by this one artist, how these works had ended up in a very different setting. So one work was in a home in the lower Hudson Valley belonging to an art historian. It was an old Victorian house and the painting was up on this dark stairway and she … you know, it wasn’t an especially lavish home, she was an academic and didn’t have a big income, but really �treasured the painting. And then another place we went was a home in Grosse Pointe Michigan. Somebody who was a high-time art collector, and so that was, again, a very different setting, with track lighting for all of the paintings and a big setup for displaying the collection. So we saw the work in very different settings, and of course for me, now, when I see those paintings, their original … the context in which we first saw them is always part of my memory. LG: Good! Well, I think we’re just about out of time. I really appreciate … I thought there were some very interesting ideas that you gave us and I want to thank you again … TD: Thank you. LG: … for spending an hour with us. TD: Thank you! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Terry Diggory Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 50:30 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 29, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Terry Diggory Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 10, 2019 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource After earning his D. Phil. at Oxford, Terry Diggory was born outside began teaching at Skidmore in the Fall of 1977, offering courses in poetry and the Classical World. He participated programs at the College, broadly including the Classical Studies Ecclesia and the Liberal Studies program. One of the poets in his Liberal Studies course on the New York School, Grace Hartigan, was the subject of his Mosely Lecture in which he connected her poetry and painting. As the College embarked on its program of interdisciplinary teaching leaning, Terry chaired the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning (CEPP) as well as the Curriculum Committee. He also served as English Department chair. Other committees included the search that brought Phil Glotzbach to the College, the search that ultimately led to the appointment of Phyllis Roth as Dean of the College, and the group that planned the Tang Teaching Museum. Since retirement in 2010, Terry has been the convener of the Skidmore Retiree Initiative Planning Group and has also been a leader in the Saratoga Immigration Coalition. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Antoine Predock CEPP English Department Eric Weller Liberal Studies Phillip Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Tang Museum