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William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Dahleen Menning
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 2
[Menning]
Okay, it's hard for me to think back succinctly over almost nine years since we
began, since I came. I came, I think, the second year of William James. Actually,
it was the third technical year, but the first-year faculty weren't teaching and I was
hired the second year that faculty were teaching. So, I saw it pretty much from
the time it was a tiny, very tiny college to right up to the end. It kind of went
through a growth period and then had loss some students. And seemed like that
even though at the beginning we were struggling with so many things: places to
have classes, all kind of very basic functions of just getting the teaching job done.
There was a real excitement at that point to the students and the kinds of
interactions between the different individuals, the faculty and the students, and all
the parts that go into to making a college, that didn't sustain itself all the way to
the end, after nine / ten years. The memorable things from that early time,
besides having my office in a tiny basement, squalid place, was the real
independence and assertiveness of the students that would come to you and say
I want to do XYZ and here's how I'd like to do it and they had a plan. They
thought it all through. They were able to pretty much assess what they would
need to learn and how they would go about affecting this whole thing in their lives
and could see down the road and it was a very exciting thing to see that kind of
independent thinking. Now we had good dialogues and some bad dialogue. I
remember with students that used to argue, just for the sake of being
argumentative, about their projects, their particular work, their process, but most
of the time it was a really exciting, stimulating dialogue of growing and sharing,
and those are the times that I remember best with the most affection I think.
There was an exploring feeling amongst the faculty, as exploring feeling my
student and even when things didn't go well bureaucratically for some students,
often times they get hung up in the records office over procedures, those things
didn't seem to bother them. We'd roll with the punches, we'd go over and
straighten it out and sometimes even it was even funny and a bit humorous and
we all enjoyed that. It was part of the reaching out and exploring. The students
that I remember most clearly from that particular group were really wonderful
creative artists that I had in class, that in spite of the fact we didn't have a
traditional art program at that time, they seemed to grasp the necessary things
that were necessary to the art world, and they put them together and integrated
in with everything that was happening at William James and they wanted to be
part of the whole thing, and yet they could retain their independence as artists
and I found that very exciting and very mature and that is what I thought was the
ideal and I thought we lost that about sixth, seventh year, toward the very end.
�We didn't see students that exhibited that kind of independence. One that usually
sticks out in my mind took us through the whole art therapy program deal
because that was initiated by student who came into my office and planted her
feet and said: "I want to be our therapist and I think I can do it here. Can I do it
here? Here's how I'm going to do it." And I took a deep breath and said, “Well, it
looks like you can probably do it here. Let’s see if we can.”
[Menning]
And we actually put together an art therapy program for her that involved
internships and involve psychology courses, the art courses that she needed,
she had to take a few things over in the College of Arts and Sciences, but by in
large she put together a very strong personal program to study art therapy with
the resources that we had in the college. And that was my first real introduction
to internships because my particular persuasion in the arts is not an internship
related thing. In the fine arts there's not much you can do. You can't really
understand the painter. So, I had to go out and generate internship placements
and this student went out and she and I found them. We persuaded people to let
her try. It was a very ticklish situation because it involved working with people in
a clinical setting and she lived up to the promise. She was very mature, she
handled herself beautifully, and she set the pace and then right after her and I
have no idea how students seem to hear about it but they came out of the
woodwork and they found out that we were doing something with it and they want
to do it too and it wasn't very exciting thing and integrated the coursework from
the social sciences and from the fine arts and seem to be what the college was
about and that represented I think one of the nicest ideals. And we had a group
of students that went through, in the art therapy program, we didn't really have
one, but they devised their own programs, more or less, and most of the students
that I've kept track of have gone on to graduate school one way or another.
Some by taking time off to work locally in various social service agencies around
town, some of them rose to administrative positions in social service agencies
and went on to graduate school, some went right away. But they all seem to
make something of themselves and they all seem to use initially what they
decided they wanted to do in the context of William James College. And that
seem to be one of the shining examples for me and out of that discussion with a
student came the class that I was the most excited about in the end, as an
integrated thing, and that was the developmental art course that I taught initially, I
think with Willard Bradfield, and then I taught it on my own, changing and
developing and actually integrating practicum into that, plus studio experience,
plus theory and it was a very involved kind of course and the students came
through that course were clearly changed in their approach to things in life. And
that was what was really exciting to me. That that one course made a major
difference in those students in their entire life. They saw things differently, they
saw how they could affect change and people even if they were never going to
do it quite that way, even if they were never going to be in the classroom or if
they were never going to do art therapy, in particular. They all saw that there
�were methods for taking theory and then applying them and that if you learn
something and used it you could make something else happen and it was a very
powerful thing for me to see that happen, I think I learned a lot, and I change a lot
of my own teaching philosophy from that. It was a give and take situation with me
and the students.
[Menning]
They wanted something, ask if we can provide it, I was one of the providers, I
learned, developed my teaching ideas, developed a course to suit their needs,
they responded to the course they went on to do other work that was a
companion to that course and went on and graduated and did something
important. And that seemed to be a whole example of what the college was
supposed to be about. Then later on we tried to deal with this art therapy and
make it a "program" and we tried to pin it down because people got nervous
about it. People, you know, college, and people across campus because it had
clinical associations nervous that we wouldn't do it right or we'd damage
somebody and so on. And the whole thing got rather tight and everybody got into
it and then got out of it, and then we dropped it. But there were I guess three,
four years there where it seemed that we really were able to do something
important with students with the nucleus of the few classes, and a few faculty,
and a few student working together and learning and teaching each other. Now
that was one of the most memorable experiences that happened over a process
of several years. There were others I think that we're maybe a little less
outstanding in there William Jamesian-ness. There were students and classes in
just the art courses portion of the arts and media programs that I saw do actually
marvelous things and brought to class a personal integration of what they were
learning in the college but didn't have such a strong identification with any one
group of things and there were individual students that classes from other
individual faculty and have very good dialogues with those faculty and with me
and that we knew each other and had and shared that but it didn't happen in
such a programmatic way.
[Barbara]
Then what happened? That happened a lot and then what happened?
[Menning]
Well, it seem to me that about the fifth, sixth year the students changed quite a
bit in their independence, and they became less assertive and less self-directed
and didn't seem to want to struggle with why am I doing these things this way
and answering questions for themselves and they became more interested in the
how should I do it and their focus and classes changed radically. I felt a real
difference in their need for different teaching styles. Much more emphasis on
what needed to be done coming from the teacher. Much less willingness to
explore a personal route. More willingness to work hard sometimes I think, an
eager beaver attitude toward let's get the work done but you tell me what the
work is and the students initially were more interested in defining what the work
was. And so, my teaching style changed quite a bit. I noticed that my, well first of
�all, I start writing syllabi for courses, finally. Some of them are fairly loose syllabi.
Certainly, wouldn't pass muster to some of the things that end up writing now.
But nevertheless, I had to make a plan and follow through. I started to have to
have rules about attendance. One of the other things that happen I think was we
got a lot of bureaucratic nonsense laid on us that had to do with money. We had
to have more students in our classes.
[Menning]
And all of a sudden confronting thirty students in a studio class changed the
dynamics from when we have fifteen or eighteen. And it made a huge difference
in how you approach them as individuals. You couldn't talk to them at length and
so you had to treat them as groups. So that may have changed. And I think the
times changed. There wasn't as much interest in sympathy toward an
independent way of thinking and striking out on your own is there was initially. So
probably a whole bunch of influences put together changed it radically for me and
I found my interest the last two to three years, particularly the last two, it was very
hard to sustain my own interest in that the teaching became so different that I
started reverting back to more of a disciplinary approach in my own field more of
an art approach that sustained my independent interest because I had lost that
feeling of group. I think the faculty got a little large; was hard to maintain that
cohesiveness amongst faculty. Then we did lose some faculty as programs were
cut. But it seemed a little big at the end and I think maybe we outgrew what was
possible to do in that same sense.
[Barbara]
Okay, we are rolling.
[Menning]
Alright, as I've put a little bit of distance between the close of William James and
my own life, a number of things have passed through my mind as they have
everybody, I'm sure. But there were obviously more than one group within the
college, amongst the faculty, because there were different people coming from
different kinds of backgrounds that had different experiences and they tended to
cluster somewhat because it's only natural that you speak and commiserate with
people and have a similar background and a basic understanding in the same
way. And so, there were a group obviously that were centered around somewhat
the arts, or at least a more applied way of doing things, and sometimes they were
technological way, sometimes there are simply practical ways of getting things
done. And then there were people who did a lot of the thinking and the reading
and sometimes we didn't always agree and we tend to find a schism I think
between two point of view very often and how to approach different issues within
the college. And those are always interesting times for me, all the way through to
college, but in hindsight as I look back on that; I've thought about the fact that I
learned an enormous amount being a faculty member and this kind of college,
perhaps more than I contributed, although that isn't the right way to say it.
[Menning]
But I had to stretch and reached to learn from the frame of reference of others
�where they were coming from. I had to read some other books I had to look for
the philosophy and understanding of what we were about, and I didn't have a
similar thing to contribute in a way that seem to fit the discipline of the arts is kind
of a singular process and as I tried to enter that world again, the one thing that
has struck me and sometimes with a certain amount of anger and resentment
and then sometimes the feeling well we choose a life course and it takes is on a
route and then we accept what we getting and then we change back again sort of
a live and let live attitude. I oscillate between being somewhat angry and its okay
type of attitude that the growth that I experienced didn't take me down my
professional path very much. It took me in a sideways way where I learned an
awful lot of things. I read a lot of books, learn how to work with people that were
very different from myself, learn how to appreciate their values and what they
had to contribute. I'm not sure it was always mutual, and it took a ten-year hunk
out of my professional life in terms of my own growth as an artist. And now that
I'm reentering that world again, I find that frustrating, and sometimes threatening,
and the anger builds because I didn't maintain the contact with my field that I
wish I hadn't done in hindsight. It didn't seem important in the first few years. The
rush of building a college was very strong. The excitement of integrating the need
to talk a lot with other people and why we were going to do it this way and that
way and work out some systems and build these classes seemed so all
consuming that I lost personal side of my own goals. And then I began to find
them again, but I didn't have an easy access route to affecting those. I didn't
have a studio space. There was no academic support in the college for me to do
my thing. I noticed that in particular when it was time for me to take my
sabbatical, there was no money for me and the excuse was that I hadn't been
doing my thing and therefore I didn't get to have money to do my thing. It was
sort of like they haves got and the have nots didn't get, you know. And I felt
somewhat cheated because I had done all these things for the college, for
William James, the greater good, thousands of hours of countless committee
work. And yet there wasn't fifty dollars in the budget for my own artwork based on
the ground that I had and stay current. And I've thought about that and I thought
that was unfair to this day, but I wish that I had stayed current and in hindsight I
would have tried to find a way and maybe insisted on it. If there had been any
other way to do the college I think that would be the major thing I would like to
see change, would be to have some way that would insist that the faculty stayed
current part of their own field so that they didn't lose that. And that might have
retained the excitement for me, to bring that back into the college and into the
mix. Maybe I went dry. Maybe we all went dry. The times were definitely different
toward the end. But the initial excitement was lost, and when I came to the
college I was fresh from a large body of work, my own personal was high, I
wanted to share all that wonderful stuff with everybody. But then I wasn't doing it
and after four, five years of not doing it there's nothing left to share.
[Menning]
I think I had given all that was inside of me and then it got kind of flat and I really
�had to work to sustain it, and I guess that's for my teaching changed. The
students were changing. We were all changing and the times are changing. But I
would like to have done more with my work. I wish that the college had then
sustained our own professional work now. They arrange for studio spaces for the
College of Arts and Sciences Art faculty. That should have been done for the Arts
and Media faculty. That we should have been given studio spaces. The adequate
funding, recognition for work. That should've been done for everyone. We should
have been encouraged to go to conferences, exhibit our work, retain the
professional identity in our field. And that maybe would have made a major
difference. It might've been the difference between the college closing and I don't
know, there's so many intangibles there, but it certainly I think would have given
me a sense of self-worth that was starting to wane toward the end because
ourselves got so entangled up in the whole that was hard to find us. I had a hard
time finding me in the end. And I guess that's why my own interest started to lag
and that I started to seek way to find me again, which was to naturally revert
back to where I felt strong in the beginning was in my own field. And that's both
good and bad, you know there's not a clear-cut run answer to that. But now that
I'm back there I feel whole again. I still have things to share that I can share with
other people and like to do that. But somehow there was no balance at that time.
And maybe that was the one failing aspect of the whole endeavor was that we
went overboard trying to build this thing and then they maybe ten years wasn't
long enough for us to have the bounce back time and then to come back to the
middle and level off at some point. We got cut off for whatever reasons maybe a
little bit too soon.
�
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
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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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/.
Identifier
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GV016-16_GVSU_16_Menning
Creator
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Menning, Dahleen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
A name given to the resource
Dahleen Menning interview (1 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Dahleen Menning by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Dahleen Menning was a faculty member of William James College who taught studio art and developmental art. In this interview, Dahleen discusses her overall experience being a part of the William James community and her most memorable moments including teaching a developmental art course and the growing student interest in Art Therapy within the Arts and Media concentration. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Dahleen Menning.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Art Study and teaching
Art therapy
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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PDF Text
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William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Jean Doyle
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 3
[Barbara]
Okay, Jean. Why on earth did you come to William James?
[Jean]
Is this the real thing? Are we starting?
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[Jean]
Okay. [Sighs heavily] I grew up in Chicago and when I was about twelve, I met a
deaf kid. Through meeting him and wanting to communicate with him, I thought I
invented the theory of art therapy. [Laughs] And I thought how wonderful it would
be if by painting, or reading, or writing poetry, or something that this kid could
express or relate to other people what he was experiencing from nature. And so
that just became a goal and I call it art therapy in my head, even as a kid. And I
just started looking for places that offered coursework in art therapy. A counselor
at a high school in Chicago, she wasn't my counselor, it wasn't my high school,
she told me about William James. So, my mom and I took a drive up here and we
looked at it. I didn't really know what I was looking at or looking for. And I said:
"Well, this must be it, you know, this must be where I meant to be." So, in
September I started. And, it was, well-- Are we going to get to frustrations right
away?
[Barbara]
Whatever makes you feel most comfortable.
[Jean]
Okay. It was so strange because once… as soon as I got there, I immediately
realized I'd been given misinformation, which I translated to as I was lied to.
Because in the in the catalog, you know, it talked about Thomas Jefferson,
College IV, William James, and CAS. And when I got there, Thomas Jefferson
had just been axed. And there was just no words about it. But I didn’t know
enough to get angry yet. That came in time. But I met a lot of people who had
been part of Thomas Jefferson and became more acquainted with their
frustration and their anger. But we progressed, and then at the end of the first
year that I was there Cathleen O'Shaughnessy (?) left. She was a key art therapy
person at that time. And she was gone, and that was it. And so, I'll never really
understand why I just didn't say: "Well the hell with this. I'm out of here. You
know, I came in for something; it's not here. What am I doing here?" But I never
left. I just, I don't know, there was something about the community of the place,
the friends I was making, and the rapport with professors. That I really felt it was
worth sticking around, it was worth waiting, and knowing in my heart someday I
�would be an art therapist and I would work in art therapy. But for the present
time, I had other things to learn, I had an education to get, and I felt like I was in
a good place to get it. Working with good people and that became a priority to me
and of great value.
[Jean]
My father, at the home front, he was questioning greatly what the hell I was doing
there when it came out that there wasn't what I was seeking there, and there
wasn't, you know, any hope of things getting better in terms of a career-oriented
thing. He respected that aspect of liberal education. But he felt that if I just
wanted a liberal education that I should continue St. John's, which is where I
started my undergrad work. He felt that it would be more sensible to go to a
prestigious college, and to have a nice degree at the end of it; especially, if I was
going to get something as general as liberal arts. And, as you know, easy to pass
off. Or, you know what I mean, people don't really just say: "Oh what are you
going to do with that degree?" You know? So, there was a lot of tension there,
but I just stuck it out. A sense of loyalty, a sense of connection, and commitment
that was felt around me, and so I just want to desert that whole front.
[Barbara]
Do you know, something that hasn't really come up in the tapes so far is the
notion of how new organization happened so many times effected students, and
you're talking about it. Do you know people that left school because of
reorganization?
[Jean]
I know one artist in particular that comes to mind. His name was Chris Molane.
(?) He's living in New York, and he's doing his work. And he's very happy. I
mean, for him actually, the reorganization is a good thing, it released him from
the cornfields out to them where things are really happening for him. I'm trying to
think who else. Not really, it seemed like people just sort of went, you know, they
didn't just accept it but they went through it, and came out the other side to see
what was there. [Inaudible]
[Jean]
Like going through some kind of mill.
[Barbara]
Please tell me a little bit about Saint Johns.
[Jean]
Saint Johns was the most beautiful place I ever was at. It was tucked in the
mountains in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it was a drug infested, sexually active,
monastery dedicated to learning and loving knowledge. And Socrates was the
hero of the school. At four o'clock in the morning, the dorms were really small,
about twenty people per dorm. And you could walk in four in the morning and
there would be people drunk, or whatever, but they'd be discussing something of
common interest. And what's so neat is that it's a very rigid curriculum in terms of
all freshmen read Aeschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and on and on. And they do
Euclidean geometry, and then non-Euclidean geometry, and the next year is
�Ptolemian, it goes on and so everybody just had the exact same education. So,
there's so much to share. And the tutors were more like referees. Or when they
would start a seminar, it was like they'd throw up a jump ball and we'd play.
[Jean]
So, they weren't projecting, or interjecting very much. And in a way, it wasn't until
I met Irving Wasserman at Grand Valley that I really was more studied with
Socrates and really tried to understand-- just have a broader view, a much
broader view, because it was like children playing with these thoughts. And so,
we had no background, no framework, to put it in and so, I appreciated having a
guide like Irv. But it was wonderful to be given the respect to play with it, you
know. Or to engage with it.
[Barbara]
Okay, but then just the notion of you wanting to go into Art Therapy was enough
to tear you away from this?
[Jean]
I was also in the midst of very strong personal problem that I had to get away
from immediately. And so, I had to leave hastily unfortunately. So, when I got
home and it was hiding out for a while, I thought: "Well, I think I'll go up to
Michigan and check out William James.
[Barbara]
Okay. Okay.
[Jean]
Take that path and then maybe go hit…
[Barbara]
Why alternative anyway though? You had two alternative colleges you were
looking for, and why?
[Jean]
Oh, that's just always been my cup of tea. I originally began my education in
straight Catholic schools. And they were fine for me, to an extent. It was sort of
like getting a lot of A's and everything for not doing any work. And when I hit
about seventh grade, I was with this real tough group. And, you know, standing in
the parking lot smoking cigarettes with jackets open in January type of fun and
entertainment, really ridiculous. And my mother began to become very
concerned about me when I stole her car and went driving around. And so, she
knew, in her wisdom, that she couldn't reach me, and she can talk to me. So, she
sent me to my sister Barbara, who's twelve years older than me, and who I've
always had a very strong affinity with. I stayed there for a month. When I came
home my mother said: "Well, Jeanie guess what? There's this wonderful school.
It's called Morgan Park Academy. The classes have only like sixteen people in
them. And you get to work at your own rate, and it's in the city, and it's real
integrated." And I'm like: "Wow, Mom. That sounds real cool. Someday maybe,
you know, I'll check it out. She's like: "Well you have your entrance exam
Wednesday." And I was like: "Oh..." So anyway, I got into this school and it
turned out there was like these real rich, snotty kids there. And I was just like:
�"Oh jeez, I don't need this." One day… the first day of school someone asked
me what did my father do for a living, and how much money did he make. And I
told her that my father was an alcoholic, and we were on welfare.
[Jean]
Which was absolutely the untruth. But I just like a little bitch. I'm not going to tell
her the truth. It's none of her business. But anyway, I got into the faculty there,
and I realized what I could learn there. And I realized that I didn't need, oh, just to
be told what to do, that learning itself was an incentive enough for me. And that I
just couldn't stand, you know, all this worrying about tests, and what did you get
on the test and… you know, what do you have to know for the test. That whole
attitude… whenever I came across that it just, you know, put my back up. and I
was like get me out of here. At that school, I was allowed to get away from that.
And at St. John's, there certainly wasn't at all an issue, I didn't even know they
gave grades until later. I found out that I did rather well. But, you know, I just
didn't need traditional structured education.
[Barbara]
Do think that's because you got too much of it? Or for other reasons.?
[Jean]
No, I think it's just the way I'm made. Just me. [Laughter]
[Barbara]
I went to a school founded by John Dewey, who was a student of James's. And
when it hits you, when you hit one school like that it spoils you for anything else.
[Jean]
Yeah, and it's not spoiled. Well, I mean it's… you don't want to go back.
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[Jean]
You don't need it.
[Barbara]
You become very cynical about traditional education is another way to put it.
[Jean]
Yes, it's true.
[Barbara]
Okay, you talk about major frustration. Are there other frustrations you would like
to talk about?
[Jean]
Yeah, I think one is a real general frustration. It's sort of like, I feel in the course
of my life I've come at the end of every great wave that I have wanted to be a
part of desperately. And it's like I'm, you know, trying to body surf. And it goes
right over me, and I'm back there, and then it crashes on the beach, and it's
pulled back in, and then I'm just waiting for the next wave or something. When I
was six my sister, Barbara again, you know, she was in college. It was nineteen
sixty-seven. She was sitting in the rain for her black roommates and, you know, it
was all very powerful to me. It really stuck with me. And I thought that's what we
�do in college. When I got there, I was all psyched for it, and then I grew up in
things where the seventies…
[Jean]
Where nobody wanted to commit to anything, and everything was the blank
generation. and it was a denial of everything that happened in sixties, it seem to
me. And so, at that time I think I sort of espoused hippie virtues, you know, or
tried to. I made myself and was forced into the position of being a dinosaur. Of
being, you know, like this extinct being. Yet walking along the living, but not
wanting to be part of what they were doing. And not wanting to fit in, and not
wanting to espouse those principles. Because I didn't see any principles in them.
So, it was pretty rough. But by the time I got to college, I realized the sixties are
gone. Life has changed a lot. There's no hippies anymore, the hippies who are
here are clinging to the past. This is a new time, and we need a new kind of
people to deal with, you know, the sixties plus the seventies, and now the
eighties. You know it's a new world. And one of my frustrations at William James
was being considered a hippie even though I wasn't. You know, and you get a lot
of flak. But that didn't really bother me, I can sort of laugh that off.
[Barbara]
What kind of flak? Or you really don't know?
[Jean]
A lot of times… when you're talking to CAS people. And I hate doing the camp
business, you know, I mean our side and their side of the river or whatever. But
people want to take it seriously. I mean from the point of a guy not asking you out
on a date because you are William James student, to in a conversation…you're
just not being taken seriously because you're considered a radical. Even though
I'm very… I consider myself conservative liberal. You know, I'm not into radical
changes. I'm into reasonable discussion of what's going on and then see what
can be done. But not just changing for change's sake. I'm not radical politically,
and I'm not a hippie, and I'm not living in the past. And a lot of times… it's hard
for me to be specific right now, my mind is not really on it… clearly enough to
come up with specific examples of times I felt put down, or rejected for having…
[Barbara]
The out of tape line is blinking at me, so it's going to stop in a second. So, it’s a
good time to just wait anyway.
[Jean]
Okay.
�
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
William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV016-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV016-16_GVSU_06_Doyle
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Doyle, Jean
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
A name given to the resource
Jean Doyle interview (1 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Jean Doyle by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Jean Doyle was a student at William James College and a graduate from Grand Valley's class of 1984. In this interview, Jean discusses the journey that brought her to William James College from her hometown of Chicago, Illinois and how she felt a calling toward alternative education to study Art Therapy. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Jean Doyle. Please note: this interview contains the audio recording in place of the video recording.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Art therapy
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng