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William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Forrest Armstrong
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 3
[Barbara]
Not as many students as I would like to, but everybody from the faculty and…
What kind of description that tells you what kind of vibes about the place did you
get from others?
[Armstong]
Did I get from others?
[Barbara]
From others. Not what you observed, but what kinds of things were you told
about the college?
[Armstrong]
Okay.
[Barbara]
Anytime you're comfortable.
[Armstrong]
Oh, you're running?
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[Armstrong]
Okay. I think the image that I got when I came was of a place where there were a
fair number of good people, people who were viewed favorably across campus,
but who, genuinely, were not well understood in the kind of thing they had
chosen to put their lives to. The college was not at all well understood. There was
the shared perception that there was nothing of coherence that one might call
general education. The synoptic program was not seen to be a program. The
concept was, I think, not well understood. The grading system was a major
problem. And I think, increasingly, the college became known more by its failures
than by its successes. I think there was a sense that there was a fatal fascination
of moth for a flame. And the college with its perceived lack of structure, perceived
lack of rigor – collectively, though not individually – and lack of grading system as
understood by the rest of the world, was attracting people for the wrong reasons.
Yet, there was attention, I think, because many people on campus could point to
individuals at the college and say: "There's a very bright, very dedicated, very
capable, very attractive, colleague." But somehow collectively it didn't work that
way.
[Barbara]
Okay. Can you be specific about certain things that you were told to change? If
that's a proper question.
�[Armstrong]
I don't think I was told to change anything. I think I came, probably, with an
implicit mandate that things needed to be better organized, that things needed to
be tightened up, if you will. There was the budget fiasco of the previous year,
where the budget had been overspent and we were, actually, in nineteen eighty
debited by over half of the amount that was overspent the year before.
[Barbara]
How much?
[Armstrong]
I'm going to say six thousand was debited and the overrun was twelve thousand
out of a CSSM of sixty. Maybe not close enough for government work even. I
think there was the sense that a number of things had – at least in the near term
– been left unattended. I wasn't here then; I don't really know what that meant.
But there were a number of things that were of the standard organizational sort:
things that needed to be done on time and things needed to be done
comprehensively. In the sense, I believe, those had not been done that way in
the past. I think Zumberge presumed, appropriately, that that's something I could
do. But that's the tail, not the dog. Another thing I think that was probably not well
understood was the extent of which the curriculum changed in a relatively fluid
manner. Not as fluid as TJC's had been, apparently, but far more so than CAS's.
And I think there was some lack of understanding about how that could keep
going on. Why people didn't think it through, get it straight, and then more or less
stay with it once they had gotten it that way. One of the issues – I don't how long
it had been an issue, but it was certainly and issue when I came – was the need
for the institution to run as many course descriptions and the time schedule each
semester as it was doing. And that was attributed largely to James's insistence
that it be that way.
[Barbara]
Okay. We've been talking about other people's perceptions, what were your
perceptions of the college when you actually came and started administrating?
[Armstrong]
My perception of the college was that it had a lot of good people who are very
seriously invested in the college. That there was a real openness to seeing
students as significant participants in the process, which is immensely valuable,
and it helps set the tone for a lot of other things that could happen. I think I also
saw that there was a real openness to ideas. People were used to working with
ideas of others; they were open to that. There was a kind of collegiality that was
important here, and it's something that I think I value especially and is one of the
many things I found that was attractive that led me to come. I think that I also
found that there was probably a mismatch between perceptions of people in the
college about what it was and what it actually was, especially in the nature of the
student body. And my sense is that the perceptions of people in the college –
faculty – probably were formed maybe five years before I came, when the
student body was largely social relations students, and probably largely made up
�of students who were here for what we all came to say were the right reasons.
They understood… they were attracted to the college because of this educational
philosophy, because of the myriad ways they could grow within that philosophy,
because of all very positive things. And, indeed, many of the students I met when
I came for my interview, I later learned were of that sort just exiting the college. I
think, though, probably beginning about seventy-eight, the student balance
changed fairly abruptly. They changed from social relations students to arts and
media students and – not because of that, but I think in addition to that – more
and more came for what might not have been the right reasons. People running
from a perception of the structure and the rigor that they would find in some other
place to a place where they could do their own thing, and everything was okay.
That was never the perception of the faculty, collectively, but I think it was of
more and more students. And I think over time, those students made an impact
on the whole campus's perception of the college. And also had something to do
with the nature of the discourse in classes. I think that was one of the things that
we didn't anticipate and had hurt us in the long run.
[Barbara]
Very clear. What was your impression of the quality of education that we were
delivering or that was being absorbed (if those are two different things) when you
arrived? The quality of the education?
[Armstrong]
I think, in general, it was quite high. I think it was, probably, more ambitious than
an increasingly large percentage of the students were able to handle. One of the
things that I remember vividly is the sense of people saying: "It's not working the
way it used to. We used to be able to do certain kinds of things and we can't do
them now." I looked at the numbers, and the distribution to students, and so forth,
and it seemed relatively clear to me why that might be. But for people who had
evolved through the change from seventy-four to eighty, the changes were
gradual and relatively imperceptible in any moment of time. The difference
between what had been done in the education and vocation class, whence came
the idea for milestone, and what was done in milestone is, I think, dramatic. And
it's probably a symbol of the changes that had come upon us without our
understanding it.
[Barbara]
Good. You must have been in show business.
[Armstrong]
I'm sorry?
[Barbara]
You're very crisp, I was teasing you.
[Armstrong]
Oh [Laughter].
[Barbara]
I was saying you must have been in show business. I'm sorry. What was your
agenda? You didn't get to be [inaudible] for very long, but what was your agenda
�for that, probably, year and a half, wasn't that it?
[Armstrong]
Twenty-nine days after I came, the state’s fiscal crisis was announced. And so
whatever it was that might have been, I think, was really abrogated before even a
month had past. I was really very interested in James, in part, because I had
spent twelve years in a different interdisciplinary setting, and I was quite
interested to get some perspective on what I had been doing. Some perspective
on interdisciplinary teaching, interdisciplinary collaboration. I was also very
interested to see an entirely different approach to the integration of general and
liberal education with a major. Green Bay had had a core program; I had been
centrally responsible for devising, and teaching in it, and revising it when it
happened toward the end. Green Bay, in many respects, was much more tightly
controlled. The whole thing was to be interdisciplinary, but there were many more
strictures. Students would all have to do this, all have to do that, all have to
something else. A very different approach toward achieving what I saw as some
common objectives was the one taken here, and I wanted to get some
perspective on that. One of the things I did not anticipate – but came to
appreciate tremendously and learn a great deal from – is James's way of doing
things. I think, probably, the central institution in the college, was council. And I
had not understood – even intellectually, much less come to appreciate fully –
the importance of council, nor the way it worked; nor the kind of respect for the
ideas of others and concern for avoiding a rush to closure that I found here.
That's one of the many things I think I got from James, was to learn something
from that. One of my disappointments was that I did not find here – in those
twenty-nine days, at least – I didn't really find the kind of collective attention to
epistemology and to the intellectual underpinnings of the interdisciplinary
enterprise that I had hoped. I think, frankly, that was a weakness. And I think that
there were enough people who thought interdisciplinary just meant doing
whatever one wanted, without taking a hard look at it. That disappointed me a bit.
There was a lot of openness to ideas and there was a lot of sharing at some
levels. And on a one-to-one basis, one could go a long way there. But,
interestingly, in the collective endeavor, people backed away from doing some of
the hard questioning, which I think is a natural outgrowth of the process and
ought to be valued… ought to have been valued. But in my experience, at least
beginning in nineteen eighty, wasn't always. I don't quite have a theory for why
that was, but it was one of the strange things that I came to think about, and still
think about, in trying to make sense out of what James was and what it offers us
now.
[Barbara]
What I think of when you talk about that is Walter because I really feel that Walter
was open to that and Walter tried to get people to converse with him in the way
that you're speaking of, and people backed off.
[Armstrong]
I think that's true. I think he did, and he was certainly one of the truly broad,
�fascinating, interestingly educated persons I've met. He didn't get very far in the
public discourse, and I don't know why. I came at a time, which was I think at the
tail end of the discussion I couldn't chair in about visual literacy, and apparently,
he had been central to that in seventy-eight and seventy-nine. My sense was
that, to a certain extent, he'd used up some of his credits, if you will, in that
discussion. I don't know why, but that was more of a closed topic than an open
one with most people when I got out here. I don't know why.
[Barbara]
I don't know why either. I know we're heading towards the end of the first tape,
even though I can't see my light, so let me just ask you… here I'll even…
[Armstrong]
Among the problems that were identified: the colleges unwillingness to collect the
student fees it assessed, the colleges willingness to Xerox things at college
expense, and violate copyright to give them to students, saving students the cost
of buying the book, the willingness to pick up faculty that had been denied tenure
in another unit of the college, the wholesale granting of credit (or so it was said)
for life experience in a couple of instances early on in the experiment with that
which lead, I understand, to the decision not to do so at Grand Valley anywhere.
And then, of course, the lack of tenure, the lack of a grading system that was
understandable by the rest of the college. And also, the perceived lack of any
clear relationship between the major and general ed. Synoptic simply meant
anything that you wanted to the uninitiated outside the college. All of those, I
think, created an atmosphere of misunderstanding.
�
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>
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
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eng
Oral History
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Dublin Core
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GV016-16_GVSU_50_Armstrong
Creator
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Armstrong, Forrest
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
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Forrest Armstrong interview (1 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Forrest Armstrong 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. Forrest Armstrong was the Dean of William James College from 1980-1983 and also served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities during his ten years at Grand Valley. In this interview, Forrest discusses his initial perceptions of William James College upon his arrival at Grand Valley, his impression of the quality of education being delivered, and the state's fiscal crisis that contributed to the college's future. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Forrest Armstrong.
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
College administrators
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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application/pdf
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eng
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William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Forrest Armstrong
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 3
[Barbara]
Could you please sum up what you felt was the distinctive core of James in a
sentence.
[Armstrong]
I think that the distinctive idea had to do with working with students individually,
helping them see the relationship between their own efforts and the impact those
ideas and efforts would have on society. I think the essence of the operation of
the college was council, with a profound respect for other people, for hearing
ideas on the merits, for looking things up one side and down the other, and for
drawing people out for playing what Peter Elbow called the “believing game”
rather than the “doubting game.” Immensely important, immensely powerful and
made a lot of the good things in the college happen.
[Barbara]
Good.
[Barbara]
Anytime.
[Armstrong]
Looking back on it, if I had it to do over again, I think I probably would have
accelerated the timetable for some things I tried to do. I don't think I would have
changed them; I would simply have gotten to them immediately. In the second
year, in the beginning of the second year, I proposed an agenda of, I believe,
fourteen different items – things that the college needed to attend to. Almost all
those we did work on, and I think almost all of them, in one form or another, were
received favorably, which I think is a testimony of the power of people to look at
with open eyes and ideas that were not necessarily the same as the ones they
had been working with. We should've done it the first year, not the second. I
remember vividly that we had a retreat in January of eighty-two. We had a retreat
at Kirkhof House. And one of the things I did at that time was read to people the
statement I had just gotten earlier that day from the President, about the charge
to the committee to, you know, attend to overlap and duplication – things of that
sort. At that time… in that meeting, on our agenda was things like a change in
the grading system, and some other modifications which, I think, possibly could
have made a difference had they been in place during the nineteen eighty,
eighty-one academic year. Eighty, eighty-one was a bizarre time. I was never
here, really, during the normal time, except those first twenty-nine days. But, if
we had made some changes then – that I personally think were called for – it’s
conceivable to me, I think it is unlikely, but I think there's probably five to ten
�percent probability that it might have worked out a little differently. That's not a
high probability of success, but those are the kinds of things that I think would
have been taken seriously. I know the changes we made during the eighty-one,
eighty-two academic year were taken seriously by the people across campus.
They looked at us in a little different way as a result. And I think that if we had
attended to the grading system which, in many respects, was the central, most
visible thing about us that people were then taking shots at. Conceivably, we
might have done it. Conceivably we might have had a different outcome. Not
probably, but least conceivably.
[Armstrong]
In retrospect, it is easy to say that I really should have proposed a number of
things earlier. I didn't do it because I really wanted to take that first year and get
to know the college more fully than I could possibly have known it coming in a
fresh. I really didn't want to just bring in ideas and say: "I've got answers and
here they are." I intuited that there was something of great value here, and one of
the reasons I came was that I wanted to learn, and I understood that I could learn
a number of things here. Learning means you talk to people, you ask questions,
you listen. You don't simply come in with your bag of tricks and say, “Here they
are, we gotta do them." And I did – I learned a lot. And that's one of the
immensely important things for me about the experience. That would have been
changed – for me, and I think for the college – had I come in with a whole
agenda in nineteen eighty. On the other hand, in retrospect, maybe something
else could have happened as a result.
[Barbara]
Fascinating.
[Barbara]
Let’s give it a shot.
[Armstrong]
One of the interesting things about the federation – I think probably one of
reasons it came into being initially – was that the several colleges presented
multiple opportunities for innovation, multiple pathways. And during that heady
growth period of the seventies, there were ultimately five different places where a
good idea could be found, where a good idea could be nurtured and grow and
develop. And I think it was always in the eyes of the people in central
administration at that time, that if there were a good idea, it would be
appropriated by other units across campus, and the whole institution would be
stronger as a result. The decision to reorganize then in nineteen eighty-two, I
think, was also informed by that understanding. The decision to create a
divisional structure happened to end up with the same number of divisions as
there then were colleges. I think that was probably accidental; probably had more
to do with the structure of knowledge with the traditional three domains, and the
existence of Seidman, which was a foregone conclusion to continue pretty much
as it had been. But that also offered then multiple pathways for innovation;
multiple structures through which people could work. All smaller structures than
�what would’ve happened had there been just one large monolithic organization. I
think probably people had learned that if there are somewhat smaller
organizational structures and somewhat more of them, maybe it's more likely that
ideas will surface and flourish.
[Barbara]
How are you feeling?
[Armstrong]
Okay.
[Armstrong]
I sometimes wonder what the future of the college would have been had we had
more time. One of the things that has always perplexed me has been the relative
disparity between some of the things that were valued publicly – that were
certainly central to the theory behind the college – and the kinds of things we
would have wanted our students to do, and some the decision-making processes
within it. There seemed to me to be a hard time for people collectively to engage
hard decisions. The idea that the choice of Adrian's successor was left to tie.
Where, repeatedly, people who had chosen to abstain from the voting passed the
decision to Zumberge. The decision at the time in nineteen-eighty when we had
to reduce staff… that faculty could have been collectively, centrally, involved in
that, but chose not to be… before the fact, at least. The difficulty so many people
had with giving no credits, even though the giving of an incomplete, more than
ninety percent of the time, was tantamount to giving a no credit, because they all
lapsed to no credit. There was some, in some sense, a reluctance to grapple
publicly, as council should have caused, with certain kinds of hard decisions.
There was a strain of thought in the college that said one of the things I value
about it is the opportunity to do things… do my own thing, really, without the kind
of real, shared scrutiny that in theory is called for. And that always has perplexed
me. It seems to be out of character with the rest of the institution. But I think it
was something that did not augur well for the future. I don't know why it was.
�
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
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GV016-16
Format
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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.
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
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GV016-16_GVSU_51_Armstrong
Creator
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Armstrong, Forrest
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
Forrest Armstrong interview (2 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Forrest Armstrong 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. Forrest Armstrong was the Dean of William James College from 1980-1983 and also served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities during his ten years at Grand Valley. In this interview, Forrest discusses the core of the William James College philosophy, what he would have done differently for the college in retrospect, and how the cluster college structure at Grand Valley provided opportunities for innovation. This interview is part 2 of 3 for Forrest Armstrong.
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
College administrators
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Moving Image
Text
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Forrest Armstrong
Date: 1984
Part: 3 of 3
[Barbara]
What's your guess… what's your estimate of the… how much of the feelings that
the way that Zumberge saw us was because we were really straight up, and how
much was it that we just made them uncomfortable because of our style?
[Armstrong]
Hard question to answer. I really don't think that the system, collectively, was out
to get the college. I say that because there were so many instances when it could
have done so, and yet did not. When TJC was killed, before I came, that would
also have been a time to change the system, to get rid of James, too. In the fall
of nineteen eighty, when the budget problems were severe, when we had a
financial emergency, when we laid off faculty, we did so across the institution, not
simply by lopping off one of the small colleges, which would've been the easy
way to go, and which had some champions. The reorganization that took place
would not have taken the shape it ultimately did if there had not been some
serious, profound respect for things that the college offered, including both ideas
and people. I do think, though, that there are some things that happened that
created a climate of, at least, misunderstanding and sometimes of distrust on
campus. I think that the idea, of course, was that from the beginning the
institution would be made up of collegiate societies which would share,
profoundly, even though they, in each case, had some distinguishing
differentiating element. My sense is that never really happened, that the
formation of the federation took place after a sizable number of faculty had been
hired at the institution. And largely, as a way to promote innovation and
differences. It's almost as if the small colleges as they were formed were islands
for misfit toys, for people who didn't like what was then the dominant mode could
go and do their own thing. I think this led, at least, James to define itself in very
negative terms. Basically, in opposition to the dominant mode of thought in
higher education at that time. And seldom was the college able to find something
that was positive that it could define itself as being, without seeing that same
positive element picked up, subsequently, in other places on campus. The
attempt to integrate career and liberal education, which certainly marked this
college from its beginnings, ultimately was picked up by only other colleges, too.
So, it didn't differentiate in a meaningful, obvious way to people who were
relatively naïve observers. What William James was that CAS or Kirkhof was not,
each in its own way. So, many people here when I came in nineteen eighty
defined themselves in opposition to something else. That was a clear problem. It
was that we were different than they are, hence, better; rather than we are
�different in particular ways that present particular advantages. I think that was
exacerbated, too, by the series of decisions… style-type decisions. And also,
because in the hiring process, we didn't always go for both "ands." We didn't look
for people who had the credentials and who could fit into any college on campus,
but who, for special reasons, also had dimensions that made them especially
good for James. That process I think began with the first faculty appointments
and probably proceeded all the way through. That obviously didn't help the
college in the eyes of the rest of the campus. There also being no intellectual life
that tied the institution together, where the intellectual life was around the
exterior, the rim of the doughnut, but not anything in the center of the doughnut,
meant that people basically defined themselves in opposition to others on
campus, rather than as something powerful, and positive, and unique that had its
own contribution to make. I think that was a major problem in the air when I
came, and I sometimes am amazed that the several opportunities to kill the
college outright never led to that result. There were certainly days when I feared
it would.
[Barbara]
Was there any sense that there was simple prejudice against us as versus us
screwing up.
[Armstrong]
I'm sorry, simple prejudice…?
[Barbara]
Simple prejudice just against our style, our politics?
[Armstrong]
I suspect that didn't help. I suspect it didn't help, but I think politics in a broad
sense… I don't think that it had to do with necessarily support for or opposition to
any particular ism but perhaps an orientation that was slightly less controlled,
less modulated, less considered, than people perceived academe ought to be,
perhaps.
[Barbara]
I moved something here and then asked you to start talking. I don't know how we
phrased it before, but talk about your mini history of what happened when they
decided they had to do something, regardless of the organization, at what point
was it decided we would kill…?
[Armstrong]
Well, there was concern expressed, I think, always from the time in fall of
nineteen eighty, when the budget collapse struck us, how the institution was
going to respond. And the decision at that time was to prune selectively, if you
will, across campus rather than simply lopping off a college or two. Subsequently,
we had a series of budget cuts. That was only the beginning, not the end. And at
each point, the problem loomed large enough that, potentially, one could have
said, "We will simply cut off a college." That was never done, and I think that was
of real consequence. I think people understood… people intuited, perhaps more
than they understood, that there was something of value in the college. My sense
�is that in the fall of nineteen eighty-one, I believe, the pressure began to build to
do something more consequential than simply pruning here and there. And in the
early part of January of nineteen eighty-two, the President's proposal that we
conduct a study to eliminate unnecessary overlap and duplication said, I think, to
the people who wanted to get rid of the collegiate system that, potentially, that
was an acceptable alternative. The process moved fairly quickly at that point and
by, as I recall, the beginning of March, there was a report from Curriculum
Committee. And there was a time, before the decision had actually reached the
Academic Senate, the President called a campus-wide meeting and endorsed a
particular plan, which is the one that, in essence, that we have today. That plan
took apart the old system. It didn't simply lop off James or Kirkhof. It didn't simply
keep a traditional college and create then a professional college. It did, I think,
much of what we in James were trying to do in some important ways. It extended
the effort to integrate the liberal and the professional programs, to pull them
together, to find some synergy there across the entire institution so that we now
have four academic divisions, each of which has both professional and liberal
arts programs in it. Certainly, that was not the way much of the rest of the world
was organized, and that's an idea and that came directly from James, and people
saw that and valued it. Interdisciplinarity, as a term, was – and I think probably
still is – not a favorable one on campus. I think people react negatively to the
term interdisciplinarity and yet I'm intrigued to see the number of people who are
coming to me and looking for ways to accomplish exactly those opportunities. As
faculty members, as researchers, as teachers – they are looking for that
opportunity to work with others from different disciplines around common ideas.
They just don't call it interdisciplinarity, but there is an interesting, growing
interest on campus in precisely that sort of thing. The new General Ed program
with the categories that are not owned by any single division is, I think, as explicit
as one needs to get in the recognition that there are things that the divisions can
share around common ideas that are important to all of us. The other thing I think
that's important is that the new General Ed program says that there is something
that we all share. We are interdependent. It's not that one division does
something for its students and another division does something for its students.
We are all interdependent. I think, too, that's something they got from James that
they saw to be of value. Probably not at as high a level of articulateness as one
might have hoped. But nonetheless it was there, and it was an appreciation, it
was valued, and it was saved.
[Barbara]
Duplication then was not, really, a serious problem?
[Armstrong]
I have never thought so. If one has full classes – so what, you know? We now
offer fourteen sections of Philosophy 101. Every year, they're all full. If we offered
seven of Philosophy 101 in one college, seven in another college, and they're all
full, [inaudible]. I think that was really an excuse, an opportunity. I don't believe
that we really did save anything of consequence that way. What we did do – and
�I think it was high time that we did – was combine faculty in larger programs. By
the time there had been cuts over time, in the last… seventy-eight, seventy-nine,
eighty, eighty-one, there were lots of programs on campus that were staffed with
very few faculty. Lots of one person programs. That's probably not good, and the
reorganization allowed us to bring together people into larger critical masses of
faculty. And I think probably strengthen programs for students, too. I think that
was a step forward. I think that needed to be done, regardless of the
organizational structure in which it were accomplished.
[Barbara]
There are people who say on tape, more than one people… "more than one
people." [Laughter] The administration was going to close us; they knew it within
the first couple of years. Was that your experience? Did they know they were
going to close us at the point when they started talking of duplication in the
organization?
[Armstrong]
I'm sorry, they knew they were going to do it within the first couple of years of
what? Of the founding of the college?
[Barbara]
Yes.
[Armstrong]
That's very hard for me to imagine, but it's also a long time before I came.
[Barbara]
But, I mean, in terms of your experience when you were in the middle of the
reorganization, talking duplication, did you have a sense they were looking for an
excuse to close the college?
[Armstrong]
No, I think… I think actually the opposite. It seems to me, looking back on it, that
there were all sorts of opportunities for them to have closed the college they did
not take. When they chose to kill TJC, that was a wrenching decision from the
institution. I understand that. But having made the decision to do that, one could
have, I think, at the same time, passed a different resolution which is to kill the
federation concept entirely. They didn't do that. When in nineteen eighty then
Adrian resigned and they needed to replace the dean, that was another
opportunity which they did not take to kill the college. And that was a convenient
opportunity. In the fall of nineteen eighty, when the budget deficit was so severe
and so sudden, that was an opportunity to solve the problem and ruffle almost no
feathers on campus by simply lopping off one or two small colleges. James first
choice and then Kirkhof second choice, I would guess, to solve the budget
problem. Didn't happen! In nineteen eighty-two, when the opportunity came for
reorganization, when it was pretty clear that there was going to be a
reorganization, the only question was what shape it would take. Again, that was
the opportunity; that was the obvious, easy answer and it wasn't taken. That says
to me, that people with the long knives were not out. That there was, perhaps, a
latent appreciation, but at some levels a profound appreciation for that which we
�were trying to accomplish and had made some headway on that people didn't
want to lose. Didn't understand it well but didn't think it ought to be lost either.
[Barbara]
It's blinking at me.
[Armstrong]
Okay.
[Barbara]
We have one more question, I think. I think you've done the legacy, don’t 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
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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>
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
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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
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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/.
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GV016-16_GVSU_52_Armstrong
Creator
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Armstrong, Forrest
Date
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1984
Title
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Forrest Armstrong interview (3 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Forrest Armstrong 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. Forrest Armstrong was the Dean of William James College from 1980-1983 and also served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities during his ten years at Grand Valley. In this interview, Forrest discusses his impression of how the William James College community defined itself, the outside community's reaction to their politics, and how the institution responded to the budget collapse beginning in the fall of 1980. This interview is part 3 of 3 for Forrest Armstrong.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
College administrators
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c59f9bf9dcc9119a8a4cf503ac55e34b.mp4
4f0e3d17a74f413f35285835a4bd8d04
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cffc9acb11a6e01e2e1e07f8d9677417.pdf
c55bc3668777774525f179a7c8cd542d
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Tom Bell
Date: 1984
[Bell]
Here at the Network, the Amway Network, bringing to you live today, a
discussion. What was it you wanted to touch on?
[Suzanne]
[Inaudible]
[Bell]
What kind of things was it that, you know, we talked about the other day that
seems relevant to you?
[Suzanne]
Community.
[Bell]
Community? You wanted to talk about community. That's probably the most
difficult…
[Suzanne]
Why don't we warm up here for second [inaudible].
[Bell]
Okay. What do you want to talk about? Where do you want to start?
[Suzanne]
How have you used what you learned at William James in your life today?
[Bell]
Okay, that's a really good question. I'm using the things that I got out of William
James in ways that I probably didn't understand or didn't expect when I was in
school. I think like a lot of folks, when you reach a certain point of pursuing an
education in particular field where you're really paying all your attention to that
particular field and you sort of set aside as a matter of convenience or really in
the drive to obtain a degree, a goal to get out and do what it is you think you want
to do. And so that process for me, I think I put aside a lot of the things were being
talked about at William James. About process, about integration, about preparing
for change. I put those things out of my mind as being conscious focused items
and can try to get on with what I was there to learn. And oddly enough, the things
that were the most valuable to me from William James, were exactly the things
William James was trying to talk about. The aspects of integrating other
disciplines into your own chosen field of discipline. To look towards the future
with an eye to changing and accommodating change. Both social change and
personal change. And I think, now, that a lot of the things that I really was
pursuing and at the time with intensity, technical skills and job opportunities, are
really not that valuable to me now. The things that are valuable to me are the
�skills I've got that allow me to perceive the opportunities of change or the
indicators of the need for change. The comfort that I have with going to other
disciplines or actually always looking at other disciplines to see what it is that
they're doing that I might find useful in my own genre of activity. I think that skill
alone has probably made it worthwhile to spend time at William James. That has
allowed me to have a greater breadth of ability and conversation with people
doing other things. And that's terrifically valuable.
[Suzanne]
How was that enacted at William James?
[Bell]
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.
[Suzanne]
How was the interdisciplinary thing that you are talking about, how did you see
that happening at William James. As a student, walking in there.
[Bell]
I think the whole idea of interdependent disciplines was, and is, a difficult concept
both to talk about in pragmatic ways and difficult to show unless you have a
particular problem right in front of you. In my case, some of the things that I found
really useful was… I was pursuing working in media realms with an eye towards
social applications, to use media, and video, and film for social change in
education and awareness. Which is, in a lot of times, becomes a very technical
endeavor. And the things that I found useful in terms of interdisciplinary kinds of
approaches to things. Let me back that up. The things I found useful in terms of
interdisciplinary… the things that I found useful in terms of interdependent
disciplines was developing the practice of looking at other disciplines like
engineering to see how they organized their thought processes. I found a lot of
things that engineers use, in terms of organizing projects and presentation
modes, to be very useful, both in terms of organizing my own thoughts and my
own projects, but also in terms of talking to technical people. It gave me the skill
to know that I can go in and talk to this group of people within their own jargon,
within their own realm, the paradigms that they're most comfortable with. That
was a tool that I might not have otherwise had, had I stayed working with visual
artist, or graphic artists, or writers, or musicians. And I'm sure that wouldn't have
been available to me. I think another example of that is the way that
environmentalists think about issues. In terms of taking an issue with a larger
scope and water pollution, air pollution, viewing that in terms of how it affects a
region, how it affect the whole nation, how it affects a neighboring nation, and
then taking that larger view and then being able to bring it right down to a specific
region of activity, a specific area that's contribute into it, or not contributing to it,
and examining those things. In essence, being able to jump from a macro view of
a situation to the micro aspects of it. Now that's a skill that has to be developed
within that realm that is also directly applicable to what I do. Again, it also gave
me the vernacular, as it were, of another discipline, so that when dealing with
people in another discipline, where you can start out with a common ground. And
�I think probably even more importantly than starting out a common ground is the
process of developing the ability to listen to other individuals, to other practices,
other disciplines. And any time you practice something like that you're going to
get better at listening to them. Let me start that over again. I think more than
being able to use the particular knowledge I've through the practice of… that's
not what I want to say either. I think the practice of looking to apply
interdisciplinary approaches to what you're doing, is probably immeasurably
valuable. It has given me a leg up in getting in on particular kinds of activities,
from the start. But also, it gives me a sense of comfort in dealing with awkward
situations, knowing that, you know, that I do have a skill that I've been working
with that is aimed at understanding other points of view, other applications, and
not only understanding, but doing it with an eagerness to say: "What can I get out
of this that's useful for me."
[Suzanne]
Do you remember [inaudible] students come in and had to go through this
transition period [inaudible]. Do you remember that?
[Bell]
Yeah, yeah.
[Suzanne]
Can you describe it?
[Bell]
Probably not. The transition period of coming into William James, of leaving a
conventional educational environment to getting into this alternative environment,
I think was really awkward for a lot of people. People just didn't catch on. People
didn't understand that you're responsible for your own process. You're
responsible for your own education. And that was an idea foreign to a lot of
students. Especially in the later years of William James. Now in the earlier years,
it was a whole different story. That was the reason the school was there. I mean
it was a reason a lot of those instructors, a lot of those professors, chose to be at
William James was because they wanted students who were going to assume
responsibility for their own educational process. I think that transition period of
going from a high school or perhaps some other college that was a very
structured, rigidly structured, environment into the William James environment
was awkward for a lot of people. It wasn't particularly awkward for me, it was
exciting for me, it was exactly what I wanted to do, and I wanted to get on with it.
I couldn't learn fast enough in William James. It was an exciting period, to have
the opportunity to jump into the kind of things that I wanted to do, at the pace that
I wanted to do it at, was exhilarating, and I couldn't get enough of it.
[Suzanne]
Can you describe it [inaudible] a little bit more?
[Bell]
What kind of things are you looking for? What would be useful for me to touch
on?
�[Suzanne]
What would be really useful if you said, in one line, actually you just said it.
[Bell]
No, I can say it again if it’s going to be for help for editing. As long are you're not
making me lie.
[Suzanne]
No, it’s what you said actually about the students changed. Just some of the
changes in here, real succinctly. Like the students changed. At first, they came
here they came here, they didn't have to have that transition and later they had to
make that transition and a lot of them couldn't and that was a problem.
[Bell]
I think making the transition from a conventional educational realm, whether it's
high school, or another college, to the environment William James was difficult
for a lot of people. The change in having the ownership of responsibility on the
student was both a hard one for some people to comprehend and apply more.
[Suzanne]
More specifically…
[Bell]
Not that succinct, huh?
[Suzanne]
More specifically, when the school first started, people were specifically looking
for that and they…
[Bell]
Oh, I see what you're saying.
[Suzanne]
How that transition, you think, was a problem.
[Bell]
Sure, sure. I think one of the unpleasant aspects for me about the experience of
William James was… no, I don't want to do that either, that's kind of putting it in a
negative tone. That's the way I feel, but when William James started, the
responsibility for an individual's education was on the student. And I think that's
why a lot of teachers were there. It was a different environment, a different way
to work. I would say almost all the students that I met in earlier years of William
James, that's why they were there, they wanted to shape their own educational
experience. Well, that changed as the time period changed. We got a new
generation of students and they just wanted to be handed the routine that they
could adopt or adapt themselves to, rather. And I think that was a real major
indicator that William James time as a college had come and gone.
[Suzanne]
Okay, now, community. Can you describe what the William James community
was? Just the other day… it was a network, a network. It wasn't being friends; it
wasn't all that.
[Bell]
I think one of the more nebulous parts of the William James experience has got
to be trying to describe that community. I think for the most part, the William
�James community only really exists between those students who caught on to
being self-responsible for the educational experience. And they aren't necessarily
the students who stayed in contact with each other on a social kind of basis, or
even perhaps in in the professional realm. And yet that community of
independent thinkers is a powerful one. Especially as students get further away
from their educational period, their time in college and find the need to make
contacts in other realms. That there is a network of people that exist because of
William James where the dialogue has- the tone of the dialogue, rather, has only
been established. It's one of being ready to think in alternative modes. But that
community is a very narrow one and I don't think all the students from William
James belong in that community, either by choice or just by being able to carry
on the dialogue. It's sort of a self-exclusive room.
[Suzanne]
Can you describe it? The other day you were talking about what it wasn't.
[Inaudible] It was great, there was this community there that was interdependent,
and it wasn't friends or whatever. Remember you were talking about.
[Bell]
Yeah, yeah, and I'm not so sure that I really made the point that I feel strongly
about come across. I think the community of William James College is very
unique one, in that it is made up of people who are posturing themselves or
placing themselves in the positions, intentionally, so they can discuss alternatives
in what they're involved with. Whether it be alternatives in environmental aspects,
or media aspects, or management. There is a basis for dialogue whose
foundation lies upon this desire to look at alternatives and see if they might not
be more appropriate. That's a very unique kind of community. It's a very exciting
kind of community. It's, I think, a very, very valuable kind of community that is
probably not going to happen again for a while. I think people are very much
attuned, nowadays, in this particular period of you know ten years or so, into
finding a status quo that works and to stick with it. Nonetheless, there is a
community of William James students who are getting older and stay in contact,
somewhat, and I just think that what makes that community valuable is that the
readiness to talk about alternatives is ever present. Did that get you where you
wanted to go to, Suzanne?
[Suzanne]
That was really good.
[Bell]
I'm not sure that the community that gets talked about, the William James
community, is really as valid as a lot of the discussion and rhetoric might lend it
to be. I think a lot of the rhetoric about that happens to come from hanger-oners.
I think the people who really engender the spirit of the William James community,
if there is such a thing, are those people who have taken the principles of
applying what you're involved with, with an interdependent view. That is to say
going into whatever activity you're involved with, with a view towards integrating
other disciplines, integrating other points of view so that you'll find the most
�appropriate way to apply yourself to a given challenge or situation. And I don't
think that gets shared by everybody who came out of William James.
[Suzanne]
What about the faculty? I mean with the student community, does that, with the
faculty?
[Bell]
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think one of the more powerful drawing aspects of
the early days at William James College was the faculty. I think this faculty was a
very special group of individuals with very powerful ideas looking, for a way to
apply these notions of interdependent educate… being personally responsible for
your own education, interdependent disciplines. Wait a second, I'm going to back
that up a little bit. I think for me, one of the things that drew me to William James
was the uniqueness of the faculty. There was a powerful collection of individuals
there, working with a lot of powerful ideas. And not all those ideas ever made it to
fruition, or perhaps made it to fruition in the successful sense that a lot of people
had hoped for. But nonetheless, there was a very powerful professorial
community there. Which drew to it, I think, the early William James community,
which was also a very powerful bunch of people in terms of energy, and
ambition, and vision, and vision, and discipline. And I think that that's one of the
things that set William James College apart and did make it unique. And for a
while, really fulfill its intent, that is, of providing an alternative environment to
acquire an education.
[Suzanne]
Good. I'd hate to ask you the same thing.
[Bell]
Fine, fine. If I'm not hitting where you need to go, please do that.
[Suzanne]
Yeah, do it for me again.
[Bell]
What is that you need to know about community?
[Suzanne]
What I need in the editing process [inaudible] is someone to give a concise, yet
excited, that there was this community there. You know, and you can say the
word community isn't quite right. Maybe a network.
[Bell]
Yeah, but see I don't think that was that much different from any other college.
[Suzanne]
You don't?
[Bell]
No, I don't think to the community that existed William James was any less
enthusiastic than the community that existed at Michigan State. I think the thing
that sets it apart is it's a pretty large collection of people, thinking in alternative
ways. And it just doesn't happen that you get alternative thinkers who gathered in
large groups very often. It's an exciting place to be in. To be in with a bunch of
�people… to be inside of a community that not only encourages alternative
thinking but pursues it. And beats it to death if it were to find ways to really come
out ahead of where you started at. Both in terms of your thinking, your
professional status, in your personal life. So, if there's a William James
community, it's one based upon pursuing alternative visions. And in a lot of ways,
it doesn't mean that it's a limited to the people who went the school at William
James. There are places that still apply a William James technique to learning.
And I think that those people are as much a part of that community as anybody
who was tuition paying person. I think the community of William James is much
larger than just the students and the faculty who participated in it. I think it's a
global thing. Actually it's a network process, where you begin… you go to a place
like William James to get involved in and expanding your processes of thinking.
Expanding your own visions of whatever it is you're involved with. And in that
process of doing so, you make contact, you make a network with other
individuals. And that's the community. That's the exciting part. I don't get that
sense of excitement, that sense of personal and professional value from people
who gone to other schools and who have established their own networks based
upon, you know, whatever their curriculum was. I think that there was something
unique about William James College which extends beyond the school, and that
is that group of independent thinkers.
[Suzanne]
Great [inaudible]. That was real good. What do you want to say, specifically?
[Bell]
What do I want to say specifically? I guess I can say, I think one of the more
powerful aspects of my experience that William James happens to come to be
one of anger rather. To have left the school feeling let down in the last two years
of my time there. And to feeling a sense of disappointment that it was waning.
The opportunity, the time of experimentation was slipping away. And I went to
William James for that opportunity, to indulge in this time of experimentation that
was, I think an outcrop of the sixties and a lot of social change that occurred. And
to have that slip away, it was sort of embittering, for a while, until almost by
surprised, I realized that I was really applying, in my daily activities, the form of
thought, the method of thinking, that William James College was working on. And
whenever that day arrived and I suddenly set up from my desk and I realized:
"It's working! It's working! It made it worthwhile to go to William James." Because
in spite of all the negatives that I had been focusing on, I got a wonderful kit of
tools to take with me from now on out.
[Suzanne]
Okay, that's good.
[Bell]
Okay. I know there's probably one last thing that… I think a lot of people in the
community surrounding the college, in West Michigan, business people, and a lot
of students in other colleges, tend to look at William James, and students, as
being unpractical, or air heads, or in most and a lot of times just in unpleasant
�ways. And I think that kind of perception comes out of the later years, which was
a result of it being a period of change. I think the very powerful time for William
James to exist occurred at the end of the sixties, or the early part of the
seventies, when there were a group of people, mostly Vietnam veterans, who
were wanting to go to school and were able take charge of their own educational
process and were looking for a place to do that in. And so, when you couple that
up with a faculty looking for a way to offer a different environment to learn in, it’s
a wonderful ready-made situation, which may not come along again for a long
time. It was for a while, the most appropriate place for a lot of people to be. And
when those people got their value out of the experience, when the professors got
their value, and it started becoming burnt out and moved on to other
opportunities, when students graduated and went on to apply what it was they
were pursuing, the need for the place to exist dissipated. And so, I think it's
probably appropriate, and it's very appropriate that William James ceased being.
And I hope that in the future, and given ten years when similar circumstance
arise, and it will happen, that those people at that time can say: "Oh look, they
did this at William James, and it was very powerful, and some things worked
really well, and some things didn't, and let's try it again based upon that." And I
think, probably, if nothing else, the important thing about the process at William
James was being attuned to change, being aware of the need for perceiving
other ways to approach what it is you're getting involved with. And if you do that,
you'll become aware just through the process of when it's appropriate to put
something down and move on something else. And so, William James leaving us
was ultimately appropriate.
[Suzanne]
Good.
[Bell]
Anything else?
[Suzanne]
Yeah. [Inaudible]
[Bell]
Let me try that again, alright? Let me shorten it up for you. I think the important
thing to keep in mind about William James is that it came into reality during a
time of terrific change and the kinds of things that it focused on were dealing with
that change, were dealing with the changes both in terms of changing
educational systems, changing social systems, and preparing yourself to be able
to change in the future. So, I think it's ultimately appropriate that when the
students who wanted that kind of education, when the teachers who are willing to
give themselves to that situation, decided to either move on or that they were all
through with the process, and then all new kind of students came in that weren't
looking for that educational opportunity, when all that happened, it was ultimately
appropriate that William James cease to be. Okay.
[Suzanne]
Great. About the community [inaudible]…
�[Bell]
No, fine, fine. If you're not getting what you need, let’s look for it.
[Suzanne]
We're getting it, I'm just thinking [inaudible]. You were talking about people
outside the community, and they looked at… I guess what I'm talking about it the
difference between people who are not part of the community…
[Bell]
Yeah.
[Suzanne]
Who are, I mean there's a major part of the world who aren't part of that
community. So, is that community practical?
[Bell]
Oh yeah. Yeah. With the William James community you mean?
[Suzanne]
Yeah.
[Bell]
I think a lot of people question whether or not the educational process at William
James provided people with practical tools. And I'd say absolutely yes. That
when William James students interface in a more conservative conventional
environment, there is no conflict per se. I mean we're just people, were working
together, and, you know, suits and ties are just another kind of uniform. And we
can all put on a uniform and for that little while people think it's all, you know,
everybody's in the same kind of army, or team, or whatever. And yet, a William
James student possesses a set of tools that makes him very versatile, or her,
very, very versatile. Those tools being looking to other disciplines for useful tools,
looking for other ways to integrate these other tools into your own application so
that you can further yourself and further your own profession, or whatever activity
it is you know you chosen to be involved with. So, no I don't think that people
fitting William James students have any trouble at all fitting into a conventional
industrial environment. As a matter fact, I think they have a leg up in the sense
that a lot of them are subversive to begin with and it gives them an environment
they can be subversive in and in a very practical way, and it sort of works out
better for everybody because employers benefit from people thinking you know
alternative ways, whether or not they're willing to accept the dialogue with that
person thinking in those ways. So yeah, I think people coming away from William
James, if they really caught on to what was going on there, have some very
practical skills.
[Suzanne]
But if…
[Bell]
But if…
[Suzanne]
But if people- one of the issues in this today is going to come out as if society
is…[?] wants people to just be able to [inaudible] one narrow job, everyday, don't
�question it, don't make drama. I mean, things are getting more and more
specialized and liberal education is going away, but William James was focusing
on that. Is that part of the reason for the change or going away of William
James? Is that one of the ways it was not successful because it was training
people for something society doesn't want?
[Bell]
Well, I think there's two issues in the question of the change of William James.
One issue is "Was William James successful?" Because, obviously, it went away
as a school. And I don't think that there's any conflict in when you say: "Yes
William James was a successful educational environment, and yes William
James went away as an educational institution." The point still remains is that it
was appropriate for a certain group of people at a certain time in history, and
when that time came and went, it was no longer appropriate. So, to hang on to
the school in order for it to adapt and to exist it would have had changed into an
environment that it wasn't intended to be to begin with. So much better that it just
went away altogether and rather than become some kind of hypocritical
institution. And this… what was in part of that?
[Suzanne]
The professional training people for something that [inaudible] might not miss or
really want.
[Bell]
Oh, oh, about….
[Suzanne]
That sort of thing [inaudible] .
[Bell]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's true that the other influence that William James
suffered, you know it's demise was a result of…wait a second. Yeah, it's true that
another influence that William James had to deal with, had to contend with, was
the specialization of the job market. Was the increasing unattractiveness of a
liberal education. And I think it's just a temporary thing. I mean, historically it's
temporary. People get specialized, and learn about math, and science until we're
engineered to death and people say: "We need more artist!" And then we get so
many more artists until we suddenly realize: "Oh geez we're lagging in the
technological race, so we need more engineers." I think it's just an ongoing thing.
And I think that there's a lesson there to be learned from William James is
dialogues with what it was trying to do, and that it was attempting to integrate
these disciplines of creative disciplines, of creative art disciplines, the ways of
being creative, with engineering disciplines, so that you don't exclude any
activity. In fact, you include all activities, so that you actually integrate your
society, your… first off on a personal level, and then on a social level, in terms of
your society and workplaces you're involved with, so that what happens is that
you don't have these peaks and valleys. You have a more fulfilled individuals.
You have a healthier society in that it has the ability to adapt to the changes as
those changes come up instead of always playing catch up there. You're always
�looking to the situation in terms of what it needs to be appropriate for the
moment. And I think the only you get that is if you are integrated with multiple
disciplines. Okay?
[Suzanne]
Good. I want to ask you one more other thing. This is just something…
[Bell]
Fire away.
[Suzanne]
…that Barb is asking everybody to sum up, in just a few sentences or more, what
was William James? In a few words or more.
[Bell]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Suzanne]
[Inaudible]
[Bell]
How would I describe William James to somebody that didn't know anything
about it? I would say William James was a very exciting place to. That it was a
collection of tremendous thinkers, in terms of faculty. It was a collection of a
tremendous group of people, hungry for knowledge and hungry for a way to
pursue that knowledge in their own ground and in their own terms. And as a
result, it was a tremendous environment of experimentation that was very
exhilarating, and a wonderful place to be for that period of time.
[Suzanne]
I'm going to stop the tape and look through some notes, to see if there's anything
else [inaudible].
[Bell]
To see if there's any more questions, fine. Hi Vern!
[Suzanne]
This is going great.
[Bell]
Good!
[Suzanne]
You're still taped.
[Bell]
Thank you! One of the keys to William James was its structure, in that it was a
non-competitive structure, both non-competitive for students, in terms of not
having grades, and also non-competitive for the professors. No tenure and things
like that. And the dean wasn't some autonomous feudal lord. And the students
also had a say in terms of how the schools was run. The student council was
more than just an organizing fun committee for bands, and dances, and stuff. It
was a very powerful voice in the decisions that went on in William James. And
that made it for, again, a very unique environment.
[Suzanne]
That was great, can you say that…
�[Bell]
Even quicker?
[Suzanne]
No, with the point that it was intentionally structured that way, from the beginning.
It was thought through and built that way so that it could fit this kind of
environment.
[Bell]
Yeah, yeah. Sure, I can do that. Yeah, I think something that- that is important to
make note about William James is that it structure it's non-competitive structure,
where students weren't competitive, because there were no grades, and
professors were not competitive, there wasn't tenure, and the dean wasn't some
kind of feudal lord, as you find in other institutions. All that structure was
intentionally. It was a well thought out structure for creating the environment that
William James had. Is that what you need?
[Suzanne]
Good. Very Good.
[Bell]
Okay.
[Suzanne]
I'm going to stop it again. Why not just look at that sheet and see if there's
anything else you want to talk about?
[Bell]
These are things that need to be said?
[Unknown]
No, not necessarily.
�
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
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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
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_64_Bell
Creator
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Bell, Thomas
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
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Tom Bell interview (video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Thomas Bell 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. Thomas Bell was a student of William James College who pursued the study of media and film for social change. In this interview, Thomas discusses the personal impact of his William James College education, the transition from a conventional educational environment to the alternative education environment, and the community of independent thinkers that made William James unique. This interview is part 1 of 1 for Thomas Bell.
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
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5760583b925689b2c98d5d980573c065.mp4
6b249415649bc6696649acb6b04500ae
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fd7d786f3cbf7cce24d046644f115567.pdf
bdbcedba3ba569a7d63b12f04669892a
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: James Clover
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 2
[Clover]
You do edit this, right?
[Barbara]
Of course, I do edit this one for you. Tell me, sum up in one sentence, you've got
one sentence: What is the essence of William James College?
[Clover]
Interdisciplinary experience.
[Barbara]
What does that mean? I'm not sure.
[Clover]
It means that I got to rub shoulders with a whole lot of folks, all headed in
different directions, and we exchanged information about our directions.
[Barbara]
Hi Dallas!
[Dallas]
[Inaudible]
[Clover]
And it was- I don't know. It was a willingness of a group of people to come
together and try and understand what each other- what we were doing. What
each of us were trying to do. That opportunity to talk about it, compromise.
[Barbara]
Did you come here to be in alternative college?
[Clover]
Yes, I've been in alternative arts school, but I had no idea what an alternative
college would be about. And the first year I was here I stood around with my
mouth hanging open. I did! I didn't- I don't know. I guess what William James did
for me was it helped to make me listener.
[Barbara]
What do you mean?
[Clover]
I was so into being an artist and being an art teacher that it seems to be that art
information was what I was primarily dealing with and I found out that I needed
outside information to support my ideas.
[Barbara]
Like what?
[Clover]
[Laughter] Like what? Like anything. Life. Anything at all. I think when I came
here, I was pretty, as far as art information goes, I was pretty burned out and I
�needed to make contact with other people, with society as a whole, and the
throwing together of many kinds of people in the William James situation gave
that to me.
[Barbara]
What did we do wrong?
[Clover]
I don't think we did anything wrong. I think that we were, that the people… you
mean administratively, what did we do wrong? I think that people didn't
understand what we were trying to do. And maybe it was our fault that we didn't
communicate it to them, or maybe they just didn't want to know. I don't know if
that's a really good answer. What did we do wrong? I think we did… I don't know.
Maybe we were in the wrong place [Laughter].
[Barbara]
Okay, um-
[Clover]
You know, I don't know. I mean, I can sit here and talk to you about this and as
soon as you get the camera on, I get strange.
[Barbara]
Well, don't get strange.
[Clover]
I know, I'm trying try not to.
[Barbara]
You're doing a good job, you don't look strange.
[Clover]
Well, I'm trying not to get [Strange Noise], you know.
[Barbara]
Now, that's strange.
[Clover]
Okay, well you know what I mean.
[Barbara]
Don't worry, we'll make it through this. Some people think we weren't doing a
quality education for some of the students. Some of the students just slid through
and didn't do shit.
[Clover]
Yeah, but see I think that's alright. I think it's okay to slide through and not do
shit. I think that's a choice of the individual you know. If they don't get turned on
during the process, tough. I think the same thing happens in the structure that we
now operate under. And -it's just a different kind of symbol that's all. There are
symbols there that say, you know, you did this, this and this, you then can slip by
on C's and everything's just fine. It's really easy to get the C symbol, and we
eliminated a symbol. I didn't see any problem with that at all. Because [Noise]
you know, the people involved in the structure wanted it made use of it. It was
there, they learned how. It was very creative.
�[Barbara]
So the key to what we were doing that people didn't understand was that we
were inter-disciplinary.
[Clover]
I think so. I think that people never bothered to find out and you know when some
kind of attempts were made to find out what we actually did… you can't drop in
for thirty minutes and make a judgment on what's going on here. And I think that
there should've been an element of trust involved. Just, you know, based on the
experience of the group of people that are gathered together in William James
they should have trusted us and said: "Hey, you know, they aren't stupid. They
must be willing to do something right. I mean why are they here, you know?
They're doing something, it was going well." It's a farce actually. I don't know. We
were outnumbered, politically. We were never able to establish ourselves
because it was a numbers thing, you know, the credibility thing. Thirty against
how many?
�
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
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GV016-16
Format
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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.
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
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GV016-16_GVSU_18_Clover
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clover, James
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
James Clover interview (1 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with James Clover 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. James Clover was an art instructor of William James College and a renowned sculptor whose work can be seen on Grand Valley State University's campuses, including the "Heaven and Earth" sculpture located in the heart of Great Lakes Plaza. In this interview, James discusses the essence of William James College, his experience transitioning from an alternative arts school to an alternative college, and the misunderstandings surrounding being interdisciplinary. This interview is part 1 of 2 for James Clover.
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
Art Study and teaching
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0ca6b1b55e7c8698aa271047e7431d64.mp4
0ad93e83685e5d9deb8dd5ad1718d6b2
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e35e47ad033009e1b411fd9e76c14363.pdf
40175bec014cfd18354f8e456169fb20
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: James Clover
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 2
[Clover]
William James was an information exchange for all the people that were
involved. And I think that in any disciple that you're pursuing, that you need
information and that it was a good way to get it. And I don't know, you know. It
was the first time that I had ever been involved with engineers, environmentalists,
writers. Did we have musicians? We had some amateur musicians.
[Barbara]
[Inaudible].
[Clover]
Right. We had philosophers, psychologist preachers, historians. All in one place.
[Barbara]
You know what, that was good. Keep thinking- keep talking. Repeat it to me.
What was some… [Inaudible]?
[Clover]
Not bad.
[Barbara]
What can't you do now, Jim. I mean, here you are in your studio, it looks like your
[?] totally. What can't you do now? Why do you need a structure?
[Clover]
Now, all I do is go to art faculty meetings and talk about problems that all art
faculties have been dealing with since nineteen fifty-six and not getting any
answers at all. I go to faculty meetings and no one ever talks about teaching. And
I wonder about that and I'm still waiting to meet the first person that says they
can't teach. And I don't know. I'm just sort of… I'm in an isolated kind of situation
right now. As far as artists use information, by the ton. They need lots of
information. More, and more, and more, and more information. I mean they eat it
up. Now I have… now I'm having to go elsewhere for my information. I have to…
I do, I leave the community. As far as productivity of my art goes, there's a lot
more happening because I have to drive to Atlanta to find out what's going on.
And I have to go to Chicago. And I keep six or seven shows going so that I
remain active as an artist. To get the information I have to read more, which is
not fine, I mean, I probably should have reading more anyway. I have to… I find
myself seeking out things that were available in the William James situation. I
have to find somewhere else, and they're spread all over the place.
[Barbara]
Did you find being at James absorbed so much of your energy you weren't as
active in art as you are now?
�[Clover]
Yes. My involvement at William James was a much more intense teaching
situation than I'm currently involved in. Yes I had found myself using the majority
of my energy in the James situation.
[Barbara]
Do you resent that?
[Clover]
No, I don't resent that. I consider that a real growth process for me.
[Clover]
I was genuinely burned out as far as creativity goes, when I came to James and
that kind of experience gave me a renewal that I'm using now.
[Barbara]
Well, it sounds like it worked out alright for you that James closed.
[Clover]
Pardon?
[Barbara]
It sounds as though it was opportune that James closed.
[Clover]
No, I don't think so. I think that I would rather have that and less art involvement.
I mean it was very important for me. Or I'd like to have some of each. Or I would
like to have the opportunity to jump out of the James experience, be an artist, for
a while, and jump back in. Which would have been ideal.
[Barbara]
Can you see ways that students needed the structure… let’s put it, forget the way
I asked that. You said you're isolated. How are the students different under the
current structure of James? We've been talking a lot about your feelings at
James, but what about the people coming through?
[Clover]
Well, the students were actively involved in the total process of the evolution of
the James experience and through community meetings and interactions with the
disciplines there was a lot of student involvement. The difference I think is that
there was a more complete… for the James student, it was a more total
involvement in what living is all about, rather than jumping from specialty to
specialty or from building to building. And there seemed to be a relationship there
and interaction that doesn't take place in a traditional education. My students
come in for three hours a day and then they run off somewhere else.
[Barbara]
Goodbye.
[Clover]
Goodbye. Whereas at James we were involved, you know, ten, twelve hours a
day. And I knew what they were doing and I knew who they were. And I knew
their joys and I knew their troubles.
[Barbara]
Therefore could teach them better?
�[Clover]
Sure. Of course. They knew me. I was willing to tell them about me and they
were willing to tell me about them.
[Barbara]
Why did you ask me if anybody cried?
[Clover]
I don't know. I have a real sadness about the closing of it because it seemed to
be an expanding structure, whereas traditional education expands much more
slowly. And it’s very difficult to communicate across disciplines in a college
situation. Very hard to get their attention. They don't listen. Seems like, you
know, whatever the popular education mode is the time, an example, computers,
I mean where the interest goes. And there's a great expense to people who think
a liberal education is important because of the jumping around from disciple to
disciple. I'm sure in ten years it might be something else. I have no idea what it
might be. Who knows. Restaurant Management, Nursing, all career-oriented
stuff. I talked to a nursing student the other day in the faculty lunchroom: the Oak
Room. Which I swear I'd never go into. Because somehow, I thought that it was
better for me to eat with the students because we could interact that way and
they would know who I am. Now I go to the Oak Room, my friends go there. This
girl was talking to me, she butchered the English language, I corrected her, she
was embarrassed. And I asked her what level student she was and she said she
was fourth year nursing. And I said Lord girl you need to learn how to speak the
English language. And she apologize all over herself. And somehow it leaves a
void in me when I run into people like that who are supposedly getting an
education and I wonder what happened. How did she miss English 110, how did
she miss literature, how did she miss writing? And it's not required for her? I think
that she leaves us in ways that will hurt her later on. I think that she could have a
better life. I think she could be a better decision-maker by being multi-disciplined.
Or at least multi-aware. Aww man. So that what I think William James is about.
[Barbara]
[Inaudible] of shit. Nobody said that. Not one person has said that.
[Clover]
It pisses me off, it does.
[Barbara]
What?
[Clover]
It pisses me off that people categorize themselves and limit their experience. I
can't stand. I don't know any of the philosophy people here. I don't know any of
the historians here other than ex-William James people. I don't know any of the
English people, other than Robert Mayberry. And Ros. Is Ros in the English
department still as an adjunct person? Committed lifelong adjunct. And they
never come by, you know. But then again, I never go by either. So, who knows,
you know. So, it's just these isolated pockets. I go to all college faculty meeting
and the politics are so involved that there is no exchange of information. Pure
politics. And it seems to be some kind of, I don't know, I find it really interesting
�that for the salaries, for the amount of money that people make in higher
education, that they are that cutthroat about their interactions and relationships
with others. It all seems to be territory protection.
[Barbara]
Do you think that happened at William James College?
[Clover]
I don't know. It was like it was not allowed, or it couldn't happen, or the nucleolus
of faculty was all small. And the fact that we were all thrown together dissolved
that. And it also… outside pressures forced us to us stick together. And we did,
as much as possible. I think we really did. And the, you know, the exchanges of
information in the James situation. I mean it's, you know, I'm not trying to make
this all sound like it was a glorious, wonderful, la la la la la, whatever. It wasn't. It
was intense. Oftentimes unnerving. You know, a willingness… my biggest
problem was the willingness to listen to other people and what they really had to
say and trying to figure out what they're really saying and then deal with that in a
reasonable manner. It's not my nature to do that and I was forced into that, and it
was super. And I watched that happen to the students. The place allowed you to
shoot your mouth off and make a fool out of yourself and people would still back
you. Which was kind of neat. I guess while I was there I didn't feel like I really had
to protect myself, career-wise. Or I did not have to be as careful what I say or
what I do. Probably in that case, you know, when you have that kind of feeling
there's a better exchange of information between you and the people you're
dealing with. And I don't know and I also I felt a certain kind of protection. I felt
like I could go into a class and say what I and can talk about what I felt I knew at
the moment, or what I know, and not have the kind of kick back or reaction that I
would have in students who weren't oriented in that way. A lot of
misunderstanding and I find myself being more careful in class. I don't swear
anymore. I gently tell people… I gently try to tell people what it's like to try and be
an artist, rather than, maybe I'm not as pushy or demanding. I don't think.
Something happens, you know, something happened there. Yeah, we used to
just, I don't know, it seems to me like you know, we used to just really it. Get
down on what trying to make a drawing is all about. Or what trying, you know,
dealing with design principle, what it's all about. And I guess the students, they
intuitively understand that we were trying to help them and did not… whereas in
the standard kind of teaching situation, it seems like a lot of people come there to
be offended. And they're looking for that, and they're offended easily. And they
complain. And you end up in the chairman's office, trying to explain what you
were trying to do. And it seems real crazy to me that I should have to justify being
what I am or what I'm trying to express. And I think these are real cheap shots of
people who do not have much background or who really don't understand, and
maybe don't want to. Or at least, I don't know. I don't know if the opportunity is
there for them to understand. Seems like the schools are afraid of the students. I
mean they're so afraid that they aren't going to have enough, that they are going
to fill the classroom. And we're told that, you know, numbers are important and
�we keep cramming in more and more numbers and there's less and less
interaction between us and the students. And it's kind of sad. And I guess I
understand the numbers game, the numbers mean money.
[Clover]
But maybe that's the wrong way to go about it. Maybe you should risk it and
maybe you would have the numbers if the information was flowing correctly.
[Barbara]
We did in the Media Department. We did.
[Clover]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We still do.
[Barbara]
We still do?
[Clover]
Yeah, like crazy, you know, which is really neat. And I really feel really bad about
that. I feel bad that the Art Department at Grand Valley State College is separate
from the Media Program is just absolutely ludicrous to me, and it was a pure
policy. It was a numbers game. And some of us who happened to be titled artists
lost. And we were thrown into an Art Department. Whereas we really preferred to
have the whole thing evolve as a cohesive group, and I certainly hope that could
happen.
[Barbara]
[Inaudible] the sculpture now?
[Clover]
Sure.
[Barbara]
Is there anything else you want to say? I think we're near the end of the tape.
[Clover]
No, I, you know, I miss it. And when I walk, you know, I walk across campus and
I see some of ex-faculty members of William James, you know, I kind of feel like,
you know, God, I used to really know this guy and feel like I really knew him in a
professional way and now I don't, you know, it's slipped away and that's too bad.
So, we all… we meet each other shake hands and say how's going it and
everybody says is going just fine. And I guess it is, you know. Life goes on and it
evolves. So, what? Life's a bitch then there's death.
�
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
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<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>
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_19_Clover
Creator
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Clover, James
Date
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1984
Title
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James Clover interview (2 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with James Clover 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. James Clover was an art instructor of William James College and a renowned sculptor whose work can be seen on Grand Valley State University's campuses, including the "Heaven and Earth" sculpture located in the heart of Great Lakes Plaza. In this interview, James discusses how William James College was an "information exchange" for its faculty and students, the importance of working with a community of diverse backgrounds, and the eventual separation of the Arts and Media concentration into two departments at Grand Valley. This interview is part 2 of 2 for James Clover.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Art Study and teaching
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ff7d4527e5cccca66b8168e0d07a150b.mp4
77076d503ff97403daa7d31654f0070d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6e68d3175eafc9f048f3887f166718e.pdf
1a0a363db774c3bb0f4ec7083ab615fb
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Michael DeWilde
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 2
[Barbara]
When you speak, you know, it all makes sense except it sort of doesn't because
you started out in one frame of mind and then changed to another by the end of
the tape. Do you have a comment on that? Did you feel a [inaudible] of anything?
Do you know what I mean?
[DeWilde]
I'm not sure, like I said, it's been a long time since I’ve thought articulately about
William James.
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[DeWilde]
What was your sense of the change?
[Barbara]
Well, I guess, I'm not really asking a question, don't worry about it. It's just that
when you started talking, over the process of twenty minutes, the school seemed
to have become more, well it did become [inaudible], but it also became more
valuable, in the way you were talking.
[DeWilde]
I think it… well, it was valuable and that's just the…
[Barbara]
I guess you can record anytime. Record anytime.
[DeWilde]
Say more.
[Barbara]
I was talking to them [inaudible]…
[DeWilde]
I guess, I really do feel a strong ambivalence about its continuation. That the
spirit, the [inaudible], the rhetoric which was prevalent, strong, and had
something to do with the practice of the place when I first got there, seem to be
diminishing and weakening and that was taking its toll on everybody. And it’s not
that the faculty were any less committed. I didn't sense that they were less
committed. I felt that there was just less understanding and less interest in
understanding what it was that the place was going to be about… what it was
about, what it had been about. But at the same time, feeling a strong
commitment to alternative education, to alternative pedagogies, and that I don't
know how you get back to that given this tenor of the times and all that.
�[Barbara]
Okay, I guess my real final question is something about… my presumption and
my personal program in life is that alternative education keeps cycling, and you
keep hopefully learning a little more each time and doing it better the next ten
years when it cycles up again and you get an opportunity to participate. Do you
have any views on what we could do better or what we did wrong? Or was it just
the tenor of the times? Which is so amorphous, it just frustrates me [inaudible].
[DeWilde]
[Laughter] Yeah. The tenor of the times was actually a bit before my time. I'm
more a child of the seventies, I suppose. So, I understand, you know, times being
tolerant of experimentation, alternativism and things like that. But I can't get a
handle on when people say this a gestation period or if people say, “Well it's
going around, it's coming around again.” I don't know what that means. It doesn't
make sense to me. I don't see that. I don’t see it coming around. It doesn't look
like it's coming around. I mean, perhaps it will. What it did well, it seemed to me,
was this [inaudible] attitude… was manifest an attitude of genuine commitment to
educating the individual as a whole. Educating the individual to be an individual.
To a commitment, not just to learning a lot – any number of disciplines – but to
be Socratic and to teach individuals about themselves. It sounds a little corny,
but I think when it worked and when it was doing… when William James was
being William James, it did that and people experienced that, and it was real.
You could see the consequences in the people you talked to; that you knew
when somebody was from William James and when they weren't.
[Barbara]
But what could it, in the next era, what could it better do? Because you’re also a
Grand Valley professor. You also didn’t get enough.
[DeWilde]
Well, I was…
�
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
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GV016-16
Format
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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.
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
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GV016-16_GVSU_43b_DeWilde
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
DeWilde, Michael
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
Michael DeWilde interview (2 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Michael DeWilde 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. Michael DeWilde was a philosophy student of William James College who went on to become a longtime professor at Grand Valley State University and the Director of the Koeze Business Ethics Initiative in the Seidman College of Business. In this interview, Michael discusses how the spirit of William James College diminished over time and how the "tenor of the times" affected alternative education during that period in Grand Valley history. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Michael DeWilde.
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
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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<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
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/892daa01be0d58ca2e155127a4c65b0c.mp4
963dd92afca4133b0b7b14718c29dab5
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3e456dd3eb84a9acfcb9d5d124bd8207.pdf
a3ad50f8ce12abc300e55bdcc6206ca4
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Michael DeWilde
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 2
[Barbara]
Anytime you want to start. You could talk about where your education failed you,
and where it worked for you, or whatever you want to talk about.
[DeWilde]
Maybe I should do a thumbnail sketch first and go from there. Yeah. My name is
Mike DeWilde, I was at Grand Valley… I was at William James from seventyseven to eighty-one and came originally to do Arts and Media. And took about
two classes with the Liberal Arts people and I never did get around to Arts and
Media. I've since gone on to do a couple of years of graduate work in Boston and
I’ve just come back visit.
[Barbara]
Are you sorry you went to James?
[DeWilde]
There were a number of interesting… it was a roller coaster ride and I tend to
view it more dispassionately now than I did when I was there, of course. But I
think I have a sort of love/hate relationship with it that when it worked, it worked
very, very well. And I felt that the collegiality that people talked about was
happening and was possible, and that it was very inclusive, and you could do
what you needed to do and you could do that with support. And when it was bad,
it was very bad and there was no such thing as collegiality, and that the rhetoric
was just that. Not just rhetoric but empty rhetoric, and that it was perhaps not
unlike Christianity in that it kept vision alive of something very grand, yet was
unable to structure itself in a way that could reach any sort of possible fulfillment.
So that it did some empowering and gave people some confidence, but when it
didn't work, all the empowering and confidence were not helpful because it
wasn't…you weren't being educated.
[Barbara]
Can you speak about it in terms of specific experiences? In other words, classes,
or tasks, or something, you know? What were the variables? When did it work
and when didn't it?
[DeWilde]
So long since I've thought about that. Trying to think of… I think for me, I ended
up doing a lot of independent study my last couple of years, with a couple of
different people. When I got here, I was very gung-ho, I did all the committees,
and history of the college, and what was William James about, and it was very
exciting and I was very involved. Through, I think a certain disillusionment with
perceiving the unable to do advance sort of work in classrooms and there wasn't
�the possibility. The kind of students that were filling classrooms, and this is the
classes I was taking my last couple of years here, it was just impossible to do
any sort of advanced work that faculty was teaching to, if not lowest common
denominator, then certainly a very common denominator. And that was very
frustrating, so I was doing a lot of independent study and working with a small
community of friends who were all looking beyond college to work or graduate
work and with two or three faculty people. And those were the relationships that I
really treasured. It was no longer so much the relationship with the school as an
institution as it was with those individual folks and spending a lot of time in
people's offices talking, you know, putting bibliographies together. And that sort
of thing became the focus of my education which once I got to [inaudible] and
Harvard, both worked for me and against me. I knew how to interact with those
people, I knew how to ask the right sorts of questions. I didn't have the kind of
basic nitty-gritty skills. I didn't have a lot of the broad general education that a lot
of my colleagues had. I didn't have CIV 101 and all that sort of thing that was
picked up through primary sources and through reading other revolutionaries and
counterculture people. And it was… so I think my perspective was somewhat
different. I found it very hard to find a community – I think, well, probably until I
got to Harvard – that was interested in broad questions, that was interested in the
underpinnings of an institution, that was interested in the assumptions upon
which institutions were based, that was at all interested in challenging
methodologies and pedagogies and it was very hard to fight that. I had a couple
of faculty people in graduate school who at times would yell at the classroom:
"This is religious education, why are you people allowing yourself be to graded?”
And of course, I was right there at the forefront, I said "Of course, you know,
that's absolutely ridiculous!" At the same time there was a resignation and I
wonder sometimes if it wasn't at James too, among the students, if not among
the faculty. That, well, we are playing a bit of the game, that you do get graded,
and money is important, and this is nice and its safe, and I can do what I want for
a while. But essentially what I need to get out of it is a career skill because my
performance and how much money I make is finally going to be of importance.
It's very hard in a few years in an alternative college isolated in western
Michigan, I think, to erase protestant, capitalist work ethics and all that sort of
thing. And I don't think there were enough students. I think William James worked
very well for a relatively few people. Because of the discipline involved and
because of the assumptions made about students, that students would take
responsibility for such a large part of education; because it was difficult to get the
faculty because of committees and meetings; because the place spent half of its
waking life defining itself. There was… if you weren't in class talking about
alternative education, then you were on a committee talking about alternative
education. And how to present yourself and what the image was. The changes
that took place in William James from – in the four years that I was there – are
not unlike the changes that I see in the skyline in Boston. They've taken what's…
it's charming, it's livable, it's old world… let's just say that about William James.
�But and it dumped a lot of concrete and steel on it and the changes have been
dramatic in a few short years. And William James got dumped on a lot in the…
when I was there. I think it existed one year after I left, as a separate entity. It got
dumped on by students who didn't understand alternative education, who weren't
interested in philosophy or the theory behind alternative education. It got dumped
on by burned out faculty. And it got dumped on by the institution. And there are
times that… that pissed me off an awful a lot at the time because I'm committed
to alternative education. I mean, I keep an eye out toward what Goddard is doing
and what Evergreen is doing, because that's important to me because I never
would've made it through college if it hadn't been for a place like William James. I
can survive at Harvard taking tests when I'm there – I’m not there right now, but
when I'm there, when I go. I can survive there because they're secure enough as
an institution to let people do different sorts of things. You can… you don't have
to do regurgitation. I mean they're not, for all the other nasty things you can say
about them, they're not insecure. There's an intellectual freedom there. Which
certainly gets interpreted and gets manifested differently than it did at William
James. But there's a kinship, nonetheless, I think. And if it's elitist, then it's elitist.
[Barbara]
Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
[DeWilde]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
You're going along beautifully, but you said, something I've heard from most
students, and I want you to explain it: "I wouldn't have survived at another
institution." What do you mean by that?
[DeWilde]
High school was a very, very bad experience. I was the editor the paper and had
to deal with lots of censorship issues. And I was not necessarily the part of a
clique. I was not the genius math type and science type and the people who are
on the four-year college prep program – I wasn't that. I wasn't among the people
who are going to be janitors, you know, for the rest my of life – that was clear.
But there seemed to be no place to go. There were some of us just in the middle,
and there wasn't anybody addressing people who are profoundly dissatisfied with
education but couldn't be shipped on one hand into vocational school, or shipped
into… you know, and that's [inaudible]. I don't mean to sound pejorative about
those but those were looked at pejoratively, certainly in the high school I was at.
But there was a certain number of people you had to get rid of, there were certain
people that were going to go on and do professional stuff, and then there were a
few of us who said: "Wait, the whole thing is wrong.” Your premise… start by
rejecting the premise and then have nowhere to go because there isn't anybody
there who's equipped with dealing with premises. So, I went to a community
college for a year and just looked through the catalog and anything that said
alternative or non-graded, I went to that. I had no idea what alternative meant or
any of that, but it certainly sounded right. If it was an alternative to what I had
�experienced so far then I had to go on and do that. And through them heard of
William James. And, I don't know, I had trouble with authority. I mean, there was
no way I was going to… I knew that I, you know, in a dorm situation, in a typical
college dorm where people are… I just didn't feel like I was interested in the
kinds of things that those folks were interested in. And that may again be elitist,
and I just have to plead guilty I suppose. But, doing tests and multiple choice,
and regurgitation and reading nothing but secondary sources, and all my
assumptions about what I would be doing at a major university, and getting lost in
shuffle, and that sort thing, was not all appealing. So that William James was a
beacon and when I read all the catalog and the rhetoric, you know… this place is
run by God, you know? That was the feeling from the catalog. Certainly, that
impression changed quickly, also. It's clear to me, without the freedom to pursue
the interests that I had, and without the support. That was most amazing thing to
me when I got here was that if you were serious, if you seem to be able to think
at all, people took you seriously. And people were tolerant, people were forgiving,
and supportive. And it all worked – especially faculty and students across the
board. When I first came here, I was absolutely astounded. People who had
been here for four years, and who knew far more than I did, were taking me
seriously when I talked. And this was the first time that had happened. So, I
began to take myself seriously and began to take your sources seriously, and
you begin to do more serious work. I think that's what made it possible for me to
not just survive through four years of college, but to cherish it. And I think that
even if it's not William James… and I say sometimes, I'm ambivalent about the
closing because I don't know when I left how many people it really was working
for. But the idea and the ideal seem to me absolutely necessary. Because I'm
sure that there are younger people, like myself, who, again, are outside the
clique, and outside the mainstream, and have fewer and fewer places to turn.
There are fewer William James; there are fewer alternatives altogether culturally.
Certainly, you can see it in Boston, as the crowd grows more homogeneous all
the time. And so, I don't know if I feel, at this point, more angry or sad. My
commitment, right now, is to… I'm working as a carpenter and there's a
commitment there. And when I go back to school my commitment is to my
graduate work. But I don't see myself shaking the William James. It's not like
giving that up, I've not become reactionary about it. I'm still committed, like I said
to that idea and that ideal. And even if it only works for relatively few, there have
to be options like that… that vision. Same way I feel about Christianity. You
know, even if it doesn't always work, that vision has to be kept alive. Because
that's an important part of who we are, it's an important part of Socratic method.
[Barbara]
Can I stop you for a minute because it’s about to run out of tape? That's totally
lovely. Would you go on for about another five minutes? Is that all right? Do you
feel that? I have a question.
[DeWilde]
Sure.
�[Barbara]
If my crew shows up. [Inaudible]
�
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
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_44_DeWilde
Creator
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DeWilde, Michael
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
Michael DeWilde interview (1 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Michael DeWilde 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. Michael DeWilde was a philosophy student of William James College who went on to become a longtime professor at Grand Valley State University and the Director of the Koeze Business Ethics Initiative in the Seidman College of Business. In this interview, Michael discusses his experience as a student of William James College from 1977-1981 and his commitment to alternative education. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Michael DeWilde.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/38e3bfba29674cef2e7b1cc07cd17a0f.mp4
62ac586eb8c25224f8f3b97deedd0dba
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0d41424735974ddad2b71653573b4099.pdf
81d4f8740b9124c6da0b315927a479e2
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Sanford Fried
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 2
[Barbara]
Yeah, but sometimes we were not as interdisciplinary as we thought we were.
And then when we were talking the other day in the co-op, we started talking
about the way the process of learning really worked was not so much that you
just took from everybody, but that you…something else. So, describe it.
[Fried]
Oh, how we took from the few, the mentor…the mentor thing?
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[Fried]
Well, one of the problems about what was good at James was that there were
many good people. And as you got over your, kind of, freshman fright, and
started to see what the value of the resources there were, you knew there were a
lot of people that you wanted to study with and then came the time problem, you
know? How long were you going to be an undergrad student? And it would take
you ten years to study with everybody. So, you gravitated towards those people
who were most important in your field, or who had the most to say to you, in
terms of your own human development. And I think that the mentor idea worked
real well in James. And I hope it works in other colleges. I'm not that familiar with
other colleges to know. But by going with mentors, of course, the problem is that
you sound like them, you start to look like them, you… in some cases you may
start living with them. And that just becomes awkward because then you’ve got to
go through this embryonic process to get rid of it, you know? And you’ve got to
shed it and become your own. You know, I was affected by that because I was
affected by some people who aren’t there anymore. They were there at the time.
And it affected me good, and it affected me real harshly, as well. And I had a lot
of things to go through with that, personally. I think interdisciplinary… in the
interdisciplinary method that we would like to talk about there, at James, we
couldn't always do it the way the catalog listed it. It always looked so good in a
catalog, and all those people in those pictures always looked so interested, you
know? And I still find myself looking at those pictures now and then and thinking:
"Gee that would have been a great place to go to, I wish I went." [Laughter] But it
was happening for us, in our own way, you know? After about my first year, when
I started to realize what was going on there. I always maintain that this college
works best for the people who do their bit to get out what they want to get out of
it. And if you're passive, your education is passive. In the way of getting a
crossbreeding of disciplines – that won't happen for passive student, you know?
�Or a passive individual. That only happens to people who are going to say: “I
demand that because I refuse to work through life any other way. I refuse for my
career to be in a very strict mode." And that wasn't all of us, you know, that didn't
work for all of us that way. Some people, you know, James wasn't for everybody.
We all knew that. And in the same way, some people who were employed there
– the faculty – weren’t for everybody as well. You had to have good direction to
get the interdisciplinary aspects. And when it didn't work, maybe it was advising,
maybe it was your own, you know, your own pursuits, your own motivations that
it didn't work for. I don't know, I guess I'm not being clear for you, as to what…
[Barbara]
You're saying things, they're not coming out linearly.
[Fried]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
They're coming out tick, tick, tick, which is why I wanted some kind of [Inaudible].
The sentences are clear and well formed, and then they go off, and then they
come back.
[Fried]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
That's how you're talking. That's alright, I accept that.
[Fried]
That's how I'm thinking of it, too.
[Barbara]
Yeah. No, that's alright.
[Fried]
Floating through me in images. Let’s see, some of the beauties of the
interdisciplinary approach, though – there are some of those. And I've seen those
most graphically by not working in my field, by working in retail. And I'm seeing
things that require you to be – of course, it’s also the uniqueness of my job – but
require you to be a social activist, to get people to think about things in a larger
context and not just such an “I” centered context but in the world center. And
then to be narrow about it, too, and to be very managerial. Which may be unfair
to call it narrow, but in some ways I think it's a real narrow way of defining stuff. If
you didn't take advantage of the interdisciplinary, if you didn't take advantage of
the people who are talking that way and the readings, then I don't know how it
would happen. That kind of stuff didn't seem to happen by osmosis. It really
seems like it had to happen through thinking under fire and being challenged.
The challenge is what worked well. I still seem to be going around like that.
[Barbara]
Its alright. Briefly…see, I thought Isaac would be up and I was going to plant him
in your lap and say: okay, big dilemma for all of us at this stage of our life is what
kind of education do you want for your children?
�[Fried]
Boy. Yeah, I want to talk about that; I thought about that. You know, being that
Sheila [?], my wife, is a James grad, too, and now we have a two-year-old – I’d
love to show you him but he's asleep. We think about what's, you know, what's in
store for him, educationally. At this stage, we don't do things like get him into twoyear-old swim and that kind of thing. I have friends who do that; I think it's really
wrong. But certainly the…I don't want to say, “hands on approach,” that phrase
seems to have been ground into nonexistence anymore. But being able to
embrace your education and embrace your experiences by touching them –
literally touching them – is such an important learning tool for me. And when I
teach somebody a new job at the co-op, I use that to teach them (one of the
things I brought with me from Allendale). And with my own son, I want him to be
able to grasp it that way. Because he seems like that kind of a kid. He has
enough of me in him that way. That's how he's going to learn. There's real
parental dilemmas in things like in kindergarten or public school / private school,
you know? You want the best quality education for him or is it important that he
be with all types. I'm sure every parent sees this, you know, deals with those
things all the time. And we all come to different decisions on that.
[Barbara]
What should his college be like?
[Fried]
What should his college be like? His college should be the world for a time.
Nobody should go to college right out of high school. And I didn't and I learned a
lot by traveling for that time. I strongly encourage Isaac to travel. He's alreadywell, he's already been to Canada, his second country, several times, okay? And
he travels well, and as he gets older and more empathic and more cognitive, he's
going to travel more. And he's going to learn about that. And he's going to learn
the way of bringing in lots of experience to teach him about the world. He's going
to learn that books, and instructed journeying through books, is a very valuable
way to learn. But he's also going to learn that it’s not the only way to learn. But it
sure helps to have a mix. It sure helps to be able to have everything around there
and be able to sit back with friends, in a comfortable environment, and talk about
how these things are mixing together, and how it makes you feel, and how it
makes you think, and how it makes you react. We did that James, you know. We
had that time, and that social part of the college was real important, real
important to me, to be able to integrate that.
[Barbara]
You said you were having visual images. What, you know, if I say: sum up James
in a visual image, what is it?
[Fried]
Oh, Mona, the dog. Remember Mona? [Laughter] The best visual image for
James is a round building in a square frame. [Laughter] It's just so perfect, you
know, because we were, you know, we were so traditional on the outside. We
tried to look that way, but yet when you get inside, and you couldn't find those
corners, you couldn't find where the dust hid, you couldn't find, you know, your
�easy way around the things. And that damn building was a maze. It was always a
maze; you never really knew what end you're coming out on. And I guess, you
know, you could say that about the education to some degree if you wanted to.
But I thought the building was perfect, you know. It couldn't have been any better
for that college, I suppose, unless it was one long hallway that always had
windings within it, too. Other images of things at James… I don't know. I
remember people bustling a lot and I'm not sure if they were bustling because
they were busy or if they were bustling because they were just overwhelmed with
a lot of different things. And maybe not busyness, but just sorting. Lots of sorting
that went on. We sorted for a long time in there and hopefully for a long time
afterwards, too. And certainly, what would happen with James closing, a lot of us
started to get more emotion involved with it, you know? Either saying "good
riddance" or saying, you know, “how can the bastards do that?" And I went
through the latter for a long time and was real angry about it. And even didn't
even see the value of this tape for a long time and thought it's stirring things up
too much. And the college can't be reconstructed, hopefully somebody can be
motivated by it, either a student or somebody who comes into contact with it in
some way to try and do something like that when it's appropriate in a setting
where it can be protected and nurtured. But, you know, the college brought me
across the state to come here and wound up making this my home for other
reasons. But, you know, I wouldn't recommend that people do that now. I
wouldn't recommend that people come across to Grand Valley because aside
from the few good people that are left that are teaching, I don't know if the
college is that different than a lot of other places, and it's a long schlep just to be
in the cornfields or downtown if they wind up downtown in the near future.
[Barbara]
That was a great answer, that was an absolutely terrific answer. I'm just going to
stop this for a second. Finish the analogy, the round and the square is a…?
[Fried]
Okay. The round and the square is, of course, is that round peg in a square hole.
T.J.C. [Thomas Jefferson College] was the same way, though they seem to be a
little more vocal about it. And, you know, I don't remember about Lake Michigan
Hall. I think Lake Michigan probably was the same way, too. So, what started out
as some designer's idea became a real fitting analogy for what was going on in
the building.
[Barbara]
Terrific! [Laughter]
[Fried]
That's a cut.
[Barbara]
That was a wonderful take.
[Barbara]
Okay, let’s start. Okay, go.
�[Fried]
Okay. It was almost like the outside of the building was almost a buffer. In that
when I worked with you, Barbara, and I was in your office all the time, and you
had an exterior office, and the damn thing was never heated and was always
cold. And it was almost as if they take the hearty people, the people that wanted
to be in view, you know, and put them out there, and face the library, and face
the campus center, and face the tour buses and those things. And so much, but
so much was hidden. And there were things that went on in the core of that
building that I, you know, kind of media experiments I don't want to talk about.
But they were great. I mean it was really exciting stuff that happened, I'm sure. I
hope it goes on today. I don't know if it does, but I hope it does. You know, I will
always remember that painting of James, too, that painting right in… I never
remember which entrance it was, but that double stairway, you know. And it was
the painting, the logo that was on our T-shirts, and probably on the letterhead, if I
remember. And I still have my T-shirt, you know. The gray ones, not the new
ones, the gray ones with the brown. That was the important one to have, I felt.
That was the official card. But whenever I see any of James’ books around here
or I see them in a bookstore or something, you know, I always flash to the face.
And I don't think I've seen any photographs of him. I don't remember seeing any.
But I almost don't want to because he was this ethereal spirit, in more ways than
one, around the college. And being there as a visual student, that embodiment
was comforting after a while, after it became home. It was real comforting to see
it, you know, done that way.
[Barbara]
What are we going to do for cutaways?
[Fried]
I don't know.
[Barbara]
I'll probably shoot your hands, which is so draggy, but I don't know what else to
do? What else can I do?
[Fried]
Yeah, hands are good. Not my shoes. You don't want my shoes.
[Barbara]
You better talk about something because it's weird to do hands. Tell me about…
[Fried]
Let me tell you about… I know what I'm going to tell you about! I'm going to tell
you about my first videotape. Okay? Want me to take the mic off?
[Barbara]
No, just keep it… unless you want to say something you don't want…
[Fried]
No, no it's nothing like that because my first… I get real graphic describing that.
But, well you remember Kim Bemen [?], okay? Kim, back a few years ago. In that
first Video One class we had to do a tape, it was a self-portrait. And at the time, I
didn't have a car, and I was hitchhiking to Detroit a lot, going back to family and,
you know, trying to ease through that transition of leaving the family-stead. And
�so, for my tape I set up a camera in the AV studio with one light on me, two
seats, and I did a monologue with his imaginary driver as I hitchhiked on the way
back to Detroit. And it just so happens that I had some sixteen-millimeter footage
of birthday parties, old birthday parties and that. And I ran that, and we did a fade
onto the screen and put some of that onto the tape. The tape is gone, I don't
know where it was. It was real crude, and it was just totally spontaneous, and it
just worked really well. I was real pleased with it. Kim was there when we taped it
and she was really surprised that anybody was going to do something like that.
And it came off real well. Does this…[inaudible]?
�
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>
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
Format
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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.
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
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GV016-16_GVSU_57_Fried
Creator
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Fried, Sanford
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
Sanford Fried interview (2 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Sanford Fried 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. Sanford Fried was an Arts and Media student of William James College who was active on the WJC Council and various committees during the years 1977-1980. In this interview, Sanford discusses mentorship among the William James community, the interdisciplinary approach of the college, and reflects on what the WJC education means to his family and his son's future. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Sanford Fried.
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
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8ca9213f210cde644dcf36f80960278b.mp4
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Richard Joanisse
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 2
[Barbara]
So, I don't know if this is something someone can answer off the top of their
head. If you were trying to prioritize what was the most… the most valuable thing
that James was? If you are prioritizing… is there a way you can prioritize or was
it such a unity one could not draw out?
[Joanisse]
Well, I think maybe there were two or three things… I may end up only saying
one or two. I think the commitment to teaching… and you know everybody says
they're committed to teaching, but I mean teaching is a way of life at the expense
of everything else. And I guess at that point it would be if you did research, if you
were interested in furthering your career, you really were going to put that on the
side. I remember my adviser telling me when I came from Chicago, he said:
"Richard, they'll eat you up there and you'll never be big league." And I think, you
know, it took me a couple years to understand what he meant, but I think that in
the first three or four years I was here, I certainly was working fifteen hours a day
and loving every minute of it. And it's like you immersed yourself in it and I think
after a while when you didn't have to work as hard… when you weren't building
the institution, the commitment to teaching, it seems to me, was still there. But it
wasn't a commitment at the individual level alone, and that's the real distinction
we have to keep bringing up. You can only create that kind of commitment by
institutionalizing it. You do that by having colleagues who are equally committed
and motivated, by rewarding them for that and for creating those conditions that
we talked about before that allow people to participate and to help to evolve what
a college is all about and commit themselves to a particular kind of philosophies.
All of that meshed together, allows commitment to keep on going. If you go to the
institution I'm in now, they say: "You always have good teachers." And what
they're saying is there's always individual people. Like cream rises to the top who
will always be there, and the rest of the people are sort of like, you know, they're
mediocre or they won't do it. And I think at William James we just said that's
baloney. We can bring people in who might, in some sense be individually
motivated, who might have the kind of characteristics that were looking for. But it
was a gamble with most people we hired. But if we got them in William James,
we believed that what we were doing at William James would transform the
person.
[Barbara]
That sounds religious!
�[Joanisse]
Well, there was a religious kind of experience at William James, I think. In the
sense that, especially in the notion, it seems to me, of community. But I think that
when you come to the place where I'm at now, it's always back to individuals. It’s
always back to some people are motivated, some more highly motivated, and
you rewarded that person for being motivated.
[Joanisse]
You don't create a kind of sense that maybe what you ought to be doing, you
ought to be doing together. In fact, what you do in this institution is you created
just the adverse. What you create here is the condition for the separation of
individuals, who begin to see themselves as in a deeply atomized situation where
whatever they're going to do, they're going to do solely for themselves. And
they'll be paid for that either through money, or prestige, power, or influence,
whatever it is. And they have no connection to anyone else. And I think that
implicitly or explicitly the institution has, in some sense, agreed to that. I think it's
more a kind of implicit contract. Where at William James we invited people in and
said: "Look what we want from you is openness, a receptivity or something, to
what we're trying to do. If you don't like it then you certainly are free to leave, but
what we do here we do together. And, you know, we do try to create committees,
and we can try to create organization, and we do try to structure the college in a
certain way. But you are in the person, it seems to me, through a lengthy
conversation that we've had over the years in which continually evolves and
change. You are part of that." And I think for most people, an example of
someone coming in later would be like Deanna Morris or somebody like that.
That's real… that was a really important experience and those people were able
to change, and accept what we were trying to do, and accept, it seems to me,
willingly. It wasn't, I don't think, coercion on people. There's a coerced notion of
community. What we used to call, remember, jokingly people would say: "Did you
want to do this?" And we would say: "This is called voluntary coercion," or
something. And I think that at some point… that happens a lot in what you might
call religious communities. People are constantly being coerced. I don't think that
was true, necessarily, at William James. I think that we actually could see that
worked. And worked hard to create those kind of conditions that would continue
to make it work. And I think that we did end up producing something, we did have
a student who is intelligent… we did have students, as some people have said to
us on the outside, who are inquisitive and creative. Our students seemed, at
least as teachers, to be good. And I think I always measured my students from
what they came to me as and what they left us as. And I always thought that they
left us better persons and better students.
[Barbara]
Who was this adviser and how could he sense this was going to happen to you? I
don't understand. Remember you had this adviser that said they were going to
eat you alive?
[Joanisse]
Well my adviser was at a research institute, University of Chicago, and at that
�time when I was at Chicago it was rated number one, I think. He just thought that
if you go to a small school, and you just spend so much time teaching, that you
really can't produce the research that would be essential for you to make your
name. And that in a very hard, highly competitive academic situation like that,
you would start falling further and further behind. Of course, that wasn't a
concern of ours then and it wasn't a concern of the college. And that's what I
mean by the college never produced any pressure on us. And never saw us as
trying; in some sense, in this case we were very close to Marx. In some ways
both in Rousseau, and Hegel, and Marx there's a notion that there's no
distinction between the state and the individual. We came as close, in some
points in the college, to really believe that we were William James College. And
therefore, the decisions we made were not being made by somebody else and I
think that was very important for us. And certainly, some people can think that we
fooled ourselves and I think I can be critical… I can come back and say “wait a
minute.” But I think for certain moments in the college, I think that we really didn't
only believe that – I think it was true. And I think that makes an incredible
difference in what you're doing. There's no separation then from what was
administrative and what was teaching. They were both, in some sense, they were
as close as you could possibly get them. That doesn't mean to say there weren't
tense situations or disagreements and it certainly wasn't true the council ran
smoothly all the time. But I think, on the whole, I think that the feeling that this
was a college that was whole in some sense, at least that's what we’ve just been
talking about. I think for some of us that there was a real strong feeling that that
was the case.
[Barbara]
[Clapping] Beautiful sound… that was good.
[Joanisse]
I didn't think of that until just now, but I was thinking – Marx tries to make this
point and so does Rousseau - that when you're talking about… how can you
have a state have power and you know what Marx says, “Well, the state is you,”
you know, I mean there is no alienation. If the state were to represent the
working class, blah blah blah, all that stuff like that. Then you figure at some
moments at William James, if you move away from individuals and make the
connection between the institutional processes, like committee work, and
governance documents, and the collective kind of representation that we had.
You put all of that together… you come as close as you possibly can but there
wasn't any separation. And you get into the unit that we’re in now and that's all
you feel is separation. It's very difficult then to turn to somebody and say: "What
kind of experience did you have?" Because the experience, you see, was not
existential alone. It was both a socially produced phenomenon and an existential
kind of commitment brought together.
�[Joanisse]
That was the real thing about William James… that it created through structural
arrangements, through its committees, through its working with the Dean,
through its understanding of what it was trying to be – I mean its pedagogical
statements, it's philosophical purposes – and through the council a set of
relationships that solidified the motivational and existential commitments that
were perhaps already there. And if they weren't there, this certainly brought them
out. And it’s that connection, it seems to me, that we always have to understand
at William James. I think – and I'm trying to reflect back – I think that's an
important thing. You know it's one thing to say you have good people, it's another
thing to say that, you know, that you don't need… there's no place for that to be
collectively representative. We did have a collective place that things could be
represented. And we have damn near committees for everything; I mean we
weren't left off. And I think, in the end, that thing we talked about before – that the
belief that what we did in these committees and in this council were actually what
we were. I mean, there was a product produced. And the product, in some
sense, it's a product of a set of ideas, or a matter of policy, or changing
understanding of the relationships between students and faculty. That was it! It
wasn't going to be something going to somebody else. This is very important
because if it did, it wasn't our fault. And this is a very important point to
understand about why, perhaps, William James, was so close. Once we had
made these decisions collectively, if the central administration decided not to
accept them, then fuck them, you see! They weren't us anyhow. So, we had this
enormous protection, it was wonderful. I mean, if you think of it in those terms
there was an internal dialectic but also an external dialectic in away. So, we
could really come up feeling wonderful even when we were defeated. And
sometimes I've always wondered – when I'm in very pessimistic moods –
whether our success was not condition on the fact that this outside world outside
Grand Valley and that they were always sort of out there and they were different
than us; they were our enemy and “they just didn't understand us.” And that
certainly - it seemed to me in some sense, just in structural terms – helped us to
be what we were. But I don't think it's what we… I don't want to get creative as
well, but it certainly lend, you know, a little push for us to keep that kind of
closeness in. But my point was that when we collectively agree upon something,
and decision was made, it went out. And then the Central Administration could
say: "We don't accept this." But see, what we had done is… we had made a
decision as a college… had agreed on it. So, we could come back and mourn,
collectively, as a college for their stupidity, for misunderstanding, or the fact that
they were conservative, or whatever. And it's a wonderful situation because we
could never lose.
[Barbara]
Until we lost.
�[Joanisse]
Until we lost! Lost almost everything. I didn't like William James the last two or
three years, though.
[Barbara]
I was going to ask you about that because Rose said you were talking about that.
[Joanisse]
I didn't think that… I lost my spirit really. You think back to the old days, you
know, Bob Carow's office down the corner. Man would come and went by like a
bird, you know. You'd say: "Hey Bob! Want to talk for a minute?" He'd say: "Oh
sure." You'd start talking, he'd say: "Oooohhhh too heavy, Joanisse, too heavy.
I'm not into that. See you later!" But the real distinction, I think, was when some
of us started to see that the Dean was a dean, in the sort of a classic sense of
the word, and whose interest we're certainly not the same as ours. And his
interests on very few occasions even overlap with ours. Then it became
apparent, I think to substantial numbers in the college, that we had lost
everything. And at that point, just began to see it really as a kind of a job. And I
really had mixed feelings about the closing then because I didn't think it was
going to be able to stay the same; I don't think we could've gotten anybody in
after having this person. And I'm not suggesting he's a bad dean or anything. I'm
just say his understanding – with the Central Administration – as to what to
college should be, was no longer the understanding of what the college was. And
at that point it seemed to me the last two- or three-years William James was not
the college that it used to be. And that may seem like a minor point, but if the
point we were talking about before has any meaning at all… that in a sense wemost of us believed that we were collectively doing something. The minute that
was there was that cleavage… the minute there was that separation and that
distance, then I think there was an enormous amount of distrust. And that was
the first time we began to see real factualism in William James. People, for
instance, who began to do things on their own, or who wanted to leave William
James, or who wanted to go into the College of Arts and Sciences, or people
who saw that the Dean's decisions were more important or more pragmatic, or in
the long run were better than the decisions of other people. And so, you begin to
feel some real open animosity and…
[Barbara]
[Inaudible]
[Joanisse]
But I think once that it happened, I was…
[Radio turns on from off screen]
[Barbara]
This will not do.
[Joanisse]
We should be close to finished though.
[Barbara]
Yeah, we are. This is not reasonable. This is not reasonable! [Speaking off
�screen to another person]
[Unknown]
Where did that radio come from?
[Barbara]
But you're right, we are almost done. That was just brilliant. If, see… if you have
an answer to this, and if we don't – we’ll stop. If you were going to do it all over
again, one of those stupid questions… not the last few years, the good ten
years…
[Joanisse]
You mean at my age, right now?
[Barbara]
Nay. I don't mean it literally. Is there something that you can see that was like a
critical lack or critical imbalance? Something, with hindsight, that should have
been in James that wasn't?
[Joanisse]
Jeez, that's a hard question. In William James… no, I think we did very well. I
don't think we were perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. I could go, you
know, do an hour of criticism and stuff like that. But I think, given the kind of
students we had, given the kind of location that we were at…
[Barbara]
What kind of student…?
[Joanisse]
We had, basically, lower middle class and working-class students. We do not
have students who go to Grinnell or to Oberland. We don't have schools like at
the new School for Social Research, which is very much like what we are, but
who students are perhaps, score-wise and that, hundreds of points beyond ours,
who don't have problems in writing and conceptualization who are, you know…
and who have the support state-wise of the institution. I don't think from the very
beginning of this college…
�
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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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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GV016-16_GVSU_37_Joanisse
Creator
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Joanisse, Richard
Date
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1984
Title
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Richard Joanisse interview (1 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Richard Joanisse 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. Richard Joanisse was one of the founding faculty of William James College and an associate professor of Sociology. In this interview, Richard discusses his experience being immersed in William James College and its transformative power within the WJC community, in addition to his impression of the college's final years. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Richard Joanisse.
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
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b85e0e93fa57554afc0dd956d7e4784b.mp4
226d6e3dc82a57ccf93a72d912f22b88
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2a98ed2bf41924851efb2814cd89a29f.pdf
440278631a4925a5e6ac299bd15ea24a
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Richard Joanisse
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 2
[Barbara]
We have everything. Don't you think Gerb?
[Unknown]
Yeah. We're pretty sure.
[Barbara]
When I say, "Don't you think Gerb," you know what that means?
[Joanisse]
Check the damn thing over.
[Barbara]
Make sure it doesn't screw up.
[Joanisse]
You are what is called the sous chef. That means he's just, what, a little guy in
this thing right?
[Barbara]
No, no, no. He is wonderful.
[Unknown]
Alright now we're not talking about me.
[Joanisse]
We're not talking about him, were talking about his position. Don't confuse Gerb
and his position.
[Barbara]
Anyway, Richard, we're going to start talking. What is the differences in teaching
in the current system and teaching at James?
[Joanisse]
Well, I think that when I first came to the new college I was sort of, I think,
catered to a little bit. I was made the chairperson of the senate and put on a lot of
committees and things. And I said, "Well if I'm in the new system, what I should
really try to do is to get acquainted with everyone and to try to involve people in
the governance of the college." And at the Dean 's request, I went and met most
of the faculty and I sent them a memo and I had him send a memo out – a
threatening memo – the second time around. Because the first time nobody
showed up for any meetings. The most we ever had of a faculty of something
between seventy and eighty was fifteen people who turned out. So, I went
around and I started to talk to people and asked them why. And most people feel
in the division, I think, that you shouldn't really involve yourself in any of those
kind of things. They're not seen as a chance to involve yourself or to have a say
in how colleges ought to be governed. They're always seen as obstacles to your
�freedom, in some ways. They're a pain in the ass to do them, they don't bring
anything back, it's all a farce anyhow, nothing really happens, it's a waste of
energy.
[Joanisse]
The key, I think, to understanding how they feel is that in some sense they’re
never really included. There is an invitation for them to attend things, but the
decisions that are made are never their decisions. And that was so true when I
went over there. The Social Thought and Public Affairs, which I'm a part of,
picked a particular person to represent them, overwhelmingly, and then
submitted first and second name. The second person I believe got three votes,
the first person, I think, got twelve. The Dean overturned the decision, and when
someone asked him why he said: "I didn't say that these proceedings meant
anything." And so, somebody who was leaving turned to me and said: "You think
I'm going to go to one of your stupid meetings? This is the way things work over
here." I think the real difference there is I think that William James, for the very
first year that I arrived and we were building up the college, we made it clear to
everyone, as well as to ourselves, that the college would be governed by us. I
think we created the structural conditions for participation of everyone. And so
that everyone had a voice and everyone was listening. And I think that's what is
embodied in the council itself. And the Dean certainly, as the head of the college,
can always overturn the decision. But if you remember that we had a particular
way of making the Dean… if a Dean wanted to overturn a decision, remember
what we would do is say to her… she had to say that it was… a what? A great
event or something or other. And, I don't know, it was forcing her again to say
that something that happened was extraordinaire and therefore she was going to
intervene. I can only think maybe two or three times in at least the first ten years
of the college where such an occurrence to place.
[Barbara]
Do you remember any?
[Joanisse]
I think the decision of Burt Brower was sort of a bad decision and the Dean used
her power there in appointing people, I think more than anything else. And some
policy decisions… Adrian felt that she knew more information and she would
work on people on a very intimate level. Which is, I think, the way that William
James worked. And I'm not suggesting William James wasn't coercive at that
level either. You couldn't, you know, use people intimately as well as you can use
them sometimes bureaucratically. But I think that what William James did have,
and something which this place lacks, is that people got used to the notion that
they actually have an input and that they, in some sense, were not required to
participate, but that participating was, in effect, one of the responsibilities that we
had. And it was a responsibility that most people and William James accepted.
And that most of the major decisions of the college took place in the council,
openly, where people could say anything they wanted to say. I've been in this
�unit a year and a half and nobody says anything in public. So, there is no public
discourse whatsoever here. There are private statements made about people
behind their backs, but people will not say in front of anyone. So, when we have
had meetings, the meetings have come to naught. I never felt that kind of
cynicism at William James. And I never felt that in William James, even at the
end when William James was changing drastically, it seems to me, and the
council wasn't as representative as it was in the past, it was nothing compared to
the situation that I'm in now.
[Barbara]
So what can you as an individual really do when you're put in a structure that
doesn't give you any opportunity to be responsible? What do you do?
[Joanisse]
Well, very little. I think that I've tried to have an effect on this college. I mean, my
metric at William James is to bring people together. And I'm now with the Dean
on a book club and…
[Barbara]
What's that?
[Joanisse]
A book club is where people come together who are interested in reading
something. I'm also the person who invites guests so we have a committee for
intellectual ideas and I invite various faculty people to give speeches. But the
sense of the community is not there. These are all individual endeavors. At some
institutional level, we're trying to create a sense of community, but the experience
isn't there. What we're trying to do is to create an experience, but I'm very
skeptical of what's happening here.
[Barbara]
Teaching, how is teaching different?
[Joanisse]
Well, there are grades. I mean, you have more students and the students are no
better or worse. I think that the students are not in there because they want to be.
Let’s start there. The caliber of the students are not that different, but students in
William James took a course because they wanted to take it. Very seldom did
they feel coerced, in some ways, to have to take a course. Most of the things that
I teach now almost, without exception, are to meet general education
requirements. Out of a hundred students I taught in social problems last year, not
one of those students is a student majoring in sociology. Not one. So that means
that in effect I'm teaching students because they have been told they have to
take something. And I think that makes an enormous difference. I never have a
student come to my office unless there's a question about a grade. My office has
never been used; I've never been used by a student.
[Barbara]
Never?
[Joanisse]
No, not in the general education. I'm not talking about students who might be in
�sociological theory or something like that. But of these students, I can't name any
student who's come to me and simply said: "I'd like to talk to you about
sociology." I think part of the problem there is that general education courses are
considered, by most students, to be irrelevant anyhow. But that experience you
would've gotten at William James… you would have gotten the curious student
who might've been interested in what you were talking about, or in ideas, and
that you don't get. I'm not suggesting that these students are interested in that in
their own field, but by the time, you know, when we get them, they're not
interested in those things.
[Barbara]
You said that you were thinking of writing a paper but didn't tell me what about.
[Joanisse]
Well, the one thing that I find impossible to explain to anybody is what William
James was. And I always had this sort of paper on the phenomenology of William
James. In other words, phenomenology is always after the question of meaning.
And I was trying to say to people: "What does it mean to be in William James?
And what was William James?" But I was asking the question from the fact that
nobody I've ever talked to who is not a member of William James ever
understood what William James is. Now that's terrifying because that's almost
like being in a cult and trying to tell people who don't understand what a cult is
experiencing. And I don't think we were a cult. I don't think there was anything
hidden or mysterious about what we did and therefore it's scary to me. I can
understand why people who are on communes, who want to hide from the
outside world, and whose experience it seems to me and the kind of beliefs they
have may be, in some sense, different from the outside world. But we were
offering a traditional state institution in the same environment, no more than ten
feet from anybody else; we publicized what we were doing and yet I have never
met an outsider… let me give you an example. Jock Bliss and I were in a
meeting – Jock Bliss is the director of public relations Grand Valley. When the
demise of William James was imminent, he said to me: "I don't understand why
you're so upset Richard, if you are such a good teacher you should be able to be
a good teacher any place. Isn't William James just really a matter of style." And
now, I wasn't offended. I just… something clicked again. I said: "My God here it is
again." I mean we were a school about, in some sense, communication; a
substantial part of what we do and nobody understands what it is that we're
doing. So, it was at that point I said I should write a paper really titled something
like "The Phenomenology of William James; or Distortions of Communication"
and try and see what is it about what we were doing that was distorted? Why did
people perceive… I'll give you a second example. Carl [inaudible]… don't ever
use these names… [?] said to me one day: "I never could understand why you
people work so damn hard, but now I figured it out." He said, "you had,"…
"because, Christ, if you didn't you weren't going to survive." And I says: "That’s
what it was all about, Carl." I said: "I mean we really… we had to do it." He said:
"Yep, I just had to do it." You know, so everybody had some kind of sense of it.
�And even Chris, one time, said to me: "You people really couldn't do all the
things you claimed. You really didn't teach all the stuff and know that stuff, did
you?" And I said: "You know, if you do one thing for ten years, you can be the
best at it." But I said: "For ten years, what your reward is, is to do things with
other people and to learn what other people are doing." I said: "You can be very
good at that." And I said that… so I stood back: There's another miss… but these
are… this person's my friend. This person taught at a school that was,
presumably, in some sense, alternative too. But the bottom line of coming for
Chris was: "I just don't really believe you people were about what you claimed
you were about." And so, it was from that misunderstanding… and I'm not saying
in effect that we were what we said we were, in the sense of what we were
publicly to people print. But the point is – in some sense – whatever we thought
we were, and what we are to each other when we speak to each other about
what we were, no outsiders have ever understood. And so, there’s something
wrong someplace. And I thought it would be marvelous to write a paper about
what it was.
[Barbara]
What do you think it was?
[Joanisse]
Well, I think in part – if I start with the negatives from our own side – I think in
some sense in order to be successful, we had to isolate ourselves in some ways.
To immerse ourselves in our own interpersonal relation, we have no friends
outside of William James… most of us. As a good example, all of our intimate
relationships were with people [?]… that's still true for most of us even now after
two years. If we had a party, most of us would’ve invited people from that college.
So, it was very difficult for us to know, in some sense, what was going on
outside. I think at an institutional level, we were very open about what we were
doing. I think that at an interpersonal level, we were very close and we liked each
other a lot and we had no energy leftover for anybody else. At an institutional
level, we were just willing to please anyone about what we were doing and
publicize anything. I think what we thought is that people would actually be
concerned and read about it and understand it. And I don't think most people
read it and I don't think most people perceived exactly what we were doing. And I
don't think the problem, necessarily, was the way we were saying it.
[Barbara]
Do you think that part of it could be so much of the thing was experience –
experiential – and then we put an intellectual, verbal gloss on it for other people.
But what James was really about… which is why we would throw students into it,
and they would flounder for a while, and then they would start experiencing and
being active, and then they would understand. But it was an experience that they
had to go through. So, when you just write the stuff down or verbalize it to other
people, that experiment component is missing and they're never going to
understand it.
�[Joanisse]
These are people who don't hold much to these kinds of experiences. And
certainly, these are people who have not had the kind of experience that you're
trying to articulate.
[Barbara]
I know… that's what I'm saying. They can't understand. It's interesting, the
Jacque Barzun book on James that I'm reading now says there was a certain
group of people, always, you could count on year after year that just didn't
understand James. Could not understand the English words that he was writing
down. Did not know what he was talking about.
[Joanisse]
I also, I just didn't want to leave this out. I do think that in the first ten years of the
college… I want to make some distinctions: certainly, all the time Adrian Tinsley
was the Dean, I think, most of us had an incredible commitment to teaching. And
lots of the evidence indicates that schools are different. The thing that makes him
different is the kind of commitment and motivation you have in your faculty. The
real keys is to try and figure out how that commitment and motivation was tied to
structural variables. What did the college do, in some sense, to enhance that
commitment, to reward people for being highly motivated? And it seems to me
that goes back to what we started with and most people felt it was their
institution. And that the experiences that they had had, in the institution, had
some kind of effect on the outcome of what they were doing. So, one was talking
about pedagogical interest or one's philosophical concerns. One could go to
one's colleagues and talk about these kind of things, and raise them as an issue
in the council. And we did that, it seems to me, constantly. And realized that what
one was talking about was not bullshit; that it would have an effect. That some
decision would come out of this. That some policy, it seems to me, would be
initiated. That's not true at a place where we're at now and think only a fool would
think it is.
[Barbara]
It's not true for us and it's not true for the students.
[Joanisse]
No.
[Barbara]
Similarly, yeah, I asked you this before. I phrased it badly but were we
responsible for the closing of James or how were we responsible?
[Joanisse]
No, I don't think we were responsible. If you look across the country, there are no
alternative schools that are still open. Evergreen would be an exception, but you
know Santa Cruz is no longer an alternative. None of the other schools that were
alternative when we started exist. I think that in some ways we are as much a
victim of the changing economic situation and the changing historical
understanding of education. And as a broader thing, at a more local level, I think
Grand Valley simply got to the point where it no longer felt that it could deal with
the confusion that the alternative colleges produced. So, you're looking here
�more, it seems to me, at public… an attempt to develop a public image where
people would no longer be confused about Grand Valley. I never met anybody
who ever understood at the administration or in admissions what Grand Valley
was about. So I think that there had been enormous pressure in the last four or
five years before the closing of the colleges to get one college. Both from the
faculty in a large unit and from the administration. And with the closing of
Thomas Jefferson, I just think that it was inevitable that William James would
close. So, whether or not William James was successful or not I think is
irrelevant. The only way that it could've been… there was no way I think it could
have remained open, regardless of how successful it was. If it had more
students, if its students had been successful outside. I don't think it was any
criteria that one could use to point to and say: "Oh it's a successful institution,
let's keep it." That's why I said before, I don't think it was failing. It wasn't on the
basis of its failure that it was closed. It was on the basis, it seems to me, of
outside forces. And certain kinds of the inside forces that felt this is an excellent
opportunity to get rid of this cluster that seemed to drive everybody mad. And the
minute it closed everyone came up to me who worked in admissions – because I
was a Representative of Admissions at William James – and said: "Boy! Now it's
going to be easy to explain what this is all about." So, I think there were a lot of
people who wanted the colleges closed, who had no animosity towards the
colleges. And lots of people who wanted the colleges closed because they never
understood with the colleges were about.
[Barbara]
Interesting. Interesting. Why don't we stop and check, okay? That's also
interesting when you're talking about the whole notion of pluralism.
�
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
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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
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
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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
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GV016-16_GVSU_38_Joanisse
Creator
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Joanisse, Richard
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
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Richard Joanisse interview (2 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Richard Joanisse 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. Richard Joanisse was one of the founding faculty of William James College and an associate professor of Sociology. In this interview, Richard discusses the differences in teaching at William James College and the phenomenology of William James, in addition to the college's eventual closing. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Richard Joanisse.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8482dff385f7964cdb4999ee0c5f36c2.mp4
1c1856a5524d2908535ce4ba1c41c3b3
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/33fa2fdc73ff050c87a8a1589643907b.pdf
1a36a40f651db91011c7c3fee162b2ad
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Steven Laninga
Date: 1984
[Unknown]
People have their William James t-shirts.
[Laninga]
Is that right? You know, I never had a William James t-shirt.
[Unknown]
No?
[Laninga]
They don't make them in my size, so I never bought one. And it always bothered
me and I couldn't really be a part without a William James t-shirt. And then I
decided that was going to be my own little private experience: the William James
student without the badge. My own mark.
[Unknown]
Okay, let’s go from the top, your history, why you came to William James
College, kind of go over again what we just talked about.
[Laninga]
I started at William James in, I believe, the fall seventy-four, after two years of
Calvin College, here in Grand Rapids, and a year of stopping out and private
introspection. I bummed around a lot. The fall of seventy-four, I went back, intent
on studying photography at William James. And I was attracted to the rather
broad offerings of photographic training at the school, as it was clustered with the
other schools. And because of Willy Jay's lenient attitude towards students, I felt
that I could slip in and out of William James, and across to TJC, and over to the
regular school, to get all that I needed to study photography without having to
cope with the superstructure of a traditional liberal arts education undergraduate. So that was the reason I came out there, and my intention when I
arrived on campus. A couple of things happened when I got there. I met my
future wife about the first week and we really haven't been separate since. It's
been almost ten years now. That's very nice, and that's a little present from
William James to us, I think. I, also, after pursuing photographic chemistry, and
darkroom, and cinema, and a number of other photographic classes, began to
become aware of a greater, more profound aspect of the photographic image
making process. And that was what happens after pictures are viewed. What
goes on in the mind of the viewer? What goes on in the mind of the creator, and
how that is transmitted through this piece of material? So, I began to be
distracted by that whole topic area and ended up a good ways from where I
started when I wanted to be a photographer. And I became, instead, someone
who, mostly, thought, talked, and wrote about the process of communicating
through media. And my degree is still a media degree, a Bachelor of Science
�from William James. But a lot of my course work was really in the Social
Relations department at William James.
[Unknown]
Can you talk a little bit about the educational experience? What you did at
William James? How or what you perceived the college to be?
[Laninga]
Okay.
[Unknown]
[Inaudible] Something that it was?
[Laninga]
Well, I was a commuter student for the entire five years that I was at William
James. A part-time commuter student. I arrived on campus about five minutes
after I was supposed to have gotten there. And I would leave as soon as I had
done everything I came on campus to do, whether that was attend a class or
attend a class and go to the library for an hour, what have you. As a matter of
fact, I used the bus to get there, for a number of years. So, my experience of
William James is, perhaps, a little different than many William James alumnus in
that I was not really ever caught up in the community of William James. I had
almost a business relationship with the school. It was a transactional relationship.
Very, very clean in that respect. I would pay for the class, I would show up, I
would talk, I would think, I would write, we would interact, and I would leave. And
all the stuff that went on the Skylight Room, all the committees, and task forces,
and all the other stuff that I heard about and read about went right past me for a
very tumultuous and colorful five years. And I was almost as unrelated to it as the
people in Grand Rapids that only heard about it from associates. Still, in all my…
there are some things about William James that I think cannot be taken away in
that it was a school that was focused on the individual and permitted the
individual to find his or her education. That was what originally attracted me to
the school in the first place. And that part I really did take advantage of. I don't
think that the Skylight Room and all the goings on in there was necessarily what I
came to the school for the first place. I got what wanted out of school and the
school gave that to me and generous quantity. I pursued my own course, and I
came away fully satisfied with what I got. As I said, it was a transaction
relationship. And I came away a much better person for having been there.
[Unknown]
We talked a little bit about how the school dealt with failure. Can you say
something about that?
[Laninga]
William James had a pragmatic approach to education. And caught up in that is
an understanding that in order to achieve worthy goals, there are risks that must
be taken, and one of the clearest risks is the risk of failure. And failure was
always real at William James. It was something that everyone lived with, from the
lowliest new student, right on through the administrative offices. Everyone dealt
with failure on a daily basis around here because much was tried and only a
�portion of that was accomplished. And everyone understood the realities of
stalled projects and fizzled ideas. And I have since then come to understand that
one good idea is worth a hundred ones that seem to be good, and it's worth
weeding through a hundred possible ideas to come land on one good one. And
that means a lot of failure. That's ninety-nine failures. So, I probably… that's one
of the most valuable things I learned at William James. I'm not sure that that is so
readily accessible at other schools, where failure is completely different in its
meaning for undergraduates.
[Unknown]
Moving on to how do you think… what do you think William James was as an
experiment? Do you think it failed? Do you think, you know, we talked about not
being allowed to fail or something…?
[Laninga]
Let me say it again, William James, the experiment of William James College, did
not fail. I firmly believe that the experiment of William James College was not
permitted to succeed. The school is a part of the community around it, and it
serves the community, and the community is supposed to nourish and feed the
school. And the two of them grow together. That takes a long time, it takes
generations in most cases. This school was not permitted to grow for even a full
generation. There is no way of knowing what kind of contribution, ultimately, the
school could have made because it was not allowed time enough to bring its…
they're no longer students, they're almost children, to adulthood. It's alumni we're
not permitted to reach places visibility and influence in the community that are
typical of a situation where a school and a community have grown up together.
And that's really a tragic loss for this community, and obviously for the school,
and all of those of us who felt that it was an important place to keep around.
[Unknown]
In five years?
[Laninga]
I think that if the school had been permitted to live on for a few more years, four
or five years, that it would have to been impervious to any kind of administrative
reevaluation. It would not have been quite so easy to simply pull the plug on the
school that had fifteen years of roots in the community. I think by that time, there
would have been enough reason for the school to stay around, for it to stay on
and continue.
[Unknown]
What did survive the experiment?
[Laninga]
The people survived William James. And the people are scattered all over the
world, but there are a great many of us still in the West Michigan area. And the
school may be closed, and the books may all be scattered, and the files filed, but
what the school accomplished is still here, it's a living, it's breathing, and it's
making its presence felt every day, every year. And there's no telling what real
contribution was made, yet, because we're not finished yet.
�[Unknown]
Was there anything of the philosophy that survived? Do you think West Michigan
is now without a William James philosophy, entirely, because the school went
away?
[Laninga]
No, I think the philosophy preceded the school. I don't think that's something so
graded and timeless, and profound as that kind of… William James thought,
originally, is already eighty or ninety years old. And I don't think he was the first…
he may have been first to verbalize it, perhaps in English, but I don't think that the
philosophy is gone. I think it was here before the schools here, and maybe it will
return in another form for future. I'd like to think so. I know I would support any
effort along those lines because I still think it's the most humane way to educate
people.
[Unknown]
Excellent. Okay. This is Barbara's question: what is the essence of William
James?
[Laninga]
Define essence.
[Unknown]
That's just what she told me to ask you, so I have no idea.
[Laninga]
No more help than that. What is… what was the essence of William James?
[Unknown]
What do you feel was the essence?
[Laninga]
Well, I don't want to talk about failure again, but I think that the essence of what
we knew as William James was an agency. It was an agency available for those
who pursued, frankly, whatever they wish to pursue. I saw a number of students
out there pursuing something other than education. The school was big enough
to accommodate them. It was free enough to accommodate them and was
flexible enough to accommodate them. There were… part of the essential quality
of the freedom of that type of curriculum is that you must allow people to… how
can I say this is less than a blunt form? You must allow people to not do anything
at all. You must allow people to not contribute, to not participate. They've had
twenty years of a more structured regimen and built up all kinds of blocks and
obstacles to a direct link to the education process. And it takes time for people to
break down all those old barriers and realize and understand that nothing stands
between them and what it is they want to be and what they want to achieve but
themselves. So, all of these self-defeating habits, regimens, have to be cleared
away. And no one can do that for you. No one can come in and reorient you, you
have to do that for yourself. It worked for a great many of us. It didn't work for all
of us. And probably the essence of William James was willingness to allow
people to go their own way, whether that meant going out the door or not. A lot of
people drifted in and out of the school, and that's not wrong. That's exactly what
�the school was for.
[Unknown]
Great, beautiful. Alright one [inaudible] the tape. How was the William James
Association formed?
[Laninga]
William James Association was formed in the wake for William James and out of
the grief and the bitterness of the moment. A feeling a need to respond to this
administrative cruelty was expressed. And the only thing that not the only thing
but the thing that probably is most typical of that particular group of people, our
age group, our mentality, our culture, is collective action. We almost knee jerk
react to any kind of challenge in a collective manner. So, the Association was
originally formed as some notion of an influence group for the preservation of
some aspects of William James. And I think as that it's probably failed. But like I
said before, failure's a reality for our community. And something bigger than that,
I think, was realized by many people. That we’re all alive and well. We got
together, we saw each other, and felt of each other. We were fine. The school
was dead, we were fine and we knew that things are going to be okay.
[Unknown]
Crazy. Anything else you want to wrap up with?
[Laninga]
No, I think you've pretty well gotten it all on there.
[Unknown]
Alright. Thank you, Steve.
[Laninga]
You're welcome.
[Unknown]
It's going to be good.
[Laninga]
When do I see it?
[Unknown]
Well, I think there is going to be a…
�
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
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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_63_Laninga
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Laninga, Steven
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
Steven Laninga interview (video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Steven Laninga 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. Steven Laninga was a student of William James College and a member of the class of 1979 at Grand Valley. In this interview, Steven discusses the personal journey that led him to William James College in the fall of 1974, studying photography and incorporating Social Relations coursework, and how the William James Association formed in the wake of the college closing. This interview is part 1 of 1 for Steven Laninga.
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
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
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eng