1 24 66 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0a5c25b79dd65c053371d6d9118ceecd.mp4 f9db2b5b3c2675157f81876d63b121f5 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f4fed114d7057b01883f4824648eaf61.pdf dc7119787fa60602b2874d711706968f PDF Text Text 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_50_Armstrong Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 (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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/770aaa0d6bde37f836fe39853679f294.mp4 276ad35bef6ac8cb04e44a029d2411d6 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4d796fbd2887157259a1ce2134871c42.pdf 21bb2dccf1cab8a356c8dc7a4ac32b0d PDF Text Text 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_51_Armstrong Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/774593335ddb9e80faf89dac3073ee19.mp4 69cd74e2febec959b57d4fda97d738f8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cd91137d7e8ceea8fce90566721f3ebe.pdf a0d465b18c2f7a11a2fc4f18d759bfe8 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_52_Armstrong Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 (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 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_64_Bell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Thomas 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 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5712bdd95ac3044b29dd64ac87f5ee52.mp4 28fd7b65fab06820473952e87512fd54 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cd0e1ed6fa0ec1fa0450ef60c42aa9c1.pdf fe01e9a3bc007b0813b0e67cffc66d60 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Robert Burns Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 3 [Barbara] [Working with the video camera] It doesn't look as well, skin tone is… it would just be a mess. I really wanted this. Oh, my is he dark. Let me see what I can do here. I'd hate to go to one six. That is just so… well, I think that this is going to be allowed. Let me just check focus. Let me make sure I'm steady. And I'm steady. And anytime you would like to resume I would be grateful. [Robert] Okay. I think it would be hard for an outsider to imagine how many committees we felt were indispensable to the running of our little college of two dozen odd staff. Their peasant villages that feel obliged to do some things in the bureaucratic way. They wind up doing it was extraordinary classic simplicity. There are individual tasks that are parceled out to a handful of individuals each year, each one he's in charge of a particular kind of activity. They carry out the duties of the office, and then they pass the notebook, which contains records to their successor the next year, and that successor intern then becomes responsible for the handling of that particular detail for the village. We always found it necessary to work with committees, which meant that every time a committee met there was an inside privy group to a particular kind of information. And we tended to not have very good ways of uniformly getting information from committee to the community at large. There would be the decisions, there would be the reports, but very little of the nature of the ongoing dialogue in committee so that occasionally committee results were unfathomable in terms of how they arrived at that conclusion. Typically, what happened whenever a committee met with that the corridors were full of all the little side conversations that we're necessary to be engaged in as different people came out of the woodwork to try to find out what it happened in that particular committee. It seemed to me that the single individuals could have been tasked… could’ve been entrusted to certain kinds of tasks, or that some of these things could literally have been handled in some kind of committee as a whole where literally everybody was going to hear the same information same time and not have to go through the business of asking for a duplicate committee reports one by one by one from any and all members of the given committee. [Barbara] But we were very well intentioned, and we liked each other a lot, and we had all selected each other, and we're not stupid at least not all of us at the same time so why did we persist in this? What structural advantage was there in this kind of super bureaucratization that made it last. �[Robert] I'm not sure that there's any other explanation for why it persisted, except that nobody felt that resort to individual responsibility for individual kind of task was anything other than a kind of an elitism that couldn't be tolerated. Things ought to be done in groups… in small groups for at least good democratic purposes. [Robert] But the small groups were in effect too small, and they always had an external environment of those who (one) needed to know the results but (two) weren't in on the meeting and then this enormous amount of time that was always spent after committees trying to find out how the results had turned out, what decision has been taken. What kinds of points of view had been presented, and the like. There was something I was going to say earlier about this. And it's not fresh in my mind at the moment. [Barbara] Shift yourself slightly towards the window and tell me the part about polishing. I don't mean toward the window, I guess I meant turn [inaudible]. [Robert] Oh, okay. Let's see what did… [Barbara] If you can recall it, not too artificially, we were talking the other day about one of our little problems being… a fine sense of sandpaper. [Robert] We always undertook to do things better than we had done them before, we always looked at our processes as if virtually anything we did. Anything we had done, could be done better if we: examined it carefully, profited from experience, and made the right judicious changes. This is a kind of thing that I've always thought of as polishing, and honing, and smoothing, and whatnot. We spent an enormous amount of time doing that. In one sense we've logically fall to the larger campus structure for having undergone major reorganizational upheavals every few years. But in another sense, we never ever settle down with our own processes inside, in a much gentler fashion, long enough to see how they worked before we were already predicting that they were not working, or finding evidence that they were not working, and then proceeding to tinker with them. So, although it was all carried out on a much more modest, much more gentle scale, and there were no big upheavals… still I think it remains that nothing that we ever tried stayed in place for very long before we found a better way to do it. And we didn't see this as reorganization -- frivolous or whatever. We saw it always “perfectionistically” as doing something a little bit better than we'd ever done before. So, we invented new ways and better ways of the new ways ad infinitum. And this gets to be time consuming, too. So, some of these processes – as I wind up thinking -- where processes had a life of their own. Once you're embarked on them, you follow through with them implicitly. Even if you have thoughts that maybe there may not always be for the best, there's a certain inertia that carries you forward. And you don't really feel it's fair to blow the whistle or to yank things to a complete halt for fear of being seen as a �disbeliever. Somebody who really doesn't belong in the system. Now realize, in this respect, I may sound like a peculiarly ambivalent character. Because on the one hand, I came to William James because I wanted to, because I found it to be an exciting place to be. And I always did, and I believed in what we attempted. [Robert] And I'm very sorry to find… to realize that it no longer exists. That's the part of it, that seems to me, like a death. But I wouldn't be honest if I didn't also say that I found our ways a little peculiar at times. What makes allowances for one family. When you're talking about a set of colleagues who are growing more and more like siblings with respect to one another every day. You put up with foibles because you know all these people too well to simply launch a political diatribe against them because they have failed to do this properly, or they haven't foreseen with the effects of that might be. You put it down to a longer-range type of problem which could be tackled over a considerable period of time. You understand we are all in learning positions, in learning situations, and that there are possible ways of all of us gradually coming to espouse a single point of view that we all share in some future. So, you overlook certain of the little points of potential… � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_11_Burns Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Burns, Robert 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 Robert Burns interview (1 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Robert Burns 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. Robert Burns was a faculty member of William James College and longtime professor at GVSU who taught anthropology and photography from 1973 until his retirement in 1993. He was also notably the father of documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, who found inspiration from his father's photographs and travels from a young age. In this interview, Robert discusses the bureaucratization of William James College and its numerous committees, in addition to his belief in the college and his thoughts on its final closing. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Robert Burns. 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 Bureaucracy 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/07cbe5eceb73b64e701b5be0f32161b0.mp4 b0455d82db8e7bfaabff15b946f1f700 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6dc69307eed3882095c19542e1b10bcd.pdf 0194f74eb90f261babb01cd42f625c65 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Robert Burns Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 3 [Robert] You don't know when the curtain is going to come down. You don't have any idea about just how much time you've got left. You don't have any sense that you're necessarily that endangered. But when you look at it in retrospect the things we did, the things we didn't do, the things we might have done, and the things we insisted on doing. Then I think it's apparent that there are a couple things that we did wrong. Vis a vis the outside world. Like the campus across campus. We never spent enough time building pathways and bridges to the rest of CAS, the rest of the campus the way I think, in retrospect, it didn't make sense that we should've done. We spent so much time immersed in our own problems, in our own preoccupations, within William James that nobody ever really gave much thought to establishing the broader connections overland to the rest of the campus. Because what was clear is that when the crunch came, the rest of the campus didn't understand us. They didn't understand us at all. They didn't understand who we were, what they knew of us, they didn't sympathize with, and it seems to me that all those kinds of problems could've been… would've been alleviated if we had more of a sense of bridge building. More of a sense that part of our security lay in relating to them, not just ignoring them or even worse than that is estranging ourselves from them. Estranging them from us, and that's where I thought of it many times. We weren't as smart as an Australian tribe would've been about the kinds of overland connections you need to develop if you're going to ever have available an escape route to save you when the times come down to the crunch in your own territory. We didn't have anybody under those circumstances that was willing to understand us, and then that comes back to reflect home on what we did internally, which I think was incorrect. With all due allowance to the Monday morning quarterbacking kinds of things go on the time like this. Why didn't we make the overland connection? We spent much too much time polishing, and honing, and fine tuning our internal processes. We labored through all of our committees to perfect every single thing that we wanted to do, every single concept that we wanted to lay claim to, as if somehow this burnishing process was going to represent our salvation. It was almost as if there was some kind of cosmic onlooker who was watching us and grading us on the sincerity, the depth of profundity of all of our efforts, and so it made great sense to us to spend all of this time somehow coming to grips with the meanings of the propositions, the substitutions of prepositions, or conjunctions and the like. As if somewhere, somebody was going to look at this is of the Rosetta stone and fault us for having used the wrong grammar in the wrong place and it was the fault of gilding the lily. We were spending much too much time on the internal processes �than we should have. We acted all this time as if fine tuning the individual word of our own processes was the important thing to do. Without realizing that single word in the outside world simply cancelled us out once and for all when the time came. [Barbara] Why did we choose to do this? We are not all fools. [Robert] No, we certainly weren't all fools. One we all I think… however many routes there were to get to William James, we all came with one main idea and that was that they we were going to do good; we were going to do well doing educational things in a different mode. And we wanted to be very sure we were thinking of every possible eventuality. We didn't want it laid at our doorsteps that somehow we had overlooked the obvious. So, we kept reexamining the obvious, as if we were searching for possible flaws, failures, loopholes, and so on. Well that's either elitism of some strange sort, or this could easily also be the case it's a narcissism of an extreme variety. That we get so preoccupied with the being of ourselves and the doing of ourselves and the eternal expressing of ourselves that we forget that there's a larger context. There's an ecology in education, and if you're not mindful of the ecology, there are things out there, misunderstood and maybe rubbed the wrong way can return to do you in, or to do you no good. [Barbara] Do you want to try lifting the GV level, Gerd. [Gerb] Is it too dark? [Barbara] I think it's dark. [Barbara] You want to put it up one? Yes. [Gerb] Wait! Come sit closer next to me. [Barbara] Yeah? [Robert] Okay, I guess. [Gerb] Then turn this way. [Robert] Okay. [Barbara] Um. [Robert] Go on and say what you were talking about. [Barbara] If we paid attention to the outside, where would we get the energy to build this �nirvana that we were all heading for? [Robert] The energy would've been the energy that we brought to the enterprise simply by being ourselves. I mean, I think we always misunderstood… [Laughter]. Let me say that over again. I think we always misunderstood completely the amount of special energy that we needed to put forth. The fact of the matter was, that all of us, and all of our various ways, and all of the times at which we were interviewed and came into the college. In all our various ways, we represented people that somehow were seen to have some sort of useful talent in the new educational scheme of things, and I think our problem was that we never relaxed, and believed in the existence of that talent. We always felt that what we were called on to do is to put forth some kind of special brand-new effort, without ever realizing that the efforts that we already put forth (that attracted ourselves to the college in the first place) and them to us, was exactly what we should've kept on doing. We should've kept on being the people who were interviewed, rather than somehow trying to transmute ourselves into this new kind of educational being that, less and less people across campus, were prepared to understand. [Barbara] It sounds like a very negative feelings about your eleven years spent there. Is this the case? [Robert] No, on the contrary! I think it was something that you said earlier that made me think that. Now, what I'm getting into at this stage in the game, I suppose, has something to do with grief work. With the death of something that you were really attached to, you begin to look around for all the kinds of things that contributed to that death and you wind up occasionally faulting the system for a premature death. I don't think that's misplaced hostility. I don't think it is hostility for one thing. I think it's simply one of those turns that somebody takes you know uncomfortable circumstances when you're trying to cope with in an absence of something that you've grown to love. And you're wondering where it went? Why it forsook you, and then eventually come around to examining the warts, the frailties, and the flaws that you didn't see at the time because you were simply so busy doing it and being it. We have some vulnerabilities from the very beginning, and I can remember talking with Robert about this many times, and he got quite excited about one of my little characterizations. I started talking about the different years of entry of staff members into William James. As if they had been, in effect, generations. There was that founding generation of Robert and others who in response to whatever the call to glory was at that time came to be the first faculty at William James, and they had always seen it as their mission to think through the purpose of the college, and to try to state that purpose. So, they were constitutionalists in a way. They were writing us an organization platform on which the future college could expand. And the second generation, the secondyear staff, always seem to me to me the wheeler dealers, the actors, and the doers. �[Robert] The ones were going to put the dream of the constitution writers into practice. You had an enormous amount of energy, often times very aggressive energy, that was expended in the cause of carrying out, as they sought, the wishes of the founding fathers. And then that left certain problems for those of us who arrived in the third year. The third generation, so to speak, because we found ourselves not in on the writing of the constitution, and we found ourselves late by year in coming to grips with enacting the constitution, and it was as if the third year came in a little confused as to its role, and it also came in just a little bit suspect because neither the framers nor the doers were quite prepared to believe immediately at the start that this third group of newcomers – “upstarts” – could possibly really understand what they had produced and enacted. So, there was lots of skidding wheels. There were lots of burning brake linings. While those of us who arrived too late to be in on the founding, and too late to even set the stage for the enacting of it all to try to figure out what the new vocabulary was that had been created and how the things we did were supposed to fit in with that new vocabulary. [Barbara] For example? [Robert] All I can point to here, I suppose, in all honesty, would be my own confusion in my first year. It extended into my second year, as well. I thought I'd arrived to do a certain kind of thing. I thought the reason that I had been accepted after the interviews had something to do with my being the anthropologist that I knew I was. And I'd discovered that on arrival that it was as if nobody on the staff had any idea of what anthropology was all about. If they did, it was a purely intellectual understanding and it had nothing to do with the kinds of things anthropologist really say when they're being anthropological. And so, I just discovered over and over again, to my confusion, that anytime I attempted to be myself, an anthropologist, was a time that I could expect to be misunderstood. Either as to content, or as to motive. Either one of those. This is a little off putting when you think that your reason for being here has something to do with what you are, who you are and then discover that you're not recognizable. [Barbara] What did they want you to be? I don't understand. [Robert] Oh, here one strides into dangerous territory. You know, it's kind of stuff with hidden agendas are made and… maybe we need to switch to something else. Well, I can come back… I could come back to it, but I need to think about that one little bit more. [Barbara] Okay. So why did you come to James? [Robert] I had come to James for a lot of reasons. I had gotten thoroughly fed up with the �anonymity of the classroom relationships in the large university. I tried it at the University of Michigan. I tried it at Eastern. And I found that the only improvement that Eastern had represented over the U of M was that I was in charge of the class of two hundred in a section, instead of a class of four hundred. And neither one of them offered me any possibility of developing a personal relationship, a personal rapport with the students that I was talking to. I'd really felt that. Well, I had quit teaching for a year, and I had gone to Europe to think things through, and I'd availed myself of the fact that a number of my anthropological graduate students were in field work in Europe that year, to search and number of them out, and to face them with a simple question: What is Bob Burns good for? And the upshot of it was that I found… they reinforced the notion that a much smaller college setting and one with a much more experimental focus was the kind of place that I would be looking for. And I have to confess that there they were one leg up on me in that regard because I hadn't yet picked up on the fact that there were this many new experimental footings that academia had set out upon or had devised for itself. And so, I came back prepared to begin to look for kind of college that I didn't know existed at the time that I first began my search. I really thought I was looking for a nonexistent animal and instead I discovered that there were these precious few little institutions that had developed under cover under certain kinds of protective wraps in special environments and that probably one of these was exactly the little harbor, the little niche, that I was looking for. [Barbara] Could you summarize in a couple of sentences. Short answer. What you think the essences of James was? [Robert] The essence of James was really the idea of an unstructured highly personalized, highly particularized education to suit the needs of individual students. Instead of the sheep dip approach to education which is about what most places were involved in. Big distribution dipping, a little bit of history, a little bit of economics, a little bit of arts (to make sure we weren't absolutely illiterate) and all of this. Pretty much the same bath going on for all students whether or not it related to what they needed, or whether not related to their ability to pick it up at the moment that they took it. You know you can be dipped on these things and not absorb anything because you're not ready for it. Well, in William James I had the sense that when we function best what we did was to loosen up the structure these requirements. We tried not to let students get away without requirements in the broader sense. But we left the requirements assert themselves, express themselves, in their own way and in their own time at a time when the student was most ready to pick them up. And eventually students would wind up getting that broader education of which we all dreamt. [Robert] In which we all had ourselves, but they didn't get it by virtue of having had their noses rubbed in it. So, it was a gentler tact, which always made a suspect in the eyes of others who believe in scruff of the neck types of introductions to learning. �And in the end, it meant that their breath was self-paced. They got broader as they needed to, and our good students always eventually needed to. No system is perfect so we had our share of the determined educational ne'er-do-wells who will not get an education in spite of anybody's efforts to offer it to them the "right" kind of way. On a silver platter or not. We have those exceptions to the rule, and we all blushed privately and publicly when we think of them. On the other hand, all institutions have those kinds of characters, too. So, I don't think our batting average was terrible in that regard. I am just amazed when I think about the William James accomplishment. Of how many good students, great students, went forth from here equipped to do all kinds of things a little better, I think, than other students who might have to wait five/ten years maybe even beyond that to realize finally what their education is actually done to them and for them. Whereas I think our students left already knowing what their education meant. Precisely because they had had a hand in the organizing of it. [Barbara] Do you regret having spent eleven years at James rather than somewhere else? Now that they've closed it on us? [Robert] Oh no, [laughter] I don't regret a moment of William James. But as I said earlier, I was talking about the Monday morning quarterbacking, or the moments that…the real moments of anguish when you turn on something that you love and fault it for not having been better than it could've been, and that's just a simple part of grief. But no, I would not have traded those eleven years at James for eleven years anywhere else. They were exciting, they were exhilarating at times. All of us did feel as if we were trying to produce something great. I was just talking earlier about the extent to which we got too carried away sometimes by our enthusiasm, and didn't raise our heads enough above ground level to see just how threatening that external environment could be. I think we suffered from the sin of pride or vanity and maybe understandably so on the circumstances. Because we did seem to be treated as very special beings for a time. And that probably lulled us into a sense of security that we shouldn't have bought into. [Barbara] One more question. When I interviewed you before, you talked about comparing peasant society to James. Where we had twenty faculty who spent their entire time on committees. Would you reprise that quickly? [Robert] One of the most appalling realizations I ever had was the day that I looked at our little college. Our little structure, a score of staff, and maybe two or three more at one time than another time. [Robert] But twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three people. And what we had devised internally as a structure for ourselves was a system of committees -- of overlapping committees, of parallel committees, of separately meeting committees -committees which when they had met were immediately confronted in the �corridors by all the people who hadn't been in on the committee. Either because they thought they weren't invited because they were teaching class at that hour. But who had to find out what had gone in and what had gone on in that committee that day? And I kept thinking: this is an appalling structure, what a bureaucracy. Byzantine couldn't have been more crazily subdivided and categorize than this. And all we were twenty/twenty-two lonely little people. I mean, if we had been an Australian band or if we'd been an Alpine peasant village… � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_12_Burns Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Burns, Robert 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 Robert Burns interview (2 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Robert Burns 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. Robert Burns was a faculty member of William James College and longtime professor at GVSU who taught anthropology and photography from 1973 until his retirement in 1993. He was also notably the father of documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, who found inspiration from his father's photographs and travels from a young age. In this interview, Robert looks at William James College in retrospect and discusses his thoughts on the endangered nature of the college, the various stages of grief he has worked through with its closing, and what the essence of "William James" really was in hindsight. This interview is part 2 of 3 for Robert Burns. 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 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c443869eceb4bed54e91009309fe299b.mp4 3a610d14cc1c7700293092fa4979116d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7249ef2c51d4d95fbcb17d5425c0c653.pdf 8734a38be9f7aa2d3155a9d6e972b3bb PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Robert Burns Date: 1984 Part: 3 of 3 [Robert] My nose out in the bright sunlight. Have I got to…? I can suddenly see it. [Gerb] Lean forward. [Robert] Yeah, so maybe I'll… [Gerb] Go back a little bit. [Barbara] … powder my nose. [Robert] That'll keep me going for another… [Barbara] White balance [speaking to camera operator] [Gerb] I don't think you need it. [Unknown] … need makeup? [Gerb] Makeup? [Barbara] Alright. [Robert] Perspiration! [jokingly] [Barbara] Alright, where we were is where we need to start. I guess you need to start that answer again. I asked you to talk about the Byzantine Bureaucratization. [Robert] One of the things that I found most appalling about William James, and I say this with all the love of parents for an abhorrent child of some kind. I couldn't believe what bureaucratic structure we conceived for ourselves. I mean it had to surpass anything that ever occurred in the times of Byzantium. We had committees for every conceivable purpose under the sun, and yet all we were was a faculty of twenty to twenty-two people at most. We had devised so many parallel crosscutting categorize kinds of committees that met for special purposes. Because they met for special purposes they always excluded, by reasons of timing, other kinds of people who might've easily sat in on the conversation. Every time a committee finished it was met in the corridors with hordes of people who needed �to find out what happened that committee. So enormous amounts of time wasted not only in committees, but in filling other people in after the committees had met with the kinds of things that transpired in committee. We watched such an unwieldy group of twenty that we couldn't work these things out in the larger community. [Robert] I mean we had our community meetings, our council meetings, meetings of the whole, and a lot of these kinds of things could've been solved there. [Barbara] But then we had students. There wasn't just twenty of us. We gave students an equal vote. So, it’s a much larger group. [Robert] There is possibly another of one our mistakes. Because I think we lean so far in the direction of according students a role in governance, that we forgot for a moment that we were actually faculty and there was nothing discriminatory about meeting occasionally as faculty without students to come to certain kinds of conclusions that we might easily have come to in that fashion. [Barbara] But that wouldn't be pure. [Robert] No, that wouldn't have been pure, and we were for purity, you know? There was – at that level of simplicity – there was a kind of a search for mom and apple pie at an academic level that we never really quite got over. Or we didn't quite grow beyond it enough. [Barbara] As I was… [Robert] We were committee structured to a point that was quite ridiculous, I think. We were twenty-two people, at most, and yet we had, at certain times, as many as seven-eight-nine-ten different committees going. As if it were possibly that many kinds of purposes that we would've had available to talk about. Each one of which called for a separate slate of individuals to meet separately and to work out some kind of a policy for the college is a whole. Granted, there are cultural differences between James, and Australian bands, and peasant Alpine communities. But I can think of no Australian band, and no Alpine community that can't figure out ways to organize the lives of five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred people in vastly simpler ways then we put together. [Barbara] But they've been around for a thousand years, and we were around for eleven. [Robert] Of course, that's exactly-- that's exactly the explanation. We hadn't been around that long. we were worried about being understood by those who spend enough time reading us or reading about us to know what we were about and we hadn't even been around each other long enough to make sure that we all spoke the �same vocabulary. I mean this was really, from our own internal point of view, the logic back-up, all of this constant probing and testing and fussing with the language. Because what we were really trying to prove was that we understood each other. [Robert] That there was no point on which we couldn't stand up and finally, in a very relaxed and matter of fact way agreed that we occupied a common footing. But there were suspicions, there were doubts, and all of this kind of stuff I think led to this over commitment of time. This over zealousness in pursuit of minutia, and I think anybody, from the outside world, than we ourselves later on in the wisdom that comes with the passage of time, look back on some of these things and think: "Oh my God! Three months taking up discussing that particular issue from the time of this inception to the time where it finally got established in council as college policy." And how insignificant that all is in the long run, when it's related to the fact of the nonexistence of the college at all at the present time. [Barbara] Katie are you thinking something that we can ask him? [Katie] No, not at the moment. [Barbara] Gerb, are you? [Gerb] Mn-mn. [Barbara] Robert, how about you? [Robert] I'm not at the moment. [Laughter] [Barbara] I don't think it's necessary to go back to that thing that you blocked on. I don't think it is at all central, we just let it go. I just won't use it. [Katie] Yeah. [Barbara] Just got off on personal… because I know you're listening; I see you reacting. [Katie] I wish he'd been able to continue with when the tape ran out. I liked… [Robert] There was a way I then… that I couldn't quite get back into that… [Katie] [speaking over Robert] …it made more sense... it flowed… [Barbara] But it made sense this time? [Katie] Yeah, it did. �[Gerb] Okay, now rolling. [Robert] We came from a lot of diverse directions. Points of the compass to get to William James, and we came - probably more of us that would care to admit – at moments of crisis or even mild desperation in our lives. [Robert] Where we really despaired of things in the larger society taking the turn that we would have liked to see them take. I mean -there were so many issues that the sixties had spawned. Everything from civil rights, to women's liberation, to the whole problem with the Vietnam War, and what there was or wasn't of an academics participation in that agreement to it (resistance to it) or what have you. A lot of people that found their way to William James, I think for public and private reasons, had wound up despairing of various academic situations in which they'd found themselves previously. Despairing of what they took to be some of the larger outlines of American education (educational structure) and came to William James to find an alternative, to build an alternative. On the other hand, you don't assemble that motley a crew of people. Motley in the sense that-And this doesn't refute what I was saying earlier about the level of intelligence that I think we brought to the enterprise. I think that we were all very bright, very concerned, very committed people. But I think we came from such disparate backgrounds. We came from such a variant set of our own special bleeding wounds. That one of the very special things we had to touch base on, and reassure ourselves about in William James, was that there was some commonality to our wounds. That our wounds could be shared. I don't think— That may sound like a very anomalous and strange way of putting it; because never once did we sit around talking about ourselves and so many walking wounded. Though, in fact, we were for variety of real intellectual reasons. We were a set of walking wounded. Because it's only if you have encountered things of that kind that you have come to your senses, and packed up, and moved out, and sought to find something different. But we had been wounded in different ways, and one of the things that we worried about was that the special wounds would either get in the way of our being able to carry out our mission; or the special wounds would prevent us from seeing the legitimacy of somebody else's special wounds. I don't know whether this makes sense, and maybe I can figure out a way of saying it more clearly, sometime. But it made for a certain amount of enthusiastic embracing of one another, and then simultaneously in a 'schitzy' kind of fashion, a certain mutual suspicion of one another. Which is one of the reasons, it seems to me, that we spent so much time fine tuning the rhetoric. It would've been no need to fine tune the rhetoric as an instrument to demonstrate our purposes to the outside world, beyond a certain point. Beyond a certain point, we were proving certain things to ourselves. We were justifying our own approaches, rationalizing our positions, trying to define ourselves in relationship-not to the outside world but to one another. �[Barbara] Where did the students fit into this? [Robert] They didn't fit into that part of it. In fact, if I'm correct in what I'm talking about, this was an activity that we did not acknowledge even to ourselves. I'm just simply, after the fact, being analytical about something. [Robert] And I've never really talked about in these terms to anyone else. So, I would be prepared to discover that colleagues disagreed with me on my choice of words, or even on my choice of schisms, or problems, or definitions. But I think that there was an amazing amount of disturbing suspicion within William James. It's part of what lay behind the concoction of a code – a kind of rhetorical code that we employed in talking about the college, and about its purposes, and about our positions with relationship to that purpose, and about the relationship of students to the purposes of the college. And we spelt this out in terms of the number of buzzwords. [Barbara] Like? [Robert] I can't even think of one. I can come up with them if… I can supply that at another time. Just my memory bank on buzzwords is sort of closed down momentarily. But… [Barbara] Oh, surely you can think of some? [Robert] Well, I can't at the spur of the moment. We had lots of them. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_13_Burns Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Burns, Robert 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 Robert Burns interview (3 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Robert Burns 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. Robert Burns was a faculty member of William James College and longtime professor at GVSU who taught anthropology and photography from 1973 until his retirement in 1993. He was also notably the father of documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, who found inspiration from his father's photographs and travels from a young age. In this interview, Robert discusses the diverse directions that brought individuals to William James College and the common ground shared within its community. This interview is part 3 of 3 for Robert Burns. 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 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6b4d84f00fdc8cd8de12406995503e38.mp4 4dd7674a909a05ce5621e2639b2bfe3e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c807b3539897a4a2cef639997f1bea5e.pdf c5ddaec34919cefbda8a7589874da101 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Barry Castro Date: 1984 [Barbara] I told you that the students would be among the audience. Was there something you want to be sure to say? [Castro] When I talk to my management classes now, management is a difficult field to teach, in a way, because you've got lots of students who haven't ever been in a managerial context, an ordinary one, haven't been in the industrial context, and they get a bunch of management courses as part of a business curriculum. So, your task is to find some experiential context that they can connect that theoretical material to make it their own. And I like using classroom material for it. One of the major management theories that we talk about is Douglas McGregor's "Theory Y" notion of invoking participation loosely. McGregor argues that it's necessary to assume a willingness to be involved, a willingness to work. That there is no adversarial relationship between work and a firm [?]. And that given that assumption, it will be ill-founded sometimes, but you will get much more happening than if you don't. And it talks about the disastrous consequences of beginning with the opposite assumption. And everybody affirms that, and people read that stuff and they feel "Lord, it's just mom and apple pie, of course that's true." And at around that point I asked them how many of them have heard of the cluster colleges and William James, and Thomas Jefferson, and those places. And it's recent enough so that many of them have. And I say that, you know, that is really what we did, we were pushing on that kind of involvement, all the time, and from ourselves, from students, students doing it to each other. It was what made the place work. But looking at it from the outside, what do you know about it? I guess that's the first thing I ask. And they say: "Well non-graded, one. And two, easy." And we talk about the proclivity to define participative management as soft management by people on the outside of it. So, the resistance you get to any effort to manage in a way that involves subordinates in a way a firm really works is people on outside giggling and saying: "Oh my! Just look at what they're letting them get away with." And when they can find someone who is actually getting away with something, there's a cause for real celebration there. And to say that abstractly is nothing. But to point at the people in my class and say "Look at what you folks are doing," with very little information. But your incentive is so great to interpret what you've got, or to make up information that you don't have, that kind of resistance to managerial innovation, to, I think, good management, needs to be reckon with all the time. And it's the case in point that I use. I think for students and faculty, we were made to order for them. Many of �our students come to school… many students at places like Grand Valley come to school having a notion that if it's hard, it's good, and if it's fun, there's something wrong with it. So, the Board of Education in Grand Rapids, I think, last week passing resolutions saying, "Everybody should have homework." And the City High School, which prides itself on being a quality institution in Grand Rapids, advertises itself as "two hours of homework a night," as if that was the elixir, you know, that was the magic stuff that made it work. And they're onto something about the sociology of your clientele that's right because the clientele are so bound up in that notion that if you involve people, and you let them have fun with it, you're somehow doing it wrong. You're not giving them the real stuff. And I think that was very hard for us to overcome. [Barbara] Could we have overcome it, or did the administration have a responsibility to help us overcome it? Where could this ever have been fought? [Castro] Well, public image-wise, I think we were in much, much better shape for fighting it for the last few years. I think we got to know what we were doing much better. And asking for public… the public has a notion that we're supposed to know what we're doing from scratch. And that were supposed to come in and just do something, all which has been invented, which in any field is absurd, no field I think more absurd than in education. The standard item, the routine stuff, the kinds of classes they are used to… know what they're doing, certainly know better than we do. In my view, often knew less well, they inquired less thoughtfully into what they were doing. The question doesn't come up for them, and folks were… it would be hard to get folks willing to give us the time to be so much above the mark, so they can begin to trust us even though we were out of the ordinary. I don't think there's a lot the administration could have done about that. My neighbors who say "Thomas James" were not reachable by the administration. And they were sophisticated, nice people who like me and think that it must've been a little bit okay because I was there. They don't mean to be putting it down, but they can't get it straight. [Barbara] If you had to sum up what made James unique, very, very briefly, like two or three sentences, what was the thing that was critical? [Castro] Keywords: ambition, involvement, tremendous seriousness about education, and not being caught up in cynicism about careers and making it and looking for things. We talked about vocation all the time, looking for real vocation, and the students who are… I think profit most from the place, were most involved in it and the faculty were most involved in it, had found the vocation there, which was going to be with them the rest of their lives, as far as I can tell. And that seemed enormously valuable to me. [Barbara] That's a wonderful execution. I think we’re running [Inaudible]… yeah, �everything’s fine. Is there an answer… this may be too personal, in which case let’s not treat it as a serious question. Can you phrase why you came to James without laying on a whole biography? What was there in you that readied you for an alternative setting? Why was traditional education not satisfactory? [Castro] Well, I came there… I read an article about it, actually, that just touched on it. Mostly about Grand Valley in general, more about TJC, a little bit about James and change. But I was taken enough with the ambition of what was going on here to write Don Lubbers a letter saying I read this article about your place and I'm interested. And Don passed it on to Adrian and I got invited out for an interview, which was nice. I think the particularities of my own situation is there's nothing… the only problem about personal is I don't know how generalizable it will be. I taught with some very good people when I began teaching who were serious and good about what they did. And I did a kind of extended apprenticeship with them. A historian named Herb Gottman, a sociologist, people who became friends and had been at it longer than me and were very good. And I got a sense that I was going to college over again, only much better this time than I had gone the first time. And that was wonderful, and I wanted to keep on doing that. That stayed with me for a while. Then one of the people I taught with at that first institution got to be dean of faculty at a new branch of CUNY that started in nineteen seventy. And called me and asked if I wanted to organize a social science program there. And it was a wonderful opportunity to invent from scratch an institution. And we did a lot of things wrong in that invention. But I learned a lot at [Inaudible] which was the name of this place at City University and wanted a place to use what I had learned and going to an economics department to do micro, macro and an occasional elective seemed very dreadful, yes. And when I came to James, I think the first… immediately upon coming in, and meeting people, and getting some sense of what the place was about. It was as if I had been here forever. I recognized it and I don't know what folks’ reaction to it – my stance – was, but I never entertained the possibility that they wouldn't hire me at all. I mean it was mine and of course they'd… it belonged to me. And they did what they were supposed to do, but it was very compelling. [Barbara] What would you say, again, not being very specific about current things, but in teaching now… no, it's not a good question, forget it. I’m sorry. Stop for a second. God, he’s looking gorgeous, isn’t he? Its fine, I'll cut through the other stuff. Okay, that's the question we’re on. [Castro] Okay. I want to talk about… [Unknown] That side, yes. Like that, that's… [Castro] The difference between… I've been teaching the last couple years in a business school environment and that seems on first vision… when I first understood that I �would be going to a business school, that was, it certainly felt like it was going to be a very alien environment, it was scary. It has not been an alien environment. The internal dynamics of my classes seem very similar to what went on in James. I am teaching in the same way and I feel that I am being responded to well. In some ways, very well. I am more of a rare commodity teaching at a school of business than I ever was at James. And folks could kind of nod their head when I did what I did at James and they are hearing it all for the first time. [Barbara] Like what? [Castro] Well, the purpose of this class is not information transmission, boom boom, boom, boom, boom. What we’re up to is engaging your thinking and engaging you in a conversation on the one hand with the literature, and on the other hand with the experience, and getting you to see that conversation, and respond to it. And getting smarter. I tell my students that the heart of management, the only two real ingredients of management are being as smart as you can be and good manners. And everything else is detail. It all follows from that. You need to listen to people, and respect them, and you need to think about what you're listening to as hard as you can. It fits in the context of liberal education much better than I think most people either in the humanities or in business schools know. And I’ve discovered a sense of mission about getting people both in the humanities and in the business schools to recognize that. That business schools can be perfectly viable milieus to teach well in. And I think a lot of what business schools are has been a reaction to feeling nasty prejudice coming from humanities. And the kind of thumbing of the nose back at them and turning up of our speakers, or ghetto blasters, or whatever, and just letting it blare out. Because you guys expect us to be doing that anyway, so we're going to let you have it. So, it's been fun to discover that there was something real for me to do in this milieu. And fun also that there were large numbers of students who were there, who I didn't need to go scraping for them, there was support from the outside environment, we didn't need to defend the business school’s right to exist, at all. I could go on to do the work that I needed to do as a teacher, without needing to deflect my energies in all sorts of ways that at James they got deflected. And that's been very exciting. Students have been… they come to my office a lot. People are around, and they're grateful for the kind of thing I've been pushing for. And I’ve very, very, very little resistance. Actually, almost none that I know of… there may have been some that's quiet. I miss the collegiality. I had Robert Mayberry next door to me for ten years at James, and that was extraordinary and wonderful and I miss it. But he's only across a short mall. This not having to worry about Alison Bernstein's double preciousness has been very nice. I'm not in a precious milieu now, I'm just in a business school. And if we can do the stuff we can do in that kind of milieu, that's better. I don't think I could have gotten as good without James, at all. I don't think we could have. I don't know that we can stay as good without it, and I worry about that. And I worry about what's going to generate �more faculty with those same commitments. And my sense is that we have to do it. We have to keep on talking and wait until the next cosmic change happens, right? [Barbara] Wonderful end to the show. Thank you! It was a good close. [Videotape recording ends and begins again] [Barbara] Because also, like, everybody doesn't cover the same material, so it must be clear that this isn't a real… I mean, people didn't get together and talk and organize this. People's conversations do bypass each other a little bit, you know. [Castro] Are you going to get Adrian? [Barbara] Of course. She troubles me. Has she written you? She hasn't written me either. [Castro] She talked to me about three weeks ago. [Barbara] Oh really? [Castro] Where did I see her? Were we in Minneapolis? � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_55_Castro Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Castro, Barry 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 Barry Castro interview (video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Barry Castro 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. Barry Castro was a faculty member of William James College from 1973-1983 before becoming a professor of management for the Seidman School of Business. In this interview, Barry discusses the qualities that made William James College unique and the personal journey that led him to the college, in addition to how the WJC philosophy informs his management courses. This interview is part 1 of 1 for Barry Castro. 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 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_19_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 (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 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/11cc0a8c7e5a170862bd06db1a335596.mp4 762baeffba01ff425bc7b6b2631cfa49 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d38c0b5861c8395a12fc620aea8462ef.pdf 10d42c29a0b9e9ed96608dbafbfb09b9 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Tom Cunningham Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 2 [Barbara] Okay, the first question I have for you then is: Why James? [Tom] Why William James? As the name of the college? Well, actually he was… I thought him last rather than first. I thought about the entire structure of the college first and the notions of the college should be. I think I'd coined the phrase… yes, in fact, I know I was. Coined the notion of psychosocial humanism, rather than scientific humanism, or more classical humanism to describe what I thought would be the appropriate type of curriculum for our own day and had also coined the notion of college should be future-oriented, and person-oriented, and career-oriented. It is evident that we didn't want to go around call me in College III, that was the name of the task force I was asked to head. And so, what name? It's easy to name something before it's founded, then to name it after it's been in existence for a length of time. College of Arts and Sciences had not gotten a name, and apparently would never get a name for that very reason. There are too many persons that had a stake in this name or that name. It's like guessing what name to give that before it actually started. I had happened to have been reading about that a year before that some works on William James. I'd read James twenty years before as a phenomena – as a pragmatist. But some works by John Wilde particularly. From the Universal of Cal… University Florida. He had been at Harvard and Northwestern, he's a phenomenologist. He had written a rather interesting book on James as a phenomenologist. I never thought a James in that connection before and so it occurred much of the ideas that I had. Mainly the concerned with psychology, even social psychology. And the concern of manufacturing your own persona. So, it was a natural but when I had thought of the materials concerning psychosocial humanism and the other things that I wrote about, even talked about the divisions of the college that would come about. The emphasis on environment and so on. I had no name in mind. But then when push came to shove, I thought we better get in name before the college we founded and James just came to my mind. I had a difficult time convincing the committee to go for that name, to tell you the truth. [Barbara] What did they want? [Tom] They had nothing in particular. But it just looked like I was doing too much. Someone wanted to name it after a guy named Maxie. I don't know I think it was a Maxi training school for boys in the Detroit area. Some had some frivolous names, I thought. But I think much of it seemed to me that I looked like I was �having too much to say. But I thought James was a natural name for the orientation that they had voted on and was only a matter of time before they came around to recognizing it. I said: "Yeah, it would be an appropriate name." [Barbara] Maybe you better go back. [Barbara] I asked the wrong first question. Tell me what the charge was, and how you came up with the notions for the character of the college. [Tom] Well, I had finished my first year teaching here at Grand Valley, and sometime in the late summer or early fall I received a phone call from the President. And I knew it was him because my wife was about to have our first son as it turned out to be. President found me and asked me would I consider heading a committee to found a new college. The task force was in charge – College III task force. My inclination as a first-year faculty, having completed my first year as a member of faculty here was: one does not lightly turn down any of the President's requests. And truth to tell, I always have been interested in educational activities. I have a master’s degree in education among my degrees. I'm history and theory of criticism of universities. So, I thought this would be a time to put my ideas, if I had any, into practice. But of course, I had asked the President: "What do you want? What's the charge?" And there was a written charge, and it's written in the documents. But I thought more revealing was a conversation that I had with the President. I had completed my first year teaching at Grand Valley, and was about ready to start my second, And the president had completed his first full academic year Grand Valley. And was beginning to do his second. He had become president about eighteen months previously. Basically, had obviously had to learn this terrain, and the existing colleges on campus. There were two at the time: College of Arts and Sciences, and Thomas Jefferson College; and having grasped that, understood that then the obvious for him, too. I say it's obvious now, looking back, was for him to look at the founding Grand Valley State Colleges and to look to what was considered to be unique in the colleges. So, I give him full credit for that. He first took charge of the colleges that existed and then he very adroitly moved to begin a third college. Grand Valley apparently had been founded to have four relatively similar size colleges. That was the founding image twenty-five years before. Each college apparently had two or three thousand students total of between nine and fifteen thousand students on campus. That was the notion on the colleges were founded twenty-five years ago now. So, he said to me: "I have two bits of advice." He said: "One of them is I want to college that would enroll a large number of students, and then I would also point out to you that we do have one small college here in campus. Thomas Jefferson College." I think what he meant by that… I didn't think to inquire any further the times. I think what he meant by that was that the College of Arts and Sciences, at that time, enrolled something like twenty-two hundred students. Thomas Jefferson college had perhaps two maybe three hundred students. So, �the time two college is one of which enrolled between eighty-five ninety percent of its number students on campus. The other college, because of its nature, seemed unlikely that would enroll much more than three hundred students. [Tom] So, it seems me he was getting me a charge to have a larger college, then Thomas Jefferson and it's possibly the college’s largest is the College of Arts and Sciences. That in turn meant that look and see where students who have to enroll from then try to excogitate from those factors the likely orientation of the college. So, it seemed to me that the College of Arts and Sciences seemed rather traditional. You could either duplicate that, or else one can attempt to make something different. I chose to do the latter and make something somewhat different. But yet stick to the President's charge. It was to make something that would be different than the College of Arts and Sciences. But make something that would also enroll a significant number of students. With that in mind, the whole thing was my fields my students were interested in. I majored in philosophy, teach philosophy, and since I majored in physics as an undergraduate, and have some degrees in physics, history of science I should say, it seemed fairly evident that the college should not focus on physical sciences. A number of people majored in physical sciences. Very small to begin with. They tend to be traditionally oriented and therefore one of the orientations that some of the committee members wanted, namely, to focus on environmental sciences seemed to me to be misdirected. I have nothing against the environment, I enjoy environmental sciences. But the sheer fact of needing to know, in any serious way, work in environmental sciences – you need to know biology, geology perhaps, certainly chemistry – meant that you were going to limit the number student who would major in fields like that. Feels like time since we had one college [inaudible] all about the sizes which had very few majors and those fields seem to have it and we were not in this particular area. [Inaudible] another college I would have… would be competing for the same small pool. So we're not being [?]. Environmental sciences, in my mind, should be the focus of the new college. It should contain that, it seemed to me, as a program, but not as a complete focus. Some had thought of focusing the college on the University of Wisconsin's Green Bay which is focused on Environmental Sciences. Others had attempted to focus the college pretty much on, as I would say, Thomas Jefferson College had been focused. Namely imitating Evergreen College in Washington state, as a possible way of organizing college too but it tended to be a small college, and therefore seemed to me that that would not obey what the President had laid down. So, the notion… once again I'm concerned about the persons and the focus on Evergreen College, and colleges of that sort aren't developing a person… seemed to me to be utterly and totally important and of grave concern for anyone in our own day. Where the sense of the self is more problematic perhaps than in previous centuries, and where the students who would come to us would tend to have a more diffuse identity than students at more traditional colleges. It seems to me that students come to Grand Valley as students in �general in our around modern age do not come from a [?] background, do not have what sociologists I think all described notions, rather they achieve their self. [Tom] And so it seemed that rather than having a college where one would fit in because one's grandfather had gone there, or because one was a member of a certain class. You would really have to have a college in which some opportunity would be provided to assist the student to grow as a person and that the notion of a person oriented it also cemented the notion in my mind of psychosocial humanism. So those two things work together. However, psychosocial humanism also borders on how one gets along with people in social context, not merely how one develops internally. And therefore, it seemed to me that one could use this facet to develop the person. To recognize a person's development communities. To recognize also that communities have functions to take care of and so, granted that the one focus or one division of the unit on Environmental Sciences. And another concern with Social Relations, it seemed fairly evident that Social Relations would have in generally a larger market for possible auditors than say-Environmental Sciences. However, Social Relations… there are a limited number of jobs. Large, but a limited number of jobs for sociologist and even a psychologist it appeared to me. But most of the jobs in our own age, and throughout history have been concerned with business. People seem to forget that. I happen to have degrees in history of science, and one of my specialties was in studying Babylonian clay tablets. They're about ten to fifteen thousand clay tablets, about as big as your hand with inscriptions on them. And everyone remembers, whoever studies the history science, those are Babylonian clay tablets which talk about astronomy. Or talk to some degree about how the geometry. Really looking on the… what do they say, the Pythagorean theorem. Square of the hypotenuse equals how many squares of the other two sides. It's a famous tablet that shows that in algebraic form shows these triads. But, as a matter of fact, of those ten to fifteen thousand tablets there's only about two hundred tablets which would be called scientific. There's another hundred two hundred tablets which should be called, oh, casual. There's this one tablet that I remember reading where this student is writing home asking for money. [Laughter] Fits in with what we normally think of student life. but leaving aside those for five hundred maybe a thousand tablets which have to do with what we would consider intellectual matters. The great plurality of the of the tablets had to do with a simple computation. Business dealings, they were business records. So, I'm saying in Babylonian epics, in our own epic, the tendency of society is to have business and social concerns or service concerns attached to some sort of records and keeping records. It seemed fairly evident then that, like it or not, the business of America is business. As one of our former presidents said, and therefore most of the jobs would be in business. So, I had the third and most important part of the colleges, it seemed to me, would be in what I named administration and information management. I like acronyms so it was AIM – “Aim.” I had also copied this, I must say from a professor at Dartmouth College �who later became its president, John Kemeny, a great mathematician. [Tom] So, it seemed to me that the largest of those three units with these administration and information management, and that would where be where William James College would have the largest number of those majors. I have to admit that's one thing I had not entered my mind was to have media group but, as soon as it’s proposed by a committee members I certainly assented. It seems to me that if William Shakespeare were alive and writing today, he would be writing as Lucas does or any of the cinematographers who would be writing for cinema or for media. So those four units seemed to me to fit in a nice package. Administration and information management being where most of the jobs would be concerned. Those who would work in such professions would learn about how to govern people, and how to govern themselves from such relations component. They would learn a deeper reflection on man from their emphasis on psycho-socio humanism. And they would also learn about the world in which they… members by the concern for environmental science. [Barbara] This may be a troubling question. Did you do any marketing research as they would be running around doing today? [Tom] Did I do what? Market? [Barbara] This came from your sense of things. Did you run out and test these notions? That this would be where the students were. [Tom] Well, in in a very indirect way. One of my roommates in college is a fairly significant, at that time, was fairly significant member of IBM Corporation. And I consulted with him informally over the phone. I also did read the literature. Seems like one of the easiest things to do rather than make your market research is to read literature. Much has been printed before by persons whom we could not afford to hire. So, I did a great deal of reading in what was written about universities. From the beginning and then studied particularly Canadian universities over the last twenty years. Because Canada underwent an enormous expansion between nineteen forty-five and nineteen sixty-five with their universities. For a very narrow base, classically oriented universities, to a much broader set of universities that was encompassing. That we're allowing for a person who never come to college to go to college. So, I did reading rather than having survey done. [Barbara] We're going to run out of tape. We have another tape it’s just that we just don't want to interrupt an open answer. [Camera operator] [Inaudible] �[Barbara] We have another five minutes? Okay. [Tom] My face was not very mobile, was it? [Barbara] [Inaudible] I'd like to ask. Would you say something briefly about synopticity, which seems to have started right away. [Tom] About what? [Barbara] Synopticity? [Tom] Oh, yes. That was actually--I liked that very much. [Barbara] And then your comments as someone from the outside do you think we grew in the right way or did we get skewed off? And then something about the courses that were working against the success of the college. If you have any observations on them. [Tom] Alright. [Camera operator] [Barbara] This is not the right tripod. [indistinct mumbling] [Inaudible] It’s not the right tripod. [Camera operator] Okay. [Barbara] So authenticity seems there from the beginning. [Tom] Oh, yeah. Yes, the synoptic lectures here. That was probably the third thing of which I'm most proud in attempting to develop within James. It seemed to me that the most difficult thing for a regional college is how to keep the faculty active. And it's for that reason I designed the synoptic program. The synoptic program I envision would be rather similar to actually what William James had done. In the gifted lecture series, that were later titled, “The Variety of Religious Experience.” A way to bring to a… to Edinburgh a matter of fact, in James' case. To bring to a campus a visiting dignitary who it in ten twelve days open up his entire mind and give you his view of the universe. And I call them synoptic lectures. They would take place here at Grand Valley. I recognize them as highly significant to the students. I think the most important thing you can do for students to give them a view of the universe. That it allows people to tie together in some sort of a fashion. The diverse notions they have and to make an intellectual synthesis to the degree they have as well. About their entire status, and the entire stance to the universe. But I really thought of it is crucially important for the faculty. Grand Valley State College is in the middle of the peninsula. Grand Rapids is a good �size city, but it's not a metropolis. [Tom] It doesn't have the resources available to it as Chicago, or New York, or Detroit. And so, to me, it seemed to be crucial to keep the faculty active; to have a variety of persons from the faculty over a period of years would pick. As becoming some master teacher in their field to come to campus and to enunciate to students at a common level, not a technical level. The great ideas the faculty had. And I was following a man named Jerome Bruner. A good cognitive psychologist. In fact, he was one of the synoptic lecturers I had invited, as well Jean Piaget, who said that: "One can always explain, in a decent way, any idea at a level that would be capable of being understood by a particular audience.” So, that was the whole notion of a synoptic lecture: to give us a view of the universe for the students, but also to give the faculty chance to plan ahead for the great mind that they would consider dominant in that field. Plan ahead for that person visit to initiate students in that, and of course keep the faculty active. So, in a sense, I was looking to the faculty. Students come and go after four years. But the faculty can be here for twenty years. And it could easily turn over old ideas many times, unless one had stimuli from such great minds. Such as Jean Piaget, or a person like that. [Barbara] Would you comment on your observation from the outside that the development of our college… [Tom] Well, I guess, I did stay outside William James College. I tried to start off as best I could, you know with the committee. We did the best we could to get it going. And then I thought once you hire faculty, let the faculty do what they considered best. And obviously the fact that they proceeded in the certain direction. I think I would express concern. Seemed to me that the faculty either did not understand or did not pay attention to what President Lubbers said and asked in his first year. Namely that it would be a large college, and that it would enroll a wide variety of students in a broad number of fields. It seemed to me that the college never put the personnel into any administration information management program that the numbers of students would justify. I think when the faculty decided for whatever reason, probably very good reasons – I was not a member of the committees at the side of these – that they would not grow exponentially. But rather they would only replicate. I think that was crucial. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_09_Cunningham Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cunningham, Tom 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 Tom Cunningham interview (1 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Tom Cunningham 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. Dr. Thomas Cunningham was a faculty member of William James College and longtime GVSU professor who was credited with heading the WJC Planning Task Force that founded the college. In this interview, Tom discusses the origin of the name "William James College" and how the character of the new college was created. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Tom Cunningham. 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 Lectures and lecturing 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a35c2d05aa6a1750dc3ab9311882bdc3.mp4 f5d4d2533eda1e30b2afc769d9ff0676 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/80acad654035dba4f8c8b2edaa8fc212.pdf 1a9a17cd2107f484430a80c8fc5540fb PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Tom Cunningham Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 2 [Barbara] Where were we? We were talking about growing... [Tom] Oh yes, I gather it was a crucial decision sometime in the second and third year of William James College faculty. Where they decided not to grow exponentially, you know, for a variety of reasons. They wanted to get to know each other. Each member of the faculty. But I think it was an unfortunate decision. At the time Grand Valley as in whole and in general was growing. And there's a certain number of faculty positions that are open when you're growing that become closed by the times. Not to grab hold of those faculty positions, for whatever good reason, means they are going to be closed to you later. And you will not have those choices to make later. So, it seemed to me that the faculty was deciding that they would be of a certain size and no bigger, and that's permissible. But it also meant that you had one college that continue to grow, College of Arts and Sciences, which would continue to have something like eighty/ninety percent of the of the students on campus. And therefore, all the other colleges, now two of them and then the third to start later, would define themselves in the shadow of that much larger college. Whereas the foundation documents of Grand Valley and the wish of the President was that you would have a number of colleges, each the same size. You can do the things if you are the same size. I looked to Oxford and Oxford University, where you have all your college and you're a Trinity College… they're pretty much the same size. The Trinity does not step over [inaudible]. They're members of a larger unit and they get service to the university. Each doing it in its own particular fashion. I don't think that ever took place here at Grand Valley, because the College of Arts and Sciences just ballooned. Whereas the other colleges I had to find themselves to be smaller for variety a of reasons, and I think that's an unfortunate. I think that eventually assisted in the demise of William James College. [Barbara] As we're on this topic, can you comment further on some of the reasons why the school had to be closed after only eleven years. [Tom] I don't know whether it had to be closed or not. But I do think that… why would it close? I suppose because most of the functions that it had been doing and then taken over by other units. It seems to me that William James was on its slippery slope when it gave up the Administration and Information Management program. I had never thought about computers, personal computers notion. I had thought of mainframes as John Kemeny at Dartmouth is associated with twenty-five �years ago. If I hadn't really known about the personal computers and could predict that, I would have invested my money and Apple computers and be a millionaire and not be here. But it was evident that the administration information management was a high growth potential. [Tom] For one reason or another it never achieved that here in William James College, and indeed, William James College allowed the computer personnel to be removed from it. That to me was already an indication that it was in its death throes. I think after that simply a matter of time. Why did it end? One can always look for scapegoats. There is a conspiratorial view history, with which I'm not in agreement, which says all of my problems are outside made. And even Freud knew that most of our problems are within me. And at James you would say that, too, I think. I do think that institutions survive – even if they're unpopular – if they perform a function. Nobody likes a prison. Not the prisoners, not even the people that work in the prisons. And certainly not the people that live next to prisons. Prisons endure because they perform a socially useful function. I think William James College, in the certain sense, died because it ceased to do that. Or at least deceased to do that in a unique fashion or in any cost-effective fashion. I don't have the data on cost effectiveness but one could look to that it seems to me. What I do think in the decision not to grow made it evident that William James would define itself in terms of a counter cultural college. In other words, it would look to and react against the larger college on campus. Whereas it certainly had the opportunity to be as large as the largest of colleges. So, I think in the great refusal it sealed its own fate. [Barbara] Many years ago you had certain… you did readings, and you had a philosophy on what would be important to found a college. Now, it's 1985. Would you do it the same way with the same rank order of importance to your decisions, or what would you do differently now? [Tom] Well, it does seem to me that college is still must fill a socially and personally useful task, and I think the tasks that were laid out at William James, however imperfectly, addressed or were attempting to address those issues. I do think that every agent, I mention from Babylonian age on, does look to service type jobs, does look to careers, I would say, in a variety of functions. In a variety of hierarchy, see. Careers in business, careers in psychology or sociology or whatever. I do think most of the documents I wrote to William James would be useful in assisting and founding any college. And I think that would be particularly useful in founding a college in our own day. One that would look to assisting. For example, that in Administration and Information Management. That was where most of the jobs would be for the next century. As far as any data showed. University of Texas at Austin is putting something like fifteen [inaudible] professors. A million-dollar chairs exactly in information management. Not that everyone who goes and gets a degree in information management will become a �computer specialist. But rather they will use computers. I think computers, which is simply another word for handling information, is really where the growth of American universities will be in the next century. [Barbara] What about the question of community though, and preparing this tape? What I get from our alums is a passionate attachment to this college. Because it fulfilled something that wasn't available to let most run the society. That's gone from Grand Valley, is it not? Can you imagine another college being founded in the near future? A small college that has this sense of community? [Tom] I don't know, I doubt it. I don't know why community has to be founded in a college-wide unit. I do know, for example, our geology majors in the College of Arts and Sciences in Grand Valley’s college now have always been closely knit. I think they're closely knit because their experiences on the digs. Our anthropology and our geology majors particularly are closely knit. I think something similar happens to our nursing group. Granted that there is attention there because only a certain number of spots are allowed for junior and senior years. But in anyone who shares an intense educational experience is an opportunity for community. I do think some of the community aspects maybe a function of the faculty meeting community more than students do. I think faculty come at a certain age, and you can go through community experiences at a certain number of times. But after all, if you're a normal faculty member you have your own family and that's where you will receive most of your community inputs. I do think that faculty require close interaction with students. I think that happens with majors, but I think the tragedy of American education in general, seems to me, is that the freshmen and sophomores are ignored, and the juniors and seniors majors in the field are prized. I think the inverse should be true. Freshman should be intensely worked with, that is where you develop community. And then the sophomores and juniors, they're around and they're your resources to talking to other freshmen. And I think that's what William James and smaller colleges tend to do. They have an intense experience with freshman students and that endures over the four years. I think in having large lecture courses in other colleges, for example, and now in Grand Valley in general. That sense, that opportunity for community is lost. So, I would say have freshman seminars, or perhaps even seminars directed to persons who might major in particular field as a freshman or plan on majoring. And you would have a community experience that could grow. [Barbara] Thank you. [Inaudible] I am out of questions, but I am not out of tape. Is there something else you would like to tell us? [Tom] No, I think you asked the basic questions. Namely how did it start. What occurred. [Barbara] I guess I do have one more question. Just something that doesn't feel real to me. �Lubbers asked you to do this. You say you did a lot of reading, but that cannot be the whole answer. How did you come up with this much this fast? [Tom] I worked… Isaac Newton was asked one day how he thought about gravity. And he said how he discovered the formula about gravity. He said by thinking on it [Latin?] day and night. I was working eighteen / nineteen hours a day for a period of three months. I have a picture of my newborn son who's born in September tenth, nineteen seventy. And he was lying on my chest. In fact, this jacket I wore when I interviewed with the President. I wore it. Well, my interview with the President (when he gave me those directions about the schools). Tommy was lying on my chest, and I was just sleeping between two o'clock feeding and six o'clock when I would get up. But I had been working steadily. I thought about education for forty-years. Twenty-years as a college student and university student. And it was a chance to put into practice all of my ideas. And I wrote them up because they were all of my ideas. I would also like to point out that Saint Augustine, someplace or other, says that most skills are learned in a short time when you're young or not at all. And I guess I wrote this material in a short time because I thought about it at great length under a period of many years. [Barbara] Quickly, what are your various educational experiences? [Tom] Three years ago I graduated law school. That was my ninth academic degree. I had studied physics as an undergraduate after serving in the United States Navy and Notre Dame. And, then I studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood and obtain six of my degrees. Three in philosophy, and three in theology. I picked up a doctorate degree in history science (medieval science) at the University of Wisconsin. And I think the degree I liked best of all is the master’s degree I obtained in education - history, theory, and criticism. That's basically what I do at William James College, was to lay out what I thought was important. [Barbara] Where is that master’s from? [Tom] From the University of Wisconsin. [Barbara] Wisconsin? Okay. [Tom] I did that University. One of the ways in which you see how ideas and science take root, is to see how they can transfer into a curriculum. In other words, Isaac Newton discovers gravity. How long does it take to get into a curriculum? That's what I did. That's why I majored in history, that's why I took a master’s in educational history. [Barbara] Okay. �[Tom] That didn't hurt it all. [Laughter] [Barbara] Thank you so much. That was very interesting. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_10_Cunningham Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cunningham, Tom 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 Tom Cunningham interview (2 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Tom Cunningham 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. Dr. Thomas Cunningham was a faculty member of William James College and longtime GVSU professor who was credited with heading the WJC Planning Task Force that founded the college. In this interview, Tom discusses the growth of William James College and how it played a role in the closing of the college after eleven years. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Tom Cunningham. 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 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_44_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 (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 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c2897a75cd31ab8ecd308ef3867df5b3.mp4 3f3657dfeed9afa38fb826176a7a39ea https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5549389bc97b38e47ba975a062a606cc.pdf 0df4f78460413454d2ca380352a6f4f5 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Jean Doyle Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 3 [Barbara] Okay, Jean. Why on earth did you come to William James? [Jean] Is this the real thing? Are we starting? [Barbara] Yeah. [Jean] Okay. [Sighs heavily] I grew up in Chicago and when I was about twelve, I met a deaf kid. Through meeting him and wanting to communicate with him, I thought I invented the theory of art therapy. [Laughs] And I thought how wonderful it would be if by painting, or reading, or writing poetry, or something that this kid could express or relate to other people what he was experiencing from nature. And so that just became a goal and I call it art therapy in my head, even as a kid. And I just started looking for places that offered coursework in art therapy. A counselor at a high school in Chicago, she wasn't my counselor, it wasn't my high school, she told me about William James. So, my mom and I took a drive up here and we looked at it. I didn't really know what I was looking at or looking for. And I said: "Well, this must be it, you know, this must be where I meant to be." So, in September I started. And, it was, well-- Are we going to get to frustrations right away? [Barbara] Whatever makes you feel most comfortable. [Jean] Okay. It was so strange because once… as soon as I got there, I immediately realized I'd been given misinformation, which I translated to as I was lied to. Because in the in the catalog, you know, it talked about Thomas Jefferson, College IV, William James, and CAS. And when I got there, Thomas Jefferson had just been axed. And there was just no words about it. But I didn’t know enough to get angry yet. That came in time. But I met a lot of people who had been part of Thomas Jefferson and became more acquainted with their frustration and their anger. But we progressed, and then at the end of the first year that I was there Cathleen O'Shaughnessy (?) left. She was a key art therapy person at that time. And she was gone, and that was it. And so, I'll never really understand why I just didn't say: "Well the hell with this. I'm out of here. You know, I came in for something; it's not here. What am I doing here?" But I never left. I just, I don't know, there was something about the community of the place, the friends I was making, and the rapport with professors. That I really felt it was worth sticking around, it was worth waiting, and knowing in my heart someday I �would be an art therapist and I would work in art therapy. But for the present time, I had other things to learn, I had an education to get, and I felt like I was in a good place to get it. Working with good people and that became a priority to me and of great value. [Jean] My father, at the home front, he was questioning greatly what the hell I was doing there when it came out that there wasn't what I was seeking there, and there wasn't, you know, any hope of things getting better in terms of a career-oriented thing. He respected that aspect of liberal education. But he felt that if I just wanted a liberal education that I should continue St. John's, which is where I started my undergrad work. He felt that it would be more sensible to go to a prestigious college, and to have a nice degree at the end of it; especially, if I was going to get something as general as liberal arts. And, as you know, easy to pass off. Or, you know what I mean, people don't really just say: "Oh what are you going to do with that degree?" You know? So, there was a lot of tension there, but I just stuck it out. A sense of loyalty, a sense of connection, and commitment that was felt around me, and so I just want to desert that whole front. [Barbara] Do you know, something that hasn't really come up in the tapes so far is the notion of how new organization happened so many times effected students, and you're talking about it. Do you know people that left school because of reorganization? [Jean] I know one artist in particular that comes to mind. His name was Chris Molane. (?) He's living in New York, and he's doing his work. And he's very happy. I mean, for him actually, the reorganization is a good thing, it released him from the cornfields out to them where things are really happening for him. I'm trying to think who else. Not really, it seemed like people just sort of went, you know, they didn't just accept it but they went through it, and came out the other side to see what was there. [Inaudible] [Jean] Like going through some kind of mill. [Barbara] Please tell me a little bit about Saint Johns. [Jean] Saint Johns was the most beautiful place I ever was at. It was tucked in the mountains in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it was a drug infested, sexually active, monastery dedicated to learning and loving knowledge. And Socrates was the hero of the school. At four o'clock in the morning, the dorms were really small, about twenty people per dorm. And you could walk in four in the morning and there would be people drunk, or whatever, but they'd be discussing something of common interest. And what's so neat is that it's a very rigid curriculum in terms of all freshmen read Aeschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and on and on. And they do Euclidean geometry, and then non-Euclidean geometry, and the next year is �Ptolemian, it goes on and so everybody just had the exact same education. So, there's so much to share. And the tutors were more like referees. Or when they would start a seminar, it was like they'd throw up a jump ball and we'd play. [Jean] So, they weren't projecting, or interjecting very much. And in a way, it wasn't until I met Irving Wasserman at Grand Valley that I really was more studied with Socrates and really tried to understand-- just have a broader view, a much broader view, because it was like children playing with these thoughts. And so, we had no background, no framework, to put it in and so, I appreciated having a guide like Irv. But it was wonderful to be given the respect to play with it, you know. Or to engage with it. [Barbara] Okay, but then just the notion of you wanting to go into Art Therapy was enough to tear you away from this? [Jean] I was also in the midst of very strong personal problem that I had to get away from immediately. And so, I had to leave hastily unfortunately. So, when I got home and it was hiding out for a while, I thought: "Well, I think I'll go up to Michigan and check out William James. [Barbara] Okay. Okay. [Jean] Take that path and then maybe go hit… [Barbara] Why alternative anyway though? You had two alternative colleges you were looking for, and why? [Jean] Oh, that's just always been my cup of tea. I originally began my education in straight Catholic schools. And they were fine for me, to an extent. It was sort of like getting a lot of A's and everything for not doing any work. And when I hit about seventh grade, I was with this real tough group. And, you know, standing in the parking lot smoking cigarettes with jackets open in January type of fun and entertainment, really ridiculous. And my mother began to become very concerned about me when I stole her car and went driving around. And so, she knew, in her wisdom, that she couldn't reach me, and she can talk to me. So, she sent me to my sister Barbara, who's twelve years older than me, and who I've always had a very strong affinity with. I stayed there for a month. When I came home my mother said: "Well, Jeanie guess what? There's this wonderful school. It's called Morgan Park Academy. The classes have only like sixteen people in them. And you get to work at your own rate, and it's in the city, and it's real integrated." And I'm like: "Wow, Mom. That sounds real cool. Someday maybe, you know, I'll check it out. She's like: "Well you have your entrance exam Wednesday." And I was like: "Oh..." So anyway, I got into this school and it turned out there was like these real rich, snotty kids there. And I was just like: �"Oh jeez, I don't need this." One day… the first day of school someone asked me what did my father do for a living, and how much money did he make. And I told her that my father was an alcoholic, and we were on welfare. [Jean] Which was absolutely the untruth. But I just like a little bitch. I'm not going to tell her the truth. It's none of her business. But anyway, I got into the faculty there, and I realized what I could learn there. And I realized that I didn't need, oh, just to be told what to do, that learning itself was an incentive enough for me. And that I just couldn't stand, you know, all this worrying about tests, and what did you get on the test and… you know, what do you have to know for the test. That whole attitude… whenever I came across that it just, you know, put my back up. and I was like get me out of here. At that school, I was allowed to get away from that. And at St. John's, there certainly wasn't at all an issue, I didn't even know they gave grades until later. I found out that I did rather well. But, you know, I just didn't need traditional structured education. [Barbara] Do think that's because you got too much of it? Or for other reasons.? [Jean] No, I think it's just the way I'm made. Just me. [Laughter] [Barbara] I went to a school founded by John Dewey, who was a student of James's. And when it hits you, when you hit one school like that it spoils you for anything else. [Jean] Yeah, and it's not spoiled. Well, I mean it's… you don't want to go back. [Barbara] Yeah. [Jean] You don't need it. [Barbara] You become very cynical about traditional education is another way to put it. [Jean] Yes, it's true. [Barbara] Okay, you talk about major frustration. Are there other frustrations you would like to talk about? [Jean] Yeah, I think one is a real general frustration. It's sort of like, I feel in the course of my life I've come at the end of every great wave that I have wanted to be a part of desperately. And it's like I'm, you know, trying to body surf. And it goes right over me, and I'm back there, and then it crashes on the beach, and it's pulled back in, and then I'm just waiting for the next wave or something. When I was six my sister, Barbara again, you know, she was in college. It was nineteen sixty-seven. She was sitting in the rain for her black roommates and, you know, it was all very powerful to me. It really stuck with me. And I thought that's what we �do in college. When I got there, I was all psyched for it, and then I grew up in things where the seventies… [Jean] Where nobody wanted to commit to anything, and everything was the blank generation. and it was a denial of everything that happened in sixties, it seem to me. And so, at that time I think I sort of espoused hippie virtues, you know, or tried to. I made myself and was forced into the position of being a dinosaur. Of being, you know, like this extinct being. Yet walking along the living, but not wanting to be part of what they were doing. And not wanting to fit in, and not wanting to espouse those principles. Because I didn't see any principles in them. So, it was pretty rough. But by the time I got to college, I realized the sixties are gone. Life has changed a lot. There's no hippies anymore, the hippies who are here are clinging to the past. This is a new time, and we need a new kind of people to deal with, you know, the sixties plus the seventies, and now the eighties. You know it's a new world. And one of my frustrations at William James was being considered a hippie even though I wasn't. You know, and you get a lot of flak. But that didn't really bother me, I can sort of laugh that off. [Barbara] What kind of flak? Or you really don't know? [Jean] A lot of times… when you're talking to CAS people. And I hate doing the camp business, you know, I mean our side and their side of the river or whatever. But people want to take it seriously. I mean from the point of a guy not asking you out on a date because you are William James student, to in a conversation…you're just not being taken seriously because you're considered a radical. Even though I'm very… I consider myself conservative liberal. You know, I'm not into radical changes. I'm into reasonable discussion of what's going on and then see what can be done. But not just changing for change's sake. I'm not radical politically, and I'm not a hippie, and I'm not living in the past. And a lot of times… it's hard for me to be specific right now, my mind is not really on it… clearly enough to come up with specific examples of times I felt put down, or rejected for having… [Barbara] The out of tape line is blinking at me, so it's going to stop in a second. So, it’s a good time to just wait anyway. [Jean] Okay. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_06_Doyle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Doyle, Jean Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Title A name given to the resource Jean Doyle interview (1 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Jean Doyle by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Jean Doyle was a student at William James College and a graduate from Grand Valley's class of 1984. In this interview, Jean discusses the journey that brought her to William James College from her hometown of Chicago, Illinois and how she felt a calling toward alternative education to study Art Therapy. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Jean Doyle. Please note: this interview contains the audio recording in place of the video recording. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Art therapy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8ee39a5b5414d9b1d03c17830572ef79.mp4 3a0edb7fa219c3623c7a772bb7e4894c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d74c2ceee996f1cec1384a19e37b7f1b.pdf 601c8e0df1c3bbdf4c60d5bac40065db PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Jean Doyle Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 3 [Jean] Okay, remember… I believe it was my first year there, and I just met and fell in love with Claire Porter and Sally Labheart (?) I was finding so much strength and joy in the dance department. I was so happy. Dance was my, you know, it was just my thing. It was where I'd go and be away from everything, and just have what I needed, and wanted. I was learning a lot and it was great for my body. I felt real good. Then all of a sudden, I hear: Tom, Sally, Claire. All the people I thought were the highest of the high were being pink slipped, fired, let go! That the Performing Arts Center as a body was being annihilated. I just freaked out. I just I could not believe it. I thought: "Now this is the one thing that I found so far that's outstanding on this campus, that is excellent. Why is the administration, or whoever is responsible for this decision, afraid of excellence? Why are they striving towards mediocrity? What is it that they're afraid of?" And so, they left, and before it was finally finalized, we're going to have sitting around the library. And I thought well this is it, finally. My first sit in, and I'm so excited. We made posters and the day of the sit in it rained. About three or four people showed up, and it was just a real discouraging. PAC just sort of fizzled out, and it was gone. Those fine people left that campus and I still had room one twenty-one where the dance studio was is my retreat, and my sacred space. But you know, I didn't have the golden teachers to bring me to higher things. You know, everything I did had to come from inside myself. Christine is a very good teacher and a very good friend, but she was sick a lot. She just was really involved with a lot of things going on with herself. You just can't have one teacher and who can teach you everything. Because they, you know, she's… her expertise is in a certain kind of modern dance, and there's many kinds modern of dance. There's many kinds of, you know, everything that really need to be dealt with [inaudible]… [Jean] … would leave the profession because they can't make a decent living at it, you know. Tell you… that was excellence. [Barbara] So, why don't talk about the closing of James. [Jean] Okay, that was significant to me and number ways. I really love Barry, Robert, and Steven for the help they gave the students to deal with it. They spoke to us about different languages and that we couldn't just express our needs and our interest in terms of that we were familiar and comfortable in talking with and have that mean anything on an administrative level. That we had to take our terms and translate them into terms that would be understandable and acceptable. When �Stephen and Robert were advocating for this college at those meetings, I just felt like it was a new spirit of seventy-six where you know they were like Thomas Jefferson or something. Fighting for a new nation or a new state that ought to exist, that deserve to exist in its own right. That they were being very reasonable about it. [Jean] That they were passionate but dispassionate at the same time about it and they were at those meetings and they had their thoughts together and they had them organize and they had them put out in a way it could be understood by anyone, in any terms. It still didn't do any good. [Barbara] What meetings were these? [Jean] They were reorganization meetings, I think. They were going on in Zumberge Hall. It was like the year or so before the final verdict came down that we were closed. Do you remember those? [Barbara] Kind of. It all blurs for me. [Inaudible] Blurs. So, what you remember is, you know… [Jane] Yeah, it was, I believe it was there that they'd would, you know. They'd have to cancel class here and there even because the meetings were not arranged for convenience. They would go and come back. They'd look very tired and worn. But I know that they gave it their very best shot you know. [Barbara] But then you were talking about when the closure actually came. [Jean] Well, the closure came with no closure. I guess William James being place a where process was something that was espoused, was appreciated, was reveled in, was maybe drawn out too long, and every decision that was ever made there as a group took so much to do, but it was always worth it. When the closure came its sort of like there was no closure, there was no finishing, and it just sort of dissipated and that was very distressful to me. I really missed that. We had a William James (our last synoptic that while we were still in college) and it was one where a lot of alumni were invited. And Adrian came and I'll never forget she read this poem and I have a copy of it now. It's called "To Be of Use." It's beautiful a poem about, you know, what is the meaning of life? It's to be useful, and to put yourself into a task fully. There's a lot of other alumni who came back and talked about what they felt about the school and what the entire experience it meant to them. And that was the birth to the William James Association from that meeting. And so that was April when we had that synoptic discussion. Then in May, at the end of school, it was last week of classes. There was this meeting of the William James Association the first meeting and I almost cried when I was there because there had been two or three hundred students. And of those two �or three hundred students of the present time, myself, Linda Rogers, Henry Hardy, Mark Zepatowski (?), Ralph, you know there was just a handful of us there. It sort of seem like everybody just went "Well it's over. Okay, onto something else." You know, and that it didn't mean anything to them. [Jean] It probably did, but just at that moment it felt like: "Where are you people? What is your experience here? Where are you coming from?" And there was a lot of alumni there, and people who had really cared, but I think the rest of my fellow students were burnt out from all the haggling and fighting for the right to exist. We just sort of had reached a point of exhaustion and apathy where they just said: "You know, oh well. What are we fighting for? Let's stop fighting, let's go home." So that's, I think, where that boils down to. It was real disappointing and real anti-climactic. [Barbara] What was the funeral like? [Jean] The funeral was a statement made… Mark Zapatowski and his unique way conceived the idea of a film to document this whole experience. Which I really appreciated because it felt like there was someone in fact, a group of people, the [inaudible] who cared. [Barbara] I changed the shot, so you kind of just pick it up. [Jean] Okay. Anyway, Mark had conceived the idea of the system documenting what it happened through the whole devolution of Grand Valley State Colleges. And so, we got all of us together for this one shot. This one idea he had. No actually this is the original idea, and then it evolved into the starch blob (?) the whole documentation. But this is just a commemoration of the death of Thomas Jefferson College, which was the first of the murders on the campus. We all became very… using words like that. Like murder, assassination, annihilation--as if it were human bodies being knocked off because it was sort of death that was happening all around us all the time. And we were just… felt real wounded and so the funeral happened on a summer day. We had a huge box just full of costumes, and musical instruments. We were at the farmhouse, and we got all dressed up and we drove over to Grand Valley. We went to the Lake Huron Hall, which is where Thomas Jefferson used to be, and someone was filming from the balcony and someone from the street. We came around, and this procession formed, oh there was everyone there. There were monks, the barbarian, the sprites. It was a wonderful long procession of different spirits and characters. It was just… do you want me to tell you about the film not being there? [Laughter] [Barbara] [Inaudible] [Jean] The funeral was to sort of… trying to bring some closure to that very [inaudible]. �Nothing was said. There was no announcement made. It just became realities that suddenly this college didn't exist. And then they were doing it to William James, and that was in the works. [Jean] I think that's why Mark got the idea to it to make something about the finishing off of Thomas Jefferson College because nothing had been said. It just ceased to be, and we were realizing that we were in the process of having our school ceased to be. And it was a scary time, and so we wanted to say something. We wanted to point something out to thin air, if nothing else, you know. [Barbara] Do you see that commune, that was historically active closing James, had anything to do with the closing of James? [Jean] Actually, it could. Now, historically it was kind of concurrent. There were several incidences where people from this group, and also with SRX. Where they got silly and wrecked some stuff. And that can't be tolerated, on any form. I mean destruction of property is bad behavior. And writing things on the wall about people who look at it every day, it's not an intelligent move. It was real politically incorrect of them. I'm sure it was innocent; it was naïve, too. I mean they weren't realizing the implications they felt at that moment; that we were eternal and there was nothing that was going to hurt us. So, they could say what they want, and express their anger, and destroy things that belonged to people that, you know, they would like to spit upon. So, they did foolish things in that sort of young silly way. I think some of those things just was like: "Well look at these people!" You know, got generalized everyone. And academics were no longer looked at, and it was just that we were an undesirable element then. A bunch of destructive of brats or something. So, I would imagine it had something to do with the beginning of the process that eventually closed the school. I wouldn't be surprised. It's because it was sort of around the same time. So, I really don't know. Yeah, there was so much tension then. There was so much tension. Always fighting, and… there's a good, I mean, we were all politically aware and active, and we cared. Somehow things got taken too far, and the political activity just turned to destructive behavior. It was no longer political it was tantruming. [Barbara] That's an interesting answer. It hadn't been what I was expecting you to say, because I wasn't talking about trashing. I mean did you guys just go on and live communally? Oops, we're going to run out of tape. Live communally as 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 A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_07_Doyle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Doyle, Jean Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Title A name given to the resource Jean Doyle interview (2 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Jean Doyle by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Jean Doyle was a student at William James College and a graduate from Grand Valley's class of 1984. In this interview, Jean discusses her experience with the closing of William James College, the final WJ Association meeting, and the "funeral" that took place outside Lake Huron Hall regarding the closing of Thomas Jefferson College and William James College. This interview is part 2 of 3 for Jean Doyle. 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 Dance 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/414504e8b2b1a25b691357ee031bcde1.mp4 8b50623872c79a6ed0b59347afe9af58 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dff76c9144326b8e832dadb1fcaecbcb.pdf a48043e603338a344b6690f614f4e555 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Jean Doyle Date: 1984 Part: 3 of 3 [Barbara] Could you think for a minute, if you had to sum up William James education-What's unique about it? In just a sentence. [Jean] One sentence?! [Barbara] Well, two. [Jean] I think the unique… one of the most unique features of William James education is that it was learning as a group project. And that I never heard from any teacher there that: "I have the information, I'm going to put it in your head." I heard from every teacher: "This is subject I really turned on about and if you're have turned on about it right now, I hope by the end of this experience you will be. And let's go!" And that was sort of an adventure spirit that I loved. I felt respected, like my mind was being respected. That I had a place to express my thoughts, think my thoughts, and find out what my thoughts were. And that's more than one sentence. But I think that's a unique feature generally. [Barbara] Actually that was more than one sentence… it's more than one thought. But that's okay. [Inaudible] Okay, I am through with my questions. [Jean] Okay. [Barbara] What do you want to say? [Jean] I really love the people that I met at William James. I think that's a large part of why didn't leave. Robert Mayberry is an incredible teacher. Ros is incredible. I tended to repeat their classes over and over. I mean, or you know, take their different classes because I was just so, you know, just so loving them. And Steven gave me so much. I can't… I wish I could think of how to describe it. Barry, sitting in seminar with him and there was almost a religious sentiment about it. The learning was so important. We were discussing in this one seminar on school and society things that were so important to us in that room. There was only four people in the seminar and it was rich, and it was good. There's just been times and conversation with people that, you know, you just bring them with you for the rest of your life. I loved William James College. I loved the coffee machine in the morning and going there and meeting with all those people who are so good. I can't talk right now. �[Barbara] Okay. Let me turn it off. [Jean] It's hard to… [Barbara] White balance again. [Crinkling paper] [Barbara] It's warming up. Come on thing, do it! [Barbara] First black people felt very close and why that had anything to do with education at all [?]. [Jean] I'm not exactly sure why people felt close there. I know they were feeling close when I got there, so I felt safe to open myself and to feel close to them. And it felt real good and it felt really different from attitudes that I had seen. And I was sort of developing this theory about the nuclear fear, the fear of nuclear holocaust, infecting people's minds to the point where they are driving their life like a car down the road. And they are isolated from other cars on the road, and they're going to this destination. They don't care how they get there, or why they're even going, but they have this point and they're going there, and the hell with everyone else. And at William James it was like we were in a big bus, and we were all going somewhere together. And it mattered where we were going, but it didn't matter how long it took because we were having a good time as we are going. So, we were happy. There was a family feeling and that did within the classroom allow, I think, for more freedom of speech. That you weren't so afraid of speaking your mind or of trying out a new idea because you knew beyond, you know, maybe this intellectual point there was something else you shared with these people. And you weren't going to be disregarded or heated or rejected from the whole group for expressing a weird thought. Now, as far as why community is important in education, I believe that it's because if you sit at home alone and read a book. And it could be a wonderful book, and mean a lot to you. And be doing all kinds of things inside of you to be taking this in, and that's fine. But if you have a book, and you have twenty copies of that book, and everybody's read that book, and everybody has their own view of it. And everybody's view is respected of it, when you bring everyone together to discuss it, there is something about the collectivity of the minds meeting and working together that I believe will open to wider vision. And the Jamesian sense of why we are here to share perspectives. Because having a community in which you feel safe to express yourself is so important if you're going to really do that Jamesian approach to learning, of having people's view of the whole coming together to make a larger vision. And that really seem to have hit William James. It happened for me and I learned a lot from my contemporaries and teachers and I believe we learned it in that way… by turning on each other's minds. And that you know people who are kind of dragging their feet got caught up in it, and it was contagious. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_08_Doyle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Doyle, Jean Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Title A name given to the resource Jean Doyle interview (3 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Jean Doyle by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Jean Doyle was a student at William James College and a graduate from Grand Valley's class of 1984. In this interview, Jean discusses her overall thoughts on the William James education, in addition to her love of its community and adventurous spirit. This interview is part 3 of 3 for Jean Doyle. 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 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6638ffc26438322b5d45e2ca2060ce85.mp4 14ea8094cc1c0910aeb6928e771b29b7 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/06f0f3f20324cb56f1ffa58893f8335a.pdf 5af404cafd60d7feac958bb77b36298a PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Sanford Fried Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 2 [Barbara] The question is: a lot of people I talk with – students – did not have anything to do with Council, or anything to do with governance, or were not involved in the college. And you and Sheila [?] were, and I would like your evaluation of how really important that was to the education. [Fried] Boy, I was just thinking about that whole thing. I was running through the Castro question, and that whole statement, and in that phrase, you know, that you weren't a part of the college. And I thought, wait a minute, there was a whole part of this college that happened… was happening in Council and it was happening in the committees. I try to remember all the committees that I was on… everything from the Community Life committee that probably isn’t even around anymore that died a long time ago, Academic Life and Faculty Review and all that faculty hiring. And, you know, the leadership quality and the building leadership quality in our students – it was never really discussed as an upfront thing of what the college was about, but it was, and it was underlying, I mean, it was obvious because there were what fifteen seats for students on the council, right? And so, it was intentional that people were going to get involved but there wasn't much of a dialogue of how that really integrates into your education and how that really helps you when you get out. And I've done various things since I’ve graduated that I’ve thought right back to my Council experiences, where when I sat in that room, I tended to listen more than talk because it was the first time I had ever been in that sort of a setting. But from going out from there, I've been able to put those experiences into my head and into use and think about how we did things at James and, in fact, I got a real concrete example of that, too. At my current job, my yearly job evaluation off my Board of Directors, they do a shitty job. They’ve just done such bad evaluations on me; I mean, you know, I've gotten really upset with it and I think back on how we did evaluations the one year that I was on Faculty Review and how we did some good evaluations then, so that was one specific thing that really… [Barbara] How were their evaluations bad? [Fried] Oh, well, for one thing they were unfair. I don’t want to get into personal gripes about the, you know, things about the job, but they were unfair and that it was an unbalanced evaluation. Any good evaluation stresses positive and negative aspects of your job performance. Okay. There wasn't enough information for the �board to make statements on various things and they weren't able to go around and collect the information. They chose not to go around and collect the information in the way when we were reviewing if a faculty member… of course, we look at all those crazy course evaluations that were done and then there was a general sweep of data from the community at large. And so, it was a very serious attempt made to get as much information from people and as much opinion and fact from people because jobs were at stake; because raises were at stake; it was an important thing to do. And in this last evaluation, I was so disgusted I just I blasted the board for it, and it didn't endear me to them in any way; it added to me wanting to get out of the job sooner and I’ve got two weeks to go. [Laughter] [Barbara] Okay, okay. Because its curious how many people I’ve interviewed that have said, of course, I didn’t have anything to do with Council, I just went on the bus and came back home. And Council, to the ethos of the school from the faculty point of view, was real important. [Fried] I think Council was real critical because, first of all, there's probably only a handful of schools in the whole country, undergrad and graduate, where you can actually… where you could have any access to any of that decision making, okay. And so, in James it was just… it was part of the daily routine or the biweekly routine, I think it was, and sure the committees got crazy, and they got out of hand. But how many of us got into jobs that we are going to be having committee time with? Surely almost everybody in Social Relations and almost everybody in Arts and Media. Anybody who's doing any producing work, you’re always on committees; you’re always doing meetings. So, you know, meetings aren’t just a couple people sitting around – you’ve got to learn how to read those meetings; you got to learn how those politics work. And they were working! They were working the Skylight Room and plus I learned about good facilitating watching Kenny Zapp and watching Pat [?]. They were some of the best, they were very good facilitators. I tried to draft Kenny to do facilitating for the Co-op while he was still in town here. It only worked once – too busy. [Barbara] Okay good, solid answer. I’m going to try going wide here [camera zooms out]. [Fried] I’m glad you asked that because I was going to work it in anyway. [Barbara] Okay, then I want to go back to a question we didn’t talk about which is, oh yes, you said James was half of your education. You’ve been out of school approximately as long as you were in James, so tell me about how it was half and what wasn’t there and all that. [Fried] Okay, should I do a little background on that now? �[Barbara] Sure. [Fried] Okay, let’s see. So, I attended James for approximately three years (seventyseven to eighty). Full-time, more than full-time in a lot of ways in Arts and Media. And now I’ve been out from eighty to eighty-five, so it’s been like five years that I've been a graduate and what I've done mostly in that time has been retail management… had very little to do with Arts and Media. I’ve been doing photography semiprofessionally and just to keep, you know, the skills sharp, but the… oh, God, I just lost my train of thought. [Barbara] Don’t worry about it. [Fried] Okay. [Barbara] Okay, so that’s what you did in terms of your history. Now, how do you characterize your education as having contributed to what you did after school? After you got out of school? [Fried] Okay, the way the education I received and the experiences I received there contributed towards what happened from nineteen eighty to eighty-five for me is that, for one thing, there was a social ethics value that I came out with. Working for a food cooperative was important to me because how food makes it way around from farmer to plate is an important issue for me and I was involved with co-ops before I came to William James, but I saw a greater opportunity to do things that were important to me and my life and to be able to affect my community a little bit. So, I took the steps of getting on the Board of Directors and wound up being able to get a hired position through there, and it was at the time that I thought, “Now I can try and put some of this stuff to work. I can try and put some of these management principles that I heard of and read of and put them into play.” And it was real gratifying for me when I could hire William James people, too, of which I was able to hire a couple and it was always fun. And more than that, it was also reminiscent of there’s now two experiences happening here, and we can talk about the Jamesian way in which we would, you know, try and sell bananas. Or try to do something in real specific context that was not talked about in James. You know, retail was just not talked about in James; that was not one of our areas. At least, it wasn't one of my areas. But, okay, so it helped me to do… to work that side of my… kind of my life commitment of service. You know, everyone has their way of service – if it’s a service to their dollar or service to some community or other or some population and visually I tried to make things happen there, too. I knew that the more exciting you can make things be visually that it would draw people in. It would be… the psychology is wonderful; it just keeps them in and then they don't know why. Of course, that can be used the way it’s used in the grocery industry is really kind of schlocky. I just tried to use it in the food co-op to make things exciting, to make �them dynamic. And, of course, the idea of using video was gone through many times, but for lots of reasons that just couldn’t happen, so I just let that one go. But the other half of the education that I didn't receive was the management and how to run a business. And I know those things were taught at James, but I never would have taken them. That was not in my head when I was there; I was learning to be a creative person in visual arts. That’s what I wanted to do, that’s why I came there. And for me to be studying management principles would have required a great leap for me and one that I was unable to do at that time. And, also, one that was not impressed upon me as being an important one to do by my peers, by my faculty and that. So, it came later. And I’m glad for the way it came because I'm the kind of person I need application for that stuff. I can’t, you know, learn about profit margins in a college context; it wouldn’t have done anything for me. But when I sit there and look how much money we lost this last month because the profit margin dropped all of a sudden it becomes more real. So being able to apply the information really was important to me. And what I maintained all through my education at James, once I really saw what was happening there, the essence of it was that I was learning to be a learner. I was learning to be a lifelong student and I think lots of other people had that same thing. Those of us who really tried to get the most out of James got that… got the ability to learn. And I taught myself just an incredible amount of things and gave my… engendered the confidence in me to know that I don’t need a college to keep on going with my education. It helps to have a community, you know, and that community aspect of James I miss. I miss that sorely. And I wish that was still around. And for me it is, in some ways; I still have a couple of friends that are still around, and we talk but it's just so great to… I’ll just drift off, there’s a cut right there anyway. [Barbara] Okay, okay. This is almost one, I’m not sure… I’m just trying to make sure I hear you. In other words, the way you answered that, it was not that we were elitist, it’s that, why didn’t you do business in school? In other words, you were encouraged to, but it was available. Why didn't you do it? [Fried] Okay. Well, there was some, I think there was some elitism about doing business in school. There was certainly for the art students, for the musicians, the media people, the dancers, and that. You were there to learn your craft, and hopefully you learned it enough - with enough of your own soul – that it could become art. To study something like business seemed to be hypocritical but it really wasn’t because it really does employ some of the same kinds of things in your mind and in your creative person. There are…since I’ve done both now, I see the overlaps and the overlaps are more than not. They are quite a bit. But we were better than that, right? We didn’t have to spend that time studying business because we were learning how to make statements about, you know, what was important to us. But for the most part I felt a lot of people didn’t know what was important to them. They were learning the craft, but they weren’t learning, they weren’t �developing their own voice and what to say through it. So, being articulate isn’t enough unless you have some ideas, right? And business skills were only another way of looking at your ideas, it was just another perspective and I think we suffered a bit, suffered quite a bit by ruling it out, by not saying that this was an important thing for us to be doing because it’s just another way at looking at it. You know we all had to do some science, we all had to do some math. And that’s just another perspective of looking at the world; business is just another one of those ways. And I know a lot of people in the media world who have gone out and started studios here in town have mentioned that same sort of thing to me. You know the business college came later, I had to go to JC, I had to go to Davenport, or I just picked it up myself. Or I just lost a lot of money and I learned how to do it right. That’s a tough way to do it, but you pay your tuition one way or the other way, I guess. [Barbara] Good line. [Laughter] [Fried] That’s right. [Laughter] [Barbara] Sheila [?] just came, do you want to talk to her for a minute? [Fried] Okay. [Barbara] Alright, that was very good. [Fried] I left the college in a rage. And I was raging from actually one of my most memorable experiences in that one – I won’t mention the faculty’s name – one person, we’ll identify him as male, who I was talking to in the later part of my senior year. I had even asked him to serve on my committee as far as seeing the rest of my paperwork through and kind of giving me his blessings and just in the course of conversation he said, “Well, what courses did you take with Stephen, Stephen Rowe?” And I said, “I think I sat in on one of his courses, I don’t think I took anything for credit though,” and he kind of knitted his brow and said, “Well, let’s see you’re a media student. Did you take anything with Mayberry? With Robert?” I said, “No, I never took any of Robert’s courses, but you know I listened to him a lot in Council.” You couldn’t help that, you know, you did a lot of listening. What about Richard Joanisse? Well, no, I didn’t take anything with Richard either. And he just got this awful expression on his face and looked at me with disgust and said, “You never attended this college!” And I’m not… I don’t have violent tendencies but I could have at that moment because I was just so mortally insulted after being such an involved student and I thought a very responsible student for three years. And going through lots of stages of anger after that and coming back to him and confronting him and saying you’re just really unfair, really unfair, and you really angered me a lot by saying that and I’m taking back my invitation to be on my graduation committee, I will get out of here �without you. And then I thought about later on, I think years later, that comment has haunted me for a long time, I can still feel anger. But since then, I thought about them, the other experiences of being on Council, for example, being in the student governance that James wasn’t strictly about anything but encompassing the academic inquiry, the scholarly pursuits of the social issues which this faculty was heavily invested into. And I thought, no way, you can’t do everything there, you just can’t do it all. It would take you five years, six years, and I just didn’t have that kind of time. But I learned my craft well, and I learned about leadership in Council and I learned about working through committee process and that was one of the strong things about what the college was about. So those experiences I realized are very valuable to me and valuable, I think, to anyone else who was in on them. That guy was just off base, he was just seeing things from his own angle, his own perspective. And I think that that created a real split, too, among the students and faculty. Because there were “us” and “them,” there were the camera heads and the chemical fingers and those of us who spent our times in the basements and over in the TV studios and there were those people who spent most of times in the libraries and other places. Our libraries were just different, you know, there’s lots of ways to do that. And I think that we were… it was a real unstated… in some ways unstated division within the college. In some ways it was antagonistic, I think the comment that I shared was “majorly antagonistic.” [Barbara] Okay. I’m going to stop because I’m going to put a new tape in because I have another question to ask you, one more, and I hate to have you start it. [Fried] Okay. [Barbara] You know? [Fried] Yeah. Do you want to set up another angle? [Barbara] I’m going to, yeah, I actually have dominated this tripod so I should be able to change the shots slightly. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_48_Fried Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 (1 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 his involvement on council and his committee work, and how his involvement was critical to his educational success at William James College. This interview is part 1 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 Student councils 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> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_57_Fried Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6fa7c2b14e063475a58ac4f2b970dd5.mp4 4ac98a39910dbe5708d09a3f1bec9bd0 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ff860e7d7305865c01de8cff65b46744.pdf 79ecbaa7e90d2b84379a4ad1204e07fa PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Ginny Gordon Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 2 [Barbara] First question being: you were here at the very beginning. [Gordon] Uh huh. [Barbara] I just want you to talk about what it was like at the very beginning in terms of starting from scratch. [Gordon] Okay. Well, did you want me to talk about how there was the founding committee. They wanted to add another college. They were into the cluster college concept and they were going to be five cluster colleges. There was College of Arts and Sciences, which they were going to get a name, but they never did. And then Thomas Jefferson, which was well established. And then college three, which became William James College… [Barbara] How did you get faculty for William James College? [Gordon] Well, there was the original committee that was Tom Cunningham, Bruce Loessin [?]… there were about seven people on that and some faculty members from CAS that were on that committee. And they advertised and the first person that they hired was Ken Hunter. They hired Robert Mayberry that year, Richard Joanisse, Dick Paschke, John Mactavish from CAS, Dan Clock who was in TJC (he was halftime CA, halftime William James). So, there was John, Richard, Dick, Dan Clock, Ken Hunter, who else? There were five and a half people that first… Robert Mayberry! Okay, and they came in early August. They all came here. They started quite early. And then they met and got the groundwork… the schedule all made out that was published. Of course, then we were on terms, so classes didn't start till the end of September. Our first two students were Theresa Paul and Tyree Anderson, and they also worked on the committee. So, then there was me, five and half faculty, Bruce Loessin [?] and Tyree and Terry Paul. And the schedule was made up of about probably, I don't know, fifteen or seventeen classes and admissions office recruited a hundred-and-fifty-two students that first year. [Barbara] What were you promising them that they would come to a new school? [Gordon] They were looking for an alternative education. They all had the real pioneer �spirit. Those first-year students, by the way, have been quite successful in the world. Most of them have gone to graduate school. Dick Wilson, do you remember him? Well, he was in that original hundred-and-fifty-two. So, we started out with a very small, selective, close knit, and we had all the first floor of Lake Superior Hall. So, we had our own turf. And we met often between classes; we had like a coffee room and everybody would sit around and quite often after classes. [Gordon] Formally, we had one or two council meetings a week and informally there was always a lot going on. [Barbara] Who went to council meetings? [Gordon] Everybody went to council meetings. We had to have them in thirty-four-thirty-six with the door open; they were usually packed, and they were always open to everybody. [Barbara] What did you talk about? [Gordon] We talked about adding new classes, what we were going to add, what the needs were; the purchases usually were made on a sort of, more or less, a communal basis. Governance document was written then. So, there was nothing when anybody came and we had no government, no structure, nothing. And everybody… they all had a hand in creating their own institution or organization from scratch. They didn't inherit any rules. [Barbara] Well, did the faculty have more say than the students in creating this? [Gordon] Well, in a sense in that they certainly couldn't teach something that the faculty there weren't capable of teaching. I mean within the capability of the faculty, yes. But the original programs where the administrative and management, arts and media, social relations, pretty much environmental studies, and then of course the synaptic program. Those were all that was established prior to the hiring of the faculty. [Barbara] But you say that this whole… [Gordon] The way that the college was going to move… was established, I mean, that was that they can decide they were going to go into economics or something. [Barbara] But the alternative nature of the college was set up by the entire community, is that what you're saying? [Gordon] No, that was… No, the grading/no grading…the grading system was set up by �the administration. By the original committee they were not going to have grades. They were going to have honors credit or no credit. They did drop the honors the second year in or second or third – it must have been the third year. And that was a communal decision we did. [Barbara] When did representation come in? Because by the time I got to James not everybody was on a council. You had… [Gordon] Well, that was all how the governance document was written during the first and second year. So, that was where representation came in. It was a whole community, and then they decided how they wanted to rule themselves or govern themselves. So, the governance document was hacked out, changed a million times over during the course of the first, I would say, two years. What year did you come in? [Barbara] Oh, seventy-five, something like that. Seventy-five, seventy-six. [Gordon] Oh, okay. And it was pretty much established when you came in? [Barbara] Okay, how did… [Unknown] Hollywood! [Gordon] Yeah. [Barbara] How did the James philosophy get imbrued in all this? How did this happen? Was it… did Mayberry lecture or something or how did the community get built here? What were the ethics of the community? How did everybody learn to work together? [Gordon] Well, let’s see. Well, I don't know. [Barbara] Okay, that one's going to go. Do you need Ginny right now? Is that why you came in? Do you need me to stop? [Unknown] Oh, I'm just waiting… [Gordon] No, it's okay. I was just… I didn't really understand your question. I really don't know what you're driving at, it seems sort of a… [Barbara] Why don't you talk about what you were saying before we started about the hiring thing. Where you were getting so many applications. As you could be very selective. �[Gordon] Okay. There were… the first year, there were 2,500 applications. They had advertised in, you know, I would imagine several academic magazines. Whatever. They advertise in New York Times, places like that. And there were 2,500 applications. So, the faculty could be very selective on who they wanted to pick. [Barbara] What kind of criteria were they using? [Barbara] You were in on a lot of it because it was kind of your decision. [Gordon] Well, I think they were looking for people that were, first of all, interested in alternative education. Secondly, who fit into the categories of the programs that William James was offering. And then also, they were looking for people with a very strong background in academia. People who are activists. People who weren't from the traditional background, you know. Like Lafleur. And they were looking for women. They definitely had a dedication to hiring women. So that's kind of, you know. [Barbara] This is getting at the community thing again. [Gordon] Okay. [Barbara] You've been a secretary here. When you were at James, you participated in decision making. [Barbara] In what ways did you participate in decision making? [Gordon] Well, I was on the council as an elected member for about two years. And also, I had the voting privileges of hiring. We voted at the end on who we were going to hire. They would bring two or three people here per position and then hack it all out for better or for worse. And I had… all the secretaries had voting rights on faculty hiring. And the council members, of course, where the ones that had voting rights on other things. [Barbara] Okay. In the years that you've been here, you've seen a lot go on. I wonder if you think we've made certain mistakes at James. What mistakes did we make at the college? What should we have done better? [Gordon] Well, I think the only thing that I think could've been a little… I think it could've been a little more disciplined. Not structured in a sense, like exams, or grades, or anything. But I think that some of the faculty were a little too lenient about student’s participation in the class and work that was required. I got my degree from William James. Totally – I took all my courses in William James. So, I was a student here, as well as working here, so I can speak from a classroom as a �student as well as a worker. I think that some of the students fell into the cracks because they had a view that this sort of cavalier attitude, "It really doesn't matter if we don't go to class. It doesn't matter if we don't get the work in on time. We still love each other, and I'm a real good friend of professor, you know, so and so, and so therefore I don't have a problem." [Gordon] And I think that some of them are still not being able to cope and are still trying to get a degree that started before I did. [Barbara] And you would be the one to know that because… [Gordon] I found as a student that was serious… class I found it very disruptive to students. I had a real hard time with those that would show up occasionally in class and then try to participate as if they've always been there and they didn't even know what the textbooks were. So, that was a problem I had as student. I think that could've been a little loss… sort of, chummy with the students where it wasn't important. Because it was important. [Barbara] What did we do right Ginny? What was the… [Gordon] Well, I think that the level of education was just incredible. think the wide range of classes was phenomenal. I think that the faculty were absolutely superior. I mean they came from the very best schools in the country themselves. They were all very brilliant. The ones that have left, have gone and have been hired by first-rate schools. They weren't ordinary faculty; they were extraordinary. And they brought with them a wealth of culture, education, knowledge. They were all so interdisciplinary. They didn't have one discipline where nothing they taught was nothing but history, they taught nothing but English or they could teach numerous amounts of subjects – each faculty. That was another thing that they looked for. Interdisciplinary! That’s the keyword. And that's something that I missed, in the beginning, when we were talking… is that they were, first of all, hired on how much they could teach. And they could… most of them, like Engie, could teach five or six different disciplines. It was incredible. And they brought all that knowledge to each class. That was the main thing. You don't find that at all anymore. So, I don't think I could have gotten a better education anyplace. I feel real fortunate, you know. And if there were a few flakes that fell by the wayside – so what, you know? I mean the ones that came out of it… the opportunity for a superior education was there if you chose to get it. Yeah. [Barbara] Good answer. You wanted to talk about why you think some of the faculty wanted to come here. Because of the area? [Gordon] Oh, I think first of all, they came here because it gave them the opportunity to create something where they could use all their talents. You know, where they �weren't hired as a quote like Engie hired as a history professor. Period. Where she taught nothing but history. I think they were all looking for that. They all had the pioneer spirit; starting something totally on the ground floor. And it seems like they came from areas where, being close to the lake, having the choice of living in the city or in the country, on the lake, was real important to them, you know. It's kind of like going out to the Colorado mountains or something. I mean it was a pioneer spirit here to come here where things weren't established either. And they lived in Grand Rapids, they lived in Allendale, and they lived in Grand Haven – which are worlds apart as far as the environment goes, you know. I always feel like I've driven 500 miles from the difference between Grand Rapids and in Grand Haven, you know. [Barbara] I was talking to somebody who moved… [Gordon] Yeah! So, you had that choice that I would find very attractive coming here from, say, New York city or you know. [Barbara] Ginny, here's a question I ask people, and I never ask it in advance. I want an answer in a sentence or two: if you had to sum up the core of William James, what was distinctive about William James? Very briefly. One thing. What was it? [Gordon] Mainly doing, in your profession, what you enjoy doing. You know, mixing your avocation and your vocation into one, or getting it as close to it. Developing your avocation. Not getting an education for the sake of a job, per se. We all have to earn a living but not just, you know, engulfing your entire life. [Barbara] Great. [Gordon] You know I was sorry. I really got nervous when Alex was in here. It just shut me right off. [Barbara] I know, me too. It draws all the… he just comes in… [Gordon] Well he was standing there and listening and all of a sudden… [Barbara] I was mad at him because he knows what's going on and he knows it's distracting, so he walks in, does this, went over there. He didn't have to do that. [Gordon] I know it. So, I'm sorry that… [Barbara] No… [Gordon] I don't even remember what the question was now, but I… �[Barbara] What you did was you said: "I can't answer it." Which was the honest response, and we went on. [Gordon] Yeah, okay. [Barbara] You gave some very good answers. One thing that is so neat is that I ask everyone that question about what was the core of William James, say it in a sentence, at the end of an interview. No two people have said the same thing. I just love it. [Gordon] Oh, yeah, yeah. [Barbara] And it’s so William James-y. See. We weren't programmed, there wasn't one thing to hold on to. I've recognized every answer and none of it seemed off the wall. [Gordon] Um-hum, uh-huh. [Barbara] You know, but it's all been different. I just love it. I'm going to run this sequence… [Gordon] Oh, that's neat. [Barbara] Of people answering it. Isn't that nice? [Gordon] Oh! That's… yeah! That's the way to do it! Yes! Yeah, yeah. [Barbara] It really works. I just love your answer, you know? [Gordon] Good! Good! Good. [Barbara] I think you did real well. Please think for minute what else you would want to say. You know what I mean? [Gordon] Um-hum. [Barbara] Sometimes I walk away and then we go: "What we really should have said was...." [Gordon] Yeah, I know it. [Barbara] So just take a second. I think it's a great interview okay. [Gordon] Well, let me just mull a couple things around. �[Barbara] Keep talking. [Gordon] I think that's one of the biggest things that is missed now, but it's also because of the times – it’s not just Grand Valley, it's not just because William James isn't here – is that there's no feeling of community anymore. There might be within small little… like your little film group or you know, your little… but as far as your feeling community with the historians, you could never. I mean, what do you say to those people? Or that… I mean, you know it's nothing but… � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_35_Gordon Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gordon, Ginny 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 Ginny Gordon interview (1 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Ginny Gordon 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. Ginny Gordon was an Executive Administrative Secretary in Grand Valley's Central Administration during the creation of William James College who provided administrative assistance and helped guide the new faculty in the college's infancy. In this interview, Ginny discusses her experience being a part of the William James College community since the very beginning, the pioneer spirit of the founding faculty, and the profound interest in alternative education at that time. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Ginny Gordon. 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 Women in higher 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/03f1157e97647dfcdc6a56685b84634a.mp4 80777c9b409648e8ddf90e4cd703cb22 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e4250b4e55bd1b1e848eb9b4d288ec33.pdf 277cc5bcabf70f38a15cf1ee28d9b528 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Ginny Gordon Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 2 [Barbara] Anyways, so you were talking about community and how… what the quality of community, I guess, you were talking about. Talk about it some more. [Gordon] Well, it was really unusual to have a large group of people to sit together and discuss things intellectually, respect each other, and make things move. I mean and they were very reasonable about things. You go in there with an opinion and you'd listen to, you know, three or four people talk and you come out and you'd get a much broader idea, a broader sense of the way a college should go there. The decisions weren't made by one person in an office. They were made by a group of people and nobody had more control than anybody else. I suppose legally the Dean could throw out a decision, but I don't think that ever happened. I think that they voted on it and usually there was a large majority at the end of maybe an hour or two-hour communal discussion of a problem or situation most of the time people came out being more dedicated to the decision and how it affected the whole community, rather than how it would affect themselves personally. And I think that was one of the real successes of the college. [Barbara] It seems as though a very important decision made early on was to hire Adrian. Do you remember anything about her hiring? I mean we didn't talk about this; I just wonder if you did. [Gordon] Yes, she had been considered the year before and I can't remember whether she turned the decision down or not. But then the next year she was reconsidered and asked to be hired and was hired. She did come here, I believe, for an interview in the beginning, but had another commitment that she needed to finish. And then the second year she was reconsidered, came back for an interview, and was hired. And that was the second year, too, of the college, I believe, when she was hired. Dick Paschke was the chairperson of the Dean search committee. I remember that and there were hundreds of applications for that position. Yeah, Robert Toft I think was one of those two… uh-huh. Yeah. And he was subsequently hired for college four, which became Kirkoff College. [Barbara] You brought community up several times and so have I. How did community contribute to the quality of education? Community’s nice but what does it have to do with education? �[Gordon] Well for one thing, one of the things that the community talked about was the courses that we're going to be taught. You know, so that affected their education: number one. Number two: it kept people here. They didn't just come and take a class and leave. They stayed here. This was like a second home to many people. They would come in the morning and they had their discussions that were informal, as well as formal. They talked about your classes; I mean, education was the main topic of conversation. Another thing that I think that should be mentioned is the political awareness that William James instilled on the students. It wasn't just a question of coming in and getting an education, it was how they could affect the outside world. They were also very much aware of the Woman's Movement, of the Vietnam War, of all the political things that were happening around the world. [Barbara] Okay, I hear what you're saying. Then when these people went out to get jobs or – you yourself, because you were a James student – go to a place where there wasn't community or there's less community where it's very hard to be politically active. Isn't it sort of like the education was aiming us one way and the society another and therefore the wrong kind of education? [Gordon] Well, no because we have to have… it would make it even more strong. It would be even more important to have a political awareness so that you could try to keep other people politically aware who didn't have a political awareness. I can't see that an education does anybody much good other than just earning a living, period, you know. It doesn't help humanity any, that's for sure. So… [Barbara] Anything else? Great answers! [Gordon] Oh well, I don't know, I guess that kind of covers it in a nutshell. Yeah. [Barbara] Good answers, too. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_36a_Gordon Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gordon, Ginny 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 Ginny Gordon interview (2 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Ginny Gordon 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. Ginny Gordon was an Executive Administrative Secretary in Grand Valley's Central Administration during the creation of William James College who provided administrative assistance and helped guide the new faculty in the college's infancy. In this interview, Ginny discusses the quality of community found within William James College, the hiring of Adrian Tinsley during the second year of the college, and how the sense of community at WJC contributed to the quality of education. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Ginny Gordon. 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 Women in higher 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b6a635ab2dfd6f5046b3dd5c4310e447.mp4 cc09890d51a0b38e57b42dab60a8acb8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/12eb6f940205cc7664f037b084a39445.pdf e3b41bea686fbef9dae004be762cf2f2 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard (Dick) Gottlieb Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 2 [Gottlieb] Here we are being informal, yes. [Barbara] Are we still rolling? [Unknown] Yes. [Julie] Um yeah, I was just wondering Barb… [Barbara] Okay, just a minute. [Unknown] Stop tape. [Julie] Of the kind of subject matter that you were teaching and not having this power to… [Gottlieb] Yeah, let’s see if she asks about that. [Barbara] Well, I am asking. Yes, please tell me what you guys are saying. [Gottlieb] Yeah. Teaching therapeutic process in a college classroom leads to certain kinds of reactions in students, lots of powerful reactions in students. And as long as there was institutional support for that to happen, as long as a student who would be upset by the material that is talked about in class, like, if we're talking about psychosis and a student either has a relative or they themselves have been severely disturbed, it brings it out. And as long as you have institutional support, you can teach it, and the student goes through that experience of stress, and realizes that they can survive and still learn about this material and not have to be crazy. If there isn't institutional support, then you get, yeah, you get crazy reactions. You get the craziness acted out. And I don't know if examples are a good idea, but probably not. [Barbara] Well, could you tell me what you mean by institutional support, because it just sounds like… [Gottlieb] Well, if a student is upset by something that happens in class and they talk to other faculty or they talk to the administration of the college and the message �they get is: "That's a serious issue, take it to the faculty and work it out.” I'm here, you want me to help, fine. But that's a serious educational question, take it back to your faculty. But if what they get is, "Oh, God, that sounds horrible! Write that down and complain about it," then what you have is students demanding to be comfortable in class and my experience is that teaching psychology or psychotherapy – specifically psychotherapy – you can't be comfortable and learn. You just can't be comfortable. The process of psychotherapy, even at the bachelor level, teaching psychotherapy is teaching something that will be bringing on stress if its ever practiced and to teach it in a stress-free environment is impossible, in my view. [Barbara] So, you did… you were able to teach it with institution support for a while? [Gottlieb] Yep, for long while. And when that changed was when the deans changed. There was not a sudden shift, it was a shift that flowed. It flowed in the direction away from support of faculty, in my experience, in the direction of making students experience Chevrolet-like. Acceptable to a wide range of students and… let me finish my thought. Acceptable to a wide range of students and not bothering anybody ever. And the sparkle went out in my view of the college at that point. What Julie? What? What? [Barbara] If you want to say something, say it loudly so the mic picks it up. [Julie] Well, it seems like a reflection of a conflict in the society, generally, about who should be doing what kind of work. People were saying that this kind of material shouldn't be taught on the bachelor level at all, but we’re reaching students now doing treatment throughout the city and facilities that hire bachelor level people to work directly with clients who are severely disturbed, but they're… [Gottlieb] Do you want me to say that? Or something about it? [Barbara] Yeah, use it. [Gottlieb] Okay. That's disgusting. [Barbara] That time we got it. [Gottlieb] Well, what you were just saying is whether or not it's legitimate to be teaching bachelor level people about psychotherapy and I think our experience in the last ten years in mental health indicates that it clearly is because bachelor level people provide therapeutic services all over. And increasingly do so. [Barbara] So why the change? Was it a decision on somebody's part or was it personalities or what? �[Gottlieb] No, I don't think it was personalities or a decision about whether or not to support. I think it was a decision at high administrative levels on the campus, that it was time Grand Valley State Colleges (newly called College) shall henceforth not piss anybody off. And I think at all levels of teaching that philosophy infected us. William James, I don't think, raised people's anxieties terribly much as a college, except people who were bothered by what seemed to be the enjoyment people had in their mission. And I think that kind of anxiety was untenable in the new Grand Valley, which was a place where nobody was supposed to be tense about anything. Everybody should be kind of copacetic. And they had undone Thomas Jefferson, and they had undone any sense of accomplishment – experimental accomplishment – on the campus. And everybody was trying to look as gray as possible so that nobody would take them out of the picture. And William James couldn't quite look gray enough and I think that's why it was closed. [Barbara] Um… [Gottlieb] So what I've just outlined is a kind of progression from the question I had to face there in teaching courses which encouraged nervousness to a college which encouraged nervousness. And there were advantages to being at William James and there were disadvantages to being at James and there were advantages to being in my class and disadvantages. And I think that in the five years I worked there until there was this shift I'm describing, I think I was getting to be a much better teacher. I think in the two years following that shift, I think I got to be a much worse teacher. [Barbara] That's my experience, okay. That's parallel to it exactly. Some people have said on tape that there were certain turning points in the history of the college which made it have to be closed and that one of the turning points was losing social work. Would you comment on that? [Gottlieb] Losing social work? When I was hired, I was asked to be the Director of the Social Work program and there were a lot of people at CAS… thank you Rich… a lot of people at CAS who were teaching in social work. So, I made the proposal that there should be co-chair with CAS, instead of just myself, and put that together and a woman, Ann Johnson [?] (she has long since disappeared) from CAS, and I became co-chair. The following term was shifted to CAS because that was seen as clearly duplicating services, somehow, that there were co-chair running the program. And or the following year, I guess, that was moved to CAS. The effect on the school, I thought, was minimal, actually. Professional education, as defined in the program, then moved to CAS, was limited and, I thought, bankrupt. �[Julie] We lost a lot of students because of the move. [Gottlieb] Yeah, but losing students isn't what caused the end of William James College. [Julie] No, not the end of William James College. [Gottlieb] That's what I'm commenting on. I don't think that Social Work going to the College of Arts and Sciences was at all a turning point for the school. I think we developed a social work curriculum within William James College that was really fine and… [Julie] The students didn't go to it? [Gottlieb] The students went to it! I don't know why you think students didn't go to it, my classes were filled. All of them, all the time. [Julie] Until the end? [Gottlieb] Julie, Social Work went to CAS in nineteen seventy-nine. Okay? We're talking two different stages here. When social work went to CAS, we sat up our own social work program, students came to it, it was fine; worked beautifully. The problem was that we were then being disallowed to be teaching some of the courses because that was, again, duplication. It was not simple to… it wasn't simple enough somehow to have two colleges teaching courses that had the same… somewhat similar content, anyway. And our students were being told not to take courses at William James. They were being told to take courses at CAS. It was not moving of the social work program; it was, I think, again, the administrative response which told students that William James was not the place to get their education. They were telling students who were currently enrolled, and they were telling incoming students. Just… testimonials don't mean diddley squat, but one student who came to me and said: "I came to the admissions office. I asked for a school that didn't give grades, I asked for a school that had a community in it, I asked for a school where you individually set up your own curriculum, and they sent me to CAS." And that was going on all over the place. I think movement of Social Work was symptomatic of that. I don't think it mattered… made any difference. [Barbara] I ask you to please summarize the essence of William James college very briefly. Like one or two sentences. [Gottlieb] Bob Burns, Robert Mayberry, Stephen Rowe, Margaret Proctor, Barry Castro, Wil Walko, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [Barbara] Okay, no two people – I ask this question to everyone – no two people have �given anything remotely resembling the same answer, which is wonderful. Whether it be… [Inaudible]. Why did you come to James? I don't mean your personal history; I mean, what was there for you? [Gottlieb] Julie and I were invited to interview. They wanted social workers. We were living in Detroit, and what we saw when we came here was a group of people… one of the people who interviewed us had his zipper down, couldn't uh…[laughter] and we found a group of people who were excited about something and I was working in a hospital at the time. Julie was not working, but we were both committed to the provision of services, and here was an opportunity to impact other people who might be providing service in the future. And I think we just got very excited by the kind of contagious quality of the place. What it had to offer us? A chance to do something meaningful. [Barbara] What do you miss? [Gottlieb] The most amazing thing is what I don't miss… about the campus. It's the only place I've ever been in – only physical environment I've ever been in – where after seven years (that's a long time), I had no attachment to the physical environment at all. Nothing. There wasn't a corner that I remembered fondly, or a stairwell that I remember sitting on. The place was so well designed as to be totally unattachable. It was wonderful, it was a marvelous place. What do I miss? I miss teaching. And so I don't exactly miss the students, I don't exactly miss the faculty, and I don't exactly miss classes but I miss teaching and that's all part of that. I liked teaching, and so that feels like a real loss. I still see a lot of people who were the faculty, and I still see a lot of people, actually, who were the students. Or people who might have been students. It was a quiet community. That's all I miss. A lot of things I don't miss. The sense of deterioration, the sense of being co-opted, piece by piece. A little chunk here, a little number there. Let's just change that rule. Let's just move that piece of… I hated it. You agree? [Barbara] Let us stop for a minute. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_53_Gottlieb Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gottlieb, Richard 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 Richard Gottlieb interview (1 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard "Dick" Gottlieb 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 Gottlieb was a Social Work faculty member at William James College and a co-director of the Social Work program at Grand Valley. In this interview, Richard discusses the closing of William James College, the movement of the Social Work program to the College of Arts and Sciences, and the essence of William James. Richard's wife and fellow social worker, Julie Gottlieb, can be heard off camera while joining in on the conversation. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Richard Gottlieb. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Gottlieb, Julie Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Social work 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/21073b8a354436b292bff74ec4010b47.mp4 4b3f1f2f0e0752d5bb9f305f0cf7dd33 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2a43de6ab2a3ec1c1cd8ab5202ef1d6e.pdf ee0c5aef308a0fc8638903524ea5407f PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard (Dick) Gottlieb Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 2 [Barbara] Something about the… you like teaching, so talk to me a little tiny bit about the teaching process and how it was Jamesian and how it wasn't… [Gottlieb] Oh, God. [Barbara] I'm getting criticism but there was positive because you miss it, and you haven't said why. You haven't really said why. That's it. [Gottlieb] Each class was an attempt to create something. I'm not an academician, I'm a therapist, and I would try to come into class hoping something would happen, without planning for something to happen. And I would have a general sense of what we were covering. Maybe, by the time I was there four years, I was even doing outlines for the term, with probably twenty or twenty-five lines to cover the description of the term. And sometimes I would even follow the outlines and I would sort of have a general sense of what going on… what I was trying to cover. But I would not read lectures, or write lectures, or anything. I would try to respond to the material as it generated in class and I got better at that. That's a clinical skill, too, and it helped me practice development of creative interaction, each class. And the students who were there during that loved it, and learned a lot, and are good clinicians, some of them now. And there are people… I guess, I get some confirmation about the quality of my teaching in that there are some people now who are well past their master’s now doing work in the local area, and all of the ones I find disgustingly horrible in their work are the people who had terrible problems in my classes. And I smile a lot about that, that seems right. And the ones who are lovely and helpful, didn't… or didn’t have prolonged trouble in my class. [Julie] You… [Gottlieb] What? [Julie] Loved you. [Gottlieb] Yeah or loved me. Okay, the only other thing I want to say is that I think that having a William James College in Western Michigan in the seventies and eighties was a mistake from the beginning. Interesting notion and interesting �experiment but idiotic. The idea that it would last even ten years, seems to me, was incredible and it should've just been moved to the east coast and allowed to grow. It certainly could not survive here. Ever. Only if it stayed small and manageable. And if it stayed small and unmanageable or large, I think it was doomed. And I think that was true from the beginning. [Barbara] Do you think we should have put up a fight, though? [Gottlieb] A fight? For what? [Julie] Yes, you did. [Gottlieb] For what? What kind of fight? What do you mean? [Julie] Do you think the students should be raising hell? [Gottlieb] Oh, the students, yes, but when you say "we" I think faculty. Yes, I think the students should have burned down the damn campus. But they didn't and that's why we closed. Students will get what they want, and they did, and they do. And so now Grand Valley is more populous than it ever was before. They have more students than they know what to do with. They're rich, they're happy, they're fat, they're ridiculous, they're horrible. And there's still good faculty there, teaching good courses to good students, but there's not that magic combination that was there before. [Barbara] Julie, you have to say something because we have you… he's talking to you and if we don't see you, it’s absolutely ridiculous. [Gottlieb] If you excuse me, I'm going to him. [Unknown] Mosquito on your left leg. Good shot. [Barbara] That’s a good shot. [Unknown] You can tell she's loving it. [Julie] I'm not… [laughter]. [Unknown] I know. [Barbara] You’re going to ask the second question. I’m going to ask the first one. You know her very best. You know what to ask her. [Gottlieb] Oh, okay. �[Julie] Well, you said I should say something about the essence of William James. [Barbara] Yes, I would like to hear it. [Julie] It makes me sad to think about it. I think, for me, the essence of William James was the people. The sense of community and learning, of people coming at things from different directions, and with different vocabularies, and coming to a common understanding. And that's what felt real important. [Barbara] Stop playing with the microphone cord! [Everyone] [Laughter] [Barbara] [Inaudible] Dick, do you have a question? [Gottlieb] How did you feel about… how do you fell about the way you were made part of the community, or not made part of the community? [Barbara] As an adjunct. [Gottlieb] As an adjunct faculty. [Barbara] Good question! [Gottlieb] Thank you. [Julie] It varied. It seemed that there were some people who were committed to not seeing me as a part of the college. But, generally, it seemed like I could be there, as much as I was willing to work to be there. And I felt accepted by the students. I felt like it could be my school, too. [Barbara] Were you accepted by the institution? [Julie] No, I don't think so. [Barbara] Because? [Julie] I don't know. It was always difficult for me to tell how much of that was me being reluctant to fully enter in, and how much of that really was the institution not being real welcoming. And… yeah, I don't know, I'm… [Barbara] I have one more question, which might draw a blank, but I'm going to ask it. Talking to Stephen, it's so clear that William James College really did embody the �philosophy of William James. Did you catch… how did catch that philosophy? Did you study James when you came? In other words, there was something that made the college work, which indeed embodied James's philosophy. I'm trying to figure out how we all learned it so fast when we didn't read James. [Julie] I don't know. What I think of when you ask the question is that we were asked before we interviewed, each of us, to write a statement of our teaching philosophy. And we did that knowing nothing about what the college was about. And it was a perfect match and that just felt real nice. It's like we discovered William James College and William James College discovered, or collected, people who already had that sense of William James philosophy within them. [Barbara] Indeed. The selection process was very important. It really was. It was absolutely critical. [Julie] We came to William James and we loved the faculty. When we came for that first interview, and it felt wonderful to be with those people. [Barbara] Perhaps we can stop so that we can let that stuff [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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_54_Gottlieb Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gottlieb, Richard 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 Richard and Julie Gottlieb interview (2 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard "Dick" Gottlieb and his wife Julie Gottlieb 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 Gottlieb was a Social Work faculty member at William James College and a co-director of the Social Work program at Grand Valley. In this interview, Richard discusses how the future of William James College was limited in West Michigan and his thoughts on the college's closing. Richard is later joined on camera by his wife and fellow social worker, Julie, who worked as an adjunct faculty in William James College and discusses the essence and importance of the William James community. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Richard Gottlieb. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Gottlieb, Julie Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Social work 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8ca9213f210cde644dcf36f80960278b.mp4 4eefa220177af47f1b46f38372f55826 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8c89a64aaf9ce37b914ffcdcce412fc7.pdf f36420e1d4f9c6090acb8509733155a7 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 A name given to the resource William James College Interviews Description An account of the resource Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Universities and colleges Oral histories Alternative education Interdisciplinary approach in education Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Roos, Barbara (Interviewer) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV016-16_GVSU_37_Joanisse Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joanisse, Richard 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 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> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives