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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a5ebf586a38a740256eb61c049b22f66.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5fefd6df044f016e68be5bede9225881.pdf
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PDF Text
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William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 8
[Barbara]
Hit the light. Okay, now I actually am running.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
When you came to James – you know, it would be nice of you to mention when
that was, when you actually came as Dean – what did the administration tell you
about what was expected at the college?
[Tinsley]
I came in the summer of nineteen seventy-two. The college had completed one
year of operation when I came. I can't say that the administration of Grand Valley
told me anything about what they wanted the college today. Let me just start this
again. It’s going to take me a little...
[Barbara]
Well, I'll adjust the shot.
[Tinsley]
Okay, it's going to take me a little bit to kind of warm up.
[Barbara]
I know, it always does.
[Tinsley]
It's like doing a practice interview.
[Barbara]
It is, so start again and take as many times as you want. I have an entire case of
tapes.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
What was it like? What did the administration tell you? "Hi Adrian, here's what
you're supposed to do."
[Tinsley]
Well, I came to the college in nineteen seventy-two. And I can't say that the
administration told me anything about what they wanted the college to be. The
college had completed its first year of operation. I knew that Grand Valley was
beginning a cluster college operation and that William James was the third
college and that Grand Valley anticipated that there would be more colleges.
That the decision had been taken early in Grand Valley's life – in fact, it had been
a plan George Potter's, I believe – that instead of just growing bigger, because
�Grand Valley expected to grow significantly. Instead of just growing large, they
would develop a whole series of colleges and each would have its own mission
and its own curriculum. So, William James… I understood William James was to
be part of that. And I understood that there had been a task force to set up
William James chaired by Tom Cunningham. And I understood that what was
written in the task force document was what the administration wanted the
college to be and that was a career-oriented college. What I did not understand
was that even at the point at which I arrived at William James – in its second year
– there was some significant concern in the Grand Valley administration about
the direction that the two cluster colleges, Thomas Jefferson and William James,
were taking.
[Tinsley]
And, in fact, after I had been the Dean of William James for a year, the Vice
President to whom I reported, Bruce Loessin, said to me with a big smile: "Well
you've really done a good job – the college has survived! Most of us didn't think
that was going to happen!" And that was my first indication that there was any
question in anybody's mind that the college would survive.
[Barbara]
Two things about that I didn't understand. I don't understand who Potter is… you
made a reference.
[Tinsley]
Potter was, I believe, a Vice President for Academic Affairs at Grand Valley and
the first president of Grand Valley, James Zumberge… I don't know if it was
Potter or Zumberge that had the notion of developing a cluster of colleges. They
had that idea but didn't implement it. Don Lubbers was the president who caused
that to be implemented.
[Barbara]
Why… I mean, when Loessin said that to you, you must have said whatever
[Inaudible]. Why start a college and presume it's going to fail? I don't understand
it.
[Tinsley]
And reasonably enough you don't understand it. William James was supposed to
be a career-oriented college. When the first faculty were hired by Bruce Loessin,
he took pains to hire a faculty that came from the traditional liberal arts
disciplines and were very – not traditional – but very good faculty in the traditional
sense. They had good academic degrees. They were not interested in doing
career education in the sense that I think Grand Valley had in mind. I think Grand
Valley had in mind that William James would be what they later had to start
Kirkhof in order to get. So, there was a sense right from the beginning that they
were looking for a technical college and William James was becoming something
quite different from what they had in mind. But what can they expect, given the
faculty that they had hired to found the college?
[Barbara]
Turn this off for a second. Make sure this thing is running right. I get a certain
�amount of neuroses… paranoia, that's the word I'm looking for. Tell me… Ah!
Tell me… let’s get you in the shot.
[Tinsley]
Tell me, whoever you are.
[Barbara]
Okay. Tell me what the administration said… what did you observe? What was it
in total, you know, really meshing all kinds of things? What was going on when
you arrived? What kind of place was it?
[Tinsley]
It was struggling to be born when I arrived. It had been in operation for you a
year. It had had no planning time. It had been started just immediately, crack off
the bat. After that, the task force report had been completed; an acting dean had
been put in; the faculty had been brought in.
[Tinsely]
And they had no lead time, they were just told that you are open in September
and get your curriculum together. So, they were struggling that whole first year to
put together a first curriculum and hire a new staff. There was not much
opportunity to do anything other than run very hard to accomplish those tasks.
But my belief about the college… and I knew it pretty well because I interviewed
for its deanship before it started and then did not come at that time…had other
commitments and then came a year later. So, I had a chance to talk to Robert
Mayberry and Bruce Loessin that very first summer, and then again in the
interview process for the second year. What I observed were that the faculty that
were at the college took that planning document – the Cunningham Task Force
Report – very seriously. And they were about the business of trying to make that
happen. And I observed that the most compelling part of it – it certainly was to
me and I believe it was to the faculty – was the notion of good work. We had a lot
of words for that, you know. Vocation with a "V," career-oriented, the notion of
doing something useful in the world. And we struggled a lot because we didn't
want this college to be simply career-oriented, but we wanted to have utility to do
something useful in the world – to make social change – and there were a whole
bunch of ways of talking about that. But that's what I saw when I came… that
people were looking at the college to be and that people wanted the college to
be. Everybody came to the college with a critique of their own graduate
education because we were all young. So, we were very clear about what we
wanted the college not to be and, in fact, that was kind of a problem early on. We
kept defining ourselves in terms of what we didn't want to be. We didn't want to
have grades. We didn't want to have majors and disciplines. We didn't want to
have a sterile kind of research focus. So, everybody had their own critique and
everybody, I think, also had their own dream of what the perfect college would
be, what the perfect society would be. The piece of it that was in the public space
right from the beginning was making a difference in the world and that's what I
thought people wanted to do in the world.
�[Barbara]
Change the shot here.
[Tinsley]
Does the tape pick up your questions?
[Barbara]
Yes, but what I'll do is redub them because I'm off mic.
[Tinsley]
Okay, okay.
[Barbara]
You can hear them, but you have to strain to hear them.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
So I get a chance to clean up my act.
[Barbara]
James operated as a sovereign state. You would agree?
[Tinsley]
Yes.
[Barbara]
Did we seize that sovereignty or was it given to us?
[Tinsley]
Neither really. We didn't seize it. Seizing implies some kind of resistance. I think
in the early years, the Grand Valley administration did not have a particular plan
as to how they thought the college should develop or indeed what they wanted
from it. We took a lot of freedom, but we didn't really have to fight them for it.
[Barbara]
If we can just stay in this shot. How did feminism infuse the college?
[Tinsley]
Well, feminism was extraordinarily important in the college. I think… you
obviously are going to have to edit this because I will get rolling in a little bit but
I'm not yet. I think feminism was probably one of the most important social forces
that operated in the college. It's an interesting mystery why the initial first eight
male faculty turned around and hired a number of strong women faculty and the
women dean. But that's in fact what happened. I said earlier that everybody
brought their own dream to the college. I think the women, in particular, brought a
feminist dream and you have to remember this was nineteen seventy-two, so
feminism was just really becoming a significant social force. And feminism
embraced both notions of, you know, gender equity and also notions about
organizational structure. There was a lot of talk in the feminist community at that
time about non-hierarchical decision making. About rotating authority. About
everybody taking turns doing the job so that everybody got a chance to do all the
jobs. A lot of talk about how you didn't want to specialize into male roles and
female roles or faculty roles and administrative roles, you know, to go by
extension. So, the whole philosophic context of radical feminism came into the
college as in many ways as the dream – or at least the strong interest – of a lot of
�the women faculty that came. And particularly as it related to, you know, malefemale relations and organizational structures. The men were coming in with the
same kind of a dream. They may have come to it through feminism per say or
they may have come to it through some other kind of social analysis. But there
was general agreement on what our politics and then for the social structure of
the college. So, I guess I would say feminism affected the college because there
were a lot of women there. I mean we were very unusual in that there were so
many women and that the women really were in positions of a good deal of
authority, respect, and influence – both formally and informally. Whether they
were program coordinates, or the Dean, or whether they were just strong faculty
who were “Weighty Friends” in the Quaker sense in the design of the curriculum.
Feminism, I think, influenced a lot of our early attempts and organizational
structures.
[Tinsely]
The whole governing structure, the coordinator's temporum, or the notion that we
would take turns doing the college's jobs. And I think it influenced the way we
treated each other. It influenced what kinds of interactions were acceptable in the
public space of college and, indeed, in people's home lives. And I think it was
interesting in that regard the ways they interacted with each other – the men and
women in college. We never fell into sex roles – or the kinds of gender-based,
sex-based teasing – that is real frequent in other situations. The place that
feminism didn't affect the college terribly strong was we never developed a very
strong Women's Studies program. I often felt as Dean, you know, I was really
remiss in the kinds of formal curricular or extracurricular things we could offer our
women students. I often saw women students come in, you know, if they’re first
in their family going to college, with very conventional aspirations and it was
possible for women students to go through this structure that was a college and
be a little untouched about what was going on. And I thought that was a real
weakness. And I think it came from the fact that the women were so busy in their
nontraditional roles - sort of running the college, developing the curriculum – that
there really weren't people to spare for developing the more usual Women's
Resource Center, Women's Studies program, and the like.
[Barbara]
I think to me, a question that follows that when we were interviewing faculty, we
went through these long interview processes – forty-eight-hour things – and we
always knew what we were looking for. What were we looking for?
[Tinsley]
Well, I think the easy answer to that is we were looking for people like ourselves.
But what did it mean to be like us? I think we were looking for some sort of real
evidence of commitment to social change. We were looking at people's politics.
We had political litmus tests and I think there's… you know, we shouldn't blink
that fact. I can remember interviewing a candidate for psychologist at one point –
a woman – and she was asked something that had to do with feminism and then
she responded that she didn't care to define herself; she didn't care to take on a
�label. It was very important to us that people we label that they have politics. So,
I think we were looking for that. I think we were looking for breadth. I think we
were looking for people that were interested in a lot of things. And I think we were
looking for people that weren't interested in sort of narrow, discipline based,
traditional academic interest. I think we found them kind of pompous and kind of
boring. We could know us when we saw us. But how you'd write that down on
paper it isn't really clear. Except we did know us when we saw us, and we were
anti-pomposity and we were pro-politics. But our politics had a very broad
definition. We were pretty inclusive in our politics, but we demanded that people
have politics, I believe.
[Barbara]
It’s coming up to the… conveniently this blinks at me when we’re running out of
tape.
[Tinsley]
Okay, 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_26_Tinsley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tinsley, Adrian
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
Adrian Tinsley interview (1 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses her arrival at William James College during its second year of operation, in addition to how feminism infused the college. This interview is part 1 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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
Women college administrators
Women in higher education
Feminism
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/354f3ad1f96b741ab62276b0aeb34e68.mp4
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 8
[Barbara]
And I'm rolling.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
And I wanted to ask you: we refer to some mysterious beast called a “real
William James student.” What's a real William James student?
[Tinsley]
Well, again, you know, a real William James student – you knew one when you
saw one. We wanted students to take responsibility for their own education; we
painted it up on the walls in Lake Superior Hall… that wonderful cartoon of the
student we didn't want which was somebody having knowledge poured into his
head through a funnel. We wanted students to do it themselves. And so, a real
William James student was a person who knew what he or she wanted to learn
and took their own route in getting there.
[Barbara]
I just screwed up, Adrian; I just pulled the panhandle. Can you repeat the last
part?
[Tinsley]
Sure.
[Barbara]
I’m sorry.
[Tinsley]
A real William James student was a student who knew what he or she wanted to
learn and desired to take responsibility for learning it. Wanted to use the faculty
as resource people. Wanted to figure out how to learn and was willing to hustle
to, you know, really move their butt to get what they needed. Willing to go to a lot
of sources and use a lot of resources. Had some drive and motivation. I think in
the early days, the real William James student was somebody who was
specifically seeking an alternative education, who shared the views of the faculty.
In the areas, for example, of grading. That letter grading was at the root of all
evil. Who wanted the freedom to design their own way of studying things, who
wanted to do independent studies. And as those students became fewer and
fewer in number because we had many more those of in the early days of the
college, you know, then I think the real William James student became simply the
one with energy. The one who was self-initiating.
�[Barbara]
How did we teach them this?
[Tinsley]
I don't think we taught them to it, they came with us. They came with us.
[Barbara]
But there was a phenomenon of students who were lost for a year and then
turned it on.
[Tinsley]
Well, that's true. But I don't know how that happened. But you have to remember,
I was not in the classroom teaching the students so that I got to know the good
students and I got to know the problem students.
[Tinsely]
But I could not explain how that mystery actually happened in the classroom
because I wasn't there.
[Barbara]
Let me grab my notepad out of here. Oh, the rocking adds a nice comfortable
touch. We were profoundly egalitarian, and yet you were in a leadership role.
How does one lead a commune?
[Tinsley]
That is a very good question, and I must say what I learned about leadership in
that situation… that's probably the most important learning I took from the college
actually. I guess I'd answer that by saying I didn't go to William James; I didn't set
out to be the leader. I didn't know enough to know I was supposed to set out to
be the leader. And I think one of the things that is important about William James
and my contribution to it is that not only were all the faculty very young, I was
very young. I have never been a dean before. I didn't know, really, what deans
we're supposed to do. All of us made this college up out of we what we knew.
And all of us had a critique, but none of us really knew how to make the college
happen. I think it's important for the college that I did not arrived with an agenda.
I arrived responsive to the same social climate that everyone else was
responsive to. We had a variety of ideologies, a variety of critiques, but I didn't go
there saying "I am the Dean and this is my vision of alternative education". I think
that the role that I played… and I don't want to give the impression that I was the
colleges facilitator, because I don't view what I did in that way. But I think what I
did I think I had the gift of being able to understand what kind of vision for the
college motivated most of the people who were there. And they were very
different visions and I think my gift was to be able to find some common ground
among those visions that we could agree to and put that in the public space and
affirm it. And I think that – as I thought about in later years - I think that is
probably the quintessential quality of leadership. Pat Labone used to say to me
that what the dean should do is read the litany. She had a Catholic childhood and
there was some real truth to that. I often used to long to have a chapel and
William James that everyone was required to attend so the little inspirational
speeches could be made. I think it's important that an institution have that and I
think that I brought that to the college. And I think that I had the ability to bridge
�among the various kinds of faculty at the college. I think it was extraordinarily
important to success of the college that I could talk to heavy male synoptic types,
that I could talk that language and that I valued that. I think it was important that I
could talk to the women. And I think it was important that I could talk to the
people who brought professional skills into the college but more scared,
frustrated, and sometimes irritated at the quality of intellectual discourse that
went on because they felt insecure about participating in it. And I truly believed
there was room for everybody. And I think that I kind of could embody that. And I
think I also – in terms of leadership – was able to work with the college's peerpressure structure.
[Tinsely]
Because you can't tell people to do things and you can't make people do things,
and an administrator has to work with what's there. You can say "no" but you
can't make it happen. And so, the trick to it is to be able to mobilize the energy
that's there, give it some focus, and get people on the same wavelength. And the
college had very strong norms of behavior. I mean there was a lot of peer
pressure in the college that said, I believe, what faculty were supposed to do and
what they were not supposed to do. And I think I was able to work with that and I
think I was able to find some constructive channels for using people's energy.
Not always, but if there was a trick to operating as a leader in that kind of setting,
that's how I would describe it.
[Barbara]
But surely what you just described at the end of your answer would be true of
being an administrator at any college.
[Tinsley]
Yeah, it is, but it was more so at William James because we had a rhetoric about
– and said and really meant – that we were non-hierarchical. I think that's how
the whole critical issue format developed, which I think was a very healthy one
for the college. As inexperienced as I was – and I really was absolutely green
when I came to William James as Dean – and I remember, practically, the first
week that I was there we were drafting the governance document for the college.
And that was drafted by Robert and Inge and it was very elaborate, and it was
really a model for participatory form of governance that worked neither on
hierarchy nor Roberts Rules of Order, which was what we wanted. But even
though I was I very green and I looked at that and I said: "Wait a minute, the
Dean has responsibility beyond, simply in a consensus fashion, gathering the will
of the faculty and implementing it.” There are probably issues at the college that I
am responsible for and there are issues that the faculty is responsible for, and
yet we’re all responsible for all of this together – how can we sort that out? And
out of that came the notion of a critical issue. That most of the times we would all
be on the same wavelength about what we wanted to have happen. But because
we had different responsibilities and sat, in a sense, in different chairs, there
might be times when the college would want to do X, but I would know it couldn't.
It absolutely couldn't. And thus, was born, you know, the critical issue and the
�veto. An elaborate way of saying: "But the college says this and the Dean said
that, the Dean would say 'no.'" And then you'd go back and discuss it some
more. And you might still come out with yes and no but their would be ways so…
I didn't abrogate what was my real responsibility to make sure that in matters of
relating to the structure at Grand Valley, the college didn't harm itself. And that
the college at some basic level operated in the way it ought to: in trust from the
people of Michigan, through the Board of Control, you know, through the
President, and down to me. I had real, legal, responsibilities there.
[Tinsley]
And yet at the same time I was a member of the community and wanted to be
involved in the process of working out what the college was going to be and do.
Because I didn't know. So, I was both part of the process and outside of the
process.
[Barbara]
Presuming that some people are going to see this tape that have no direct
experience with James, would you care to give an example of a critical issue that
actually came up?
[Tinsley]
Yes. The critical issues came up around hiring issues and around money. And
two examples were: at one point the council voted to hire a faculty member and I
felt the decision was untenable, that it was made not because the person was the
best candidate, but because there were a great many…the person was known to
us, there were many personal feelings involved. And I felt it would be
irresponsible of me to let that decision go forward, so I vetoed it. Another issue
came when we had a very elaborate, as you will recall, salary administration
policy. And which I did not like, but never really interfered in because I felt that
was the faculty's business to determine. I did not approve of it. In one particular
year, it works to really the detriment of an older member of the faculty who was
going to end up with a less than a cost of living raises as a result of the operation
of this policy and I said "No, that would not be acceptable." There may have been
others that were more, you know, policy issues but I don't recall them. One of the
interesting things was that these issues arose very rarely because we have did
most of our work by persuading one another. It was very interesting; we were
frequently compared with Thomas Jefferson College because we were both
alternative colleges of sort of different kinds of stripes. I thought, and I think many
people agree, that there were very different leadership styles at the two colleges.
Thomas Jefferson was run by guru, a bearded, alternative education dean who
put his picture on the front of all the colleges brochures. And then, in fact, the
early brochures, you know, showed his face with his beard and the little legend
was: "This man runs a college." The faculty at Thomas Jefferson seem to be very
pleased to have a dean who would be their guru and who would not tell them
what to do exactly but would take care of them. That was basically what it
amounted to, would take care of them. And we had a model that was much more
political. Our model was: everybody had to understand how this works,
�everybody has to have an operator manual because we all have to understand
the political context we're working in order for to work, I guess. I don't want to
say, "We won't survive," because we didn't sit around thinking "Well, maybe it
won't survive." But we all had to understand it.
[Tinsely]
And I felt really strongly about that and I think most of the faculty felt strongly
about that. And I was not there to, you know, be there to take care of them, and
they were not there to be, you know, recipients of somebody's guruism. I think
that was real important as to how we worked. It was like a marriage, it really was.
People called me Adrian, but if they were really angry at me, they referred to me
as the Dean and I didn't like that, you know. I can recall saying: "I am not the
Dean!" or "I am Dean, but my name is Adrian!" So, there was, you know… I don't
quite know where I'm going with the rest of that answer but…
[Barbara]
Let me check on the tape. Ah, look there! See, I have this sixth sense.
�
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.
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1984
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_27_Tinsley
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Tinsley, Adrian
Date
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1984
Title
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Adrian Tinsley interview (2 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses what makes a "real William James student" and her experience as a first-time dean of William James College. This interview is part 2 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
College administrators
Women college administrators
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>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/87ae057bb80134a199788b0801fac231.mp4
9b6d9cb5256e7ae095f44fae10bcfb88
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d532358870b38f47b104952ec650a917.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 3 of 8
[Barbara]
There you go. There’s a good tape… [inaudible]. Okay, we’re a go. Just tell me,
just [inaudible] about the beginning.
[Tinsley]
Well, what I really remember about the beginning – although, of course, I didn't
realize it at the time – was we were all so young. I sometimes think about the
three older faculty who are in their fifties, who were hired because the initial core
faculty had some sense that we ought to have a spread of age and experience in
the college, which was an absolutely right instinct. But I wonder what it must
have felt like to Willard and Doris and Phyllis to arrive with this entire college that
was so very, very, very young. And I look at the pictures of us from those days,
and it's kind of interesting to see us. We were very concerned to build a sense of
community in the college and that expressed itself in a lot of ways. The first year,
I recall, the first fall that I was there we decided to go on a retreat together. And
we all packed up our camping gear and we went off. I can't even remember
where – somewhere on a river. I remember being out on a rowboat with Pat and
Inge and Romano. I remember that Robert wouldn't go because he didn't believe
in going camping. And I remember that Richard expressed the sentiments that he
would not know how to pack the right food and he was hooted down for the
sentiment and told that he would have to work like everyone else. We had the
phrase – which I'm sure many people have referred to – we wanted to integrate
our work and our lives. We wanted to be an intentional community. In some
ways, as the years went on, that wore a little thin as we realize that the
integrating our work and our lives meant basically abolishing our private lives.
And spouses were not always thrilled to be part this of intimate, intentional
community. But I remember the first fall… our way of doing business was typified
by the first fall. We had a confrontation. One of the students, a black student,
whose name I have forgotten… I may be putting two or three incidents together.
But there was some real criticism of how we were doing business. I believe it
came from a black student, although I have forgotten his name at the moment.
And to deal with that, we simply shut college down for a day and all got together
to talk about it. And that seemed to be the most reasonable thing in the world to
do. Toni Cena wrote a very moving statement which she read. I can remember
us all sitting around on the floor, talking earnestly about whatever these charges
were that had been brought, and how we can do better as a college, and how
students could take more of a hand in the college. And that seemed the most
natural way in the world to do business and very, very good. And we did a lot of
�that. I remember the first year we painted the walls of Lake Superior together and
that was very nice. And I can remember – or maybe it was the second year –
Rhonda was the Assistant Dean, and I can remember people painting mustaches
on me and Rhonda and taking pictures of us.
[Tinsley]
I had a good friend that I worked with in the Modern Language Association who
visited me in the first year and I brought her out to the college and showed her
around and she turned to me and says: "You can't fool me, Adrian. I know what a
college is; this is not a college; this is a summer camp." I always remembered
that because I took that as a compliment. There was a real attention to
community.
[Barbara]
Where did that attention come from? Where did that ethic come from?
[Tinsley]
Well, I think Robert, as he did so many things and gave it articulation. We were –
this is not Robert 's formulation – we were not to be alienated from our labor.
That's not Robert 's formulation; Robert would have talked about not being
cynical. Robert would have talked about, you know, controlling the conditions of
your work life so that they were human and met your human needs. They came
from the whole movement in the sixties to make work life more responsive to
human needs. And I think most of us had felt very alienated in our graduate kind
of experiences… had felt we were part of big faceless bureaucracies. It was also
a time in American history where there were an awful lot of communes. It was
right in the middle of the “back to the commune” movement. So, I think it came
from those places. And then once we were all there, is when it kind of took on a
life of its own. And I think was, probably for me, it was one of the very, very
appealing parts of the college. That it was not only a workplace, but it was a
place where you really were yourself, and you know, in a sort of a whole human
way.
[Barbara]
Some people I have talked to acted as though there were two William James
Colleges: the early one and the late one. Would you comment on that? With the
kinds of things you're talking about, how much of that persists? Or why did it
change if it changed to something other?
[Tinsley]
Yeah. Well, I like to like think it persisted. And for me, of course it persisted.
[Barbara]
Me, too.
[Tinsley]
So I don't have the sense of their being two colleges. The college changed in its
externals. The college change in some of the externals of its organization to
reflect demands that came about as Grand Valley put them on William James,
and as the State of Michigan put them on Grand Valley. I learned as I'd gotten
older a lot more about the kind of demands that come from the outside that mean
�you don't operate as free agent, if you're looking to the state for your money. And
as Grand Valley began to get its act together. You asked me earlier what Grand
Valley wanted from William James. Grand Valley didn't have its act together, they
didn't know how they were going to develop. As they began to get their act
together, they wanted William James to fit into their structure.
[Tinsely]
And so we began to have to do some things to suit Grand Valley. For example,
we always had a great deal of flack around the title of the course, "Uptight About
Writing" – it became symbolic of kind of conflict we were always in. The faculty
thought that the title absolutely expressed with that course was about. The Grand
Valley administration thought that that course title made William James look silly
and made Grand Valley look silly. We did a lot of changing of external things so
that Grand Valley didn't feel it was looking silly. Some of that was legitimate, I
think. So, my view was that what changed a lot was our way of fitting into the
bureaucracy. The student body changed, you know. That seemed very real to me
even though I was not, myself, in the classroom often. I taught maybe once a
year. I could tell the students were changing. And the students wanted different
things. And I think that's where the sense that there were two William James'
comes from. The later students came because we had an Arts and Media
program. They just wanted to learn what they, you know, were supposed to learn
so they can get jobs in arts and media. The kind of students that really wanted to
direct their own education, we had very few of them towards the end. So, I think
that was a real change. But for me the other stuff was superficial.
[Barbara]
I would argue, being in Arts and Media, some of the guys that just graduated and
the last people to graduate… I interviewed one of them, and he's typical, okay?
And pissed off because they took James away. And he articulates and
personifies something that is far more than just a hard nose, "I now have my
professional stuff and I'm going out in the world." He talks about being in
Steven's class before William James was closed and afterwards and the
difference in the other student. You know what I mean?
[Tinsley]
Yeah, oh yeah.
[Barbara]
I'm still not convinced it's just the students changed.
[Tinsley]
Well, it may not be. But my first answer to the question: I didn't feel there was an
early William James and a late William James. Perhaps there was in a sense that
we were younger earlier and it was fresher. We believed it was a good idea to all
go camping with one another. Probably after ten years, we didn't think it was a
good idea to all go camping with one another. But that's just sort of time passes
and, you know, life happens to you. I didn't think what was at the center of the
college changed much. I really didn't.
�[Barbara]
That makes two of us.
[Tinsley]
[Laughter]
[Barbara]
Where did the seminal ideas come from? We talk about feminism – and that's
really important – but how did William James actually… it seems like a miracle. I
don't understand how James suddenly, genuinely, infused the college…
something that had been dead for X number of years, you know.
[Tinsley]
I think it came from a really happy confluence of a lot of streams of thought and a
lot of things that were happening. I think we all acknowledge we were awfully
lucky to get the name "William James" and I don't think we thought that up. I
believe Tom Cunningham named the college, so we had that to work with. We
also had that very thoughtful document that the task force had put together,
which embodied a lot of the ideas of the late sixties but pointed forward in his
emphasis on careers. So, it gave us something we could kind of sink our teeth
into. I think we came from a lot of different intellectual places. We were just Godgiven lucky that it just worked together. Robert, for example, whom I knew the
best of anyone because I had known Robert – we had been graduate students
together at Cornell. Robert was very interested in the philosophic base the
college was working off. He cared passionately about not making what he used
to call invidious distinctions between the liberal arts and practical subjects.
Roberts was a person… it was very important to Robert to view himself as,
simultaneously, a philosopher and a practical man. From his philosophic side
came many of the ideas that carried the college forward. And then in the next
year also from Stephen. For me, I didn't come to it by reading philosophy. I came
to it by teaching at the University of Maryland in the English department. The
University of Maryland had, like, fifty thousand students on the College Park
campus. There were over one hundred faculty in the English department. And I
couldn't figure out what anyone was doing there. I used to look out over the rows
of parking lots and say: "I know why I'm here; I'm getting paid to be here. But why
are the students here?" I really didn't understand that. It was the late sixties and
early seventies. All of the students who were majoring in English were paralyzed,
they didn't know what to do with the lives, their degrees we're not going to fit
them to do anything, the Vietnam War was going on. The students I knew spent
most of their time smoking dope and being very scared. And really not knowing
how to interact with the world that was going to greet them when they left the
University of Maryland with a kind of a third-rate degree in English literature. For
me to come to a college that was going to put some emphasis on being able to
do in the world was really important. I mean I cared passionately about that and
when I was interviewed, the Grand Valley administration said to me: "Well you
have a PhD in English literature, what makes you think you can be the Dean of a
college that is practical?" And I said: "You just don't know how much I desire this.
This is the desire of my heart." And then I think feminism came in also, with its
�stress on theory and practice. I think a lot of people came to the college from an
ideologically feminist perspective wanting to combine those two.
[Tinsley]
So all that came together. And I don't want to say we were just lucky, but we
were living at a historic moment where it could come together.
[Barbara]
This comes from another question that I forgot to ask you. What is a male
synoptic heavy?
[Tinsley]
Oh, a male synoptic heavy? Well, that's the men in the college and it was
interesting how it did tend to divide on gender line.
[Barbara]
Oh damn. Adrian, I just moved the damn thing again.
[Tinsley]
Oh well, we'll do it again.
[Barbara]
Keep going anyway.
[Tinsley]
One of the tensions in the college was that a compelling interest in discussing the
philosophical base of the college seemed to divide along gender lines. It divided,
to some extent, on professionals versus the liberal arts line, but really it was on
gender lines. And there were a group of men that were perceived as the male
synoptic heavies, and they carried the flame of the sort of philosophic base of the
college. The women saw themselves, in many ways, more as the doers and
tended to rely, in many ways, more with the professional faculty. And yet those
two had to talk to one another. One of the tensions in the college had to do with
one's synoptic credentials. Only on a tape about William James College could
one talk with a straight face about one's synoptic credentials. But I can remember
at faculty retreat, prior to one of our years, in which we had facilitators come in to
get us going for the year. And that's what came out – that there seemed to be a
distinction between the philosophers, the synoptians – those who were seen as
guarding the flame of those who were appropriately liberal artsy and the others. It
was an interesting tension in the college and people felt very insecure about it.
The man who did not see themselves as the liberal arts heavies felt very
insecure about it, as did some of the women. The women in the college who
have those credentials to be synoptic heavies were sometimes impatient with it. I
felt that I could really relate to both sides, and those were the strengths. And that
the college needed both… because one of the things that gave the college power
was that it did have a concept – it really did – and that gave it enormous power.
[Barbara]
Concept of?
[Tinsley]
Theory and practice. And using theory and practice to make a difference in the
world.
�[Tinsely]
And we spread out from there – the concept got broader from there. But it had
that core concept.
[Barbara]
End of tape. Good answer.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_28_Tinsley
Creator
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Tinsley, Adrian
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
Adrian Tinsley interview (3 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses her memories of the early years at William James College and the importance of community, in addition to how the college developed over time and the role of feminism in theory and practice. This interview is part 3 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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
Women college administrators
Women in higher education
Feminism
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/14658cb13005e4c207bd82efbcb54138.mp4
ec8e601ad6311d86c6027e320ed57869
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b14e73f4cd28bbe0f70381f282ef762a.pdf
c143e2bb8723b3c16a980e7665f3bef3
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 4 of 8
[Tinsley]
Yeah, test at the end.
[Barbara]
Question will be: [inaudible] the administration at Grand Valley, at various times,
would give you, sort of, “We're not completely happy – shape up” or “You're
doing very well – this is going to go on forever.” Did you get that kind of feedback
from [inaudible]?
[Tinsley]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
That's not phrased very well, is it? Do you know what I mean?
[Tinsley]
Yeah. It's another version of "What did the administration think was happening."
[Barbara]
Yeah. Okay, anytime you feel comfortable. Let me just double-check that we’re
rolling. Yeah, we are. What kind of feedback were you getting from the
administration?
[Tinsley]
It's interesting that I'm having a difficult time answering questions about feedback
from the administration at Grand Valley and there were really two parts to the
administration at Grand Valley. The first phase was during the period that I
reported to Bruce Loessin. And I might just say, parenthetically, that one of
wonderful things about being totally greenhorn, an inexperienced dean, and
being a woman and never having served in the army, I was told I reported to
Bruce Loessin. I guess the first year I reported to Harold Colbert; I had no clue
what it meant to report to somebody. I had no notion what the term meant or that
I was supposed to tell them what was going on in the college and that was what it
meant. But from the college’s second year, up until about nineteen seventyseven, I would guess, Grand Valley had a structure which differentiated where
the colleges reported. And William James and Thomas Jefferson reported to
Bruce Loessin and the other colleges reported to Glenn Niemeyer. That function
was split. In seventy-seven, or whenever the reorganization took place… it may
be seventy-seven, maybe seventy-eight. Let me start this answer again Barbara.
Okay.
[Barbara]
No harm.
�[Tinsley]
Let me think about it for a minute first. Okay, the question that you asked is what
kind of feedback, criticism, encouragement, direction that you got from the
administration of Grand Valley. There were really two administrations at Grand
Valley during the time that William James existed. During the first administration,
I reported – William James reported – to Bruce Loessin. Grand Valley had a
structure in which the vice presidents were all equal and they were all called the
Vice President of the College.
[Tinsley]
Bruce was, at that time, the vice president of the college William James and also
Thomas Jefferson reported to him. This is not just a bureaucratic thing of interest
to administrators. Bruce was responsible for William James and for Thomas
Jefferson and so he wanted us to do well, as well as he wanted us to do good
and fight evil. And he bent his fairly considerable energies to helping us do that
and to fighting our battles. You didn't ask if I had any mentor at Grand Valley; if I
ever did, it was Bruce. He was a kind of funny mentor, you know, a little short
guy. People used to laugh about little, short Bruce and his high heels. But he
looked out for William James because it was his – it reported to him. What I got
from him was: "You’ve got to make it so it looks like the other colleges. You can't
be out there looking weird. I don't want to change anything you're doing; I don't
want to change you. I think William James is great and I think you have the finest
faculty at Grand Valley, but you have to not look weird." And that was really, to
tell you the truth, that was right. Bruce was right about that. He would give me a
little pep talk about not looking weird. I'd go back; try to get us not to look weird.
But he helped us, you know? He would fight for us when we had clashes about
who was going to offer what or were we going to be able to get our name out in
advertising brochures. Bruce was there fighting for us. So, he had an interest in
us. And seventy-seven or seventy-eight… this was a bizarre structure at Grand
Valley with these deans, the vice presidents at the college and the academic
units reporting lines split. Don changed the reporting structure and Glenn
became the Vice President for Academic Affairs and all of the collegiate units
reported to Glenn. Now, you have to understand I'm not saying anything about
Glenn or Bruce personally; I'm talking about structure. The day that
reorganization came down, Bruce took me to lunch at the Matterhorn and he
said: "I just want you to know, that I've always been on your side, always before,
and I have really busted my ass to make sure William James got its fair share
and survived, and I've been your friend, but you need to know that I'm on the
other side now." And I said: "Right. I understand that. I appreciate your just
saying that upfront, you know? Thanks for everything Bruce." And in some ways,
I mean, you could say that was the beginning of the end. When the college is
reported to a different vice president, what it felt like was you had your very own
knight. When I needed something, I went to Bruce; CAS needed something, they
went to Glenn. Then Bruce and Glenn got into their suits of armor and rode out to
go like this to one another. And, you know, sometimes one won, sometimes the
other, but the Dean just kind of sat back, you know, and waited to see who was
�going to triumph. When all the units reported to Glenn, we had entered the era of
rational planning and the emphasis went to program. When the units reported up
different lines the emphasis was on, not program distinctiveness, but
distinctiveness of mission, distinctiveness of student body, distinctiveness ethos.
[Tinsley]
When all the students reported to the same vice president – and maybe this
would have been true whoever the vice president was. I'm suggesting that I think
a lot of the issues were structural; the issue then was which college will do what?
We'll have a rational plan, and programmatically, we'll differentiate
programmatically, you know. And I think people do have to understand that this
was not an individual decision that Glenn made because he was an individual; it
had to do with rational planning with the kind of accountability that he had placed
on him. Because we were entering a time of much tighter money and Grand
Valley couldn't really afford to have computer science programs in both places. It
was confusing, it was messy, and it was expensive. So that's the apologia. What
actually happened when we started reporting to Glenn was that the whole
emphasis went on programs and on new programs. What Glenn wanted from
Williams James was that it would develop new, sexy new programs that would
attract new students and that could give us a niche that we could occupy. And we
fiddled with a lot of things there, at one point, I mean, computers was our thing.
At another point it was going to be environmental science and planning; at
another point it was going to be social work. The problem that happened there…
rational planning might've worked as a model, but the units were of such a
different size and political power. We could make all the bargains we liked, we
can say "We'll do social work and you do nursing. We'll do arts and media and
you do fine arts." But every time a decision was made, we do this and they'll do
that, and what we were doing looked interesting or looked like it was drawing
students, then the other unit wanted to do it. And we didn't have it – I don't think it
was the political clout – we didn't have the size. There were too many faculty
angry that little William James got to do this and they didn't get to do it. And so
those faculty would go to Glenn or they would go to Don. And Grand Valley was
governed in a political way. It was and probably still is on the political model.
There are books written about styles of academic governance and you can have
the bureaucratic model, and you can have the hierarchical model, and you can
have the political model. And Grand Valley was governed in the political and that
meant that we couldn't keep our gains. So, the problem for us was that Glenn
would say: "Develop some new programs." And our tongues would hang out and
we'd say: "My god, we developed a whole new college. We've got zillions of
programs. We've got three programs per faculty member." You know? We need
to consolidate some programs; we need to grow some programs; we need to
develop; you know, we need to let some programs get bigger and stronger.
When we got good stuff, we'd lose it. We couldn't hang on to it.
�[Barbara]
Like what?
[Tinsley]
Like computers. I suppose that was a real good example.
[Tinsley]
The deal was, initially, when I went to the college that the math department
wanted to do computer science. Right at the beginning, the math department had
an opportunity to hire Ken Hunter and had refused to do it. And William James
had hired Ken Hunter. Ken had a genius for understanding how to teach the use
of computers in business and applied context. And that's what our students
wanted to learn. And he built a super program in that area. It was called
Administration and Information Management. Very strong in information
management. And it was very clear where the lines were. It was rational
planning. Mathematics Department did computer science and students who did
that went to graduate school and they became computer scientist and if you
wanted to be an information managing specialist and work in business in an
applied way, you went to William James. Along about the middle or end of the
seventies, it became clear that we were in a gold mine; we were sitting on a gold
mine. We were sitting on top and what everybody wanted to do. And the math
department began to want to do it. And the math department had a lot of political
power at Grand Valley. The lines were clear, you know, there was no question
about what the agreements were. But there was a lot of political issues, so Don
Lubbers set up a task force to look into the matter. And he hired a consultant who
came and spent a couple of months on the campus one summer looking into the
matter. And then he called a meeting and we all trooped into the President's
office to have the meeting at which we were going to decide what was going to
happen with computer science. And Don VanderJagt went in from the College of
Arts and Sciences; Bruce Klein at that point was already in the College of Arts
and Sciences or maybe he was with us, I can't remember this. The punchline of
the story was VanderJagt trooped with the Dutch guys from Holland and this area
and William James trooped in with the woman, the Jew, and the Martian. And I
thought: "I think I know how this is going to turn out." In the end, you know, I
suppose I should be careful putting that statement on this tape.
[Barbara]
Maybe you need to say that again.
[Tinsley]
Yes, probably… I will say that again.
[Barbara]
Why don't I change the shot… it's accurate, but I don't think you're really…
[Inaudible].
[Tinsley]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
Okay, let’s see. So, then William James trooped in. You can go from there.
�[Tinsley]
Yeah, so then William James trooped in with a fine program, but we didn't have
the political clout of the people that had been at Grand Valley for a very long time
and we're very close friends of Niemeyer and of Lubbers.
[Tinsley]
We were a smaller unit; we didn't have nearly the potential to make trouble for
Lubbers that CAS had to make trouble for Lubbers. So, somehow we ended up
losing out. Now the way in which we lost out was not that Don said: "I've thought
about this and on the face of it the College of Arts and Sciences is a bigger unit,
it has more students, it makes more sense for the program to be there." Don
said: "I've thought about it and it doesn't make sense for me to prevent the
College of Arts and Sciences from doing it. I'm not going to prevent them from
doing it. I certainly want you to keep doing it; you're doing a wonderful job. Let
many flowers bloom." And when you broke down the trade agreements and let
many flowers bloom, it was very hard for William James to compete. So that's
why it was very hard for us to hang onto students, because we were a smaller
unit. Now you might ask me, it might be good question to say: "Why was it hard
for William James to compete, you know, in an atmosphere that said 'let many
flowers bloom.'" And that's the real question. Because we were smaller, because
we were viewed as an alternative, because as the decade began to draw to a
close, people in large numbers began to be a little afraid. Maybe they always
were, but it was a little closer to the surface of their mind, they didn't want to go to
a school that was weird. So, if you wanted a real straight-line thing, like
computers in relation to business, and you had your choice of taking it at CAS or
in William James, chances were unless you were an unusual student, you would
take it at CAS. Because we really were an alternative to that. And yet it meant it
was hard for us to hold onto our programs if they took equipment because we
couldn't develop enough students. That was a rambling answer, but you can
maybe use parts of it.
[Barbara]
It's blinking at me anyway.
[Tinsley]
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
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
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1984
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_29_Tinsley
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Tinsley, Adrian
Date
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1984
Title
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Adrian Tinsley interview (4 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses the two administrations at Grand Valley during the time of William James College and how the college developed over time. This interview is part 4 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
College administrators
Women college administrators
Women in higher education
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/21006ae57ddf7f3e23506b884642356e.mp4
f37ac2cb1e5e843082adab1b0311588d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7e428a4e09dbdc4c76a863dedfae8083.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 5 of 8
[Barbara]
It’s meant to warm up [the camera].
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
Okay. We are balanced.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
When you left…
[Tinsley]
When I left…
[Barbara]
Yeah. Did you think that we would…how long did you think we would survive?
[Tinsley]
When I left, I didn't think the college would not survive, but I thought it was
problematic. And the reason I thought that is that the college was getting smaller.
We were finding it more difficult to hold onto programs. I started thinking about
leaving in seventy-nine, actually the end of seventy-eight, and left in the summer
of nineteen eighty. And I left for two reasons. The compelling reason was I
needed a rest. I needed to find out who I was when I wasn't being the Dean. If I
could've gotten a year’s sabbatical, I probably would have stayed. And I
discussed that with Glenn and while he was not opposed to a sabbatical, he felt
that he couldn't spare the Dean for more than three months. And there was some
reason to that. In any case, I decided I would simply move it on. Another thing in
my thinking about that was that I did not see how Grand Valley could continue to
put the kind of money into administrative salaries it was putting into to run the
collegiate structure. I thought that the collegiate structure was getting marginal
from a financial perspective. If you think about what it cost to have at William
James, a Dean. We had – for most of our time – an Assistant Dean at least part
time. We ran the Records Office – Hank Mei's operation. We put money, you
know, modest amounts of money into Student Services – that was a lot of
overhead. If you counted that up that was probably a hundred thousand dollars a
year in the administration of William James College. We were smaller than many
departments. I mean, we were twenty-two, twenty-four faculty. If I looked at
Grand Valley – and you remember at Grand Valley at its peak was at six
collegiate units and by the time it ended was at four – that’s a lot of salaries and
�administrative overhead and that made me nervous. So, I thought that was
problematic about the college's survival and I was just tired. I thought I needed to
do something else. It's, you know, it was a long… I was Dean, what, eight years,
I guess. And that's a number of years of working very hard and cheerleading so I
needed a rest. When I left, I said to myself: "This is a window in the college’s
history. Right at this moment, I perceive us as very secure, nothing is threatening
us. It is time for me to leave and this is a good moment to leave," because I didn't
want to close the college – that was last thing I wanted to do. And so that’s kind
of why I decided to leave and when I decided to leave.
[Tinsley]
And at the time I decided to leave, I did not think we were in any danger, though I
was well aware of what the administration of those collegiate units was costing.
And I was also, by the way, well aware - and I haven't said this on this tape - you
know, if you think about it, the Deans of the two alternative colleges were
women. Women were pretty well represented at Grand Valley during the time I
was there. But we were running the alternative colleges and I said, and I
remember saying this, you know: "When we choose the next Dean, we have to
choose someone who's more like them. We have to try to get this embedded in
Grand Valley." So, I was not, you know, looking for another woman. I was hoping
that the college would get someone who could maybe do a better job than I had
of getting the college really embedded in the Grand Valley social structure. And
those were my thoughts as I left.
[Barbara]
It occurs to me that it in your last answer, you said there were two levels of
administration and you talked about Bruce Loessin. What kind of feedback did
you get from the other level?
[Tinsley]
You mean from Glenn or from Don.
[Barbara]
I don't know.
[Tinsley]
Oh, the second… once we started reporting to Glenn, I talked about getting
feedback about programs. Glenn certainly never said anything to me to suggest
anything other than he supported William James and he was working very hard
to understand William James. He found a lot of it incomprehensible, but I believe
he did work to understand it. And I believe as long as he thought it was
supportable, he worked to support it. That's not a very good answer.
[Barbara]
Okay, I understand. I was envisioning Lubbers.
[Tinsley]
Yeah. Let me talk a little bit about… you know, some question like: were there
any major threats to the college or…
[Barbara]
Yeah, what were they?
�[Tinsley]
You’ll remember that towards the end of the seventies, things starting to get –
financially – really tough in Michigan. And Grand Valley had to go through a
retrenchment and reallocation, and I believe that happened in seventy-nine. And
that was the first serious and significant threat to the college. And that one, we
came out of okay. And I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about that because I don't
think many colleges could handle that situation the way that we did.
[Tinsley]
The deans were not involved in making the decision to reduce and reallocate;
that was done at the level above us. We were simply brought together and told
Grand Valley was going to reduce and reallocate; that it was probably going to
cut Thomas Jefferson and that we had to prepare budgets. Well let me go back
because I want to get this accurate. I'm going to pick that up again. The deans
were brought together and told that Grand Valley was looking at a shortfall of
money that we were going to reduce and reallocate. And we were given targets.
We were given, I think, three levels of targets for cutting: the deepest, the middle,
and the lightest. And we were told to go home and figure out how to do that. To
go home to our college. Go home, it sounds like home, we go home and figure
out how we do that and come back prepared to meet those three levels of cuts.
And also, to figure out where the new money would be reallocated. The family
obviously didn't want to do that. I mean that is a very painful thing to do. But
when I went back to William James, and I remember that afternoon because I
went back on a Friday afternoon to say: "The news is we’re going to have to
reduce and reallocate; here are the levels we have to shoot for." I said, "How do
you want to do this? If you like, I'll just do it. If you like, you can. I am open to
suggestions; we'll do this any way you want to." And the faculty… it wasn't a
council meeting; it was just the faculty. We didn't take any votes, people just said:
"Look Adrian, let's make a committee of people that we all agree we trust and
then you guys just do it and come back and tell us what you've done, and we'll
tell you if it's okay." So, a committee was made of Robert and Barry and
Kathleen. The next morning at five in morning, the phone rang and my father was
dead. So, he died literally the next morning. And that committee came over and
we sat around my dining room table before I flew off to my father's funeral,
figuring out how to do this. And then that committee just sat down and figured
out, you know, what we could do and what they could live with. And we brought it
back to the college and nobody fetched, and nobody screamed, nobody said:
"Kill the administration." Everybody just said: "Well, you folks have done the best
you could, thanks." I was really amazed.
[Barbara]
What percentage cut did we lose?
[Tinsley]
I can't remember, but it was deep. It required a retrenching. I think in the end
three faculty. It was not clear if it was going to be five, four, or three, and my
memory is it in the end was three now. It wasn't clear, at that point, whether the
�cuts in Thomas Jefferson were going to be so deep that the college was going to
die as a result. And we had one meeting that was sort of the last critical incident
of my watch, as it were. We were all given to these nautical and military
metaphors. But I do think of it as my watch, and it was the last critical incident,
and I'm rather proud of it so I guess I want to tell it on this case.
[Tinsley]
The deans were all brought together in the Dean’s conference room and we
simply were to go around the table and talk about how we'd like to meet the
budget shortfall, and so I presented our plan, everybody did. It was very clear
that the senior administrators wanted to deal with the problem by merging
Thomas Jefferson and William James. And they thought that would take two
units, both of whom we're getting so small that they might be marginal, and
perhaps give them enough substance to be able to survive as a joint unit. I
thought that would be an absolute disaster. Just an absolute disaster. I thought
that although, indeed, the two of us we're both alternative colleges, and we both
had women deans, that didn't mean our operating philosophy is… our ideologies
as colleges were just so different. I could not see anything positive would come
of that. And I knew that it rested on me to prevent that from happening right that
moment. And I can remember taking a deep breath and remembering, and
knowing I had to get on my feet. I had to somehow get some height in the room
and to be able to speak with the kind of authority I wanted to speak with. And
there was a folding blackboard in that conference room which was closed and I
can remember getting up and very slowly walking to that thing, opening it up and
getting a piece of chalk and beginning to draw diagrams on the blackboard. And I
have no idea what I drew, but I was trying to get myself, you know, organized, to
make the pitch to show how different we were. So, I drew these diagrams and
delivered a little lecture about the differences between the two colleges. And
maybe talked for ten minutes, you know, as compellingly as I remember going
about anything. And when I finished there was a long silence. Nobody said
anything for about a minute and then Doug Kindschi – and I will be grateful to
him for this to this day – said: "You know, that's right. William James and Thomas
Jefferson are very different and if we put them together, we'll likely lose what's
good in William James." And that was it, you know, and then they passed on to
other topics. So things were tense during that last… that reduction. And then, of
course, there were further reductions to be had after Forrest had come on board
as Dean. So [Inaudible] started getting really tough in seventy-eight and seventynine.
[Barbara]
And that's the… you said, plural, the threats, buts that's what they did?
[Tinsley]
That was the most compelling one that I had to deal with.
[Barbara]
What about hostility from CAS all along, did we feel it? Did you feel it?
�[Tinsley]
Oh sure, sure, it was a real pain. I didn't feel it from my colleagues because, you
know, they weren't allowed to for one thing. And also, it was simply we were at a
level where we were kind of above that. But for the faculty it was very tough
because there was that constant grinding: "You're different, you're not as good.
We won't play with you. We don't have to. We're traditional, we're good." And it
was so ironic because our faculty was one of the finest in the country. I mean, we
didn't come from Michigan, we came from all over the United States. And we had
superb degrees from superb schools. And we had to put up with this kind of "Well
you're not good enough for us to let you, you know." We took all of CAS's
courses for credit. But CAS was always very picky. "Well, we might not take that,
it might not be up to our high standards." And so that was a constant problem for
us; and it's too bad. And it happens in all kinds of places that try to do this kind of
thing.
[Barbara]
That's true. What would it have taken for us to survive?
[Tinsley]
Well, I don't think we could've survived. And I have really given that a lot of
thought, obviously, because I've had to think: "Is there something I could have
done that would've made a difference for us." And here's why I don't think we
could've survived. It wasn't financial; although, as I indicated earlier, it was very
expensive to have four, or five, or six different deans. That was a problem, but
the reason we didn't survive wasn't because of money. And I think that was clear
when Grand Valley reorganized itself into schools or colleges. They didn't leave
faculty off, at that point, because the issue wasn't financial. The issue was
twofold. One, and they're both important, but the first issue was Grand Valley
was always fighting with itself. The problem could never be solved that the units
were competitive with one another. There was no way to make them stop fighting
each other. And particularly not if you're working in a political model. I often
thought, if the presidential just said: "There will be no more fighting. I won't have
it. The next complaint, the person will be fired." Maybe it would have stopped,
although I doubt it, because it is human nature. But it would have put the central
administration at a very autocratic position, saying: "CAS will do this, William
James will do that, and that's the end of it. I don't want to hear any more about it.”
And they didn't want to that do that. And I can't blame them. They would've come
off as tyrants, and they would not have won any friends with CAS, which was
much larger and more powerful a unit, just to kind of save us. But because they
didn't do that, everything was in a constant state of turmoil. And Grand Valley, in
the end, just couldn't afford that. We needed to pull together and put our energies
outside the institution, not with constant battles inside. And I believe that's the
reason that it couldn't work and that cluster colleges, in general, have a very hard
time working. I think, also, and I never used to believe Bruce Loessin about this,
but I think it gave Grand Valley a kind of weird image in the community. It's a very
conservative community. We always used to say that William James is really
lucky to be embedded in a community this conservative because it kind of… that
�Grand Valley protected this, really quite radical unit, in a very conservative
community. But even having the different collegiate units, in the end, was pretty
hard for Grand Valley.
[Tinsley]
It gave it a weird reputation and it couldn't afford that. And in the end, it needed to
get rid of it. So that's where I think we couldn't survive.
[Barbara]
Can you see that light? You're doing a good job knowing right when it ends.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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GV016-16_GVSU_30_Tinsley
Creator
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Tinsley, Adrian
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
Adrian Tinsley interview (5 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses her experience transitioning away from William James College, the conversations surrounding combining WJC with Thomas Jefferson College, and her perspective on the college's future. This interview is part 5 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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
Women college administrators
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>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bb6b0043b473fdc2973378dc4ed2ac99.mp4
5f271fddab80448de0ebc486388ae64a
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a00bd1f1e28160b998aaa9f5aeb65626.pdf
d016e24b77f01d78e6d14cf11831bdeb
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 6 of 8
[Barbara]
Come on, camera! There you go. Nope, not yet. Sorry. I’m still getting in there, so
I don’t have your finger [in the shot] and you have an incorrect white balance.
Hey, you didn’t do it! There it goes. Alright. We’re actually rolling. We can go any
time.
[Tinsley]
Okay.
[Barbara]
We were talking about the legacy of the college as a partially conservative...
[Tinsley]
Okay. The legacy of the college… that's a really broad question. And I guess
what I'd say about that is that we were very early strugglers with some things that
now need to be struggled with less and are just a very normal part of the college
scene. The whole issue of professional programs, for example, we struggled
hard over that, both intellectually and personally within our college community.
And we were dealing with professional programs, I think, long before they
became such a very important feature of collegiate life. Nowadays it's a very rare
student who majors in anything other than a professional program. I think we
struggled with some issues around how you do liberal education in a professional
program context. I think we came to some really good solutions to that issue. And
that, you know, probably that hasn't filtered out as much into the larger
community as I wish it would. I think there are a lot of articles to be written there,
if everybody's looking for articles to write about the college. Because ninety
percent of the students who go to college major in professional programs now.
So, I think that's important. I think, for students, a lot of the things that we wanted
to do for students and with students exist in very mainstream colleges. You
know, all the way from independent study, to at least some credit no credit
grading, to certainly internships, to stress on projects related to community
needs. A lot of stuff that was very innovative when we did it is not particularly
innovative now and is pretty much an accepted thing now. So, I think we were
sort of the first wave of a lot of new stuff that was coming into higher education.
That kind of legacy certainly remains; what doesn't remain is a space, you know,
a local habitation in the name; a place where you can go to get something. I'm
not sure I how want to put this. Where you can go, where you don't have to worry
about what the meaning… I'm literally going to take this answer again. Let me
think about it a second. I've talked to some of the William James faculty the last
year or so, talked to Richard, to Margaret Proctor, to Barry. Barry, I think it was,
�has talked in an interesting way about what it means that the William James
faculty are mainstreamed now and they're part of the ordinary units at Grand
Valley. And they haven't just disappeared into those units. I mean, they have
begun, maybe this is grandiose, but they have begun a little bit to transform the
settings that they're in. I know, you know, some of the William James faculty are
doing that in the places where they are at Grand Valley. And what Barry said
about that was: "Well, you know, as long as we had each other to talk to you, we
didn't really have to talk to the other faculty." And we didn't very much. But the
place was poorer because we didn't. And that's right. So, there is some sense in
which I think Grand Valley as a whole is enriched by having William James
faculty in the mainstream. It's the same argument you might have if you were
talking about women's studies, you know.
[Tinsley]
To what extent do you want to have a special place that women can go and
totally deal with their own issues and one another, and deal with women's
courses? And to what extent do you want to say every course in the university
should contain topics of particular relevance to women and should address its
subject matter from the perspective of the new scholarship on women. What's
missing is that there is no place you can go to now where you go there, and you
know that all the people there share your values, and care about the same kinds
of things that you care about, and want to…
[Barbara]
Okay, [inaudible] we'll use the rest but [inaudible]. Okay?
[Tinsley]
Okay. No place you can really go where you know that everybody shares your
values and cares about what you care about. And I think having that space is
really important to our students and to our faculty.
[Barbara]
Why?
[Tinsley]
One answer is because it was there, and it was safe, and we didn't have to
create it every day. You had it. It gave you some identity. You didn't have to
always be creating it at all the time. It was a place where you could go, and it
gave you some identity because you shape it and it shapes you.
[Barbara]
But Barry said, in his interview, that… you know, he very much believes in this
notion of moving out into the mainstream, and that its working, and that in his
classes that he is still teaching in a Jamesian way. But he said: "Of course, I
don't know how long it's going to last. I don't know how long my energy can last
since it's not being infused anymore."
[Tinsley]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
Because that's what the places does.
�[Tinsley]
Yeah. If you concentrate the energy there and concentrate the people there, you
can go deeper, and you can replenish it. And that's what's missing because the
space isn't there. And I suppose all of us are looking to find some other similar
kinds of space out in our lives.
[Barbara]
Including the students?
[Tinsley]
Yeah.
[Barbara]
Would you put this in personal terms now. What does it mean to personally
spend the eight years you did, working very hard?
[Tinsley]
Well, I suppose… let me say what it meant to me professionally really first, rather
than talking first about what it meant personally. I went from William James to the
state… stop. Let me think about this another minute. I don't want to, you know,
falsely romanticize the period at William James; although, I personally do believe
it was a kind of Camelot. I do know that when I did go back and do administrative
work, I felt very strongly that I wasn't ready to go back to another campus. I
couldn't give my heart to another campus in the same way. And so, I took a job in
the central office of the state university system. And two things seem important to
me that I want to say. In Minnesota, I've been in a very mainstream
administrative situation. I work with seven separate state universities, with their
vice presidents, with their presidents, with strategic planning, with academic
policy. The people in that system are very good. They are very competent,
professionally. Minnesota, I would guess, is one of the very advanced states in
the union, in terms of not only its support for higher education, but the
professionalism with which their system is managed. And what I've learned is
that, although I work with an incredibly competent professional people,
professional values are not enough. The change for me was growing from a
place where, I mean heaven knows we did want to be competent, but there was
a real value beyond competence. There was a reason you wanted to be
competent. There was a reason you were doing what you were doing. So, by the
contrast that existed at William James, simply, the value of professional
competence is not enough. It doesn't keep you warm at night. It's too thin. I'm on
my way to go to Glassboro State College in New Jersey and I 'm now ready to be
back on the campus, and I am just really excited about going back to campus,
and, you know, and having a substantial leadership and management role on a
new campus now. But here's what I asked myself: I say, at William James,
everybody knew the meaning of what they were doing, so you could stand up
and so recite the litany, or you could have an external person to come in and
recite the litany and say this is what's important about what we're doing, this is
why it's important to work this hard, and this is why we're not cynical. Because
here's why we're doing what we're doing, and we really care about it. I go to
�Glassboro and I say, you know, what does the vice president do? The vice
president has got to find that thing that the institution is doing that's important and
put that in the public space and say: "This is what we're doing, and this is
important, and it's important that we're doing it and we're doing it well." And I
don't find it really easy to look at a Glassboro or at the state colleges in
Minnesota and say: "Here's what I can say about that. Here's why it's important
in the mid nineteen-eighties to be doing this." And I think that's a problem that we
are dealing with in higher education. It's hard to talk about why we're doing what
we're doing and why it's so important. And it's hard to get that into the public
space.
[Tinsley]
I remember when the colleges were about to be dissolved, and Robert said: "The
problem is that it's not that I don't want to work in CAS, I mean all those people
are fine, but I've got to have something I can believe in. I just can't work with
people who are cynical or who are apathetic." And so, what I'm saying is there
was no cynicism, or very little, or little apathy at William James. And how do you
find in a mainstream institution… how do you find, sort of, what you hang your
hat on for the meaning of it. And I think that's the question that we answered at
William James. And that's the question I want to try to answer now at a more
mainstream institution. I don't think finding that answers is going to be just real,
real easy.
[Barbara]
This is going off from that answer what we thought was important in James and
the reason that we would be energizing and uniting the kind of notions that we
had. Were they specific to the time? Are they not specific now? Why can't you
just take those notions to your new job?
[Tinsley]
No, they're not; they are specific to the time and let me talk a little bit about that
because I have thought a lot about this and I really believe it. In the midseventies, the agenda of the society was access and new opportunities. And it
was very important to open higher education up to women, and black people,
and minorities of all kinds, and older students, and people that hadn't been to
college before. And we put a lot of stress on that. And William James came out of
that milieu and that was very important to us. That is not a value in nineteen
eighty-five. In nineteen eighty-five, we talk about quality which is – depending on
how you look at it – is either a positive or negative from my perspective. I think
there is some genuinely good work being done under the rubric of upgrading
quality, but there's also some genuinely reactionary stuff being done under that
rubric. And the agenda for the institution is the economic development of its
region, science, and technology. The issues that the institutions are dealing with
are very different. In the mid-seventies, we had the federal government really
pushing access, really putting money into social services. Now we have science,
and math, and technology. I think there's no reason that we can't relate to this
�new agenda. But we haven't really thought about what it means for the values we
had in the seventies. So, I think the times are very, very different. And I think
that's why it's hard to find the spine of the institution in the eighties. I mean that's
what I learned from dealing with seven mainstream institutions in Minnesota and
the state legislature.
[Barbara]
Because my experience… I'm blinking again. My experience…
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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GV016-16_GVSU_31_Tinsley
Creator
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Tinsley, Adrian
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
Adrian Tinsley interview (6 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses the legacy of William James College and the importance of having a community with shared values, in addition to the importance of keeping the William James philosophy alive. This interview is part 6 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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
College administrators
Women college administrators
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>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4082a53062701be1ef0f139a40d64be7.mp4
6bf51067c429ce5698da83268a6142b9
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2126441a7c7ddbae8e0ccd5ab59d2336.pdf
3bf07d5bad3b1264044f6441d7f2d581
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 7 of 8
[Barbara]
Oh, I always ask you to do it when the cameras are warming up.
[Tinsley]
Alright. Okay, let’s see a piece of white paper in front of my…
[Barbara]
Okay, it’s all wound up. It's not in really great shape, truth be told. I kept it,
though, for some reason… must have something I'm supposed to do.
[Tinsley]
Yeah, you’re supposed to tell them how to allocate your TIAA and your CREF.
[Barbara]
Oh yes, I think I'll just let it set. Thank you. I didn't really plan on that saving me
anyway. Alright, we are almost good. Best thing about your experience at
James? Is that a meaningful question?
[Tinsley]
Oh, I think it is. It's like a psych quiz question, but, yeah, the best thing about it is
that it had meaning – it really had meaning – and it was important. You felt like
you were using your life for something useful. I've always liked Marge Piercy's
poem "To Be of Use." And you felt like, at James, you weren't just treading water,
you were doing something very, very useful. And that was the best thing about it.
And you were also doing it in the company of like-minded people who were
friends, and intimates, and you really had a family that you were doing it with. So,
I think those two things were the best. We weren't the only institution that was
doing this; there were other colleges like us. FIPSE, the grantmaking agency in
Washington, was very much like us. A lot of little enclaves of people doing this
kind of work and it seemed real and important.
[Barbara]
If you…
[Tinsley]
And it was! Sorry.
[Barbara]
I'm being a bad interviewer. I'm really listening to you. I am listening to you, but I
was thinking of the next question. Which is: if you had to sum up the nature of
William James College in just one sentence, what would it be?
[Tinsley]
Well, I actually frequently did have to sum up the nature of William James
College in just one sentence for a variety of public relations and mission
definition purposes. But I don't remember any of the sentences and I'm sure
�none of them were very real. William James was a place where people talked
about real things and did real work, and really loved each other.
[Barbara]
No two people have said anything resembling the same thing. They just go with
the strength of the college and its weakness. And no one has said “synoptic”
either. [Laughter]
[Barbara]
Okay, there is one question around in my head and it’s something that I wrote
down in the beginning. It has to do with power, and you sort of talked about it
when you talked about CAS and all that sort of stuff. Couldn't have we been more
political? Even though we were small, dammit, some small things survive
because they are so political, because they do their own PR so as well. Do you
have any feelings about that?
[Tinsley]
Well, let me think about it. I am myself a structuralist, and I believe the structure
of Grand Valley – not the structure of William James – worked against us. In the
back of my head is the nagging thought: "Suppose we really had been more like
them?" Because I don't think you can fudge that, because you can't go around
pretending to be like somebody when you're really not. Suppose we're really
more like them, and our values, and what we want to do, but our values were sort
of more like theirs, would it have helped? My honest answer is no, it probably
wouldn't have. Because, structurally, we just had a very difficult situation to deal
with. But that's from my perspective. I sure did everything I could. And so, you
know, maybe it's in my interest to not be able to think of anything else that could
have happened.
[Barbara]
Richard talks about a siege mentality being very useful to us, energizing us. To
go out more would have destroyed some of the energy that helped us work as
well together as we did.
[Tinsley]
Yeah, I don't think going out more on the Grand Valley campus would've helped
us a lot. I really don't. Because it would've been that painful work of trying to
make friends with CAS. And they didn't really want… it takes two to make friends,
it really does. If we would've been able to get outside into the local community
even more than we did – and we did a lot – that might have helped.
[Barbara]
Do you want to do it again, quickly, the story about… the story happened
because you were talking about how we could not… how this could not work,
how we were at a disadvantage. One example was losing computers, and you
made that bit by the anecdote of the day we lost computers. And if you want to
retell it using euphemisms, fine by me. [Laughter]
[Tinsley]
[Laughter] I don't think so, the point of the story comes from the cast of
�characters. But I will trust you not to use it on the tape.
[Barbara]
What about first part, when you talk about them being from Holland? Is that
okay?
[Tinsley]
I think.
[Barbara]
I think so, too.
[Tinsley]
I think it’s okay.
[Barbara]
Is there anything to say here? [Inaudible]
[Tinsley]
Oh golly, well there probably is, but I can't think of it at moment.
[Barbara]
It’s tiring at this point.
[Tinsley]
It is, it is tiring. No, I mean I would like to talk on about it for another ten hours,
but I don't have anything in particular at the moment.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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GV016-16_GVSU_32_Tinsley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tinsley, Adrian
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
Adrian Tinsley interview (7 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses the highlights of her experience at William James College and the overall nature of the college consisting of community and conversation. This interview is part 7 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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
College administrators
Women college administrators
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>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
Text
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eaf285fef8bbaaa63efe8e2f5de2cc8e.mp4
f65a858fd0951d1719f16ccf0f662757
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7f3e58bdae16743c8c0999882c013395.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Adrian Tinsley
Date: 1984
Part: 8 of 8
[Barbara]
The question is: what is the quality of the education that we were giving
students?
[Tinsley]
Okay, ready for me to go on that?
[Barbara]
Yep, anytime.
[Tinsley]
Okay. The issue of quality was a real one during the life of the college. I think
looking back, I would have to say that the quality of what we did was variable.
For the good students, what we gave them was breathtakingly good, I think. We
gave them access to superb faculty. We gave them access to sort of a panoply of
resources that they would not have gotten in a conventional undergraduate
education. The students that were less good could skate and that was a problem
– and I think we did have some students skate. It seems to me that the issue of
quality was very tied into the real ethos in the college on individual energy and
individual rights. I think the college always leaned towards wanting the individual
to express himself or herself. It was difficult in the college to get a clear sense of
institutional norms; at least, those norms could not be imposed easily by
administrators. They needed to develop in kind of a more organic fashion and I
think that was a problem sometimes. For example, in terms of our beliefs about
appropriate curriculum, appropriate grading standards, and the like. As the years
went on, I think we had a lot more homogeneity about those things. But part of
what I did as Dean was endlessly negotiate with faculty. There was no sense that
I had any divine right to set standards or, indeed, to set policy. It was a matter of
endless negotiation in a milieu where, as I said earlier, the ethos was on the
individual's right rather than the institution’s necessity. Looking back, I guess, as
Dean of the College, if there is an area where I should have paid more attention,
it is… no, let me stop that and you come back to this, okay.
[Barbara]
Let me change the shot, then you can do it. That's fine.
[Tinsley]
As the college matured, we began to get a curriculum we were pretty comfortable
with. I think there were still, probably, some issues around supervision of
internships and independent studies. There were still some course titles that
remained as symbolic battles between the faculty and the administration. I think
in another two, three, four years we would probably have been on a cycle of
�independent curricular reviews with outside consultants. In the end, in terms of
the curriculum itself, I felt very good about it. I felt it was a strong curriculum. In
terms of the standards of the college, in terms of what happened to individual
students, I think we probably always let students skate a bit too much. I think we
paid for that very heavily.
[Barbara]
Say that last sentence again because I screwed up. So just the last sentence: "In
the end..." is a good time to start.
[Tinsley]
In the end… about the curriculum?
[Barbara]
No, just in the end about individual students.
[Tinsley]
In the end, I think we always erred a bit on the side of putting out a hand to
individual students to help them through. And sometimes, in some places in the
college, we did that too much; we weren't tough enough. We paid for that, I think,
very, very heavily. That's something I won't do again; it was too costly for the
college.
[Barbara]
Finito?
[Tinsley]
Finito.
[Barbara]
Good.
[Tinsley]
I guess the last thing I'd like to say about the college – after having done some
thinking about it in connection with this taping – seems to me that most of us, or
all of us, brought to the college a desire that our work have real meaning; that our
work bring meaning into our lives; that our work perhaps be the significant source
of meaning in our lives. We wanted a kind of a texture in our work; a kind of
depth in our work. Clearly not some kind of situation where we did our work and
did home in our real lives outside of work. Our real lives – our most important
lives – were in our work in the college. Sometimes this provided some stress and
strain. We made demands that our work give meaning that I think aren't very
unusual in American work life. And I think for most of us, the experience of
having the college no longer present is that it's forced us to say: "In whatever
work life I'm in now, how can I make it have that kind of meaning for me?" That's
certainly true for me. One of the things that is very interesting to me as I look at
what the faculty are doing now – and because of my position, I knew the faculty
better than I knew most students – it seems to me that there's almost a little
explosion of good work going on: research, writing, work products coming out of
people that were on the William James faculty or interesting jobs. Almost as if
some of our energy that was being used to make the college work is going right
into creative work products. And I see that as coming out of this desire to find
�meaning in one's work that I think is so important and that I think was really
critical to us at the college. Sorry I trailed off on that.
[Barbara]
[Laughter] I'm tempted, I won't do it, I'm tempted…
�
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>
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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GV016-16
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_33_Tinsley
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Tinsley, Adrian
Date
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1984
Title
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Adrian Tinsley interview (8 of 8, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Adrian Tinsley 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. Adrian Tinsley was Dean of William James College from 1972 until 1980. In this interview, Adrian discusses the quality of education at William James College and how the experience brought meaning to the lives of those involved. This interview is part 8 of 8 for Adrian Tinsley.
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
College administrators
Women college administrators
Women in higher education
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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eng
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/07edd5efb603db138c71cac791e42647.mp4
6828e9a45f67f210afb89cd25b1a4693
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e5e1a0f15123015c693818c7363d4739.pdf
dd537ed0e7e5b1fe20e6efeb0802a7b2
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe
Interviewee: Arend Lubbers
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 3
[Conversation between President Lubbers and Professor Stephen Rowe]
[Lubbers]
You can just… you’re going to just kind of edit and put comments in?
[Barbara]
And it should be very informal and if you say something you don't like you can
say: "I don't like that, let’s do that again." Okay?
[Lubbers]
Alright. Did you want to start with a question or?
[Rowe]
Yeah, it seems that the basic question would be that in the wake of rebellion and
confusion and break up of what some have called a “traditional model” of our
education in the late sixties, there was this period of so-called innovation and
Grand Valley, in that period, adopted the cluster college model. So, it seems to
me, the first question for you to characterize the deliberation within which Grand
Valley made that decision.
[Lubbers]
Well, of course, the college when it was established had a concept – or the
people who established it had a concept – of a cluster of colleges. As I remember
the original plan called for…
[Rowe]
This was sixty-three?
[Lubbers]
Yeah. Four colleges of fifteen hundred each. Thinking that that would be a nice
educational unit.
[Rowe]
This was Oxford inspired?
[Lubbers]
I don't really know. I’ve talked to Bill Seidman about it, but it's been such a long
time ago that I don't remember how it came about. I think that there were some
who felt fifteen hundred was a large enough group for a college and that if you
wanted to keep personal contact and tutoring, you had to keep it at that number.
No one did much planning about the time the first college reached fifteen
hundred. What do you do then? Do you start another college with the two
hundred more that you might have? So, it was an original concept, but it was not
one that was clearly thought out in detail. But when I arrived, there was the talk of
having this School of General Studies. And so that was in the works by the time I
�came here. And then I noticed the plan, of course, the original plan and thought
that this was a movement towards that objective.
[Rowe]
Did the alumni give the idea to get it more from the culture or from the original
plan? You suggest that it was the latter… or the former.
[Lubbers]
I don't know whether people like Dan Clock and Gil Davis was here. I assume
that you talked with Gil, maybe not, but Gil was here, and he might remember
more about the origin of that School of General Studies.
[Rowe]
That was seven… what was the date on that? Sixty-seven?
[Lubbers]
They were talking about it… I came in January of sixty-nine. And I know it went
into effect, I think, then in the fall of sixty-nine. And it's terrible how these things
kind of… the past blends together, and I can't remember the dates exactly. But I
know my own thoughts at that time were sympathetic to the original concept. And
I also felt that there probably were different ways to learn, and if we can establish
colleges with different pedagogical approaches and styles, that might be useful in
higher education rather than to take it on a number’s basis. In other words, you
have your first fifteen hundred and then you set up a parallel college with the next
fifteen hundred. I thought it would be more useful to students and higher
educational experimentation to establish the schools on the basis of pedagogy,
rather than the numbers.
[Rowe]
At what point did you or the college become aware of cluster college as
something distinct that we were doing, say, like Santa Cruz or other places that
were similar?
[Lubbers]
Well, really from the time I arrived in January of sixty-nine and saw the formation
of the School of General Studies, I was very much interested in the cluster
college concept and worked toward it. And then, of course, then the School of
General Studies became Thomas Jefferson College.
[Rowe]
Can you characterize the moment at which the College III task force was
founded. College III, of course, became William James.
[Lubbers]
William James. I recall a conversation that I had with Tom Cunningham about the
concept of a William James College.
[Rowe]
So named?
[Lubbers]
I don't remember calling it anything else or thinking about it.
[Rowe]
Seems likely.
�[Lubbers]
I do remember the ideas that I had at that time. I was very much interested in the
vocations of the future. What were they going to be? What were people going to
be doing with their lives? And concerned a bit about the narrow vocational
direction. And of course, we have many of these schools now that are
professional and choose a profession and educate for it. We're more into that.
But I was concerned about the narrowness and that there ought to be a place
where you educated for broad fields and that the approach to communications
was a very broad one, in my view anyway, and then we had the computers and
the social relations. And I can remember some of the literature in that period
pointing in directions… jobs are going to be in these general fields. And so, there
was that professional aspect of it, but a broader based professional approach.
And so that appealed to me a great deal. And how you educate for professions
and at the same time keep the liberal arts core was the part of the experiment
that I liked. And an attempt to bring a synthesis between the professional
approach and the traditional liberal learning approach.
[Rowe]
What was it about Tom's idea or James' philosophy that made the fit there,
between your thinking…?
[Lubbers]
I think it was the pragmatic approach. In other words, let's try to educate people
to do things that work, that function, that will serve them well. I think that was
probably it. But, again, you know, you have… such as William James College
and Thomas Jefferson College, in a sense, cut out of whole cloth. In other words,
you come at it with a strong sense of pedagogy. This is what it's going to be. And
then to see how it works out, and it never works out the way the plan calls for to
work out.
[Rowe]
How did James work out?
[Lubbers]
Well, some people, I think, were very well served by it. I think there's a problem in
the experimental education. I think that's been true throughout the country. Was
true throughout the country in the nineteen seventies, particularly late sixties into
seventies. Accompanying most of these experiments, of course, was a different
evaluation system. They didn't have the traditional A through F grading, nor the
traditional examination. And I have a feeling that one of great problems was
really quite simple: that experimental education never did work out a very good
evaluation system. And some people do not require evaluation, they just are selfmotivated. And I think that we saw a group of students – particularly in the middle
seventies – who were more inclined toward independent study and had the kind
of motivation to carry through a sensible educational program with the assistance
of faculty. But for the most part, and certainly on into the eighties, I think we find
people needing more traditional evaluation structures. They like to have "A’s,"
"B’s," "C’s," and "D’s," and as much as they don't like examinations, they need to
�have examinations. And I believe that what happens is that the standards begins
to be relaxed. And then a lot of students who are really not inclined to be
students pass through a system and are not evaluated.
[Rowe]
How is that problem with evaluation, which you associate with experimental
education, related to the basic model: integrating vocational and liberal? Is there
any connection? Is there some integral connection?
[Lubbers]
I don't think so. Are you asking whether that kind of a model for William James
required a different kind of evaluation system from the traditional one?
[Rowe]
Yeah. Well, you mention two things that seem separate: one, the basic pedagogy
and the philosophy of education, integrating liberal and career studies, and
secondly, the experimental orientation, which had this problem with evaluation. I
don't see what you say about how the two are connected.
[Lubbers]
They're not connected.
[Rowe]
So they just happened to…
[Lubbers]
They came together and one of the reasons I think that experimental colleges
have changed, closed, or merged is because they did not have a more traditional
evaluation system. I think that there would have been a better chance of William
James College surviving, if the evaluation system had been similar to the
evaluation system that was in the College of Arts and Sciences, which of course
was the more traditional evaluation system. I think that it would have been…
because a comment was made about people not liking William James College. I
think that's true. I think that a large number of people in the College of Arts and
Sciences did not think highly of William James College.
[Rowe]
Because?
[Lubbers]
Because they didn't believe that the quality of work was a college level. And
whether that evaluation is correct or not, that was the perception.
[Rowe]
And you're suggesting that perception was related more to the evaluation and
experimental orientation than it was to the basic pedagogy?
[Lubbers]
I'm saying that I think that is one of the contributing factors to it. And you know,
again, the curriculum was put together, somewhat as you go, and I think that was
probably another reason why people in the more traditional institution did not
respect William James College.
[Rowe]
In that sense it was experimental?
�[Lubbers]
I would say yeah. I would say it was in that respect. I wonder if there could have
been a more fixed curriculum, and also whether there could have been a more
traditional evaluation system, whether that might have made a significant
difference in the survival of all experimental colleges. I think this is a
characteristic of experimental colleges, and not a fixed curriculum, and not a
traditional evaluation system. It might have been possible to have a different
pedagogy, a different approach, and still have those two traditional elements.
[Rowe]
Or to not have those elements and have a different pedagogy. For example, TJC.
So, maybe the question is: was the pedagogy of TJC more consistent with the
experimental approach in evaluation and curriculum?
[Lubbers]
I don't know whether it was or not. But I do think that it's possible, a least I… this
is again, conjecture, but I think that some of the pedagogy of the experimental
colleges was valid, and is valid, but I don't think the systems that were used, or
the lack of system, served the experiments very well.
[Barbara]
Steve, we have to stop and change tape.
[Rowe]
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
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
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eng
Oral History
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GV016-16_GVSU_45_Lubbers
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Lubbers, Arend
Date
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1984
Title
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Arend Lubbers interview (1 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Arend Lubbers by Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe, 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. Arend "Don" Lubbers was president of Grand Valley State University from 1969-2001 and served as president during the lifespan of William James College. In this interview, President Lubbers discusses the cluster college model that was utilized at Grand Valley from the time he arrived in 1969, the origin of William James College which was previously known as College III, and his impression of the college's performance. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Arend Lubbers.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Rowe, Stephen (Interviewer)
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
College presidents
College administrators
Lubbers, Arend D.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2bea94e0a171b2bacf29bb52309c8590.mp4
cdba35c0a98053d349ce1cbc09926850
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PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe
Interviewee: Arend Lubbers
Date: 1984
Part: 2 of 3
[Conversation between President Lubbers and Professor Stephen Rowe]
[Rowe]
Could you comment on the connection there?
[Lubbers]
Well, I'm just talking experimental education, you know, you can have many
different pedagogies. You can have colleges, or schools, or courses, that are
different from the traditional. You can have very different kinds of pedagogies.
There is not, in my definition, experimental education does not have a pedagogy.
[Rowe]
And yet so much of it fell into problems with evaluation and curriculum.
[Lubbers]
Right.
[Rowe]
Why was that do you suppose?
[Lubbers]
Well, I wonder if that was more the spirit of the times. In other words, when
people were ready to experiment, and wanted to experiment, and maybe
accompanying an experimental era is this desire for freedom and individualism.
In other words, an experiment is a breaking away, of doing something different
from the way most people are doing it. So, there is a freedom about that. I want
to break away and be free. Well, what do you want to be free of? You not only
want to be free of the traditional curriculum, you want to be free of the way it's
delivered.
[Rowe]
Or, as many people put it, they tend to be very clear about what they be free
from, but not very clear about free for.
[Lubbers]
So often, experimental education has so much rebellion built into it. And
rebellion, you know, finally has to be, I suppose, consummated. I mean you have
to have your rebellion, and be done, and move on. And so…
[Rowe]
How would we have that here?
[Lubbers]
Oh, I would say we had, again, that desire to be free of the usual constraints.
And that was built into William James College, as it was into Thomas Jefferson
College. And I don't think… and that led to a way of evaluating, or not evaluating
�very well, and it led to a way of putting a curriculum together perhaps in too
haphazard manner. But I think that here – and maybe in most universities – the
experiments that were tried were not accepted by an overwhelming majority of
the faculty. And I think that's a problem. It's almost insoluble. And it's a problem
that I think experimental education will always have, because if you set up a
freestanding experiment, that is very difficult. Most experiments need the
strength – at least the financial strength – of a traditional university or college.
Maybe Evergreen State is an exception to that and that's why I would like to see
them… see how they've done it. And at the same time, it's very hard to get a
large majority of the faculty to support the experiment, to really be enthusiastic
about it. If the majority of the faculty or if the CAS faculty, for instance, had a high
regard for William James College, it might have survived. Though, we were in a
real financial crunch and things had to happen. We couldn't afford to do some of
the things that we had done. So, the reorganization of the institution might have
taken place anyway, but certainly it was the financial crisis that triggered the
changes. But if there had been a high regard for what was going on at William
James College by the rest of the faculty, they might have fought to keep it.
Because they would look upon it as a distinguishing part of Grand Valley that
they liked, but that was not the case.
[Rowe]
What do you think they understood William James to be?
[Lubbers]
Just, low standards, low academic standards. And no comprehensive,
comprehendible curriculum.
[Rowe]
Did they understand the pedagogy or the basic approach?
[Lubbers]
I don't know whether they did or not. If they did, those who did might have
respected that to a certain degree but didn't feel that it was being carried out well
enough to save it.
[Rowe]
Some people noticed that the very first sign of trouble in William James was
when the nation, as a whole – “Change Magazine" identifies this as seventy-six –
became involved with the “New Vocationalism” was the term. So that everybody
suddenly became interested in integrating career and liberal education, even on
the campus as a whole.
[Lubbers]
Uh-huh.
[Rowe]
Some people reviewing the history of William James notice as early as seventysix we were, in some ways, co-opted by a much larger national movement.
[Lubbers]
Yeah.
�[Rowe]
Could you comment on that?
[Lubbers]
Well, I think co-opted and maybe that is one of the great values in William James
College: was that it was before its time in terms of philosophy. And I think that the
heritage that William James College has left to the campus as a whole, is
probably this integration… this attempt to integrate the professional and the
liberal learning. There's been the two tracks, of course, in education and the
synthesis between the two is essential. But as we are now organized with our
professional schools living intermixed in the divisions with the arts and sciences, I
think is a good illustration of what William James meant and has been that part of
the William James heritage that continues and is a major contribution to this
institution. Again, I think maybe faculty accept it, the ones that do accept it, not all
do, but the ones that do accept it, some will do it because they believe in it
philosophically, but many of the arts and sciences professors have had to face
the unpleasant reality for them that many of their students are majoring in
professions. And therefore, they have to live together with the faculty in the
professional fields. And for whatever reason, it's happened, and is happening,
whether the motive is high or low, I welcome it because it does mean that people
have to… educators have to live together and have to work out some of the
problems that exist between professional curriculum and an arts and sciences
curriculum.
[Rowe]
Do you have any frustration or concern about what developed as the
understanding of "career" in this new vocational movement? Some of us in
William James felt that the definition of career that developed was precisely the
more narrow form that you and others, at the founding, tried to avoid.
[Lubbers]
Well, I think that it has come to that. And I don't think that every student, or all
faculty, or every program, is narrowly career. The narrowly career programs can
exist side by side with the ones that are broader philosophically. And yet this
happens to be the day of the narrower career approach. But those things begin
to change some. Although we are facing a time when jobs are so specialized and
require such carefully honed talents that I wonder whether we're going to
continue to need places in our educational system where people are, in a sense,
trained but at a very high level. If you're going to be, well, on our campus for
instance… if you're going to be a physical therapist, you can't just take a general
major in health. There can't be a general health vocations major, and then
practice that profession.
[Rowe]
You still need the terminal bachelor’s degree which I suppose they may have to
assume. We've mentioned seventy-six as the time when the new vocationalism
became very popular in the country and on the campus, and the reorganization in
seventy-nine?
�[Lubbers]
It was after that wasn't it?
[Rowe]
Eighty?
[Lubbers]
Eighty, eighty?
[Barbara]
Eighty.
[Lubbers]
Was it nineteen eighty? Is it that long ago?
[Rowe]
Can you say anything about the lay of the land between seventy-six to eighty in
terms of what happened to William James, both internally and externally?
[Lubbers]
Well, I think that there was a growing problem for William James. Students – high
school students – were not quite so interested in experimental colleges, or they
were much more interested in the traditional educational institutions. And in the
more narrowly defined professional fields. And so, it was becoming a problem to
attract students. And I think that was a major reason, too, for the demise of the
institution finally. There just wasn't the student interest in it anymore and it was
declining. And, well, I think those of you who are on the faculty worked very hard
to recruit students and try to gain interest. And there were several older students
who liked the style of William James. And, maybe again, if the institution had
been well-respected, by all the faculty, it might have survived and became a real
haven for older adults. But, again, the financial crunch and the declining interest
of students in the eighteen-year-old group, or the high school group, and really
the lack of appreciation for William James by the faculty, and the financial
crunch. And I think you begin to put all those factors together. Often one factor
will not bring about the demise. But they were pretty strong factors bunched
together working against William James’ continuation. And I really don't see that
it could've survived, probably not even in good times. I'm not sure.
[Rowe]
Because of?
[Lubbers]
Because of the faculty really working against it.
[Rowe]
In terms of evaluation?
[Lubbers]
Yeah, I think so. The failure of the cluster college system to survive… I think,
really, the single factor that was maybe most important of all these clusters of
factors was the inability of faculty and students on one campus like this one to
ever have a real feeling that though they were a part of an experimental college
or they were part of the traditional college, they also were part of Grand Valley as
a whole. That never could be done. And I guess I did not foresee that at all at the
beginning. I never dreamed – and that was probably my own naiveté – that the
�competition between and amongst each of those colleges would be almost… or it
was really, more intense than our competition – Grand Valley's competition – with
other institutions outside. But I suppose, one should understand that possibility
and I don't know why didn't. Because in my experience, like probably yours and
everyone else's, we need to have our enemies close. And if we don't, we really
have… I've noticed, if you're with any kind of an organization, maybe within a
church. I've often enjoyed watching denominations; they fight internally more
than the enemy out there. And we were fighting ourselves all the time. And…
[Rowe]
The drift of things that I'm hearing from you is that the fight was primarily…
[Barbara]
I'm going to have to stop you. Finish your question…
�
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
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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GV016-16_GVSU_46_Lubbers
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Lubbers, Arend
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1984
Title
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Arend Lubbers interview (2 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Arend Lubbers by Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe, 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. Arend "Don" Lubbers was president of Grand Valley State University from 1969-2001 and served as president during the lifespan of William James College. In this interview, President Lubbers discusses the "spirit of the times" that played a role in the experimental education of William James College, the perception from the faculty outside the college, and how WJC was ahead of its time in terms of philosophy amidst the "New Vocationalism" movement. This interview is part 2 of 3 for Arend Lubbers.
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Rowe, Stephen (Interviewer)
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
College presidents
College administrators
Lubbers, Arend D.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7bc10ca36c87103e5d847537d0002494.mp4
3389952cc9a5c472ecd04993bca176e6
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/52659b18946217b719f10feba4aebfa8.pdf
b2e45ffb1db38ed59ed54fb01414f2fb
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe
Interviewee: Arend Lubbers
Date: 1984
Part: 3 of 3
[Conversation between President Lubbers and Professor Stephen Rowe]
[Rowe]
Was that characteristic of College IV as well as Thomas Jefferson and James?
The model was this distinction among and between units about pedagogy. You're
suggesting that underlining that there was a deeper distinction between the
traditional education and the experimental. Is that a fair understanding of what
you are saying?
[Lubbers]
Yeah, I think so, I think it was. The experimental education with its structures – its
evaluation structures and its curriculum – were just not acceptable or respected.
The College IV, later the Kirkhof experiment, I don't think that the ire of the faculty
in CAS was directed so much to that institution as it was to Thomas Jefferson
and then to William James. But I think the criticism by that time was, "Well, we
don't… this organizational structure is inefficient and there's no need for us to be
this way. And it would be so much better if we're offering similar kinds of
education." That is, I mean, we're offering English everywhere, languages. We
should be putting the faculty together and doing departments the traditional way
and have stronger departments. And so, there was not only the antagonism
directed toward the experimentalism of the institutions, and that was the great
part of it, but also toward the inefficiency. And then in the struggle for credits and
courses, who's going to get the students, and can we get them, or do they get
them?
[Rowe]
Did the traditionalism learn anything through contact with James and the other
colleges?
[Lubbers]
I don't know. I would, as I said, I think the heritage left is what I described, is the
way we are organized in professional disciplines and the liberal learning
disciplines together. I don't know to what degree people accept that, endorse it,
or grudgingly accept it. I don't know… that you'd have to take a vote of the faculty
to find out. But at least that's the heritage. I would say most of the faculty who
were opposed to the experimental colleges would probably say good riddance.
You know, I'm not sure that there is any cherishing of the past in any way. I think
this is about time that this was put aside. That's the way I view it. I haven't taken
any scientific surveys to know how people really feel.
�[Rowe]
Changing the subject a little, can you comment on legacy or heritage in relation
to the larger community? Perception of William James’ alumni or with the college
in the larger community?
[Lubbers]
You mean, how the larger community viewed the experimental colleges? Or?
[Rowe]
You're right, and its products, the students.
[Lubbers]
No, I really don't have anything to base a judgment on. I do think that the
community had a difficult time understanding our structure at that time.
[Rowe]
Grand Valley's?
[Lubbers]
Grand Valley's. And the public, generally, was not too sympathetic to the
experimentalism that went on here. Well, there are always exceptions and
pockets of people who liked it. But, I think, generally in this this area of the United
States, experimental education is not looked upon with great favor. And we
weren't looked upon with great favor for indulging in it. So far as graduates are
concerned, I don't know. Like you, I run across graduates of William James or
Thomas Jefferson, who are very… seem to be happy and pleased with what
they're doing and respected the education they received in those colleges. So,
there is that heritage, too; the heritage of the people who enjoyed and benefited
from it. I think, again, as I look back on the '70s – maybe period from seventy-one
to seventy-three or four – was the high watermark in terms of Thomas Jefferson
College. William James might be a little bit later than that – maybe seventy-five,
seventy-six – where both colleges had their best students, the largest number of
good students, and those people have done very well. And after that, there were
fewer good students attracted to that kind of education. And I don't regret having
done it. As a matter of fact, I think in a crucial stage and I believe there was
something happening to people, to young people, whether it was the Vietnam
War or what it was. But, from the late '60s into the '70s, well into the ‘70s. This is
a generation cut from a different cloth, I think. You know, in all of my experience,
they're different. And that kind of educational approach saved a lot of people a lot
of difficulty and agony. They would not have fit into the traditional mold. And they
did have places to go, other places in the country, too. But they had some places
to go here, and their older brothers and sisters and their younger brothers and
sisters have gone in the traditional route, but they were that group that needed it,
needed something different. And that was a great service to them.
[Rowe]
Here again, we're back to the term that emerges from this discussion, is really
basic, and that is: experimentalism, which so far has been characterized as this
certain kind of evaluation and this certain kind of flexible, if not loose, curriculum.
And now as a refuge, that seems in this whole discussion to be the one term that
needs one level deeper. Or can you say more about what this experimentalism is
�or was at its best? In some ways, all of the characterizations we have so far are
negative. Lack of evaluation, overly flexible curriculum, refuge from the society.
[Lubbers]
Well, of course.
[Rowe]
What is the positive?
[Lubbers]
The negative… the positive is the other side of the negative. These people who
flourished in that kind of environment were those people who flourished best
when there was no traditional curriculum and no traditional evaluation system.
They did flourish very well for a small period of time.
[Rowe]
Self-motivated was the term that you used earlier.
[Lubbers]
They were self-motivated, and they were in a state of rebellion, too. Now, if
you're rebelling, you have some idea about what you're rebelling against. But
then where do you channel your energy? What do you do with that energy that is
born out of rebellion? Where do you take yourself? Where do you take your body
and where do you take your mind and what do you do with it? If you have a place
to go where you can do some positive things, where you're not restricted by that
which you are rebelling against and you can find another object for your
attention, you're likely to not waste so much time.
[Rowe]
What was the object of attention?
[Lubbers]
The object of attention was the learning in these institutions. And they could take
themselves and go to a curriculum and work with some faculty members to do
what they wanted to do and move on.
[Rowe]
The study plans and riddling people to do what they want to do and become
entitled or empowered, except for individually, was certainly something that was
important to James.
[Lubbers]
Yes, it was.
[Rowe]
Perhaps to all experimental education, I'm not sure.
[Lubbers]
I think it is to all, I think it characterized experimental education of that era – of
the late '60s and '70s.
[Rowe]
So this was basically a vision. This experimentalism was a vision of perhaps a
very modern vision or a revival of the very modern vision of the independence
and development of the individual person.
�[Lubbers]
Right. Yes, I think so.
[Rowe]
And what was the social or communal or cultural implication of that or was there
any? Was it merely individual, as so much of modernism has been in ways
problematic?
[Lubbers]
It may, I think, more individual than I thought it would be at the time.
[Rowe]
Then this is a question for me as well. What was the communal vision that
accompanied that individualism? What was it?
[Lubbers]
Oh, I think, again, a more egalitarian society where the hierarchies would no
longer exist, where there would be decision by consent of the group. I think there
was a lot of that at that particular time. And I don't know exactly why except,
again, a reaction against the Vietnam War and a government that was waging
war and not always telling the truth. And that became obvious and here you are
where power is. You know, power is far away from you and it's coming in on your
life from that distance that you can't get at. You can't get at it. You can't influence
it. And I think that at that particular time, the experimental education carried the
communal vision of "we're going to be small groups deciding our own destiny."
And we begin in our experimental college by governing our experimental college
that way.
[Rowe]
In retreat from or separate from the larger communal structures, not in a way that
would reform them?
[Lubbers]
No, I think the hope was that they would be reformed, that the experiments would
work, and that out of this would come a new age. And certainly, the campuses
would be democratized and that was a hope. But, we Americans, when we have
our objectives and hopes, and we usually solve our problems as quickly as
possible. And we're not… we usually think that our vision will become reality
within our lifetimes. And I think I'm finding out that when you do experiment, you
maybe make a small step towards realizing what you want and what you hold is
ideal and as desirable. But then you don't get there all at once and you don't get
there in one lifetime.
[Rowe]
Rats, well this is just getting started.
[End of Lubbers Interview]
[Start of Rowe Interview]
�William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos and Arend Lubbers
Interviewee: Stephen Rowe
Date: 1984
[Conversation between Professor Stephen Rowe and President Lubbers]
[Lubbers]
[Inaudible] everyone, there are no students here. I mean, some may come back
or their students, but really there's no student tradition anymore or there are no
students here who talk about William James or Thomas Jefferson.
[Rowe]
Or in the community, for that matter. This William James association about which
I was nagging you about this plaque and not letting them paint the wall, it ceased
to exist. I mean, they can't even get a damn plaque on the wall, you know. They
don't…
[Lubbers]
It's interesting. It is almost as though it hasn't happened. And as we go about our
daily business, as I go about my daily business, that which was so important in it
during the decade of the '70s, it's almost as though it never existed.
[Barbara]
Hey, could you ask a question… rephrase your question about the communal
side of James? That's one question I would like to have on camera. It was just in
this last part of the interview.
[Rowe]
If the college was… if the experimentalism was essentially about the
enhancement or development of individualism, what then was the communal…
the accompanying communal vision, if any? Anarchism, some sense of the
individual fully developed in such a way that he or she is able to be in community
in the way that their ancestors weren't?
[Lubbers]
Is egalitarianism more than…[Inaudible]?
[Rowe]
What does that mean?
[Lubbers]
People living equally and sharing equally, deciding the fate of their lives as
equally as possible?
[Rowe]
Yeah, but see, that's a term in the modern period like "freedom" that everybody
uses and that means different things. I would say basically in the modern
orientation, there's equality of sameness and equality of difference. In our best
moments, the communal vision that accompanied this particular sense of
individual development, at the best, argued for an equality of difference; at the
�worst moments, it became an equality of sameness. That makes sense, right?
[Lubbers]
Yeah, the right. Yeah, which then comes back on itself as individualism, doesn't
it? It's, in a sense, the equality of difference is really… it's a kind of individual who
"I have a right to be different and work out my destiny than say we have a right to
be different and work out our own destiny." But then it's every little we… it's kind
of like Protestantism that it breaks up finally because everyone has a right to be
what she or he wants it to be.
[Barbara]
I'm sorry, I know you want to follow this through, but I just have a certain amount
of tape. I need to ask one more question… ask some sort of intro question to the
notion of the cluster college. You asked very early in the first…
[Rowe]
An intro to what he said?
[Barbara]
Yeah.
[Rowe]
I'm trying to remember.
[Barbara]
Well, the answer is that [inaudible] had to do with the difficulties of that structure.
[Rowe]
Okay. Developing out of your and the founders of the college's notion of small
educational communities, Grand Valley became, in effect, a cluster college. What
were the difficulties that were related to that kind of model in itself? And how is
that different from the Oxford model of small communities? I think the answer to
that is at Oxford, the pedagogical differences developed sort of willy-nilly over a
long period of time. Whereas, here in America, in some ways we tried to make
them. Arend [Lubbers] wouldn't talk about the problem we're making at that point.
[Lubbers]
That’s true, well we took a single institution and broke it up into pieces and it
wasn't ready to be broken up into pieces. Whereas universities, many
universities, people came, they did their little thing, and the other people did their
little thing side by side. And then finally, it develops… a kind of unity evolves.
[Rowe]
A more organic rather than made.
[Barbara]
It's now eleven o'clock, okay?
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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/.
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GV016-16_GVSU_47_Lubbers-Rowe
Creator
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Lubbers, Arend
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
Arend Lubbers interview (3 of 3, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Arend Lubbers by Barbara Roos and Stephen Rowe, 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. Arend "Don" Lubbers was president of Grand Valley State University from 1969-2001 and served as president during the lifespan of William James College. In this interview, President Lubbers and professor Stephen Rowe have a conversation about William James College and its place within Grand Valley history, its legacy and heritage within the larger college community, and the positive elements of experimental education. This interview is part 3 of 3 for Arend Lubbers.
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Rowe, Stephen (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
College presidents
College administrators
Lubbers, Arend D.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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eng
-
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
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Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
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GV016-16
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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GV016-16_GVSU_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>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng