Delmer Goode Oral History Interview, July 17, 1979

DG: I thought afterwards one thing I'd like to add about Dr. Strand. It was Dr. Strand who gave the authority, official administrative, authority, for starting the journal, Improving College and University Teaching. I felt that that journal ought to emirate from the graduate school and so I went to Dean Hanson, Dean of the Graduate School and told him about the idea and he was interested and he accepted the idea and he undertook to go with me to see President Strand to see what his reaction would be and so Dean Hanson introduced the subject and asked me to explain it and I told the idea that I had in mind and...

JL: How did you get this idea?

DG: Well, of course, when I majored in rhetoric at The University of Minnesota I had aspirations to become a writer because that's what rhetoric is. It's a written and spoken speech and, I think, way back then I thought it would be very nice to be the editor of a journal like The Atlantic Monthly or some of the notable journals at the time of a national magazine. I'm sure I had that flitting thought so I had gone through this experience of becoming a curriculum consultant.

I've described that how that came about. And getting started in teaching which 00:02:00was an offshoot of my curriculum work. At the time that I was studying curriculum I didn't realize that I was studying teaching too although it happened that the very first graduate course I took was a course at Stanford in Improving College Instruction. That was the title of it. So, I was interested although my goal was curriculum I was interested in teaching and improvement of teaching. Improving college instruction. Well, I taught I was teaching I had been teaching for 10 or 12 years the seminar in The Graduate School called College and university teaching. First, in the School of Education and later in 00:03:00The Graduate School.

JL: Now what years was this? When were you doing this?

DG: 1942 to 1953. I...

JL: How did you get involved in that? You'll be having...

DG: Well, after I got back from Stanford I still had not written my thesis and that is still true. (Chuckle) But I was asked by The Dean of Education to take charge of a course which The School of Education was teaching called College and University Teaching. The man who had been teaching it resigned to take a job elsewhere and they needed someone to teach it and my fresh graduate, studies seemed apparently to be just the right thing to take that course.

JL: Well, in 1942 you had also become the director of publications?

DG: Not in'42.

JL: No.

DG: No. It was 1943 that I became head of the office. Not director. I got that 00:04:00title later. In fact I proposed that the title he director and it was approved and I got the title but I started out as head of The Office of Publications. Well, I was asked to take charge of this course and I taught it every spring for a number of years. It later changed to other terms and then somewhere along the way I started teaching it in the summer term, too. So, there was a time, I think, by 1953 that I probably had been teaching it twice a year. Once during the regular year and once during the summer. Anyway I got interested in 00:05:00teaching. Teaching had come into focus and I began to define teaching in terms of curriculum. I said, "Teaching is the dynamic aspect of the curriculum." "Teaching is the dynamic aspect of the curriculum," The sort of static aspect of the curriculum is when it's done into a syllabus and done in a nice neat loose leaf or a permanent binding and stuck on a shelf somewhere and supposedly followed. But, not necessarily. Handed out to teachers is supposed to teach a course. This is what you're supposed to teach and I remember at Minnesota when one of my teachers something came up about the scope of the course we were in and he went into his adjoining office and came back with a copy of the catalog 00:06:00and read the description of the course as it was supposed to be and he read it in a kind of a supercilious way as if he wasn't taking that very seriously. He was teaching what he chose to teach what he thought belonged under this particular course.

Well, that's the way curriculum is. In its static form it's something that a committee or an expert has outlined in printed form and tucked away somewhere but it's supposed to be operating in the classroom but where it's operating in the classroom then the curriculum is in a dynamic aspect. When it's in a bound up syllabus it's in a static aspect until it's brought to life through teaching. All right, I had been teaching this course and having contacts with graduate 00:07:00students who were going into college teaching and I was getting more and more interested and I saw the value of a national journal devoted to improving college instruction like this first course that I had down at Stanford. And I thought of the name Improving College and University Teaching. Well, I explained it what I had in mind to President Strand and he listened attentively and quite deliberately as he had a little time to ponder it a little in his mind. He said, "I think I can go along with you." Or "I think I go along with you."

JL: Did you need his support before you started this journal?

DG: Oh, yes, because it had to be an official thing and so it became that way. 00:08:00It was established in the Graduate School with the approval of the president of the college as it was at that time.

JL: Had you brought him an outline of what you were thinking about?

DG: No, I told him that I had the material enough for a first issue. I couldn't have told him what would be in the second issue. I didn't know yet. But...

JL: You could [unintelligible].

DG: Oh, I felt sure that we would find the material. As it turned out it was an avalanche. We more material than we could ever use. Well, who will pay for it. That came up. Dean Hanson, the Dean of The Graduate School had $300.00 in his budget that had been assigned to a particular project but never used and I knew 00:09:00that and I brought it up and he approved the idea and he said, "That could be used." And so President Strand authorized a transfer or the use of that $300.00 for the first issue. Well, the first...

JL: Was there anybody opposing your journal?

DG: Not outwardly as yet. They didn't know about it but in time they did. Strangely enough the criticism of the title Improving College and University Teaching the first criticism I had of that, not unfriendly, was from a man down at Stanford who balked at the idea of improving and here Stanford had been teaching a course called, Improving College Instruction but this man hadn't been 00:10:00teaching that course. I don't know maybe he ultimately taught it and changed the name. I don't know, but he thought and I think he was quite right that it would be irritating to faculty people to suggest that they ought to improve and so on. 00:11:00Well, I didn't accept his thinking. My thought is that it doesn't matter how good you are you're interested in improving. People who have a perfect technique in playing a piano will practice and practice and practice and they get so that there better than the best and all. And furthermore the fact that they are tops is because they have been interested In Improving... They have wanted to improve and so on and have stepped up this obey, become, and contribute. They have obeyed all of the rules of the techniques of learning how to read notes and learning fingering and playing a piano and learned the discipline and then they have become adept, expert, their fingering is expert, and their reading is all and so on and then contribute. They can take a piece, a real pianist, can take a piece of music and make it INSPIRING. Not merely because it's the playing. The technique is perfect or because the sight-reading of the music is perfect or the memorization of it. It may have been memorized. That's a form of discipline to memorize a symphony like some of the conductors do and then contribute. The contribution will be not only a perfect performance but perhaps an 00:12:00interpretation of this particular piece of music that no one else has ever given an original interpretation of. An aspect of it that perhaps no one else could reproduce. This is your interpretation of a Beethoven selection maybe. Well, that's why I stuck to improving. Anyone ought to be interested in improving and the best people are the ones who are most interested in improving. That's one reason they are best. That was my philosophy.

Well, anyway Dr. Strand gave the green light and I got busy. I had some material 00:13:00on hand. There was a I had heard a man of The University of Oregon give a talk or read a paper at a regional conference that I thought would be fine for this first issue and then we had brought here Dr. Max Marshall from Berkeley or actually San Francisco. He was in the medical center at The University of California and he had written a book. Two Sides to a Teacher's Desk. He was a microbiologist. But he was interested in teaching and had written a book on teaching and we had brought him up here for a conference and he had left we had published one he made a couple of presentations while he was here. One of them we had published but one we hadn't published. It was called Purposes of 00:14:00Teaching. The benefits that are involved in teaching other than the salary you get like access to a library and association with scholarly people and sometimes retirement benefits or this or that. Purposes of teaching and so I proposed that we use that for one of them and then I got a member of the faculty here in chemistry who was teaching a seminar on teaching procedures that we had introduced and I got him to write a description of that and then I wrote an editorial and that was about it. It was just sixteen pages of this first issue. But, we mailed it to libraries and to other people and the response was very 00:15:00good. A philosophy professor at the University of St, Louis wrote a note saying "Comes to fill a need. It's permanence seems assured." That was Dr. William Charles Korfmacher of St. Louis University in St. Louis. Well, I've always blessed him. I've met him since and all but I've always blessed him for saying that. "It's permanence seems assured and there were other compliments and then the response from libraries was very good we had subscriptions from, I think, it was two-thirds of the states by the time the second issue came out. All based on this first issue and then articles, I solicited in those times I solicited 00:16:00articles but some of them were voluntarily contributed and I started a file just I called, oh, pending or emergency or something of possible things that I could use if I had an issue to get out and didn't have any articles for it I could go to this file and dig out things that could be used. The fact is I never used that file. We put things in it but we never were out of material. So, we got along very well in that respect. It started out just three issues a year but we found that if we would issue it four times a year we could get second class 00:17:00mailing privileges which would reduce the mailing cost considerably so we for the second year we went to a quarterly basis and it's still on a quarterly basis.

JL: And you had the support of the administration of the university then or the college?

DG: Yes. Yes. We always have had although it became rather grudging toward the end because expenses were getting greater and opposition or indifference toward it. There was a change in a kind of rebellion against this idea of improving. Faculties, didn't like to be improved. They didn't like to admit that they needed improvement which is a pity because under my philosophy we all need to 00:18:00improve. No reproach to anyone to want to improve and but it's nevertheless a kind of an idea among faculties that if you got a Ph.D. degree that you're equipped to teach. You're equipped you're all equipped you don't need any more improvement. You don't need to do anything. All you do is go up before a class and teach and there was a lot of resentment develop so that in time I'd say that the support that the journal got was a little somewhat begrudging. But, it actually in plain fact got more and more support from the journal from the institution or it wouldn't have survived as long as it did. It took money far more than the subscription money provided although subscriptions grew really 00:19:00greatly and all. We had subscriptions I presume it may still be true that the journal it went to every state in the union, every province in Canada and 40 other countries and it went to all the continents on subscription so it became an international journal and although I originally described it as an international journal on college teaching or something like that why I changed it towards the end to say International Colloquium of University Teachers. We got to calling the journal Improving College and University Teaching. ICUT. I.C.U.T. and so we kept that acronym and said International Colloquium of 00:20:00University Teachers and that's still listed" "all tough. It's no longer published here. It's published in Washington, D.C. But on the current issue still carry that International Colloquium of University Teachers.

JL: That's quite an accomplishment.

DG: And the theory of it was that teachers who are interested in improving can share with each other wherever they are the problems they have the difficulties they have faced. The difficulties they faced and overcome or whatever. Their experience in teaching. That they can write them up in articles and the journal 00:21:00would publish them and that way they'd he shared with teachers everywhere. Some who have had the same problems and solved them or who were still facing them or haven't yet faced them but given an idea, well, I may have that kind of problem sometime, so they read the articles.

JL: How do you see the teaching profession changing with this emphasis on research more than teaching?

DG: More, yes, I think that I once shocked a dean, a former dean of the graduate school, not Dean Hanson and not the present dean although it might have shocked him too. But, it was a dean who is no longer here but he was in my seminar in College Teaching and I remember saying BOLDLY for him to hear that teaching is just as important as research. Most graduate deans wouldn't agree with that and 00:22:00I don't suppose he did. But, I consider it just as important as research. What good is research if people spend their time gathering data and filling monographs, and books, big books and all with reports on research findings and put it on bookshelves and nobody reads it or only the people who are already more or less versed in it. Just to keep up and so forth but it isn't made any real use of in the classroom. This course that I had down at Stanford, under Dr. Eel, he was a great researcher he was a teacher that Mrs. Goode had had once too 00:23:00up at Whitworth College, but, although he was a great researcher he was, I considered quite a good teacher. He wasn't the best teacher I ever had but he was constantly bringing into the classroom the results of research accomplished or underway. He knew lots of research that was under way and he'd tell us about it. It made research live. Some live stuff and related it to what we were studying.

JL: So you think that research and teaching go hand in hand?

DG: They go hand in hand and that's, what I said in the presence, of this, of this dean and may have shocked him. I don't know. I said, "It's necessary teaching. Research without teaching is just barren and fruitless. You we got to 00:24:00have it." That is it's the dissemination of knowledge. Research is the creation or discovery of knowledge and teaching is the dissemination of knowledge. But, unless the knowledge is disseminated well what is it it's just." I wrote a poem called, "Science for Service" in which I indicated that people, if research is to be really useful, people have got to see what it's uses are.

JL: What do you think of the self-learning concept technique of teaching? Do 00:25:00you know what I mean by that? Sort of begun by Dr. Reichart. You know Robert Reichart's Self-Learning Centers?

DG: Oh, yes. Yes. Well, that's good. Of course, it has its limitations. But, it's very, very good. Self-learning and all that. I know Dr. Reichart very, very well. Admire him very much and he's a great teacher himself. Very great teacher. He was a teacher in the graduate school but he originally was a teacher in the English Department and he wrote an account for his department of how he managed the low level students in English. Those that just didn't know how to punctuate and all that and he took them in hand and brought them out of darkness to light. 00:26:00Well, he wrote that paper and he happened to give me a copy of it and I had been in a seminar with him down at University of Oregon one summer and, I guess, that's how he came to give me this so when I went down to Stanford for my last year I had a copy of this article of his and I used it as a basis for a paper that I wrote at Stanford. I quoted many pages of his article but giving him full credit. That sort of thing. I called him Dr. Robert. I called him, "Dr. Robert." Not Dr. Reichart, but Robert is his first name. I called him, "Dr. Robert" and so I, mentioned that to indicate that I know him quite well.

JL: And you agree with his...

DG: Oh, yes. Yes, I do.

JL: What is a teacher's job? I understand you led discussions on that. What do you feel what did you emphasize in your courses that a teacher should be doing? Can you capsulize that?

DG: Well, I was always reluctant to hold forth on the teacher's job because I felt it would be offensive for me to be telling another teacher what his job is. So, I tried really to avoid that. But, I tried to get the other people to describe their own jobs or to describe the teacher's job if they want to do it. But, in a just as a natural function, function of a teacher, I always, I think always, described something like this. The function of a teacher is to activate 00:28:00students to learn. The purpose of teaching the actuality of teaching is activating students to learn because unless there is learning there isn't any teaching. The teacher can be as eloquent as can be and go through, all kinds of antics or raise his voice or drop his voice or whatever he does to emphasize this or that but...

JL: I'm sor...

DG: Activating the student. Thomas Aquinas, he's called St. Thomas Aquinas, medieval scholar, very important in educational history, and in one of his writings he has a description of teaching which I couldn't improve on. He says that as a, let's see, I won't try to quote it exactly but give the essence of the thought. The thought is that just as a gardener growing a plant seeks to supply the stimulation and the nourishment and so forth to make that plant grow. It could be done in terms of what Mrs. Goode did a few days ago in going over her African Violets and cutting out dead stuff and putting in fertilizer and so 00:30:00forth and my they've bloomed forth the way African Violets should look like. Well, that's what teaching is like to get students to develop in the way that they are capable of developing, Just, you can't make an African Violet into a carrot. You can grow a good carrot but the violet will be a violet. The carrot will be a carrot and you're students are going to be different depending on what their capacities are. But, your job is to make each, one learn in terms of his needs and his vision and so forth. Well, you see what a teacher's job is it's he says it's like that.

DG: Who is ill, well, it provides some things maybe like medicines that apparently are deficient and needed by the patient to help him to help nature make him get well faster, but the real recovery is the capacity of that patient to get well by the operation of his or her own constitution. Every illness tends to heal itself and all a doctor can really do is help that process which nature itself starts. Well, that's what a teacher does. St. Thomas Aquinas ends up by saying, "So it is to teach. To aid growth and development." And that's a 00:32:00teacher's job. Well, now that is something quite different from saying that teachers should never sit down and should always stand or should talk and talk well and all those things. What I would say, I always used to do is all I could to discourage lecturing because there are so many evidences of research that show that what students hear they don't remember. What they remember is things they've done. If they've written a term paper they remember that. They remember what they put in it and so forth. Or if they did something in class. I remember to this day way from 1909, no, earlier than that. That is more than 70 00:33:00years I remember once saying the right thing in class. I was called on and I answered. I had a good illustration of something and the teacher said, "Isn't that beautiful or isn't that splendid" or something. I knew that I had scored well because I had the right thing in the right time and right place. (Chuckle) That sort of thing. I performed though. What I remember isn't so much what the teacher said as that what he did was make me feel that I had performed well and so on. What student does is what he learns. Well, that's part of my doctrine that I have emphasized every way I could think of.

JL: I see. What support did Dr. Strand have the support of the faculty and the administration as a president?

DG: Quite good.

JL: As Kerr did?

DG: Yes.

JL: Have the same...

DG: Yes, I think he did. He was very different, of course, from President Kerr. A fault of Dr. Strand, I think he probably realized himself was that he didn't have help enough. When his successor came into office he immediately enlisted five or six assistants. The only one of that sort, I believe, that Dr. Strand enlisted was Dean Lemon as Dean of Administration. He did, he was the one who put Dean Lemon in that post but Dr. Jensen who followed Dr. Strand he had a flock of assistants and he said, I remember him saying once that, "He had never had known an institution that was so lacking in administrative facilities."

JL: Why didn't Dr. Strand have more help?

DG: I don't know. He wasn't used to it and it was war time. Money was all going to war. You know, to the war and all that and so he overworked himself. He should have had more help but Dean Lemon was a great asset for him. I don't know what he'd have done without him.

JL: I know that you became the head of the World War II history project. What did that entail?

DG: Who did?

JL: You did.

DG: Hmmm.

JL: (Chuckle) you don't remember? I read in the archives that you that they 00:36:00had asked you to become the head of this World War II history project. To gather information about men that participated in the war.

DG: Yes, I think dimly I remember it. It doesn't that's something among many things that I have done that has kind of faded away. I guess that I suppose it - they have it in the archives. Probably?

JL: Well, what I really want to know is what effect did the war have on the campus? What did you find out?

DG: I'd have to refresh my memory on that.

JL: Well, maybe you...

DG: Because I don't doubt that it would come back quite readily. I had, well, I won't say I'd completely forgotten it because now that you mention it I think I remember doing...

JL: Well, maybe that's not so significant as what you remember about the war 00:37:00years on campus. What changes did you see?

DG: Well, I had been president of Phi Kappa Phi before, just before, the war started. It was the year 1938 '39 and then I went down to Stanford for '39 and '40. I was on leave that year. And then, of course, the war was already starting in Europe. I remember while I was at Stanford that there was a young man from Vienna who had escaped. Forlornly, you know, because Austria had been taken over by Hitler and he was glad to get out. But, he was longing for home. He was homesick and all. I remember that, but we weren't in the war yet, but during the war time was partly an aftermath for me of my experience as President of Phi 00:38:00Kappa Phi because during that time that year when I was President of Phi Kappa Phi we established The Biology Colloquium, I'm credited with being the founder of The Biology Colloquium. I could show you up in my study a barometer that they gave me with an inscription on that. Well, that's from Phi Kappa Phi. But, that was not all. We were having The Biology Colloquium excepting that one year after the war started we omitted it because the (Thud noise) travel conditions were (she just dropped her cane.)

JL: Ohh.

DG: The travel conditions were had and they had the slogan to ask yourself. Is. this trip necessary? That sort of thing and so we just decided that we couldn't have a Biology Colloquium because it was supposed to be open to people from a wide range. Inter-state. Lots of states. All of the states, west of the Mississippi for example, but we were, excepting for that one. Year we were having The Biology Colloquium and I was active in it even though I am not a biologist. I worked to keep it going. It's still going. It had a colloquium just this year. But, when the war really started here I talked to quite a bit about that in terms of the training programs on the campus and then the relations between Corvallis and Camp Adair, the Naval Hospital out at Adair and the air 00:40:00field down south of town that was for the marines.

JL: Yes.

DG: And then these programs on campus which were partly military and partly academic, but meanwhile there were girls on the campus, I guess, more or less as usual and I imagine that girl's dormitories and sororities operated pretty well but the men's dormitories and fraternities were practically all taken over for men in uniform carrying on this duel program of military and academic and, as I 00:41:00said last time, that we had a graduation exercise at the end of each quarter because there would be men who had finished their course and would be going into active duty and they would get their degrees. Well, on the campus a number of things took place, of course. I suppose the functions of the Dean of Men were considerable because there were lots of men on the campus. The Dean of Women was Buena Maris whose husband Homer Maris wrote the Alma Mater. Within a Veil of Western Mountains. He was the author of that long before hut he was dead and she had come here, I guess, to do graduate work and she became Dean of Women but 00:42:00then when they established up at Hanford and up in the area there near Pasco and that other place. There are three towns up there together and they had atomic or nuclear research going on there. Secret. Federal and they needed there were there was a program there that involved women as well as men and they needed a counselor for these women because the women were kind of at sea and separated from their usual environments and so on. I don't know just what Mrs. Maris's 00:43:00function was but they just took her from us and made her the counselor for the women up at Hanford. A very important and secret function.

She never, I don't think, disclosed to us details of what her duties were up there but she was dealing with people who were dealing with this secret research Well, that was one thing that the war influenced everything. Curtailed something and but particularly slanted the curriculum in terms of what was needed in prosecuting the war. I don't know that I remember anything very concrete. It might come back to me but I know that they were busy years. Of course, during 00:44:00that time one thing that deserves mention that relates to President Strand too. In 1942 was when President Strand had come here and entered upon the duties of his office. It was decided up to that time there had always been some kind of an inauguration although Dr. Peavy was never inaugurated as president in any elaborate or formal way. They may have had some little ceremony but...

JL: Why is that?

DG: Well, it was (Pause) depression, you know when Dr. Peavy became president. It was depression and then with World War II such things began to go into disuse because people were absorbed with the war and this travel business, Is this trip 00:45:00necessary? That sort of thing but we decided that on October 27, 1943 which was the 75th anniversary of the act of the legislature which designated Corvallis College as the recipient of the funds under the Morrel Act by which it became a land grant institution, 75th anniversary. So, we decided that that ought to be celebrated and it was decided too that President Strand's inauguration should be combined with that. So, we had a celebration that included the inauguration of a 00:46:00president and also a celebration of the. 75th anniversary of the college which had changed its seal. I might as well put this in. Up to a certain time the seal of Oregon Agricultural College and later of Oregon State College, I guess, had carried the date 1885 because that was the year when the college became wholly state. And the years, from 1860, well, 1868 when this act this legislative designation occurred. It had been partly state and partly church. The Methodist Episcopal Church 6outh had established Corvallis College and operated it. A 00:47:00church related college and it went on. It was a liberal arts college and it went on even after 1868 when the legislature designated this Corvallis College as the recipient of the land grant funds but it was 1863 that the state began to give state money for the operation of the college. It was still being operated by the church but it began to be partly state.

Well, I was the one that thought that it was appropriate that we indicate that 00:48:00date as the significant date for Oregon Agricultural College rather than 1885 when it became wholly state because here were all of these years even before 1868 Corvallis College had existed and from 1868 to 1885 which was quite a spell it had been partly state but partly church, well, I suggested that we have 1868 as the date of the founding of state. State College it was beginning to be called Oregon State College and as a state college it really began 1868. Well, I suggested that to Mr. Reed, E.T. Reed, the man who had brought me to Oregon I had been his student. He brought me here and established me in his office as an 00:49:00assistant and I suggested it to him. Well, Mr. Reed was in very close touch always with President Kerr and he immediately brought this up with Dr. Kerr and Dr. Kerr took it up with the Board of Regents and they changed the seal.

JL: Hmmm. Due to you.

DG: I really was. It's not a matter of record before but I'm perfectly willing to have that in the record because it is true. Well, 1943 then was the 75th Anniversary of this state college business. I was appointed chairman of the committee.

JL: Well, when was it changed? When was the seal changed?

DG: It was changed, well, I could find that out easily, but you could find it out looking in any of the official publications. See the state's seal of Oregon State.

JL: O.K.

DG: Somewhere along there it became not 1885 but 1868. It was in the 20's. Sometime in the 20's. All right I was named chairman of the committee for this inauguration and 75th anniversary. The people on the committee were mostly deans. The Dean of Engineering, The Dean of Home Economics and a number of others and the main one in news service was John Burtner. He was on that committee. He was not a dean but he looked after the publicity and the 00:51:00celebration was on what we call Charter Day October 27, 1943 and at that there was a convocation in the Men's Gymnasium and the speaker was the President of the University of Idaho another land grant institution. And a speaker was Mrs. Sackett a member of The State Board of Higher Education, the lady after whom Sackett Hall is named. Some of the titles of the program were taken from The Oregon State Creed and, I think, her theme was The Dreams of Yesterday, let's 00:52:00see, what is the line in the creed. The Dreams of Yesterday isn't all of it, but anyway that was her she went back to some of the past and someone else spoke on the future. The magnificent tomorrow that sort of thing. And there was a ceremony conducted by the chancellor inaugurating and installing Dr. Strand as president. It was simple but we didn't invite people from other institutions so on which ordinarily would have been done but because it was war time we didn't 00:53:00do it. But, one thing we had was a procession representing the 75 years. Alumni, who had graduated in the various more recent years like 1943, 1942 and 1941 and all as far back as we could get people. We had real alumni carrying banners with the dates. 1943, 1942 and so on, but the earlier years like '68 and '69 and '70 I suppose there wasn't anyone alive or available. But we enlisted other alumni, younger alumni, to carry those banners so we had a procession in academic robes 00:54:00of the 75 years who marched up and took places in the front rows.

JL: Hmmm.

DG: And then there were honorary degrees conferred. Dr. Kerr, the chancellor, received an honorary degree and E.T. Reed received an honorary doctor of literature and there was a third. There were three honorary degrees conferred and Mr. Reed was there but he was jaundiced. His skin was colored a yellow. He was jaundiced at the time. He was ill and this had just happened, unfortunately, that he was in such a ghastly condition. But he was able to be there and 00:55:00receive that honorary degree. I recommended it. I recommended the degree. I remember this much that I wrote to Dr. Kerr the chancellor emeritus asking or suggesting that he recommend Mr. Reed for an honorary degree and Dr. Kerr replied I not only favor it but I recommend strongly. "Or something and he did. Dr. Kerr was one of the ones who recommended Dr. Reed as he became doctor for this honorary degree.

JL: He must have been very honored.

DG: I'm very proud and happy to have done that because although it was just some people have an inordinate pride delight maybe in getting an honorary degree although I know if I received one it would not be in anything like that. It would almost embarrass me because it would remind me of the fact that I should have earned a degree. I almost did and I didn't quite do it. But...

JL: Why didn't you finish.

DG: ...but, but, I think it pleased him. I think it pleased him very much and I'm glad that it did. I'm not sure it would have pleased me to get one but, of course, I'm not going to get one and I don't even want an honorary degree. Never have but, I think, Mr. Reed did appreciate it and I had great satisfaction in having stirred it up. I recommended it myself and got Dr. Kerr to and others.

I think Dr. Verne who was secretary of The State Board, I think he recommended it too. It was well recommended and, to me, one of the delights of the occasion. That was quite, a brilliant day this charter day. They revived The Oregon Academy of Science for example on this campus on that day. It had gone into a kind of an inactive period and they dug it out of its, grave and revived it and all and set it going again.

JL: Hmmm. What significant decisions did Dr. Strand make?

DG: Significance?

JL: Decisions.

DG: Well, he established this journal. (Chuckle) He established the journal Improving College and University Teaching, which I, of course, put at the top. He appointed Dr. Hanson as Dean of the Graduate School. He really did a number of things but without refreshing my memory, I'm not able to do justice to it.

JL: That's all right.

DG: Just these things. A few things come before me.

JL: After the war what changed on campus?

DG: Well, of course, enrollments increased because many men who had been in the service came back. Their education had been interrupted they came back to resume their studies so there were large student bodies and the faculty was made 00:59:00larger. Necessarily. Buildings.

JL: What about the feeling?

DG: Feeling? Oh, oh, of course, great relief. Great relief because of the menace of Hitler. Hitler aspired not only to rule Europe but ultimately dominate the world. He had crazy ideas. Some people thought he was crazy. And I don't know maybe he was but some of his ideas certainly were crazy and they were terrifying because he was planning to dominate Europe just as, okay, just as Alexander had dominated Europe and Caesar had dominated Europe and all. That idea of conquest and Napoleon. All of that was part of his craziness. And he intended to. He took 01:00:00over Austria, occupied Belgium and occupied the Netherlands; occupied Norway and so forth, and France, and Italy and he intended to dominate Europe... We'd have had I don't know whether we'd have had an United States of Europe. We'd have had an empire of Europe and Hitler would have been the emperor. So we were relieved of that. Hitler had not only been conqueror but he had died.

JL: So a great sense of relief.

DG: Oh, yes.

JL: And at this time you were the head of the publications.

DG: Yes. During that time I got the feeling we were developing the Oregon State University Press although there was the printing department was called The College Press and that was a kind of a block to getting the name Oregon State College Press, you see, because, College Press meant the printing department. But, we were developing a press, nevertheless. We had a Faculty Publications Committee of which Dr. Earl Gilbert, head of chemistry, was the chairman. There were about five or six on the committee and I was, as editor, I was secretary of that committee and we were already publishing books. We published a book called 01:02:00Birds of Oregon and we published a book on the certain group of plants in China and that partly required the use of Chinese characters and it ended up that that had to be printed in Tokyo and so I was editor of a book that was printed in Tokyo.

We said Oregon State Monographs. We didn't want to say Oregon State College Monographs because we felt already that the institution should be called university and we didn't want to do anything to make current, any more current 01:03:00than necessary the expression Oregon State College but we couldn't use the name university because it wasn't official. But, we had these Oregon State Monographs. They are now Oregon State University Monographs. I suppose they are still being published and the we wanted to establish the Oregon State University Press. Well, I guess I don't know just when it was, let's see, when did Dr. Munford become director of publications. What I started to say a while ago was I felt that the title director was more appropriate than the title head of the 01:04:00office of publications. It was more than the head of an office and it was a director of university publications that although we didn't use the word university I recommended that office be called that the position be called "Director of publications."

JL: Well, then why...

DG: That was approved and I became director of publications.

JL: You started your journal teaching...

DG: 1953.

JL: ...in 1953. How did you have enough time to edit this journal plus do your job?

DG: Well, I considered it part of my job.

JL: I see.

DG: But, then I had been brought up on a hard working regime. Back in the 20's and in the 30's we were shorthanded, we never had a staff equal to our needs, and so we always whenever necessary put in extra time and so I was used to putting in extra time not appearing at eight in the morning and clicking out promptly at five P.M. Nothing like that. I didn't always necessarily get there after I be-, came director but I was often at meetings that kept me much after five and took my time evenings and Saturdays' and so forth. We weren't time-servers though in those days and so I had time because I considered it part of my job.

JL: That's changed hasn't it? Why do you think it has?

DG: Oh, it's changed very much and not all bad but I intended to resist the introduction of civil service on the campus. That came on while I was director of publications so I could just as well speak of that now. They proposed that it was state centered. All people who were not academic people but in the pay of the state were supposed to get into civil service and they worked out a scheme for civil service on the campus, and they invaded the publications office. They decided that some of our staff, small as it was, should be civil service not academic. Up to that time they had a rank an academic rank like assistant 01:07:00professor even though they weren't assistant professors. But, we had two assistant professors and I had been associate professor and then I became full professor although my main job was editor rather than professor of anything. But, they worked out a scheme by which the director of publications and one member of his staff would have academic rank and the others would all have civil service status called classified.

Well, of course, I resisted that because I felt that our people needed to work 01:08:00with academic people and have contacts with them and so on and we were losing something. But, anyway that's what we got. We got the director and one assistant and then they had a third position in the office that could remain assistant professor as long as the incumbent was there but when he was replaced it would become classified. Well, almost immediately we lost that man. He was in a position that he felt was going to be terminated under what he called a "grandfather clause" and so he got another position on campus. He was one of our very best people but we lost him. I won't go into that, but anyway now the office of The University Publications is composed of a director who has academic rank and an assistant director who has academic rank as was provided. All the 01:09:00others are classified and, of course, all is quite a company nowadays. It used to be only a couple or three people but the result is that those people in the civil service classification have they are on a time basis. They get paid only for the time they put in. So they keep a record of their time and they have many privileges. They, well sick leave once a month. At least women are allowed a day off. It used to be at least. Once a month and they can have some sick leave and overtime. If the overtime is authorized, they can have overtime and I guess 01:10:00under some conditions they can get extra pay for overtime. I'm not sure. But, anyway they have holidays, designated holidays and so forth. They have many, many privileges that are assured to them which when people in our office didn't have classification they had kind of vague privileges and all. They have vacation privileges in the civil service too.

So, it is a good thing but it has I'd like to put this off the record. I don't 01:11:00want to comment on it...I just said you can remember. But, we used to put in extra time whenever necessary and I worked all night many times when we had a report years when the legislature would meet there was always something that JUST HAD TO BE GOT OUT to be put in the hands of the legislatures as soon as they sat down in their places. Well, we would work probably perhaps of a president's report it would be I many times worked all night. I remember going home after daylight passing their students on way to their eight o'clock classes. I was going home after having worked all night. Not lying around on a desk asleep. SITTING at a desk AT WORK and all. We did lots of that and we would work on holidays and if we were called out of town we'd work and so forth. Do 01:12:00the work we needed to do.

Dr. Kerr was very reasonable and appreciative but he was quite demanding in terms of work. If he had to have something done, why, he had to have it done that's all and we just did it and so we weren't time-servers and in a sense even thought I knew that the general regulations of civil service were going on all around me and they were right in our own office we just made the best of it and were glad of the benefits but nobody works, I don't think, now like we used to work.