University Without Walls Research Collaborative

Quinsig was a direct stepping stone to UWW, though I didn’t know it then.  I was busy learning two jobs that were brand new to me, applying what skills I had while learning new ones.  I had bookkeeping and auditing skills, which kept me out of trouble and gave me credibility with the Administration.  I had a sense of humor and could talk with most anybody about most anything, which gave me credibility with the students. But having little experience, I knew almost nothing about organizations and leadership.  Turned out, it was my job to know them.

The new Dean of Students had a mind to start over again in Student Activities, and so he had me work with students to rewrite (for the Senate’s approval and his) the entire Student Association By-Laws, now to include in their purview the student programming organizations, student governance, and intramural sports, all of which I advised directly – along with the clubs, the student newspaper, and intercollegiate sports, which all had their own faculty advisers, but whose budgets the Student Senate funded and I supervised.

As the new President and Dean set about getting rid of more second tier administrators (the Director of Admissions was soon gone as well), Rich saw an opportunity for reorganizing there, as well. So he set me to interviewing his directors and rewriting the mission/descriptions for each area and department as well as for the entire Student Affairs area. This was my introduction to the field of Higher Education Research, Policy, and Administration; years later, I was to receive my EdD in it through the UMass School of Ed.  I learned to write vertically integrated mission statements and program goals, and work up both classic and matrix organizational charts. I grew expert at putting things in neatly labeled boxes, arranged just so.  The missions and descriptions I wrote for Student Activities and Student Affairs became the basic content for the new QCC Student Handbook, which became The Footbook, which I’ll get back to later.

As I was writing and rewriting mission statements, the Dean further engaged me in a re-thinking of the mission of Student Activities itself and how it fit with the mission of Student Affairs and the College as a whole, which is when he truly became my first mentor.  He described two ways of thinking about Student Affairs, the traditional, reactive “service” model and the re-envisioned, proactive (first time I heard that word) “student development” model. As illustration, he mentioned the outgoing Director of Financial Aid, who habitually sat in his office reading the paper till a student came knocking on his door with some Finaid problem his secretary couldn’t solve. I had a problem with his attitude myself, as did students. Rich saw it as simply the old school and outmoded “service” model: reactive, patronizing, and ineffective. “You need us, we’ll see what we can do.” Like the custodial staff.

Rather than sit there, he said, Finaid should be getting the word out that financial aid is available for working adults and that there are many scholarships out there no one’s even applying for. They should be running workshops to help students fill out and submit the forms. They should be reminding them of the deadlines to apply. They should be reaching out, he said, not waiting for students to reach them, and making sure they had the tools to succeed. “That’s the “student development” model”.  He said that Student Affairs as a whole needed to switch from the service model to the student development model to align itself with the mission of the College, which is educational.  And there was the Big Picture. This was philosophy, educational philosophy, applied, the way I like it; I’d hungered for a way to make comprehensive sense of this new environment beyond just the ideas I had for it.  Now it clicked.

Student Activities, he continued, was traditionally geared to providing “bread and circuses” (beer-blasts and baseball, at QCC) to divert and pacify restive, residence hall students.  Thanks to its commuting students, that’s not a community college problem, Rich pointed out. But the model was carried over anyway in most community colleges.  Student Activities was funded to provide “extra-curricular” activities and entertainments, called that because they were outside the instructional program of the school, serving a different purpose vaguely described as “school spirit” and “healthy outlets”. But it’s mostly give them what they want: the service model.  Only, if you asked students what they wanted from their student activities fee, most would have said they wanted their money back.  Rich was right: they didn’t need entertainment. So why have Student Activities?

Because there’s the extra-curriculum, Rich said, and then there’s the co-curriculum, which falls under the educative mission of the institution, where all of Student Activities should be.  The student newspaper, which was advised by the prof who taught our Journalism classes, was a good example of a co-curricular activity.  It was a way for students to learn journalism by doing it – experiential learning.  And that was the student development model, emphasizing activities that developed student skills and empowerment, ideally in collaboration with the classroom. I was right with him on all that, but the dirty little secret of Student Activities was that our most popular activity was beer blasts. They seemed as fundamental to our Activities program as the dirt beneath our feet and about as uplifting. “So what about beer blasts,” I asked him? With just the trace of a smile, he said “we need to help students learn to drink responsibly.”  Could he possibly mean that? How?  I was wide-eyed by then and my head was buzzing.

He liked my ideas for turning Student Activities into a job-training program, but encouraged me to focus on developing students’ leadership abilities and their understanding of group dynamics, as that’s what they’d be doing in Student Activities, mostly – generic skills which all the student leaders could stand to learn. And he said I should get more faculty involved. He gave me a book to read by Terry O’Banion, for many years the President of the League for Innovation in the Community College and one of its foremost thinkers. Later, he helped me develop and deliver “Leadership Overnight” workshops, with exercises I’m still drawing on, and even an overnight personal growth workshop.

While these did help students become more aware of how they worked with and related to others, what they did most was bond the student leaders. They came to understand what their roles were in the grand scheme of Student Activities and how they could work together on major events, like Spring Arts Week, and support one another.  And so they became part of something bigger than just their own organization or club. The Student Association became more than an organizational abstraction; it became something to be part of, as its parts, its member organizations, learned to work together and their leaders became friends.

And the student leaders became more effective as they went along if only because they stuck with it – they were developing! And so we managed to make Student Activities into a solid co-curricular program by keeping the fun in it.  Only now the fun was in the organizing, in the social process, the team effort, as well as in the product at the end – the entertainment.

And so it grew.  Many older students started getting involved.  They’d see me in the hall or at an event, come over and ask “why don’t you ever do this?” And I’d say “Great idea – why don’t you help make it happen?”   They were vets, they were displaced homemakers, they were on MassRehab – they were lots of things, but they were generally capable adults, often better at organizing and leading than I was. They were often older than me too, so I listened respectfully. They were tired of rock-drenched beer blasts aimed at the younger students, tired of paying that fee for nothing, and wanted to do things more worth their while – they wanted more varieties of music and more films, they wanted someone invited in to talk about domestic violence, they wanted us to organize a long weekend trip to Montreal.  I found I had a skill for recruiting folks to do things they already wanted to do – I was easily enthused by others’ energy and ideas, and amplified them.  We wound up doing all these things, and each got new folks involved.

Students saw me as a peer because of my age, more their subordinate than boss: since they were paying the fees and volunteering their time, the least I could do was support them. They saw that I listened, that I respected them, and that they could trust me.  I’d developed a style of servant leadership which enabled me to get out of their way and encouraged them to exercise their powers.  I didn’t parade my authority and expertise about; I projected rather an air of good intentions overwhelmed, of someone in a bit over his head, which I was.  They could see I needed help, and so they gave it – because I was just trying to help them, after all.  I made friends with everyone.  Somewhere in all that welter of people and groups, I’d quite forgotten the shyness I’d found so debilitating in my youth.

I’d come into Student Activities with a developmental, experiential educational approach that had grown into a philosophy of higher education that went beyond the classroom and would carry me into UWW.  It was about giving students the tools to learn to do for themselves – it was about empowerment.  But I’d learned that it was students coming together that truly released their power – and mine.  And coming together required not just numbers in proximity but structure. We had a structure to work with now that gave us a unity of purpose and a common identity underneath all the disparate activities. We were building a student community.

This was a new experience for me, as I’d been an outsider growing up.  I felt a sense of belonging for the first time in my life, satisfying a hunger I didn’t know I had as an only child with no extended family near, a latchkey kid growing up a goyim in a solidly Jewish neighborhood.  All those lessons about education, organization, and leadership stayed with me and stood me well; but it was my new understanding of the strength in community that most intrigued me because it was so unexpected. It was to become the pivot on which my ideas about education would next turn. My ideas were growing and so was I, along with my program. I thought maybe I’d found my niche in life here at Quinsig. I thought less about my delusions of destiny with UWW. My calling had led me here, and that was enough.

About 3 months after I began at Quinsig, all the acting top administrators were replaced at once by a “Management Team” assembled by the Legislature and the governing council of the community colleges, presumably.  Former Speaker of the House, current Prez of Holyoke CC, David Bartley was now our acting President and the other acting Deans and top administrators, all drawn from other Mass. Community Colleges, were presumably a crack team of apparatchiks.  I remember being interviewed about decisions my Dean had made and what I knew about them.  I knew nothing.

Within a couple weeks, the acting Dean of Students requested some time to present a proposal to the Student Senate at their meeting that evening.  Without any prior preparation, he presented us with what he made sound like a fait accompli: we were being “relieved” of our ownership of the Cafeteria and Bookstore.  The money we had put in was already returned to us in our enjoyment of those facilities, and they barely broke even anyway.  So they’d take them off our hands. Would the Senate please vote to approve the transfer?

I sat there quietly.  The student officer sitting next to me (Doug Roberts, our representative to the Mass. Community College Council) asked me under his breath if I smelled a rat. I nodded.  Doug, whom I’m still friends with, then asked if all the administrators besides me would leave the room. I was vaguely aware of the risk I was running by now; but these were my employers, and my friends. I certainly didn’t want to go out in the hallway. So  I stayed.  We talked and framed a bargaining strategy on the spot.  The Senate called the administrators back in and voted the offer down.

The next day, Bartley called me into his office, where the acting Dean of Students was already seated.  Bartley’s signature raccoon coat hung on the wall; his manner was that of a busy and important man.  When he turned to me finally, he asked simply, “Who do you think you work for?” I answered without hesitation, “the Student Senate on behalf of the Student Association.”  He replied, in the oily expression I’ve heard more than once since, “We all work for the students. Do you know who signs your check?”  In fact, it had never registered with me who actually stamped his signature on my check. My quizzical expression said it all. “The Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signs your check,” he said.  “And if you forget it again, he won’t.”  A quick crocodile smile, and I was dismissed. But I still had my job.

A knot of Student Senators was in my office waiting on my return.  I told them what had happened. And I told them to “dig in” – just don’t say I said so.  We figured they couldn’t afford to make a big issue out of this, that they needed our buy-in because of the press nosing around.  To make a long story short: we walked away with $100,000 – more than all the Student Activities Funds we collected in a year. And I was off the Student Association payroll (and so were two other activities directors in the Mass community college system; a variety of reforms around the management of trust funds were instituted across the system to clarify ownership and accountability – the Wild West days in the community colleges were coming to an end).

The irony was, we used our buyout for capital improvements!  Mostly. We took over the whole basement floor of the Admin Building, with my new office anchoring one end and the Nursing Office the other.  The Handicapped Office and the Campus Ministry were in between, along with new, nicely furnished offices for the Student Senate and the student newspaper, along with a large student lounge complete with furniture. There was an old basketball court in the basement, for private parties. My new office doubled as a Mini-Theater, as it was about 20’ x 40’ of very open space with two doors.  My desk and my secretary’s desk were in the corners at one end; two round meeting tables occupied the far corners with a pull-down movie screen between them.

There were typically a half dozen to a dozen students in there at any one time, either meeting or just hanging out, more if we were showing film shorts after work. The additional spaces gave a vibrant new focus to what was the most heavily trafficked corridor on campus, leading to the cafeteria. It was now entirely for Student Association supported service providers and organizations. And we still had enough cash, I hoped, for a campus radio station!

Well, that idea got squelched.  But we had a lot to show for our brass. We didn’t have our own building, but we’d established our place. We were building an underground empire. I still had my job – I was even getting benefits – and the State was paying, so we had more to spend.  We were on a roll. And there was no question where mine and the students’ loyalties lay – we had each other’s backs. We were one.

I understand now that I had stumbled into what’s called a “servant-leadership” role, which in effect, inverts the organizational pyramid and softens professional, hierarchical boundaries. I led the students only so long as I served them and not myself. Made sense to me – whoever signed my check, I still worked for them. It’s a role, an approach to working with students, individually and together, that I carried over completely to UWW.  And so long as I facilitated things, more students got involved. They brought friends and soon they all became friends. And we were soon to realize the power that comes with a united front and a whiff of success…

Someone should write more comprehensively than I can here about life in the Massachusetts community college system back then. Their history only goes back to 1960 but they’ve come a long way, as all of higher ed has since the business model took over in the ‘80s.  UWW at UMass allied itself with the community colleges from the start; being a degree completion program, community college students are still an important demographic for UWW.  And then there was the Massachusetts Transfer Compact which guaranteed any student who  met its requirements admission to UMass with all gen ed’s completed. That was our sweet spot, students who just needed to design and complete their major to complete their degrees. We had an office and even joint programs at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) as well as at QCC, for a time.  A third of my UWW advisees in the Worcester “cluster” were from QCC. As I was.

I came to QCC in the wake of well publicized “scandals” around the Administration’s use of Student Activities Funds for capital projects (and some Presidential misuse of the grounds crew for home improvements). The misuse of Activities funds were only scandalous in hindsight.  When conceived they seemed plausibly seductive agreements between consenting adults. The Dean of Students, who had for some years before me (and my short-lived, part-time predecessor) done the Student Activities job himself, sweet talked the Student Senate into appropriating large outlays of Activities Fee funds for capital expenditures, like setting up the Print Shop, the Bookstore, and the Cafeteria at QCC — and then left the Student Association/Senate technically in charge of them (he was in charge of the Student Senate at the time, so that seemed to work).  And Dave Dickman was there to keep an eye on things.  I thought that was bold but defensible, if the legislature wasn’t going to fund those operations directly.  It was the kind of thing I might have done.  But the Commonwealth wanted clear title – and the revenue those operations generated – reassigned to the College.  The local paper did their best to make a scandal out of this, and it was a challenge when I got there to avoid talking to reporters.

There was also concern about the size of the Student Activities payroll. Besides myself and my secretary, the Student Activities Fund paid for the Nursing Office, a lawyer on retainer, a Handicapped Services Coordinator, and a Campus Minister. Today, I’m most surprised that student health services were funded by student fees; then I was more surprised at the Campus Minister, which seemed to me a clear misuse of public funds for sectarian purposes.  But this was Massachusetts, and no one seemed much concerned about that.

Though I had only the foggiest idea of the intricacy of these issues when I arrived at QCC, I could see their damage.  The President was gone before I got there, and the Deans followed, one by one (mine was the last).  At my first QCC Commencement, after I’d been there nine months, they lined all us administrators up to march in order of our years of tenure.  I was number 4.

While I had a hard time following the nuances of what you could and couldn’t do with Student Activities Funds, what was immediately apparent to me was the cronyism and nepotism pervading the college from top to bottom. The community colleges were havens for political patronage back then.  I remember in UWW not too many years later, reviewing a degree plan from State Rep. Nick Buglione, who set as the career goal for his bachelors degree a presidential posting at one of the Community Colleges when he retired.  This offended me a bit then, but it wasn’t a pipe-dream: former Speaker David Bartley was President at Holyoke CC and other presidents were frankly chosen for their political connections, too.  This is Massachusetts we’re talking about.  I mention Rep. Buglione’s name, because years later, his daughter Suzanne and I became close colleagues and friends, and we laughed about it.  The Community College system has become much more professionalized now.  Advanced degrees are required for top positions now.  But it was all very much a matter of who you knew back then.

My first week at QCC, a senior secretary (while coffee-breaking with mine), kept asking who got me the job.  She herself owed her job to some political poobah in Clinton who shared her last name.  She wasn’t satisfied till I told her that my mother-in-law in Shrewsbury had seen the add in the paper. Then she had me pegged.  The fact that my in-laws had only moved to Shrewsbury two years before we did and didn’t know anyone really, didn’t faze her take at all.  But she helped me realize that I got the job precisely because I was an inexperienced outsider, unconnected to anyone, and had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I never thought to ask how many others had been interviewed, or withdrew from consideration before me.  I was beginning to wonder if there were any others…

Before getting back to my story, I’d like to stay a while with the UWWs at Goddard and Franconia. Both had interesting denouements as they confronted the hard economic times from in the late 70s.  Neither story is addressed in the documents we have archived so far. They should be.  Goddard in particular, was one of the leading UWWs, thanks to founding President, Tim Pitkin, a student of John Dewey.

Goddard, according to its website was “one of the first colleges to include adult learning in its charter, the first to develop a low-residency model for higher education, and the first to offer residential programs for single parents receiving public assistance”.  According to Wikipedia: For its first 21 years of operation” [up till 1959, when it finally received accreditation], “especially noted were Goddard’s use of discussion as the basic method in classroom teaching; its emphasis on the whole lives of students in determining personal curricula; its incorporation of practical work into the life of every student; and its development of the college as a self-governing learning community in which everyone had a voice.”

Goddard had gained a national reputation by the 70’s as an alternative college with a strong focus on the arts. They’ve had many notable graduates, from play-writer David Mamet and jazz musician Archie Shepp, to actor William Macy and convicted (framed?) cop-killer, journalist and activist, Mumia Abu Jamal. And so the hard times Goddard fell on after Pitkin’s retirement occasionally made the news. They lost accreditation for a time; back in ’81, they sold some of their off-campus undergrad programs to Norwich College and Lesley College (now Universities both). This is probably when Goddard stopped calling themselves a UWW (a search of Goddard’s current website finds no mention of the name). But they did get themselves together again as a low-residency grad and undergrad college, offering individualized degrees and credit for prior learning. They remain a proudly “progressive” institution.

Ironically perhaps, Norwich College in Vermont, to which Goddard sold its four non-traditional undergrad programs, is the oldest military academy in the country. But they couldn’t afford to rest on their laurels in hard times either. They merged with Vermont College in 1972, then took on Goddard’s non-traditional degree programs in 1981 – and then sold them all off to Union Institute and University in 2001, which now makes its home on the old Vermont College campus. Union Institute was the graduate arm of the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities – UWW’s original grad school. But that’s another story…

Though only passing through, UWW/Goddard seems to have left traces of itself on Norwich College’s website even today, as it speaks of “student centered education” and “credit for prior learning”. There are no portfolios and no individualized degrees, so the rhetoric is empty; but Norwich now operates an extensive online degree completion program at the undergrad level. Its grad degrees are entirely online.

Lesley University took over Goddard’s weekend learning program, I recall. My first instructor/adviser partner in UWW’s Worcester center, Midge Farrell, left UWW to teach in that program (and write historical bodice rippers under a pseudonym).  Lesley still offers individualized degrees and credit for prior learning, but they’ve never claimed to be a UWW.

Franconia College’s post-history had its lasting ripples as well. When it finally closed in ’78, Ira Goldenberg and his Academic Dean David Osher took Franconia’s Regional External Degree (FRED) program to New Hampshire College. Two years later, it became the College’s School for Human Services, with Ira its first dean, offering a one weekend per month undergrad degree for adults working in the human services field. The FRED Program developed branch locations in Manchester, NH; New Haven, CT; Springfield, MA; Littleton, NH; Roxbury, MA; St. Johnsbury, VT; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Gothenburg, Sweden(!) And in 1988, the FRED Program (with David but without Ira) moved on to Springfield College, which to this day offers weekend classes and credit for prior learning.

Goddard and Franconia Colleges and the colleges influenced by them are good examples of why a fuller history of UWW and its influence would be so valuable in understanding the changing landscape of higher education in the years since the movement peaked. I only wish I had saved those old catalogs and recruiting brochures from Goddard and Franconia. Goddard College does maintain an archive, thankfully. Franconia has only some web pages maintained by former staff and alums that I’ve found so far, but they’re a start.

Back to my own story…

Quinsigamond Community College

When I arrived at Quinsigamond Community College for my interview, again there were warning signs: the 3 campus buildings seemed rundown and aging, even the newest; the commuting students seemed a bit run down and aging too, many of them older than me – very different from the coddled, bright muddled kids I met at Goddard and Franconia; it was dawning on me how little I knew about community colleges.  This one in particular:  I soon found out that the College was in the midst of a Legislative investigation for financial improprieties – many of them centered on abuse of the Student Activity Fund I would be in charge of.

What should have been more worrisome was that my interview didn’t include the Dean I’d be reporting to. In fact, it included only one professional staff member, Dave Dickman, the bookkeeper for the Student Activities fund, who couldn’t have been more than 4’ tall and looked like a slightly misshapened elf in a wheelchair. I’d never seen anyone with birth defects before in person.

As I walked into the room he introduced himself and extended a long, delicate hand to welcome me.  I didn’t grow up in NYC for nothing. Without hesitation, I took it, smiled and said hello and thank you. I told him I’d been trained in bookkeeping myself as a State Bank Examiner trainee and appreciated him being there – and thus passed my first test, it turned out.  QCC was the only wheelchair accessible college in Worcester at the time, and it was looking to be a leader in working with that population.  I later learned I’d have a Handicapped Coordinator reporting to me who was quadriplegic.  Had I shown discomfort on meeting Dave, or talked slowly and loudly as if he were deaf, or looked away from him towards the “normals” in the room, I doubt I’d have been called back. I was to learn how often that stuff happens to folks who are differently abled.  And I would help them organize.

I hit it off with the members of the Student Senate who were the rest of my interviewers. They were all about my age, and the atmosphere was informal.  A few days later, they invited me back to offer me the job.  They asked a couple more questions and then began telling me all that was going on.  It was bit like the interview at Franconia, only they were selling me on them instead of the other way around, and they were doing it by being upfront and genuine.  Things were in serious disarray, they told me, and nothing was happening – no programming committees, no events, and only nominal communication with the Administration.  They needed leadership, they said – someone to work for them. I would be paid out of Student Activities funds, so I would work for the Student Association, which they represented.  [“Danger, Will Robinson! Danger”] All I heard was, they wanted me.

“Well, sure”, I said., “I’ll do it.”  A job in the hand was worth two in the bush, I figured. And only then did they take me to meet the Dean of Students, whom I would also report to in my capacity as Director of Placement; but as he was being investigated himself, he didn’t even interview me except to say that if the students wanted me, they could have me.  “Any questions?”  I should have had many, but all I could think of were housekeeping issues: hours, vacation time, office space and such. I was pleased to learn I’d have a secretary.  He arranged for me to meet the previous Director of Student Activities, who would explain my responsibilities and walk me through the procedurals.

That was helpful, but she’d been part-time and hadn’t been involved with Placement, so there remained a lot of grey area. She did fill me in, rather angrily, on the scandals and the politics that had driven her to resign. I still had hardly any idea what I’d gotten myself into, but I was coming around to the idea of approaching Student Activities as a skills development/job training program, so my efforts in Activities and Placement would complement and lead from one to the other.  And it was coming together for me philosophically as well as pragmatically: work, I reminded myself, becomes play when it’s something you love. That was always my goal in career counseling. These antithetical jobs could be synthesized, I realized; I was getting the Idea of what I was doing.  And the more I thought about it, the more I loved the Idea.  It wasn’t UWW, but it no longer felt random.  I was developing programs and I was helping people figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. It was a step in the direction of my Calling.

My wife finally exhaled.

Franconia College, NH

So I had found my Calling if not yet my Place in the world, I told myself.  I would bring career counseling and an interface with the world of work to some soon-to-be grateful, yet-to-be-determined, University Without Walls. I was feeling Destined.

I set about researching both Goddard and Franconia Colleges, their key staff, and their surrounding communities. I was determined to network myself into an interview with the presidents of each and find the best fit. I was willing to create my own job and develop my own funding through job development grants, if necessary. How could they say no?

I loved the idea of building a career counseling/job development operation from scratch for an institution pursuing an alternative philosophy of education, a philosophy which emphasized experiential learning, creativity, and community engagement.  I would have loved to pursue an integrated curriculum as an undergrad, as they were doing at Goddard, or to help build a radio station as they were doing at Franconia. I wanted to help them sell that experience, that passion, to employers.

So I polished my resume, researched all I could of the schools and their surrounding areas, visited both campuses, and began writing letters.  I used all my best job-hunting techniques.  I started with Goddard, hoping to hone my approach for Franconia.  But my visit to Goddard was disappointing. Goddard had gone through a reorganization, and there was a battle now for the future of the college, whose finances were fraying. There was a lot of negativity in the atmosphere.  I’d hoped to network my way into an interview with Tim Pitkin, who would certainly recognize me as a kindred spirit and hire me on the spot; but he had just recently retired, the college had become politically fractious in his wake, and there wasn’t much much interest in new initiatives.  I couldn’t seem to network my way to anyone interested in hiring me.  Several individuals told me they were leaving first chance they got.

So I moved on to Franconia. I wrote some letters, visited and made connections in the surrounding North Country area, and managed to work my up to an interview with the President there, Ira Goldenberg.  I remember walking into the lobby of the once grand hotel which housed the College, rather shabby now, and seeing a kiosk on which someone had drawn, in black marker, a cartoon of the “USS Franconia” sinking bow-first below the waves, with musical notes above it and the words “Nearer my God to Thee…”. The reference to the Titanic was not a good omen, I thought…

I was wearing a searsucker suit that hot summer day of my interview with Goldenberg. Clare had advised me to dress up; “they know you can dress down,” she said. I found “Ira” wearing a tie dye t-shirt and cut-off khakis.  He looked at me like a mad dog Englishman, and urged me to dress down before I met with anyone else around there. I felt more than ever that I fit in here.

I gave him my rap, which I’d developed somewhat since coming from Goddard and exploring the surrounding towns. I told him I wanted to write a grant to fund a job-development agency for young people in the White Mountain area, including a career counseling arm that would reach out to Franconia’s students in particular. Young people were routinely leaving the North Country then, as the economy was slowing down, and Franconia College didn’t even have a placement officer, let alone a career counselor on staff. Some of those students, I said, thanks to their communal experiences at the College, would probably like to stay in such a beautiful area. But whether they stayed or left, they would all need help translating their college experience into resumes and jobs. And I wanted to do that.

Ira seemed impressed – especially as I offered to bring my own funding – and invited me to speak to the college community, meaning whomever could be assembled on a hot summer day in June.  I dressed down appropriately, and then spoke with about a dozen and a half faculty, staff, and students, answering questions and assuring everyone of my idealism, my practicality, and my bohemian credentials.

This was my first exposure to one of the founding tenets of the UWW program, though I didn’t know it yet: including students in the governance of the program as well as in the design of their education. And not just students and faculty, but the non-academic staff as well – the entire college community. Franconia’s governance system was as close to a direct democracy as I’d ever seen outside the schoolyard. The prospect was intimidating and so I questioned its efficiency and effectiveness to myself at the time; but to my surprise, I wasn’t uncomfortable being interviewed by a small crowd. With so many voices, so many questions, I couldn’t get worried about any one – I just winged it. And they seemed interested. I felt the ball beginning to roll…

After that community interview, Ira walked me back to his office and told me what he admitted he might have told me sooner: that Franconia was on the verge of bankruptcy. He said he didn’t want me to commit myself to a sinking ship. I thanked him, tucked my tail between my legs, offered to do some recruiting for the College, and beat it back home.

I was beginning to doubt my destiny, if not my calling.  There was no internet, no Google then. UWW, so far as I knew, was simply an Ideal, an educational philosophy that a college might adopt;  Goddard and Franconia – struggling liberal arts colleges with quirky, powerful presidents – were the only two in existence, so far as I knew.  And they both seemed headed down the tubes.  Had I been a more thorough researcher, I would have discovered how many UWW’s there were then, and perhaps not have doubted my course.  But in my ignorance, the doubts raised by this setback left the way open for serendipity…

When I got back to Queens, Clare told me that her mother in Shrewsbury, MA had inquired about an ad for a “Director of Student Activities/Director of Placement” position at Quinsigamond Community College in nearby Worcester. They’d sent her the job application, she’d sent it to Clare, and it was “the least I could do” to fill it out and send it back, she said, despite my protests that I had neither experience in student activities (even as a student) nor any interest. Student activities was about getting students to play after class, I railed, while I was about getting them to work after college.  These were full-time positions that had nothing to do with each other.  And I was a career counselor, damn it; a noble calling for a philosopher, not a camp counselor. But my Plan B having failed, I was back to poring over the want ads and I had no other leads.

So I sent in my resume with a cover letter.  And was offered an interview.  I felt my feet getting cold, so far out of my depth. But Clare stared me down till I blinked and went to pack my bag. By the time I boarded the plane, I was warming up to the idea. Truth be told, I’d written a 75 page paper in a graduate independent study on ludic philosophy – the philosophy of play.  I didn’t know anything about Activities work, but it had possibilities for a philosopher.  Destiny, I was soon to find out, works in mysterious ways…

I first encountered  UWW in the Goddard College catalog of ’74 or ’75.  I was finishing my MPhil degree at Columbia U. (the equivalent of ABD – all-but- dissertation), having re-thought my plans of becoming a Philosophy prof. I was disappointed with my experience of academic life, uncomfortable with the over-specialization in what I conceived as the most general branch of knowledge and repelled by the snarky competitiveness of the Professoriate.

But I was just as disappointed in myself for not fitting in better.  I proved an erratically average student, more gifted than academically skilled, more thinker than scholar, more practical than not. I wanted to live philosophically, rather than write and talk about it. I didn’t connect with any faculty. I wasn’t motivated to play the game. I’d expected better out of Philosophy at Columbia and myself.

As the prospect of teaching philosophy lost its luster for me, I’d gone to the University’s Career Counseling Office and entered their self-assessment program – only to fall in love with the idea of college career counseling, of helping other students find ways to fulfill, redeem, or at least salvage their studies as I was doing with a relevant career.  I could help them conceive and pursue the Good Life for them.  This was worthy work for a practicing philosopher.  And I’d still be in higher ed, where I knew I belonged, somewhere…

My first task was to land myself a job.  But I was trained for a job search now, I assured myself.  So I set out along two tracks, my plans A and B: the first was to subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Ed and apply for any relevant job listings I saw; the second was to figure out where exactly I most wanted to work and network myself into an interview there (the strategy is laid out in “What Color is Your Parachute?”, a classic career change manual by Richard Nelson Bolles, whose weekend training seminar for counselors I’d attended).

I began collecting college catalogs and visiting colleges like a high school junior; only I visited dozens and had dozens more catalogs than the most anxious grind. I eventually sent my resume to every college and university in the northeast quadrant of the US – about 1500 of them in all – and amassed shoeboxes of rejection letters, several each day for months and months.  These were the mid-70’s, and there were lines at the gas pumps; we’d lost Vietnam, finally, along with another president; pot had given way to coke; there was a garbage strike in NYC; and things were tight all over – nervous times, conservative times, and I had an eccentric resume. It seemed a leap from philosophy to career counseling, from Nietzsche to nurture, however I tried to explain it.

This could have been a very disheartening time. Though I’d grown up there, NYC was no place for us to be. My wife, Clare, was desperate to get away from the big city, away from her mindlessly hectic job in Manhattan and her daily subway trips from Queens, and to see me launched on my career.  I was starting to wonder if I had one.  What made the rejection letters bearable was that, while all were better than where I was, none of them seemed a place I really wanted to be, though there were many beautiful campuses. They were all about credentials and I was constained by them.  They all seemed dull after U of Buffalo in the 60’s, and I was an excitable boy.  No place seemed to engage my passion.

Then into that gloom came something as eccentric and ill-fitting as I was feeling: the Goddard College (VT) catalog, talking about a different, more innovative approach to higher learning, based on curricular experiments with rigorous evaluation and continual improvement.  It dismissed the traditionally static college curricula, with their standard courses and random distribution requirements, their tired lectures and academic irrelevance. It spoke of Goddard’s latest experiment: an entire year of classes, drawn from all departments, all focusing on the problem of environmental degradation from their different perspectives, all aimed at changing the world. It showed photo after photo of happy hipsters.  I was impressed by the daring relevance of the experiment and by the educational philosophy underlying it.  It was my kind of place.

The catalog said this all stemmed from Goddard’s being an “experimental college” and having adopted the “University Without Walls” model. The concept resonated with me. I’d taken a class as an undergrad at the University of Buffalo through “College 3”, an experimental non-credit college within the college, where anyone with expertise who’d like to teach something could post a green tag on the College 3 bulletin board, and anyone interested could sign up on a yellow tag and slide it into a pocket with others interested. If there were enough yellow tickets, the course ran. It was offered in the wake of the campus protests and teach-ins following the invasion of Cambodia, and didn’t last much longer than the rioting. But I’d taken a good course on Nietzsche through College 3 with a grad student, Richard Perkins, who turned out later to be one of the top Nietzsche scholars in the world. And I took it with a school buddy, Lee Manchester, who later came to work for UWW at UMass with me. The three of us remain close friends to this day.  College 3 was a great experience for me. I liked the very idea of an “experimental college”.

I learned later that Tim Pitkin, the Founding President of Goddard College back in the 30’s, had a hand in writing that section of the catalog that so intrigued me, that he’d been a student of the philosopher John Dewey (at Teachers College at Columbia), and a leading voice in the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities (the UECU).  He’d helped conceive the philosophy of the experimental college movement, culminating in the University Without Walls. I used Dewey’s “Experience and Education” in my own classes later. I wanted to meet Tim Pitkin.

Then I learned that Goddard wasn’t the only UWW out there – the catalog from Franconia College arrived in the mail soon after. Franconia’s package lacked the philosophical heft of the Goddard catalog, but made up for it in its detailing of innovative approaches to learning.  While Goddard talked of courses and curricula, Franconia talked of projects and programs in the community: students were getting credits for building and running a radio station, for a prison program, and for working with local farmers to build cooperatives to save their farms. They had invited oldsters from the surrounding community to come live in the unfilled rooms of their dormitories, looking for the young and the old – the curious and the curios – to learn from each other and build a shared community.  I was beyond impressed by this; I was enthralled.

I don’t know why Franconia’s programs so caught my imagination; I was more libertarian than progressive in my politics and philosophy; but I decided then and there that I was going to work for a UWW and turned all my energy to the effort.  I figured experimental college students would need someone who could speak their language and help them translate their skills into the language of the work-a-day world to follow upon Commencement.  I knew of two UWWs now, and neither had much in the way of a career counseling operation, though they sorely needed one.  I decided to network my way into interviews with the presidents of both Goddard and Franconia, hoping I could persuade one or the other to let me devote myself to their cause.

Though I hadn’t quite found my Place, I firmly believed that I had found my Calling. I was not entirely wrong…

I’ve urged other veterans of UWW’s across the US who stumble on this website to share their recollections and reflections here.  While I’m happy for even a guest-book signing, I’d love to see some blogs, bite-sized, easy to prepare and digest, for all those interested in the phenomenon of UWW – especially, the legions of researchers I hope will one day find their way here.  One or many memories, whatever you can spare. We veterans and alums are each of us reservoirs of more information about UWW than in all the published journals.  To prime the pump – break the ice – and let flow the waters of reflection, I need to follow my own urging.

I haven’t blogged before, and I’m already fighting the form by attempting a long narrative in an inherently impressionistic, non-linear medium and presenting that constantly interrupted narrative in apparently reverse chronological order – last authored, first seen (once done, I may change that). But I do have stories to share, some long, some short, lending themselves to a lapidary, chaptered style, as the story of my life in UWW, the thread to that necklace, has a rather long arc by now…

I plan on several seeming side-excursions as well; the open-endedness of the blog form haply allows for meandering away from chronology when timely, without worrying overmuch about transitions and connections.  A blog is looser even than a memoir, as successive screens are less constrained than adjacent pages. UWW will be the connection. This loose narrative form seems a good personal fit as my story is mostly behind me, and I am reduced to meandering recollections. I am retired to an adjunct teaching position now in the UWW where I spent my career.  I have become the program’s archivist, gadfly, and raconteur, given to rummaging and rambling through my past. This effort suits me.

Others, especially students passing through, may find it more fitting to simply share occasional reflections on the process of gaining their degrees through UWW. Others may just have a story they’d like to share.  We’re not looking for testimonials here at uwwhistory.org, but details of what UWW was like for you. Stories. And attachments – degree plans, even portfolios – are always appreciated. All good, all fodder for the future historian of UWW for whom we can only hope to prepare the way.

These blogs, mine and whoever else’s we might recruit, could one day serve as a vast, crazy quilt revealing the textures of lived experience among those who were part of UWW across time and space – the common threads  and unique patterns that make the whole.  Varied viewpoints from various UWWs – the more the better – would add another valuable vat of source materials to the more official and published documents dominating the archives on this site.  So please, any UWW folks reading this, past or present: consider, if you will, sharing something here, if only once… you’re always welcome back for more!