RICHARD DYER: Dom Jones, biological scientist can you give us an idea of some of your previous experience before coming to Columbia Junior College?

DON JONES: Well just before coming to Columbia Junior College I was teaching high school in Englewood biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science.  Two years prior to that I was in Oregon State as an instructor and student, and prior to that time I spent most of my teaching career in Southern California teaching at the high school and junior high school level in the sciences.  My experience has been primarily with teaching in the eights, ninth, and tenth grade levels; but I taught math at the fifth and sixth grade social studies and the sciences (yes this is how he said it) and I have been involved in teaching graduate students in Oregon State. 

DYER: Well were you working at an advanced degree at Oregon State?

JONES: I was in a doctoral program, yes, I was working on a doctorate in biology.

DYER: Now why did you select Columbia Junior College?

JONES: I selected it…well…I think they selected me rather (a little laughter)

DYER: they selected you (also laughing along). Okay, why did they select you Don?

JONES: Well I think because of my wide background.  They needed someone that first year to teach not only biological sciences, but also physical sciences.  They needed someone who could teach a whole host of courses and you indicated earlier you though I might be well if I gave a rundown of the courses I taught, and when I get into that for you, you realize why they selected someone with a broad background like mine.

DYER: The rumor has it that the selection process is unique.  Were you exposed to any kind of a medieval torture device in the interview that you had when they selected you for the position?

JONES: No, not at all.  In fact I tried to compare the kinds of selection devices that were use when I went through that first year and there was no comparison.  The interviews that I had were all in Southern California for the most part, uh, I did make a trip up here and visited the campus and talked to the administrators, but it was a very casual thing, over a glass of wine, as I recall, at Dusty’s house, one blustery spring afternoon. My first recollection of the area was really quite unique.  I came into the city and the main offices then were on the main drag there in Sonora and that place now since has changed hands two or three times, but I remember Dusty had his office in the back next to a pot-bellied stove, or what appeared to be one, and there were just small partitions between the s\desks then.  I came in and Duty had just come back from a reserve trip and there was a commander sitting at a desk (Dyer and Jones start laughing at the story).

DYER: I think I would move into the interview with some apprehension about that.  It might be easy for someone to assume he’s going into the Army or Navy.

So it’s rather casual then…did you, uh, speak Dick Dodge then, who was the dean of the division?

JONES: My interview was with Dick Dodge. Uh, what had happened, there was a change of the guard right prior to my selection.  Dick dodge was appointed to his job as dean of natural science.  After my original evaluation had been made by Bill Haskins and he had set aside about four or five papers, apparently, for Dr. Dodge to look over.  It turned out that the people that they were all interested in were all in Southern California, so Dick made a trip down there…interviewed several of us.  We all happened to be attending the same biology convention, so it was quite easy for him…very convenient. 

DYER: Did you see the Eagle cottage while you were here in Sonora?

JONES: Yes, yes…Dick…

DYER: What was your initial impression of it…?

JONES: I was amazed that we could all teach the courses that we taught in that facility…of course at that time we were assured that we would be using other facilities besides Eagle Cottage.  It did turn out that way.  The only other one that I used extensively was the old…I think it was the Odkuft Building there in town.

DYER: On the corner…?

JONES: On the corner, yes.  That was one of our lecture buildings.  But most of our time was spent in Eagle Cottage. 

DYER: Did you have nay apprehension about teaching such a multitude of courses at Columbia Junior College?

JONES: The shock of it didn’t really hit me until we started to prepare the courses late that summer.  The summer before we begin the college…why we got together—as probably other have indicated to you—there at the high school in one of the portable classrooms.  And when we started to get our materials together, one of the big shocks was going into the basement there at Eagle cottage and seeing nothing but a dirt floor!

DYER: (a little laughter), I vividly remember that.

Well, when you started, Don, what was your classroom assignment?

JONES: Well, a good deal of our time was spent down in the very back the basement where we had all of our tutorial lab set up. The biology class, which was my major responsibility the first quarter, was taught about equally in that other tutorial lab, and upstairs in the old dinning room.  Of course, I had to teach the chemistry sequence that I had not had to teach, but it was a pleasure to tech the chemistry sequence that first year.  We had two quarters of inorganic chemistry and a quarter of organic chemistry, and I had the assignment for general biology the first two quarters and I assisted with botany in the winter quarter, and taught zoology in the spring.  I also was responsible for the physical science courses that were taught.  We had a, uh…physical science survey course that was taught one quarter, and then we had a historical geology class and, uh, physical geology.

DYER: Now you mentioned the audio tutorial approach, was this a well developed approach after you got to Columbia during the fall of 1968?  You had an opportunity to sit down and to develop the modules?

JONES: No.  We didn’t have modules, as we know them today, that first year.  What we did was to take the topics that we wanted to teach, and then we modified the Postalweight concept for teaching the programs.  Sam Postalweight decided the thing to do was to take and provide the lectures and the laboratory activities right in one room with the audio tutorial.  And so we set up a biology programs—Ross Carkeet, Dr. Dodge, and I—set those up the first year, with the lecture partly on tape and partly lectures in the classroom.  And then the laboratory, of course, was all audio tutorials downstairs.  At that time—well, I guess it was at the end of our first year of experience—we got involved at Huston High School with what they call a lap approach to audio tutorial instruction (learning activity packages, so called) and we modified programs for the next year based upon our experience the previous year, and with the audio tutorial lap packages that were being used in Huston High School.  The outgrowth of that was what I turned an audio tutorial package or ATPs for biology.  The play-on words there being that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the high-energy molecule for life, and we thought that would work well for biology.  Subsequently, we have done away with the audio tutorial programs that were used for tha next two years, and we now have a third generation fo bilology programs.  The ATPs are still being used…the concept in there, but Mr. McDonell uses it now for his first science and phisicall geology programs. 

DYER: Was Dr. Rodes particularly interested in the audio tutotial approiach at the time?

JONES: He certainly was, this was a thrust very early.  I’m not sure whether he was influence particularly by Dr. Dodge on this, or whether the reverse was true.  But anyway, there was a great deal of enthusiasm for developing this mode, and part of it stemmed from the fact that we were very limited in our laboratory phicilities. 

DYER: did you get any feedback from students about the success of the audio tutorial programs?

JONES: Generally the same kind of feedback that we get now…students either like it very much or they dislike it a great deal.  There is no inbetween.

DYER: Don, I’m sure that you spent time outside of the classroom in field achtivities and field trips.  Would you briefly describe some of the field weork that you were involved in during that fall of 1968?

JONES: Well, the majority of the fieldwork that was done in Eagle Cottage was connected with my earth science programs rather than biology, and we tourd a lot of the mines.  We spent a lot of time traveling around the Table Mountain region—visiting the old mining areas in the canyon….visiting the limestone phasilities that are down here…visiting the caves along the river.  Very little was done the area of biology for field trips.  Students had enough to do just keeping up with the classroom programs.

DYER: Did you ever spend any time here at the reservoire on the compus—the San Diego Reservoire?

JONES: Yes, I missed out by a few weeks…the famouse trasferring of fish that took place as they drained the original reservoire.  And I followed with a great deal of interest, the contouring and recountouring of the lake bed and the formation of the island, and so forth.

DYER: who was responsible for the design of the lake when… they cleaned it out and they put in fish beds, ws it?

JONES: they cleaned it out primarily ro get rid fo the algo growth and the aquatic seedbarring plants that were here, and the old design operation was under Dr. Dodge’s operation.  He was pretty much in controll of the who operation. 

DYER: One last question…as you think back on the eagle Cottage experience, do you think of any unique experience or students who were involved in unique achtivities, individual projects, classroom achtivities, or others?

JONES: I would say the unique aspects were the rule rather than the acception.  Nearly everything that come to mind from the seminars and the dormitory areas upstaris to tryin to teach classes in the kitchen, to shuffling chairs around and trying to be in phase with other classes that were going on at the same time so that there would be as little discoure as possible when 150 students were making the change of classrooms that did occur from hour to hour.  One of the most frustrating things, I think, was trying to record audio tutorial programs as we are now in the building that was so unique.

DYER: Don, we appreciate it.  Thank you very much for sharing soe of your reminissances with us for the future of our students and other who want to come and listen to what Don Jones was like.

JONES: Hah (laughs), thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW #2

Interviewer:  Richard Dyer

Interviewee: Dr. Barbra Painter (Counseling and Other Student Services)

RICHARD DYER: Barbra, could you give us just an idea of why you selected a career in education?

BARBRA PAINTER: Oh, Dick, that’s a long time ago, you know.  We are going way back now into what it was like when I did my first teaching assignment whet I was in the fourth grade at Bishop grammar school. 

DYER: You mean Bishop across the mountains?

PAINTER: Bishop across the mountains.  We were going to our country school—a two room school, and the teacher became ill, and they thought that someone in the fourth grade who knew what was going on in the classroom could teach while the teacher became well again.  And so I actually taught the first four grades for about a day-and-a-half.

DYER: How old were you then?

PAINTER: I was just in the fourth grade, you know, but I was a fourth grader at the time. 

DYER: That’s highly illegal. 

PAINTER: sure, you could never do it now, but this, remember, was a long long time ago, and they needed teachers then (laughing). But it was a fascinating experience, and once I look back on it, I wonder if that is what gave me the main impetus.  But, true, my first goal was not education, but medicine.  And my first two years of college work were science oriented, to go into the field of medicine perhaps to fulfill the…

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard L.

Interviewee of interview #1: Jones, Don (Biological scientist)

Interviewee of interview #2: Dr. Painter, Barbra (Counseling and Other Student Services)

Name of Tape: Continuation of the History of Columbia Junior College: Interviews by original faculty of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_8_0)

When: Winter of 1973

Transcriber: Ariella (September 2008)

Transcriber’s Note: This interview does not continue onto tape CC_hist_8_1