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

RICHARD DYER: Bob, of all the “plank holders”, you probably have the most interesting background, so why don’t you take a little bit of time and tell us a little bit about where you were brought up.

BOB HAMILTON: Okay, Dick. I presume by “plank holders” you mean original teachers at Columbia.  Well, I was born in China.  My parents were Presbyterian missionaries there.  And I lived there most of the first sixteen years of my childhood—I spent one year in Korea and two or three years on (______) in the United States.  But I came back to the United Sates in 1941—before America got involved in World War I and graduated from high school in Atlanta, Georgia and attended college in North Carolina and joined the Air Force in World War II and flew B-24s down in the South Pacific for the thirteenth air force.  And then, after the war, I got side-tracked in all kind of other things besides teaching, although I had always wanted to teach and sooner or later I could tell I’d get back to it.  But for awhile I flew for United Airlines on their ATC contract to Tokyo in 1946.

DYER: what is an ATC?

HAMILTON: That was the air transporter.

DYER: Oh, okay.

HAMILTON: So, I was there for the War Crimes Trials in 1946 and saw Tojo and others as I dropped in on the trials from time to time when my planes had layovers in Tokyo.  And since I understand Chinese, I could get some of the testimony first-hand when they had Chinese generals on the stands testifying to Japanese atrocities in China. Anyhow, after flying for them, I decided to go into architecture.  And first started with carpentry—I became an apprentice carpenter for a couple of years, learned a little bit about building houses with my hands and then I went into drafting and spend eight years in architectural designing and drafting.  And also went in for flying, again, when the Korean War cam along.  I happened to have been in the Air Force Reserve and was married by this time, and had a family and decided that I’d prefer to stay home rather that go off to the army a second time, so I got a job flying for California Eastern Airways during the Korean War, back and forth to Tokyo, which was considered an essential industry.  And so uh…

DYER: were they flying in military supplies?

HAMILTON: Yeah, troop and war supplies.  I was doing essentially the same thing, excepting I was able to see my family a little more often. 

DYER: so, did you live in California then?

HAMILTON: Yes, right.  So, in the San Francisco bay area.  And from there I want back to the University of California because I still was interested in teaching and continued my studies there, and then decided to try theological seminary and went to Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas Texas and got a master theology degree there.  But, meanwhile, I kept wanting to get back to teaching instead of preaching, so I…

DYER: did you have you own congregation, or…

HAMILTON: No, but I was ordained and went to teach at a small Christian college in the bay area—it was called Western Baptist in El Cerrito.  It’s moved to Oregon, but it was at the bay area at the time.  Taught there four years and also did some additional graduate study at UC Berkeley in the meanwhile and got my MA in history there , and part of my PhD. And then went to Milliken University in Decatur Illinois to teach history.  Spent three years there, and heard about Columbia College opening up in the Fall of 68.

DYER: Back in Illinois they had some information about this mother lode institution?

HAMILTON: Not quite.  I was in Berkeley in the summer of 67 for some study that I was doing there.  As a matter of fact, I was doing some preliminary research for a book I hoped to write, which was about the typing revolution in nineteenth century China, and the University of California had some good library materials on the typing revolution.  So, I heard about it while I was at Berkeley and went out to Sonora—first time I had ever been to Sonora, that I  recall—and saw the college offices there in the rented office on Main Street.  Went in an met Dusty Rhodes and Bob Deil and Joe Haskins.  I had originally applied by letter, and Bill Haskins replied and said that he would like to interview me, and I went out for an interview in July 1967, and had a good interview and liked all of the people that I saw.  I came out to see the new college campus, which was nothing but a great pile of dirt with bulldozers running around, and drove out to see the town of Columbia, where Bill said that we would be teaching initially.  And then went back to Illinois, taught for another year and Milliken University and then got and invitation from Bill to join the initial faculty, so here I am. 

DYER: Well, after having taught at two colleges and after spending time on the campus at Berkeley, you certainly must have been impressed with the first campus over Columbia.

HAMILTON: It was quite different.  We taught in Eagle Cottage, of course, as your previous informant have told you, and also the Odd Fellows Hall.  I had my history of civilizations class in the Odd Fellows Hall and I had U.S. History—I was teaching both at that time—in Eagle Cottage in the main dinning room, and had California History in an upstairs bedroom in Eagle Cottage.

DYER: there is quite a history in that cottage

HAMILTON: Yeah, I had heard it referred to variously as a minors boarding house, or a miners whore house, but I understand that it had quite a reputation in the mother lode days—using that in the original sense of the term.  But, it was, Columbia was quite a jolly, as I understand it, at that time.  And the number one industry, I think, were saloons, and the number two that came rather close behind it in terms of public service industries were red light houses and there after miner supply stores from what I was following through in my California history class that I was teaching there I had the students do research projects about Columbia got quite a lot of interesting insights to different phases of Columbia history as a result. 

DYER: so you started by teaching civilization of Europe, history of California, and history of the United States. What about political sciences?

HAMILTON: Yes, started out also with class in American Political Thought, which has been part of my curriculum ever since.  And that first year was 1968, which was presidential election year, and I had the student become involved in projects relating to the election.  And this aroused a lot of interest on the part of the students and each one participated in either the democratic campaign or the republican campaign, or did research interviews on public opinion in Sonora, or Jamestown, or Copperopolis, or someplace pertaining to some election issue, and these were then written up by the students as reports and we put them together as a bulk, and had it reproduced by the college press and each student got copies, and the library got some copies and people in the community did and it was quite a satisfying thing for the class as a whole to do.

DYER: Are you receiving royalties from it?

HAMILTON: (Laughing) well, considering the fact that all of the copies were given away free, the royalties that I got were the dividends and interest and satisfaction that came from participating in it. 

DYER: I’ve heard so many of our original “plank holders” refer to the primitive conditions.  Did these, as you think back, did these bring on any memorable occasions…activities that you can recall in the classroom, or over a cup or coffee that would be a little unusual?

HAMILTON: Well, probably the most unusual feature was that we could have our social gathering over a pitcher of beer, rather than a cup of coffee.  Since Columbia was a going tourist town and the historic state park at the time we moved on to their campus, why they didn’t shut down the industries simply because students came.  So, there was the Pioneer Saloon and the Columbia House Restaurant that served beer, and the St. Charles Saloon, and so forth.  I remember, I taught history of civilization in the afternoon in a two-and-a-half- hour stretch, and we would take about a twenty or twenty-five minute break in the middle of that time, and instead of a coffee break we would call it a beer break, and we would simply stroll one block from the Odd Fellows Hall, where the history class was going on, to the Pioneer Saloon, and order a pitcher of beer and, in essence, have an informal seminar. And we’d sit around and discuss whatever the current history topic was at the moment, and it was a very relaxing way to convey history and stimulated some interesting questions too.  I’ve always regretted that we can’t have pitchers of beer in out history seminars on campus here.  I understand that some of the colleges do have beer on campus.  In England, I know that they used to sell them. Oh, in Germany, of course, this was a great part of the university life.  I believe the University of California now has beer available in the Bear’s Lair and the Golden Bear, but I think that we have a few legal problems as far as the community college is concerned.  But we probably have the only community college campus in the state of California which had liquor available on campus.  (Laughing)

DYER:  Was it a worth while experience, Bob, to go through these primitive conditions that you had, rather modest facilities, and a rather informal environment.  Or did it actually lead to the rather unique environment here in Columbia today?

HAMILTON: Well, it was very exciting to be in on the ground floor of a new college.  Everything was ahead of us.  Nothing was really structures as we approached it. And consequently I felt like I had an opportunity to contribute my two-cents worth to helping plan history courses and lay out a sort of a program for future expansion with future staff members coming in—yourself being number one on the list, and joining us the following year and taking over U.S. history and California history and enabling us to expand in some other areas.  In that following year in ’69 I was able to undertake teaching philosophy when I was relieved of U.S. history, and also with the wider number of history sections that you and I together were able to offer, we served the need of the expanding student body.  So, Once removed from Eagle Cottage to the Columbia campus, I think we doubled our student enrollment almost immediately.  We had about three-hundred at Eagle Cottage and about six-hundred here, or something like that. 

DYER: Occasionally students have criticized our institution because we tend to be small—we tend to be, in many ways, provincial.  Do you as an area chairman now, have the feeling that we have other attributes—things that we can offer to our students that they did not get Noah Kenmore, at, uh, California Baptist College, for example. 

HAMILTON: I fell that we have always had a good faculty-student rapport here.  It was especially noticeable at Eagle Cottage because thee students, together with us, were sharing in the pioneering spirit of starting a new venture.  And it was still pronounce for the first year or two on the new campus, because everything was new and different and exciting as the new campus was opening up.  Now, today, since we’ve been five years in operation and this is going on our fifth year on the new campus, it, well, you don’t see change as much or as dramatic, today, from year to year as we did in those first few years.  But I remember in Eagle Cottage we had small bedroom adapted to faculty offices.

DYER: I heard a lot about them. 

HAMILTON: We had three faculty members in each one, and those rooms weren’t much bigger than the offices we have now, and we had three people in them so we were pretty well…

DYER: Rather cozy. (Mumbles)…worry about an energy crisis. 

HAMILTON: Right, but student came in and would see us and chat with us and we figured we would get into three or four-way discussions with several faculty members involved, whereas today in our present, segregated, office situation, when a student comes and see a faculty member it is strictly a dialogue. I remember sometimes there were some rather striking informal seminars that developed just spontaneously.

DYER: Sounds like a genuine interdisciplinary approach. 

HAMILTON: It was, it was. I regret that we haven’t had something like that since, although we might when we develop the new interdisciplinary building with faculty offices opening into a common area, with student traffic a little heavier there we might find things like this a little easier to stimulate than we do at present. I feel that even today, I feel less formality between teacher and student that I did at Milliken University—more a feeling that, uh, well, if the teacher isn’t one of the guys, at least he’s part of the team.  And I think that students here feel that they and us are both on the same side and we’re pulling together for accomplishing purposes of providing them meaningful experience in education. 

DYER: I think that this almost has to be almost a trademark of Columbia Junior College, and if we offer anything, we offer a much more personal education for our students.

HAMILTON: By the way, I was shocked. This fall, for the first time in my life, to hear a student who was a transfer from another community college in southern California, who told me that she felt that the Columbia teachers were more formal and more distant from the students than she was used to, and that she liked the situation at her former college better. And I (____) on this…the students at her former college we almost all rather young, in their twenties, and in dress and hair style the teachers were apt to be in blue jeans and running around barefoot and

.DYER: …it’s a little cold up here. 

Hamilton…and she said on the opening on class sessions, why, they would find teacher and students all sitting around on the floor and you couldn’t tell the teacher from the students until somebody spoke up and started leading a discussion or calling the roll.  And I said, “Well, that’s very interesting.  There is somebody in the community college business that is one step more advanced than Columbia, at least, in terms of informality and relations between teachers and students.”  And then I got to thinking about the Columbia faculty and I realized that those of us that started in 1968 are five or six years older now.  And as I look around I realize that the Columbia faculty is more homogenous than I had thought of it as being before—more middle-aged, middle-class. And while we were originally selected as being different and innovative and not afraid to be different and not afraid of change, at the same time after we have, sort of run in parallel courses as members of the same team for five or six years, maybe we have sort of gotten more homogenous with each other than we were when we started out.  But…

DYER: This is almost the nature of an institution, growing up because, as the institution comes of age, you have to expect some this to be a part of the institution. 

HAMILTON: right.  So I, for one, was glad to have you come along, younger than me, and the new faculty members we’ve hired each younger (thump bleeps out word) and in fact, all of the faculty hiring we’ve done, in the last three years than I have been associated with, I have urged that we provide extra brownie points for candidates who are young or candidates who are of ethnic minority background, or candidates who are women, or candidates who are from out of the country with some kind of different experience. 

DYER: I think that this is healthy. At least it will help us as we seek to continue growing rather than to stagnate.

HAMILTON: Right. Uh…

DYER: Hey, Bob, I think I’m going to almost have to cut it off here. 

HAMILTON: Okay.

DYER: I do appreciate the (_____) comments, and we’ll make sure that they are preserved so that people can come back to Columbia and listen to professor Robert Hamilton.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard L.

Interviewee: Hamilton, Bob (History and political science)

Name of Tape: Continuation of the History of Columbia Junior College: Interviews by original faculty of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_8_1)

When: Winter of 1973

Transcriber: Ariella (September 2008)

Transcriber’s Note: n/a