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Western Washington State College: A Close Look (1972)
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- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- You hear all sorts of reasons advanced
- as to why the young go to college.
- That they do so to get a better job
- is very frequently advanced, That they
- do so because everybody's doing it is very frequently advanced.
- That they do so to get a husband is frequently
- said about females.
- That they do so to avoid the draft
- was commonly said in the '50s and '60s.
- But if you talk to entering freshmen, what they want to do
- is to learn.
- If there's a quality that I think all humans
- possess it is the desire to know.
- And it's an obvious quality in the smallest child.
- I think we lose some of the sharpness of that need,
- maybe because of the environment that we grow up in.
- I think maybe sometimes our educational system
- doesn't keep it as whetted as it should.
- But I think it's still there.
- The stimulation that you're talking about
- comes in many different ways.
- But it basically comes from, as I see it, a professor
- being willing to be open about what he cares about
- and to care about it in some kind of communicative way.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- The style and quality of your doctoral research
- are known to us.
- And you're being hired in the beginning for that reason.
- Now whether you are generally educated
- enough and dedicated enough to teach freshmen only time
- will tell.
- And until such a discovery is made,
- we will not entrust a freshman class to you.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- You are aware that sex was invented at Berkeley in 1964.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- It is certainly distressing me to think
- of an entire educational apparatus in which a faculty
- member or a student can't sit down over a cup of coffee
- or in his office and carry on a 30 minute
- to an hour's conversation.
- One of the things that I found most compelling when
- I came here for an interview was the notion
- that I was sitting there in faculty member's office,
- and a student came up and had precedence.
- And I thought that was a very good thing.
- I don't really know of a faculty member or an administrator who
- is against having students come in to see him.
- The president of the institution has
- students coming in constantly.
- And I think it goes throughout the entire institution.
- I think it has a very open attitude about it.
- Today's college students seems, from whatever cause,
- are to be desperately afraid of being accused
- of a lack of sophistication.
- And, of course, to confess that you
- don't know where College Hall is,
- you don't know how to find room 131 in College Hall
- once you do get there, and you're not aware
- that you're in the wrong section of the wrong course
- after you sit down in the room and listen to it, to confess
- these things seems to call for more of a strength of character
- than a great many college students possess.
- Western has a number of resources for students
- who come to Western.
- And the Counseling Center is one of these resources.
- There are a number of different kinds of student services
- on the campus.
- For instance, there is a draft counseling agency on campus.
- There is sex information.
- There is also a CCM, which is the Campus Christian Ministry.
- There are opportunities for exploration
- of one's self in a group setting within the Counseling Center,
- and also through some of the dean's activities.
- These resources I think can help that student too
- to examine what his possibilities are in terms
- of career, examine what his possibilities are in terms
- of a major here at Western.
- And so the Counseling Center tries
- to zero in on these kinds of problems
- and these kinds of concerns that most students have
- when they get here.
- Colleges in the past have had of rigid requirements
- that you needed to take before you could graduate.
- And sometimes it's set up rather ridiculous situations.
- I remember sitting through a psychology course
- once in which they devoted a great amount of time
- to the discussion of dating practices.
- I was married.
- My wife was eight months pregnant at the time.
- And this was brought about because I had transferred
- from one college to another.
- And, as a senior, I had to go back and pick up a freshman
- psychology requirement.
- Is Western that rigid?
- No, I think that Western, compared
- with several schools with which I've been familiar,
- is considerably less rigid.
- And, in fact, the college now offers several programs
- in which he can tailor his own individual program
- to his particular needs.
- It's as though he were writing his own catalog
- for his own degree.
- One of these is the Honors program.
- Another one is the Bachelor of Arts in liberal studies.
- And the third example is the student faculty designed
- interdisciplinary major.
- This is perhaps the freest example of all.
- Here, the student, in consultation
- with faculty members, devises a program made up
- of courses out of different departments
- that will meet his particular vocational needs
- or his particular interest of an academic nature.
- Then he can draw really upon the resources
- of the entire college.
- In fact, all of the departments at Western, plus the three
- cluster colleges.
- Yes.
- This, I presume, is to help him make a major that
- is more relevant to him?
- Yes.
- The rationale for the cluster college program
- at Western in the first place was the advantages of smallness
- and the possibilities of intimate contact.
- I think David ought to talk about that.
- Talk about the way in which Fairhaven
- is able to operate by reason of its different administrative
- arrangements, limitations of size, et cetera.
- Fairhaven is, in some sense, dedicated
- towards non-competitive excellence.
- We're trying to look for just those kinds of stimuli which
- will bring forth the notion of excellence
- for excellence's sake.
- Excellence because it is a delight.
- Excellence because there is joy in solving an equation
- or painting a painting, not because that
- means that you're going to get an A,
- or jump ahead of the next guy, or stand
- on top of the heap for this brief moment in time,
- but because there's something very special,
- something very human, that that excellence gives you.
- So that-- I don't know.
- That phrase kind of sums up at least the-- one
- element of the fervor that I see in Fairhaven.
- It's a place where there is a tremendous amount
- of opportunity to do almost anything that you want.
- That freedom is a very dangerous thing.
- And I think we're pretty cognizant of that.
- But, at the same time, there are many students
- who can flourish under that kind of freedom who couldn't
- flourish anywhere else.
- Herb, what about the College of Ethnic Studies?
- At Western, we have four disadvantaged minority groups.
- We have Chicanos.
- We have Blacks.
- We have American Indians.
- And we have Asian-Americans.
- Now, it is not intended that the College of Ethnic Studies
- draw all the students from these minority groups, or even
- a majority.
- Furthermore, it is not intended that what
- I shall call whites, for want of a better term,
- to be excluded from the College of Ethnic Studies
- there's a large component of whites.
- What is intended is to address ourselves
- to the ethnic minorities in the United States.
- Take one example, drawn on almost at random: History.
- I doubt that one history book on the United States,
- in five, devotes so much as three pages to the American
- Indian,
- save insofar as their commentaries
- on the Indian Wars.
- The College of Ethnic Studies is attempting
- to weave a skein of very colored cloth
- to reflect the fact that the United States
- population, in fact, is a collection of minorities, not
- one majority, and that one majority having
- exclusive right to the educational process
- and to the interpretation of what education ought to be.
- Jerry, what about Huxley?
- Well, Huxley was conceived as a way
- of providing focus upon the matter
- of environmental sciences.
- It, I think, was the first environmental science college.
- If not the first one, or the very first,
- and it actually was developed before the current enthusiasm
- for matters environmental developed as a great surge
- in this country.
- Now the basic thesis having to do with the cluster colleges
- is, one, smallness.
- The advantages of that, we've already mentioned it.
- But, beyond that, I think most importantly is to give them
- freedom to develop.
- The comments about Fairhaven, the idea
- there is to give it freedom.
- Now, the founding fathers of any such program
- have in mind a particular image.
- But they also recognize that as you bring people
- into the program, that image will
- change as the people therein define it, or redefine it.
- And, as you give them freedom, such change
- is inevitable and necessary.
- Huxley was generated to provide focus
- to the environmental science area.
- And they were given the freedom to do this in ways
- that the people who then came into the program conceived it.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- I don't know if colleges had technology
- departments for a long time and I've just
- been ignorant of them?
- Or is the concept of a technology department something
- fairly new?
- Well, for a long time, they recalled
- Departments of Industrial Arts.
- And that brought forth the image of working with wood and metal,
- and that was about it.
- And the modern definition of technology
- has a long way from being simply working with wood and metal,
- that it's a varied, very complicated area.
- And I suppose that it's more like engineering
- used to be than it's like what industrial arts used to be.
- What kind of things might you do?
- What kind of courses might you take
- in the technology department?
- Well, let's begin not with the course
- but with an enterprise in the technology department.
- They're now producing a relatively pollution-free
- automobile, which has been entered in competition,
- has survived several winnowings of that competition,
- is now in the top 10 in the nation,
- and is the only one in the top 10
- which is not being produced by a university
- with a school of engineering.
- It's really amazing.
- They have solved problems, engineering problems,
- associated with this car that apparently defied solution
- at some of the major engineering schools in the country.
- In part, I suspect because we did not
- have some of the elaborate equipment that they had.
- It might also be that we didn't know they couldn't be solved.
- Yeah.
- The campus is all torn up now.
- And it seems to me that it's been torn up
- for the last five years one way or another almost all--
- You mean physically or otherwise?
- Physically.
- Physically.
- Physically.
- Because you keep making the library larger.
- Yes.
- Why do you do that?
- Well, my opinion, and I think the opinion of most of us
- in the institution, there are three basic components
- in building excellence in an institution.
- You've got to have all three.
- You start off with students.
- They're supplemented by faculty and by library.
- Now, if you, in fact, have a poor library,
- you cannot talk about excellence.
- Starting about five years, six years ago,
- we had found that our numbers of acquisitions-- that is books,
- journals, and such--
- have increased many, many fold, much more
- rapidly than has the actual enrollment increased.
- For example, in terms of journals,
- I think six years ago, we had something like 800--
- subscriptions to about 800.
- I think today we have some 3,800.
- I might also point out here that I
- believe that Western Washington State College Library is open
- more hours per week right now--
- has been for years--
- than any other library in the state of Washington.
- My hope is that we will get the current facility filled almost
- overnight and be, again, caught up in the press
- to add to the library.
- Western is a different kind of school
- where you can educate yourself with a little help
- from your friends.
- Whether you come here to find out where your head is,
- or if you already know where you're going,
- chances are you'll find what you need.
- Western is a big part of Bellingham.
- And what is Bellingham?
- Well, it's a town that's big enough
- to be interesting and small enough
- so you can move around in it comfortably on foot, by bike,
- or car.
- There's water everywhere.
- The bay, with the beautiful San Juan Islands,
- Lake Padden, Lake Sammamish, Lake Whatcom,
- and a special place on Lake Whatcom called Lakewood.
- It's owned by the Associated Students
- for their use to sail, canoe, swim, whatever
- water sports they like.
- The Chamber of Commerce says you can
- go from sea to ski in one hour.
- Well, you may not want to be boating in Bellingham
- Bay at noon and skiing on Mt.
- Baker by early afternoon.
- But you could do it.
- All kinds of housing in Bellingham.
- Off campus, there is everything from very nice apartments
- to what might best be called turn of the century revisited.
- On campus, there are many different kinds
- of living facilities.
- One of the best--
- Ridgeway Dorm-- won a National Architectural award
- for its design.
- If you want some of the things bigger cities have to offer,
- Seattle is only about 90 minutes away.
- And Vancouver, Canada is less than an hour from Bellingham.
- There's a good environment around Western.
- It helps to make the college a good place to live and learn.