*****

I grew up knowing that I was going to attend a university. Because my mother had a career in education, and even though my father had not finished college, they both strongly encouraged my older brother, Jeffrey, and I to get a degree. During my senior year, I explored Montclair University, LaSalle University, Rowan University, and the University of Pennsylvania. I ended up not applying to Penn as the expenses, even with a partial scholarship, were likely to be too much for my family. I applied and was accepted at the other three. I chose Rowan because it had a good reputation for education, and they gave me the largest scholarship award, making it the most affordable. My brother had, from my perspective, struggled too much with the costs of college and had too many loans.

Majoring in history was something of a spur of the moment choice in my junior year of high school. I can remember the guidance counselor asking me to choose between AP Chemistry and AP Biology for my senior year. I didn’t want to do either, and I insisted on taking a world government class instead. I justified this decision to myself and to others by saying that I was going to be a history major in college. I always liked history, but that is how I made the decision to study the subject.

I can’t remember much about orientation, though I do remember it was hot. I also remember going to the Honors session and thinking, “woah, this is going to be a lot to complete.” I never did complete the Honors concentration sadly. I have a more vivid memory of my first ever class at Rowan. That was your class, United States History to 1865, which began at 8am. I can remember your saying to the class that you didn’t give out As. I remember thinking to myself, “we will see about that.” One week later was September 11, 2001. We had class as normal, and I left class and went to the library to study. I was going to meet my friend, Kristen, at 11am, as she had you for the same class but 9:30am. However, when we met up later, I found out that you had cancelled class. She asked me if I knew what was going on. I did not. She told me what she knew, which was not much at that point, and we found a television and saw the second tower collapse. At this point, Rowan had no way to cancel classes electronically. So, we went ahead and went to our next class, which we had together, John Wilson’s World History After 1500. He was having class normally, except that he started by saying that the government of Afghanistan had reached out to our government with a message of concern for the events that had just occurred. This made no sense to me at the time, because I had no knowledge then of the Taliban or anything related to Afghanistan. Later, we went to our English class with Cathy Wilcoxson, but I believe that she had cancelled class. I can remember the extremely weird drive back home on Route 55 where the flashing message said, “Don’t travel to Manhattan” and no cell phones worked because all the signals were so jammed.

The next day, Wednesday, I had an honors class with Matthew Davis on the History of American Education. He emailed us the night before, and he told us that he was going to hold class but that we were free to use our discretion about attending. I remember thinking that this was a very different approach than I would have expected from a high school class, as he was trusting us to make this decision based on our individual circumstances. I chose to attend, and we spent the class just talking about what had happened. Later, I came to realize that Dr. Davis was an excellent professor. He was smart but also very down to earth. He genuinely cared about what we thought and treated us accordingly.

On September 13th, I remember that you and Cathy held class on Thursday, and you each touched on what was happening, while also moving on as best you could. I remember later thinking how lucky I was, as a first-year student, to have had you, Cathy, and Matthew during this world-altering time.

I did end up with A in your class. [Editor: Chris graduated with 4.0 GPA.]. The second semester I discovered Jim Heinzen, and I loved his “dry” sense of humor. He was a bit less tolerant of the less-enthusiastic gen ed students in the history class, which I appreciated. Later, I took more of his classes, both Western Civilization surveys and two upper-level courses, one on Russian history and one on modern Europe.

In my sophomore year, I took you again for Historical Methods. This happened because, when I was a first-year student, I was in the office to meet my advisor, Gary Hunter, but he didn’t show up. You were in your office, and you agreed to help me and became my academic advisor. So then I was encouraged to take your Methods course, which was fine with me as I knew you from the first course. I can still remember some of the readings you assigned, including Robert Darnton’s analysis of French folktales (including the origins of Red Riding Hood, which has stuck with me to this day) and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. I can also remember that all of our research papers for the class had to be on the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey. I remember thinking, “what Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey?” I can still remember going to Trenton to the State Archives with my friend, Kristen Murray. There I discovered the history of redlining in Mount Laurel, which was shocking to me. I wrote on this topic for my paper, and I can still remember my title, which I took from a quote I found in one of the documents – “If You People Can’t Afford to Live in Our Town, Then You’ll Just Have to Leave.” This experience, like so many others in my classes, was showing me that not only was the world large and diverse but that I didn’t even fully understand the region where I was raised. You later “asked” me to present this research at the regional conference of Phi Alpha Theta at Kutztown University.

My third class with you was The History of the American West. This took place during a very challenging semester for me. I was also taking Scott Morschauser’s class on Ancient Egypt. This course was great, but it was so much new material that it was hard for me to keep everything straight. I also had Macroeconomics, which I hated and was a lot of work. Your course had a dozen or so books I think. One of these was the single worst book I have ever read in my life, Hidden Cities. It was dry and undecipherable, and it has been imprinted in my mind for all the wrong reasons. To be fair, you also assigned some books I really liked, such as Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Despite Hidden Cities, I took you for a fourth course, United States History after 1865, in my senior year. Kristen and I were the only two seniors in that class. [Editor: I never assigned Hidden Cities again.]

I took multiple courses with Scott Morschauser, beginning with Ancient Egypt. He is the smartest person that I have ever met. His mind is brimming with so much information that he intimidated me even though he was also a very nice person. Despite my nervousness, the class was great, and I did well. Later, I took The Medieval World and The Search for the Historical Jesus with him.

I loved Cory Blake’s class on The Modern Middle Class, which I took in 2003. It was obviously relevant to world affairs. She surprised me with her depth of knowledge and background in this field. Most of us had only recently realized the importance the Middle East, but it was clear that she had been studying this region intensely for decades. I felt so fortunate to be able to learn from her, gaining so much new information on a part of the world that I knew so little.

Another one of my Honors courses was a sociology course taught by Harriet Hartman, which focused on the place of women in science and engineering. I remember that class opening my mind about the problems that women had faced and still faced in society. Looking back, this class also reminds me how sheltered and unaware I was of the larger world, and how important classes like this are to college students’ development.

I took Joy Wiltenburg for Senior Seminar, and she was a great surprise to me as a faculty member. She had a personality that was quite different from you or Dr. Heinzen. She was perceived by students as very serious, probably largely because she had a more reserved personality. I somehow expected her to be strict and stern, but this was not the case. Not only was she brilliant, she was also very caring and took great pains to help us grow as students. I didn’t feel like I had to prove my intellect or anything to her in order to get her full support. Later, I came to realize that we have similar personalities, though I did not quite understand this at the time. In any event, I can remember that I met with her after my first draft of my research paper. She said that it was very good but needed some work. I took the paper home and revised it over Thanksgiving. One concern that I had was that I thought she probably disagreed with my argument, which was about Thomas Beckett’s ideology. I argued that he was confronting Henry II out of genuine ideological disagreements as opposed to the pursuit of power. In any event, I turned the revised paper in. When we met, she said that she indeed disagreed with my argument and conclusion, but she nevertheless was awarding me an A because I had done a good job making my case. I felt that she was speaking to me almost like a colleague as opposed to a student. This made a great impression on me and my own confidence, evident by the fact that I remember that conversation all these years later. I wish I would have had her for more classes.

Having worked at Rowan for so many years and seen so much of the University, I have come to understand that the Department of History is a special place. The faculty cared deeply about us, and they introduced us to ways of thinking that surprised me as a southern New Jersey student. I felt like I got a high-quality education that was just as good as one might have gotten from a more prestigious college. I continue to be amazed by how much of what I learned has helped me in my career, even though it has not been directly related to history at all. The improvement in my writing and critical thinking skills that took place during my time as a history major has been particularly helpful to me, leading me to stand out among my peers. The ability to make a logical, dispassionate argument, backed by facts and research, has helped me my entire career, and I would not have had those skills without my History training. Not only did I learn these and other “soft skills” that are often touted by humanities advocates, I learned to see the world, and my place in that world, more clearly and in a much more complicated way.

 

*****

This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University. Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow. Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions. Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections. You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web: https://chss.rowan.edu/.../alumni_highlights/project_100/