This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Nat Biggs.  He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland.  He lived there until he was five years old, when his family moved to Long Valley in Morris County, New Jersey.  Nat’s parents were both math teachers.  After Nat was born, his mother decided to become a homemaker, and his father decided to go to work for American Telegraph & Telephone as a business analyst.  He has one younger sister.  He attended public schools in Washington Township and graduated from West Morris Central High School in 1997.  He entered Rowan University in the Fall of 1997 as a history major.  He completed his undergraduate degree in just three years, graduating magna cum laude in the Spring of 2000.  He became a legal assistant in the foreclosure department of a mid-sized general practice law firm in Parsippany called Fein, Such, Kahn, and Shepard, P.C.  His role in the company grew over time, and he moved into management.  In 2007, he earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Phoenix Online.  He still works at the same law firm today and oversees a number of employees as well as coordinating the various work related to the complex world of foreclosures in his role as a Team Lead.  In addition to his work at the law firm, he has published a number of novels.  A longtime writer, it was the pandemic that allowed him to finish and publish his first book, entitled Prisoner of Vengeance, a World War II spy novel.  Subsequently, in 2023, he published his second novel, Evil Ascending, the first of a planned fantasy trilogy.  In addition to writing, he loves to travel with his wife of almost two decades. They have visited just about every historical site of interest within a hundred-mile radius of his current residence in Oak Ridge, New Jersey.  They especially like travelling to Michigan because of the Great Lakes. 

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Attending college was never in doubt.  As former teachers, my parents expected me to go to college.  I applied to Rowan, Monmouth, the College of New Jersey, and a number of schools in Virginia.  I remember that I thought I might go to Roanoke College.  However, my mother became ill in my senior year, and I decided that I wanted to remain closer to home.  However, I did want to “go away” for college and live on campus.  Rowan was an ideal distance in that regard.  I also liked Rowan’s size. It was not so big that I thought I would get lost in the shuffle.  I did end up having to take out student loans to finish my Rowan degree.  Compared to others, I was lucky.  It only took me ten years to pay off those loans. 

It was a big transition for me to live in a dormitory and having a roommate.  I remember, however, that I felt liberated at Rowan.  I had grown up with the same group of people from K-12, and they all knew me and kind of pigeon-holed me as a certain type of person. I remember realizing that I was free to be whomever I wanted to be and that people would see me only for what I was in front of them, free of anything I had done in the past.

I took mostly general education classes in my first year.  I had placed out of Western Civilization since 1660 thanks to some AP classes I had taken in high school; but I somehow did not take the first half that year and I actually had to take it in my senior year.  I remember when we had a speaker come into that course and several history faculty came into the class to hear this guest lecturer.  They saw me in the class, and asked “what are you doing in this course?”  I remember thinking it was so cool that my professors knew me so well that they would not only recognize me but know that I was in a class that I should have already taken. I don’t think this would have happened at a larger university.

I was interested in all types of history, and I took a wide variety of classes.  Bob Hewsen taught a course on the Byzantine Empire.  This course came as a shock to me as the first upper-level history course that I took.  I was astounded by the amount of reading, and I remember thinking, “whoa, this is a legit college course.”

Scott Morschauser taught two of my courses, one on the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Egypt.  He was very organized and knew his stuff so well. I knew little about the subject but found it fascinating.

I took a class on the American Revolution with Janet Lindman.  I had done some work on the subject before the class, but she expanded my understanding so much by giving me a broader view of the conflict and emphasizing social history.

I took French Revolution with David Applebaum.  He had a more unorthodox way of teaching.  My good friend and I used to joke that the more confused we were about the paper we submitted, the better our grade was likely to be!  I can still remember the paper that I wrote for this class, as I eventually presented it at the regional Phi Alpha Theta conference that year at William Paterson University in Wayne.

Lee Kress taught Modern Latin America.  I really enjoyed this class.  There were only about a dozen of us, and he structured it in such a way that we had really great discussions.   I remember the course had a lot of reading.  I remember that he was impressed with how many highlights and notes that I had written in the text, and he actually allowed me to use it on the exam.  He allowed my friend to do the same with his copy, which also had extensive notes. 

I had loved reading and studying the Civil War era for a long time, so I remember being very excited when I was able to take your Civil War and Reconstruction course. It was your very first semester at Rowan.  I recall that the course was structured through a series of turning points, and I really enjoyed that approach.  I also remember you really fostering a community in your classroom and then inviting us over to your house after the last class.

I got involved with the history honors society, Phi Alpha Theta, in my senior year.  I remember we went to the conference at William Paterson University.  It was a really good experience to present and do some public speaking.

I look back fondly on time at Rowan.  It was a high point in my life. By the time I was done, I was ready to move on with my life and find a job.  After I started working, however, I remember thinking, “I wish I was back at college.”  I believe that I got a great education at Rowan and that the experiences there would not have happened at a larger University and without the student-oriented Department of History faculty. 

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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 100^th 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/departments/history/alumni_all/