Position Papers - Fort Worden

Item

Identifier

1971-07_000001

Title

Position Papers - Fort Worden

Date

June 1974

Creator

Peter Elbow

Marilyn Frasca

Hap Freund

Jeanne Hahn

Rob Knapp

Karin Syversen

Byron Youtz

extracted text

POSITION PAPERS
FORT WORDEN
June, 1974

Here are the partial contents of our minds. We're
excited to have provided a channel for them. We
think this book will do us a lot of good as we think
and meditate relaxedly on it all over the swmner.
We hope there can be a tradition of such "yearbooks"
so we can stay in better touch with each other.
This document will serve as a thank you from all of
us to Byron Youtz for the work he has done this year.
The Planning Committee
Peter Elbow
Marilyn Frasca
Hap Freund
Jeanne Hahn
Rob Knapp
Karin Syversen
Byron Youtz

POSITION PAPER· - Ft . Worden, June 1974
Michael W. Beug
I.

FACULTY RESPONSIBILITY IN THE USE AND MAINTENANCE OF MAJOR SCIENTIFIC
INSTRUMENTS AND A NEW MODEL COORDINATED STUDIES SCHEDULE

All last summer and throughout this past year, I have worked t0 set up a laboratory where students can do environmental research in chemistry, where they can
do organic synthesis, and where the equipment has been gathered to do studies on
the chemistry of plants. In short, we now have a comprehensive organic-analytical
laboratory. If I was not teaching in the eight-quarter Ecology and Chemistry of
Pollution Program, that laboratory would now be disassembled, a full year of hard
work down the drain. I am looking ahead to the end of summer, 1975. Current
policy dictates destruction of the facility at that time. If that occurs, I will
never again put in the tremendous effort required to create a useful research
facility for students. It is too much work just to maintain the laboratory, to
have to rebuild would be criminal.
Maintenance is what worries me most. In 1975 when I am teaching full time in
"The Mind Freaks Out" program, who is going to see that the radiation tests are
performed on the gas chromatographs; that the gas cylinder filters are changed;
that the graphite furnace is serviced; and most importantly that the student
about to inject acetone on the g.c. with the electron capuure detector is pulling
a no-no?
Right now some equipment in the science facility is shamefully under-utilized.
The faculty members do not have time to keep the'instruments up and operating or
to instruct students. They must spend most of their time figuring out how to
run their brand new untried program, plus designing another untried program for
the following year. Science unfortunately requires some stability, it is also
very demanding of time. I am asking here for a little more of both and maybe we
will find in return a little less "burn-out '.'.'
Meanwhile, on the major laboratory facilities, it must be recognized that the
science faculty must each take responsibility for the upkeep of certain pieces
of equipment (as they have done for the most part), and that release time will
be necessary on a regular basis for the execution of said responsibility.
Let me suggest a model that may help. Each faculty member should teach for three
weeks in a given program and then take a one-week break to do research, handle
students on individual contracts, or do laboratory work. To facilitiate intellectual interchange, the scientists should all be "free" one week; the artists ·
another week; the humanities a third week; and the social sciences a fourth week.
A second model involves a more radical departure from the current system. In this
model, a faculty member teaches in a basic program for two weeks, and then is
"free" for two weeks to meet with another program, do contracts, research, laboratory work, etc. On a rotating basis, students would be exposed to more faculty
than they are now, but could retain the integrity of a single program. Faculty
also would retain their home program. It may be desirable under this model to
start the release time two weeks after the start of the quarter and end it two
weeks before the end of the quarter so that each prggram would have a full complement of faculty at the start and finish of the quarter. Again rotations should be
designed to free all artists at the same time, etc.

Michael W. Beug
Page 2
II.

THE USE OF PORTABLE EQUIPMENT AT EVERGREEN

The time has come to change the one-for-all and all-for-one equipment policy at
Evergreen because it is fast becoming a none-for-all situation. The symptoms
are loss, theft and breakage. One cure is replacement (but who has the money);
a sure cure is non-use (lock it up); a potential cure is usage strictly limited
to program requirements with clearly defined student and program financial responsibilities. Secondly, a demonstration of technical and theoretical proficiency must be made prior to release of all non-trivial equipment (and funds
set aside for preparation and delivery of proficiency tests). Thirdly, a
quarterly renewal may be necessary established on a check-out and renewal
system similar to that employed in the Library.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Evaluation Writing - Richard Brian
ASSUMPTION:
If a faculty member is willing to grant credit to a student for a quarter's work
(this solely in control of the faculty member) then the faculty member and the
student should be able jointly to draw up a statement of what that student did
that quarter and how well he did it.
OBSERVATIONS:

the following seem to be to be generally true.

1.

Sixty percent of what I write in a student's evaluation is redundant to the
material found in the student's self evaluation.

2.

When I spend enough time in counseling a student as they write their self
evaluations, they write a fairly complete document which is quite satisfying to me; i.e., I can sign it in agreement.

3.

The goals of most Evergreen programs and contracts are sufficiently general
that real "evaluation" (measurement against a standard) is at best difficult.

4.

Most school registrars and potential employees are not going to read a 3Opage transcript which we are preparing for our graduates.

5.

Ambiguity between two evaluations can render the documents useless to those
who read them.

SUGGESTIONS:
1.

The final transcript evaluation be a single document drawn jointly by the
faculty member and the student unless the student doesn't wish to participate, in which case the responsibility falls to the faculty member.

2.

The faculty advisor's signature on that document be considered a certification that the document is true, correct, and satisfactory to that faculty
member.

3.

That it be the responsibility of the faculty member to see that the document
is properly filed.

COMMENTS:
The assumption precludes a need for adjudication of disputes between the faculty
member and the student. If you cannot agree with the assumption then you probably
cannot agree. with the suggestions.

POSITION PAPER FROM MERVYN L. CADWALLADER
ON THE NEED TO REDUCE EVERGREEN'S COMMITMENT TO COORDINATED STUDIES
Four and a half years ago in February 1970 I brought the idea of a team-theme
courseless two-year program to Evergreen. A year later Richard Jones invented
the label we now use. On the very day that I first explained the idea, I warned
that a team-theme courseless program was difficult to design well and difficult
to teach in. Unhappily I was much too successful in selling the program idea
and not at all successful in getting anyone to listen to my warnings. I wanted
two team-theme two-year programs in the moral curriculum (the liberal arts) each
year. I assumed that they would require harder work than any other kind of
teaching and an unusual willingness to follow a theme while working outside of
the usual academic disciplines. 1 I said quite emphatically that very few faculty
would want to teach outside of the disciplines and very few would want to subordinate
their own individual interests to the common interest, the common theme, and the
common book list of a two-year team-theme program. I may have been emphatic, but
clearly I did not shout loudly enough. I had oversold the courseless program and
over the next four years Evergreen became over committed to what we now call
coordinated studies.
This over commitment has proven to be bad for all of us. It has been bad for us
in at least three ways: (1) many of our coordinated studies programs have been
poorly designed around themes that just did not work; (2) many of the faculty have
become disillusioned with the idea of teaching as members of a team and are tired,
nay exhausted, from having to work in poorly designed programs with faculty that
they did not want to work with, did not like, and could not get along with; (3)
teaching that could have been done much more effectively and pleasantly in many
other ways, and yet hardly at all in a team-theme program, nevertheless has had
to be done in something called coordinated studies. As a result it has been done
badly and many of our teachers have been unhappy.
I am convinced that if we keep trying to offer a large number of coordinated
studies programs, and keep insisting that every member of the faculty must teach
in them frequently, then faculty and student dissatisfaction with and misunderstanding of coordinated studies will call the whole team-theme courseless program idea
into question. As a matter of fact, that has already happened.
Three years of Evergreen history, much of it unnecessarily painful, tells me that
it would be better to have far fewer coordinated studies programs, and to have
them all well designed,and to have them all staffed with faculty who really want
to work with each other on those teams in those particular programs. Fewer programs
would reduce the number of shotgun weddings and painful divorces each year. It
would be easier to give the designer and coordinator a happy team and it would be
easier to admit to and correct mistakes in faculty assignments. The fewer programs
would turn out much better than the many, they would be more fun to teach in, and
the students would be happier and would learn more.
1. Team-theme courseless programs need not be interdisciplinary (mine, in the
moral curriculum, are usually non-disciplinary). We all know that courses can
be very interdisciplinary. The question of interdisciplinary vs. disciplinary
studies simply is not an issue in this discussion of Evergreen's over commitment
to coordinated studies.

- 2 -

Here are a few suggestions for the implementation of this proposed reduction in the
number of coordinated studies programs offered annually.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Decrease the number of courseless team-theme programs to the point where they
require no more than approximately one third of the Evergreen faculty;
Revise and repeat the good programs. Offer good sequences and then repeat them;
Increase the number of group contracts and modules offered each quarter, offer
sequences of both, and repeat them;
Stop trying to force the teaching of mathematics, foreign languages, music,
drama, studio arts, film, and introductory sociology into the courseless
program format; and
Promulgate and use a taxonomy of coordinated studies programs so students,
faculty, and administration can start thinking and talking clearly about the
many different kinds of things that now go on under that all too sloppy rubric. 2

I thought it might be useful to solicit a bit of support in behalf of my proposal.
I asked those whose signatures appear below to read my statement and join me in an
urgent request that this matter be discussed fully and frankly by the entire faculty
in September.

~

I..~-~---d~-,,~~,--

,C\

Q...)

;?~-~
4.Jl(.
2.

(I_-

I am working on just such a taxonomy, an Evergreen Periodic Table of Programs.
Perhaps I'll have it ready for our discussions in September. The need for such
a taxonomy seems more urgent every time I get into any kind of a discussion about
coordinated studies. We simply cannot expect to have clear and sensible discussions about what we are doing if we use the same label, "coordinated studies
program," to describe Man and Nature, Democracy and Tyranny, and Individual
in America.
The Eskimos could not have survived in the Arctic if they had had only one
concept, one word for snow. They invented and used a whole bunch of words for
what we casually refer to as snow because their lives depended upon their
ability to make lots of distinctions. I think we had better invent and learn
to use a whole bunch of words for these many, many different things that an
Eskimo might casually refer to as coordinated studies.
Peter Elbow called our attention to some of the distinctions over a year ago,
but we have remained blinded by our paucity of categories to this day.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Time at Evergreen - Richard Cellarius
I need to find ways of bette'r arranging my time so I will survive. I've thought
and listened. Written down here are some of the results. They are presented as
suggestions and guidelines, not rules. Maybe they'll be useful to others; many
of them come from others.
(1) Family, sex, etc. should be given their proper priority. It should be clearly
indicated to students and other colleagues that there are times when you do NOT
want to be bothered with their academic or non-academic trivia or non-trivia.
(2) Time for self--preparation, professional growth, development of "other-disciplinary"
competence, consulting, etc.--should be given at least equal priority with time
for students. Without it, we can't do a good job. Many claim a functioning faculty
seminar is absolutely essential for coordinated studies. · I agree. I think we
need at least two and preferably three times as much time set aside for ourselves
as we give to our students. (It seems reasonable to expect that they should have
an equivalent amount of time available for their own work and preparation.) This
time needs to be scheduled and set aside in large enough chunks so that work can
be accomplished. I usually require 1/2-1 hour just to find the top of my desk
before I can get down to accomplishing something.
(3) The above point suggests that "class time" should be no more than about 15
hours per week and preferably less. I know this is less than the present average;
we and the' students will have to learn to live with less time together.
(4) One of the glories of TESC is the freedom to design our own schedules without
being locked into fixed one hour blocks. (The shortage of seminar rooms does
affect that, however.) I have tried to give two hour lectures (Yes, Virginia,
there are lectures at Evergreen.), but even with a break in the middle, that may
be too much information to assimilate at one time. Some activities (seminars,
workshops, labs) can appropriately go for a full day with great effectiveness.
The problem is how to best schedule activities that are of short duration so
that similarly short blocks of time fore and/or aft are avoided or also used
effectively. Any suggestions?
(5) Some of the greatest successes have been in those programs that have crammed
all their group activities into 2-2 1/2 full days each week with the remainder
pretty much off or individual work days. I find this an appealing idea and will
try it myself next year. For programs that are intense (as most turn out to be),
provision should be made for one or two open weeks each quarter, in which nothing
is scheduled except the four "r's" (reading, 'riting, recuperating, and recreating).
They should not be used for the deans' scheduled faculty program-planning work
weeks. (See point 7, following.)
(6) "Time off" should not mean open office hours. Most, if not all, of the off
or down time should be clearly indicated as times when the faculty member is
not available for student consultation. In a more positive sense, so students
know they can find us sometime, we should designate specific limited periods
for individual student consultations on either an open door or appointment basis.
(7)

With the advent of working dean's groups, full days set aside exclusively for

Richard Cellarius
Page 2
faculty meetings (faculty work days) are probably unnecessary. Approximately one
afternoon (Wednesday?) each month should be set aside for meetings in which the
faculty (community?) as a whole can get together to talk about issues related
to the Evergreen philosophy. More time may need to be reserved for program
planning early in the fall. If a full week is to be so designated (and I question
whether that's the way to go about it), meetings should be set up for only
mornings or only afternoons (preferably the latter), so that major breaks in
academic programs are avoided. It would be useful as the academic calendar is
drawn up for next year if planning for those weeks be done in advance so that
(a) it can be determined whether the time set aside is really necessary and can
be used effectively and (b) the schedule is not changed after programs have constructed
their own schedules around it. (Some will argue that we need to be ready for
the unanticipated, i.e., be flexible. I agree, but that is NO excuse for introducing uncertainty and chaos for their own sakes.)
(8) In coordinated studies programs which have a series of relatively short
workshops or modules parallel to the core of the program, provision should be
made for each member of the team to have one of those periods off. This will
increase the student/faculty ratio for the other faculty in the program and
will be more feasible for programs with 5-6 faculty than for those with 3-4. But
I suspect it will be worth it.
Scheduling is perhaps the most obvious and formal mechanism for getting at the
time problem. I suspect a lot of time gets wasted not only in seemingly unnecessary
meetings but also in venting--or sublimating--wrath at colleagues because of their
(or our) intransignence or incompatibility. In discussions at Fort Worden, it
was noted how many of our so-called coordinated studies have been thoroughly
UNcoordinated. Many also felt they should, nevertheless, remain as an important
part of the curriculum. While I believe we all need to accept assignments anywhere the deans feel is appropriate, much attention needs to be given to developing
compatible teams and incompatibilities need to be discovered very early in the
planning process. Open and frank discussion of personal interests, philosophies
and dislikes and a listing of the kinds of questions each person expects the
program to deal with should be the first items on the planning agenda. The book
list should be the last. I suspect that in at least a few cases, the reverse
has been true. I hope the deans will devote some time to this problem in their
discussions over the summer and very -early fall, long before the decisions have
to be made.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974

On Moving Every Year - Richard Cellarius
I

I like the idea of moving offices every year for one reason: it keeps us
together with the people we will be teaching with. But moving is a terribly
expensive endeavor in terms of faculty time and energies. The number of
person hours (faculty) alone is probably 1000-1500, with an equivalent
dollar cost of over $10,000 each year. Moving would be incredibly easier
if we did not have to pack up books in boxes and unpack them each year.
I propose that the college purchase or have built a number of book cases
with sturdy wheels and replacable front panels (so the books don't fall out
in transit). These will have to be of a size that is convenient for the
offices, can be set side-by-side, and fit through office and elevator doors.
On moving day, drawers are exchanged in desks and filing cabinets and the
book cases, with books inside, are rolled to the new offices. We would
probably need 400-500 such book cases, and they would probably cost about
$100 each, for a total cost of $40,000 - $50,000. The cost would probably
be amortized over the first five years of an incredible less hassled faculty.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Teaching and Learning - Susan Christian
I got very tired and irritated at Fort Worden until I got drunk. We all talked
too much. It was all utterly fascinating. None of it was about anything.
Why do we discuss teaching all the time?

Why don't we tell stories about it?

i'm going to be you people's visiting artist for one year. Here's what I'm
going to do. I'm going to find a place off campus (absolutely not my idea)
where me and some students can work, in privacy and peace. We'll spend a lot
of time together and invite the rest of you over when we have somethi~g to show
you. It should happen about once a week. Somehow we'll get some tea or coffee
or wine or something together and we hope you'll bring some too. We'll need you
absolutely desperately. You need us, too.
We're going to be very very happy, like lovers, in a kind of self-sufficient
security, an alert confidence, an attentive generosity. If you need us for
anything, please let us know. We will love talking it over, whoever we are.
That's my position.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Practice in Interpretation - Thad Curtz
The problem: Students here tend not to learn craft skills in the humanities close reading of various kinds in literature, extracting the argument from a
philosophical text, working on the assumptions structuring an historical
narrative, etc.
One of the reasons is that each seminar in a basic coordinated studies is likely
to contain a few people who want to do literary interpretation, a few who might
want to do philosophical analysis, etc. As a result, most of the talk tends to
be about themes and moral questions. I think that's as it should be, but I think
we need someplace for kids to acquire the analog of lab skills if we are ever
going to be able to run really sophisticated advanced coordinated studies.
(There are places where students are learning such things, I think -- in some
g~oup contracts, but I don't think rjlany students are learning them.) I think
that the lecture series I'm proposing, which would split craft skills sharply
off from anything else, might be a very painless way for a lot of students to
get exposed to what disciplined work in the humanities is about.
What I would like:
We would meet in a lecture hall once a week. Each week one volunteer would deal
with a short text - a poem, a slide, a myth, a dream, a piece of non-verbal
behavior, a film of a therapeutic interview, a philosophical or historical text,
a Biblical passage, a legal case, etc. Generally speaking, the shorter the text
the better. Each week the lecturer would try to display a different way of dealing with the text. Sometimes, these might be exploratory techniques based on
body movement, on writing dialogues with the work, etc. Most of the time the
lecturer would probably be telling people things, asking them questions he knew
the answers too, etc. Leading them around by the noses saying look at this,
look at that, what do they have in common, etc. My notion is that we would be
focusing on minute particulars most of the time. Exposing students very briefly
to all sorts of ways of proceeding with a text after you've looked at it once.
I was talking to Ron Woodbury about this, and he said he thought there were three
levels involved in dealing with historical writing: (1) getting the words off
the page - remedial reading problems; (2) being able to give a clear summary of
the argument when you'd finished the book - lots of college graduates can't do
this; (3) criticizing the logical structure of the argument and the assumptions
behind it - usually done in senior seminars for history majors or in graduate
school. Now, I think what I'm interested in is at level 3 and its analogs in
other disciplines, at least primarily. (Extracting the argument from a philosophical text is level 2, but Mark Levensky doing that for 30 mintues would show
students a lot about what the discipline of philosophy is about.)
If 10 or 20 people would each volunteer to help on one occasion, I would try to
do arrangements, publicity, refreshments out of the Learning Services budget.
Please drop me a note if you're willing to help. I'll probably try to persuade
you all face to face in the fall as well.

-./

A Partly-Redundant Position Paper About Faculty Seminars at Evergreen
-Leo Daugherty
Lots of people at the Fort Worden Retreat were ti.lking about lots of
things: curriculum, faculty burnout, "Is Coordinated Studies Worth All the
Grief?" and a million other problems that somehow seem connected.
We live in a time when everything seems connected.
At least, all problems do.
While hopes and wishes and aspirations seem not to be, except as one
more hope.
And we keep looking for an answer that will unify them and make them
make "it" - happen.
Rudy Martin and Richard Jones suggested in meetings that the Faculty
Seminar is a good answer. I believe that. It has worked for me. And it
has worked for just about everybody I know here who has really tried it.
It isn't an all-purpose panacea. But it is also not merely a placebo that
makes you feel better for no organic reason. It is organic. And it is
good medicine, both curative and preventive. Mostly because it is run.
So here are ten ideas I have about Faculty Seminars:
1)

Hold them.

Once a week.

2) Make them your top priority in Coordinated Studies important thing you do during your week.

the most

3) A good idea is to make them public, with students and deans and
the Provost and the President invited. The students in your program should not,
probably, be "required" to come, or"strongly expected" to come, but just
announce to them the time and place of your meeting. Once you get settled,
however, lock the door and put a Do Not Disturb sign up. Corranunicate the idea
that this is a very important thing to you, and that people should be on time
or not come. In the two programs I've taught in, we experimented with the
idea of "pretending that students aren't there." The faculty sit around a
table, with students grouped in another area of the room, and with it being
understood that they can't talk, even to ask questions at the end. That's
because the Faculty Seminar is for you, not for them. Yet lots of them will
want to be there, and they will like it. The alternative is to exclude them
totally, but my experience has been that there's no reason to do this if the
above rigidities are held to.
4) Make the Seminars about books or topics you're reading together.

5) #4

means do no do any program business at them.

6) #4 also means that personal stuff (your nervous breakdown, divorce,
etc.) should be kept to a minimum. (That kind of stuff is better dealt with
over a beer or a cup of coffee off-campus, and it usually~ be dealt with,
and not avoided, by you and your teammates. But the Faculty Seminar is something else.)
7) Make no overt attempt to have the Faculty Seminar feed into your
teaching. It is for you. Both you and your teaching will be better for doing
it this way.
8) Write position papers for them. One position paper per meeting
is usually enough.

They can be in the form of letters.

-2-

9) #2 and #8 seem to add up to your taking all day for the Faculty
Seminar. Prepare in the morning (through reading or writing your position
paper or writing a response
to last week's meeting), have lunch f and meet in
I
the afternoon. I've found Friday to be the best day to hold them. There are
lots of reasons why, but the most important one is that it gives you something
fu.~ to really look forward to all week. (The objection is that, since it isn't
a required function, your students might take a three-day weekend. But we've
already given our students so much of our trust at Evergreen that this seems
a trifling consideration. Just tell them that you don't want them to -fake a
three-day weekend (if you don't), and suggest some things they might do on
Friday if they don't plan to attend. You'll have lots of ideas.)
10) Memorialize them. Make tape recordings. Take extensive notes
on what people say. Ask artistic students to make sketches. (Videotape is
a point of controversy here. It usually isn't very good. I have no idea why.)
p.s.:

It is tempting to talk about teaching problems in the Faculty Seminar.
Different people will respond to that temptation in different ways. My
own suggestion is to mimimize such talk during the Fall Quarter meetings,
while forcing yourself to really talk about books and issues, unless you
have a teacher on your team who is new to Evergreen or new to teaching.

Pes.:

Yes, I think it will still work for people teaching in Individual
Contracts or Group Contracts. The main problem is in organizing your
weekly meetings and in getting the real commitment from yourself and
your colleages to be there. I would suggest that the constituencies
be formed around common types of books and issues being taught during
the quarter - not around personalities.

p.s.t

I've been presumptious enough to hard-nosedly suggest all these things
only because, with the exception of my 2nd p.s., they've really worked
for my colleages and me over the past two years. I believe in them and
I hope you'll try them. I hope you'll let me know how it goes. Good
luck.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
George Dimitroff
I.

COLLEAGIAL SUPPORT FOR INDIVIDUAL CONTRACT FACULTY

Chuck Nisbet suggested that faculty make an effort to leave their offices
for lunch, to meet in CAB, to discuss problems, and to share successes. I believe a lot of publicity ought to be given to this proposal among faculty, so
that they know that there is a time and a place for meeting and talking that
is more than just coincidental.
Bill Aldridge mentioned that last year some Individual Contract faculty got
together, formed a faculty seminar group, and had their offices located together. This should be encouraged, perhaps to the extent that some priority be
given to such groups by the Space Desk in making office assignments and by
putting all faculty of the same seminar group into the same Dean grouping. All
this should be widely known.
II. INVOLVING STUDENTS IN PROGRAM PLANNING
Much publicity should be given to programs that have already been planned
with student participation. Tom Rainey spoke of a group contract he helped
plan with a great deal of student participation; there are other group contracts.
I am currently helping to implement a proposal for a Coordinated Studies program,
Developmental Learning, which was initiated in Maxine Mimms' section of the ICS
program and was developed largely by students who will be interning as facilitators
in the program this fall. Their excitement and enthusiasm for planning and creating has been infectious and exciting.
Students should be brought into program planning at the beginning, on the first
day that program proposals are submitted to the Deans. The recruiting of students
might best be accomplished through their existing programs. The first studentfaculty program proposals should come out of groups that are formed within programs.
Then Deans should sift and sort, and students and faculty should be given the
chance to choose the programs they wish to help plan. Then students should be
paired or grouped with faculty, and the program planning process should be treated
as a learning experience; after all, we faculty are not quite at the point where
we know all the answers.
Neither students nor faculty should feel committed to any program they propose
during those first few weeks, but no program should be passed along by the Deans
at the crucial last sift unless it has a faculty member in on the planning who
is willing to coordinate that program.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974

Evaluation of Faculty Seminar, A.c ademic Year 1973-74 - Carolyn Dobbs
A regular high point ih the week's activities is the faculty seminar. Last
spring Bill, Earle, Carol, Wini, and I agreed to form an Individual Contract
faculty team. We requested rooms next to one another and made a pact to do
the "book/support thing" that is expected of Coordinated Studies teams. In
this way we hoped to overcome the reported isolation suffered by individual
contract personnel last year.
We began meeting in the fall and were soon joined by Betty
two welcome additions to the group. These additions meant
members of the group were outnumbered five to two, another
we're sure, and one that doesn't seem to have caused undue
for Bill or Earle!

K. and Lorraine,
that the male
first at Evergreen
stress or anxiety

We have met faithfully for two hours once a week. We rotate from one house
to another, discussing books, general experiences, and teaching problems.
Our intent was to read books that would explain our fields to each other and
have the discussions led by the appropriate exper t. The plan didn't work as
well as we had expected, but a good time was still had by all.
1

We have used the seminar to share with one another and to build or strengthen
friendships. I don't think any of us have suffered in the least from isolation except that Betty sometimes feels left out because she's in the Lab
Building and she envisions this constant chit-chat among those of us in the
2400 Hall. Actually, it is nice having adjoining offices because there is a
running casual interchange when doors are open.
In conclusion the experiment can be deemed a success - one that I recommend
strongly for future contract pool members.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Curriculum Planning:

A Critique and a Plan - Peter Elbow

In our curriculum planning, I think we are putting more and more trust in a
model, and less and less trust in the teacher's and student's instincts about what
to teach and study. What's wrong with these instincts? The choice and commitment of the teacher and student is the strongest motor for learning that we have.
We seem to be assuming unquestioningly that the mind resembles the hoary standard
curriculum: that people learn breadth before they learn particulars; that
therefore we should have all beginning students in broad coordinated studies
and only let returning students do group or individual contracts.
But this doesn't make sense. As often as not the mind works just the other way
round: a student starts from some very narrow or particular interest and by
pursuing that is led to broader interests. If it were a debate about models
of learning, I think the particular-to-general model is superior and we should
insist that all entering students be in group or individual contracts. If someone
is going to study, say, counseling or ecology, in depth, it makes more sense to
consider the study of government and literature as consequences of the pursuit
of counseling or ecology, rather than as preconditions. I know it would be handy
if the student had a smattering of everything before going deeply into something,
but that's not how the mind often works: getting good at something makes you
willing--gives you a reason and a handle--to wander into everything.
But let's not have a debate about models. Evergreen is just the sort of place that
shouldn't build its curriculum on a model. Or at least not yet. Let's have
teachers teaching what they believe in and students studying what they believe in.
Let's have some easy programs and some hard ones and some in between. (Words,
Sounds, and Images indicated to me that it can be useful to mix experienced and
inexperienced students; there's a trade-ofTT
But let's not assume that "beginning" equals "broad," or "basic" equals "coordinated
study." I think we should respect the desire of beginning students who want to
study something narrow--who would like to be in a group contract or even an
individual contract--so long as some teachers can be found willing to teach them.
We are also drifting into the assumption that a coordinated study is the best
place to teach basic skills. Seems crazy to me. Surely, a group contract is just
as good if not better.
Many of our coordinated studies are really more or less loosely allied group contracts. Why not call a spade a spade and really let them be group contracts.
Then they could be planned better and they would be more likely to have students
in them wh·o knew and chose what they were getting into. Group contracts don't
have to be a whole year long.
Frankly, I think we are killing the coordinated study mode. What a perverse way
of punishing Merv for having introduced it: taking his baby and embracing it
to death. What a nasty trick: turning the moral curriculum into the duty mode.
It has become everyone's duty to teach or study in coordinated studies. People
are only allowed to "get out of them" after they have "gone through" them. What
is this a metaphor for? Freshman English? The Ph.D. Spinach? Abstinence?
When we push people into them against their will, it means we no longer believe

Peter Elbow
Page 2
they have a payoff people could actually desire. If no students or teachers will
freely choose them, I think we should drop them. Merv certainly never wanted
coordinated studies to take over as ,the main mode. Fifty per cent of the college
would be plenty--more than he suggests.
Let me assure you that.!. actually believe that study in a broad interdisciplinary
group is inherently superior to individual or disciplinary study. I think it
provides greater sources of insight, understanding, and motivation. But my
experience here--with our huge emphasis on seminars and broad interdisciplinary
groups--makes me actually embrace the contrary truth: there's nothing wrong with
studying something narrow or disciplinary or by yourself. And if that's what a
student wants to do, it's -crazy to force her/him into a coordinated study where
she'll/he'll be a hindrance to others who wanted to be there.
Notice our faculty backlash: more and more teachers saying, "I don't want to
teach beginning students any more. Give me advanced students." I think this
feeling may be a reaction not so much against beginning students, as such, but
against the quality of life in a coordinated study that has a significant proportion of students who don't want to be there. And I suspect, also, that many of
the problems of seminars are not really problems of seminars, as such, but
rather problems that result from students who lack any sense of having chosen what
the seminar is about. One of the consequences of having such a large proportion
of the college in coordinated studies is that there are many fewer options to choose.
We are drifting into the condition that made most of us leave other places: not
lecture courses or departments--nothing necessarily wrong with them--but an
institution filled with people studying what they don't really want to study, taught
by people who don't really believe in what they are teaching. This spells disaster for us.
Let's admit--celebrate--the fact that there are special payoffs to coordinated
studies. But let's not force people to take them till they want those payoffs.
Way to plan curriculum.

a

The problem is to find
better way for teachers and students to reveal to each
other what they want--and a procedure for negotiation when the two are out of
phase with each other.
Teachers up against the wall!
Let there be a war room. One wall for teachers--with enough space on it so each
teacher ca~ put an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper somewhere on it. Starting in
September, each teacher simply puts briefly on the sheet her/his desire for the
following year (or 2 years). You don't have to have a plan, just the truth about
your desire. Thus, in September, many would say, "I don't know." Fine. But some
.
would be more speci f ic,
e.g., II a group contract i n x, y, or z, II or II a coor d"ina t e d
study involving the arts," or "individual contracts," or "working with advanced
students, please," or "so-and-so and I would like to do something together."
And some would have a specific plan--either for a coordinated study or a group
contract. As the weeks went by and we could see what others were thinking about,
specificity would slowly increase.
There could even be color coding, e.g., one color for "I really feel pretty strongly
about this" and another for "this is just an idea; I could happily do something

Peter Elbow
Page 3
very different." The wall would be easier to read if there were vague regions:
upper spread for advanced students, lower for beginning; one horizontal spread
for each of the three modes; a place for programs that don't distinguish between
advanced and beginning students; and a big space for people who aren't sure.
There would be
write "hey, no
one is doing a
Students might
and I are very

another, smaller wall, for people to put up notes . Teachers might
one is doing a program to prepare people for so and so," or "no
program for freshman who aren't sure what they're interested in."
say "hey, there's nothing in media," or "the following 15 people
interested in studying x: who'll be our teacher?"

Students into the bowels of the machine.

----

----

Each returning student would have a number for the computer. Each would tell
the machine her/his desires for the next year (or two). Again, the truth is
all that's needed. There would be a button for "I don't know." But also buttons
for general subject-matter areas; coordinated study, group, or individual contract;
basic, advanced; internship. And there would be a number corresponding to each
teacher so that a student could indicate if she/he wants something actually proposed
by a specific teacher; or even indicate that she/he wants to study with a particular
teacher. Perhaps there also ought to be a button to distinguish whether these
desires are strong or mild. We need the truth--not necessarily definite choices.
The more people who don't care, the better, so long as we know the limits of their
not caring.
Students and teachers could change their desires as often as they want. But the
faculty mind would always be in view; and there would always be a readout of
the mind of student information that will help teachers and deans figure out what
to do: the numbers of students who want to do what kinds of things.
Obviously, teacher and student desires may not match up. Though they may come
closer than we suspect. When teachers express their commitments and say what
they really want to teach, it will become much more attractive than listings that
consist of what students supposedly ought to study.
But supposing there is a large disparity. At least we can see what the disparity
is. And then we can go into a process of gradual negotiation. Trying various
compromises. The main thing is that this plan will let that process be slowly
in little bits. Little changes here and there will ease the picture. One or two
teachers who make a change could fix up the whole situation . And it wouldn't be
a change forced on them, it would be something they thought of which they would
probably be happy to do.
I think this plan will easily permit us to move to curriculum planning for two
years in advance instead of just one. We could then put out a regular catalogue
and new students wouldn't have to choose Evergreen in total ignorance of what
will be taught. (That may be one of the things that hurts our admissions efforts.)
Most
just
Most
more

teachers would be happy to indicate their desires for two years instead of
one--especially when you remember that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer.
of us would welcome more continuity and more gradual planning. Also more and
of us realize the need to repeat programs.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Portnoy's Dilemma - Peter Eibow
Marilyn and Greg and I were wondering on the porch Monday night at Ft. Worden
about why there was so little sense of community among the faculty at Evergreen.
There are lots of obvious r~asons. E.g., time: we're always busy, don't have
enough time for unstructured visiting. Or, pressure and anxiety: being unsure
of what we're doing most of the time and suffering from a sense that we are
probably doing it wrong -- this ought to bring us together for support, but in
fact it tends to make us crawl home and lick our insecurity alone. Besides,
teachers tend to be loners.
But two not-so-obvious reasons came up.
related metaphors that came to me.

I want to put them in the form of two

(1) Portnoy. The adolescent kid who wants to get laid so bad and never does.
The REASON he doesn't get laid is BECAUSE HE WANTS IT SO BAD. I think it may be
the same with us and our lack of community. What I'm not sure of is WHY wanting
something badly keeps you from getting it. Is it something about being so desper•
ate -- it mattering too much -- that you are unable to act freely or casually?
We benefit from games like volleyball and softball. We're all so serious, really,
about connnunity and the possibility of the whole being greater than the sum of its
parts. But we seldom score.
Or is it something about fooling oneself about what one wants? As Greg said, the
kid pretends he wants some deep personal relationship when all he wants is to get
laid,' . Or vice versa? Or thinking he wants a girl but really he is suffering
from his growing distance and revolt from family and wants back in, wants his
mommy -- and daddy -- but can't admit it? If so, then what is it that we're not
•
admitting
we want?
(2) I was separated, then divorced, and lonely, and wanting to have a close relationship. I was extraordinarily bad at it in spite of being supposedly eligible
and being somewhere fulL,of possibilities. It wasn't EXACTLY the same as Portnoy.
It wasn't just that I wanted it badly but that I think I knew too much about what
I wanted. I wanted a lot. I wanted everything. I wanted a full complete close
relationship. For some reason this made it harder.
Actually this was a metaphor I made to illustrate to myself a point that Marilyn
made straight out: that the faculty are too expert. We all know TOO much about
closeness and community and synergy. One of the main reasons why many of us came
here is because we were good at producing it in our classes, we knew it was ~m~
portant, and we knew Evergreen was a place where it could be central in teaching.
And we THOUGHT it would be central among the faculty.
For some reason, when people are specially good at something and also specially
committed to its importance, they are often SPECIALLY SKILLFUL in deviously avoiding it or defending against it in their own lives. Like the way psychiatrists,
whose job is to help people deal with scary feelings, are themselves so often
expert at NOT dealing with their own scary feelings.
Is it something about becoming a psychiatrist -- dealing with other people's
scary feelings -- BECAUSE one feels the need to deal with one's own but doesn't
really dare? Translation~ we want closeness but fear it, so we get it vicariously by peddling it for our students?

Peter Elbow
Page 2
Or is it something about the fact of knowing all about it and therefore not
being willing to settle for anything less than perfection? We have a vision,
an experience, a memory of great connnunity. We're disdainful snobs of anything
less -- of any of the painful awkwardnesses that come first -- when you actually
try to do it yourself with real people -- as opposed to standing above and helping students do it? We're ea~ily disdainful of foibles in our colleagues. Who
wants to be close to people with foibles! We're waiting for the perfect faculty.
Why settle for something imperfect when we are experts.
Any ideas for where to go from here?

******
Faculty Burnout - Peter Elbow
I.

~

it really~ problem?

After all, we get paid a lot of money for 10 months work. Why shouldnft we
work hard? Why shouldn't we be tired in June? Program secretaries probably work
just as hard if not harder for a fraction of the salary. In other colleges some
of the teachers work just as hard.
But it's not a matter of how hard we work but rather how intelligently. I think
we do have a problem that could be called "burnout." It involves an unintelligent kind of work: rushed, pressured, always feeling behind, always feeling
things coming at you from six directions at once, feeling under a cloud; without
perspective, without calm, without foresight. This is stupid. It has two bad
effects. (1) After a while, people do "burn out." That is, they go into reaction and become cynical, absent, withdrawn, completely uninvolved. Maybe they
shouldn't. ' But moralism won't help. They do. And nothing can stop them. You
can't legislate involvement. The college suffers. (2) The college also suffers
from lack of wisdom, thoughtfulness, and perspective. We don't get enough longrange, large-minded thinking, enough calm, imaginative, slowly-nurtured thinking.
All our energy goes into short-range survival and petty procedures. We scurry
down paths, just trying to get through each week and don't have enough energy
to really think about whether the paths are the right ones. Lynn's memo spoke
to the same thing: we get completely caught up in petty matters.
II.

Where does it come from?

Let me give my own personal answer. (But I think it applies to most of us.)
My first impulse is always to blame it on quantity of work, but I don't think
that's right. When I'm really clever and firm with myself I have to admit that
being harrassed, rushed, under a cloud is associated with a particular set of
feelings: being unsure of what I'm doing, unsure of whether I'm right, unsure
of whether I'm appreciated, and generally anxious in a somewhat low-level undercover sort of way. When these feelings are absent, then I handle my objective
duties with calm and control and perspective. I start being intelligent.
So let me briefly try to describe the ways in which I think Evergreen produces a
peculiarly virulent strain of uncertainty and anxiety.

Peter Elbow
Page 3
Students want so much from us. We are their only teacher in most cases -- where
in most colleges they would have 3-5 teachers at once. In fact they want so much
from us that their wants are contradictory.
They want us to g.ive them both less leadership and more leadership at the same
time. On the one hand most of them came here because they wanted more freedom
and autonomy: to be treated like adults. Yet at the same time they really want
more from us. They want us to change their lives. They want special, magical,
enriching, transforming, growth-producing relationships with their teachers. That's
what we advertise, really.
They want us to be swinging, experimental, brave, speculative, able to deal out of
our field. Only they also want us to be professional, to be confident, to be
sure-footed, to know what we are talking about.
They want a seminar or a group to be a united, synergistic community of concerted
productive activity. Only they also don't want to do anything they are not already interested in.
We feel an increased pressure on us because here we can't count on what Dave
Powell calls "the old fuckers." In other colleges we used to be able to count
on the old fuckers to force them to learn the hard stuff, the basics, to give
tests, to be tough with them. We could be liberators, we could tell the students
"why not?" But here we have to try to be the old fuckers too. If they can't read
or write or think, we have to worry. This complete education seems to rest on one
set of shoulders at any one moment.
Another source of strain here is the centrality of the personal, compared to other
colleges. So many things that are academic or objective at other colleges are
personal here. In most places it is a question of whether the material is relevant or exciting: here it's a question of whether I'm relevant or exciting.
Teaching is a constant test of whether I'm sufficiently honest, sensitive, perceptive
i.e., am I really an authentic person? I can study hard to try to know my material
better -- I don't know how to study to be a more authentic person. If I'm not
rehired at some other college, it's because they used some stupid external criterion that has nothing to do with my real worth: if I'm not rehired here -- where
we have no tenure, of course -- it's because I'm a bad person. When I want to
push my students to learn, to work, to struggle, I've got nothing to hit them
over the head with -- no grades, no major, no long tradition of hard work -- nothing but my bare naked personality or character. To have such an uncertain implement
so overused makes for real strain and anxiety.
At Evergreen I'm more dependent upon my students for my feelings of self-worth
than I ever . have been anywhere else. In other places there tend to be other
channels: relationships with a department, with your whole professional discipline,
research, committee work, and work outside the university. · And also in most colleges
one is teaching 3 courses so that one can worry less if one course just goes down
the drain: it's easier to take chances and try things out, take risks. But here
very nearly 100% of one's survival juices must come from that one program, that one
set of students.
·
There is always a sense of whether a teacher is a desirable teacher to have. Last
year (1972-73) I was perceived as out of it, not someone that students wanted to

V

Peter Elbow
Page 4
study with. Winter quarter, the students had a measure of choice and it began
to look as though perhaps I wouldn't have any students except those that somehow
got forced to me. I submit that all of us feel this somewhat -- even when we
are popular: for we all know how fickle and changable such student attitude can
be. And I submit that it hurts, however cool we pretend to be.
In fact, there is a stinger in Evergreen's emphasis upon the personal . Not only
the strain of feeling it, but also the strain of pretending -- sometimes even to
ourselves -- that we don't feel bad about student esteem. We all go around carefully proving that of course we don't give a damn, we're above that -- but of
course subtly making sure people realize that students really do respect us and
like us.

,-,_
'-J

At Evergreen we are supposedly trying to reduce the centrality -0f value-judgments
in education. We don't grade each others' or students' work. But I think we
spend a correspondingly larger amount of time and energy grading each others
characters and personalities.
Perhaps all this sounds like an argument for trying to reduce this tyranny of the
personal. But it's not. I finish this year more convinced than ever that it is
a good thing: it's correct and salutary that our bare naked characters should
play such a central role in teaching. It forces one to try to learn how to teach.
Personal relationships are the most appropriate plasma for carrying learning.
But let's recognize and compensate for the price we pay -- in strain and anxiety
for this kind of teaching.

r
.J

We're always doing things for the first time, and always engaged in trying simultaneously to plan something entirely different. (Surely we can change this
situation without loss.)
We are so often teaching out of our field of competence. We're liable to be talking
baloney every other second and we know it. That's why we deal so much in safe
(and empty) generalizations. But it makes us feel guilty.
What if we're all wrong in our college here? What if we're leading our students
down the garden path? Will they blame us for not having given them a structured
enough curriculum full of the standard stuff? I think most of us must suffer from
feeling that many of our students are not learning as much, or just plain working
as hard, as we did in college -- or as they would in a regular college, . (Our habit
of pretending that no learning goes on in regular colleges is wearing a bit thin . )
We all imbibed the ethic of hard work. We still believe it: look at us. Yet
supposedly we are calm and relaxed at the prospect of all our babies imbibing the
opposite ethic.
III.

What can we do about it?

This isn't a plea to give up on our experiment. But it is a plea to recognize the psychic price and to figure out things to compensate: balms and supports.
Two things emerged loudest to me at Fort Worden: time and colleague-support.
(1) Better uses of time. Better rhythms, bett~r ways to divide up the day, the
week, the term. Something seems wrong -- as though we could do more with less .
Some random thoughts about time:

"

Peter Elbow
Page 5
The Fort Worden experience seemed helpful: a genuin€ stopping and catching
a breath of perspective. How about having a 2-day retreat right in the middle
of each term. Even going away. I think we'd get more done than in the 4 or 5
faculty workdays.
That would fit in with the idea of a down week in the middle of each term.
Which sounds right to me. At Oxford they have 6-week vacations when people
are supposed to get reading done; at Harvard they have reading period for the
last three weeks of term before exams. But for us, the middle of term seems
more appropriate.
There tends to be a widespread assumption here that classes or seminars for
less than 2 hours and with more than 10 people are worthless. If you operate
on that assumption, it means that you can never deal with more than 10 people
in a half-day. Are there certain kinds of learning activities -- in addition
to lectures -- for which it is appropriate to meet with more people and/or for
a shorter period? That wou~d mean you could do two things before lunch. Perhaps we could be more sophisticated about specifying the nature of the learning
that is supposed to go on in a meeting and thereby be better about knowing its
organic size and length.
Dreams and Poetry met with groups for a morning, then broke for writing, and
then again an the later afternoon to share what was written. Perhaps they
got more of a certain kind of thing done in those 6 or so hours than would be
done if the 6 hours were spread out over the week.
Dreams and Poetry had expensive supplementary faculty. I guess it's not
generally feasible. PORTALS, I gather, had cheaper supplementary teachers.
How did it work? Is it exportable?
(2) Support from colleagues. We need to learn to get self-esteem and gratification from each other and not just from students. This will give us more perspective, more strength, more ability to take risks. (I took more risks when I
was teaching at MIT. I was amazed and chagrinned when I realized that.)
The main vehicle for colleague-support is now the faculty seminar. There is never
a lack for testimonials to how importa~t and salutary the faculty is. That's not
at issue. What needs explaining is why a group of intelligent and well-meaning
people like us so seldom succeedsdn having good faculty seminars. I'm a good
guy and smart, I've taught for two years with good smart people, but I've had
fewer good ones than bad. And I believe in them. Something's fishy.
Let's look at it through the marriage metaphor. When you teach in a program with
someone it is like marrying them. (When I told Bob Gottlieb that, he didn't
think it was funny. He still doesn't.) The thing about a marriage (one of the
things about a marriage?) is that it can't survive if too many needs have to be
satisfied •there.
Somehow, one feels locked into a kind of life-and-death struggle with one's team
(to continue the marriage metaphor) and it's not always easy to give _and get
support from them when they are the only ones one is getting it from. I think
the women's movement has made it clear how much one needs to depend on "sisters"
or "brothers" if one is to come at a marriage with any strength. I think I could
have done better with my team if I'd had other support. When something is the
only source of sustenance, the risks feel too high: it's hard to muster the bravery
and openness that's necessary for good sharing and support .

Peter Elbow
Page 6
Perhaps all this is wrong. But I'm co~fident I'm right when I call for better
uses of time and more and better vehicles for colleague-support.
IV.

!_ special note about Coordinated Studies

As I've said, I don't think we should stop doing the things that put more
strain on us and lead to burnout. But rather that we should do other positive
things to relieve the strain. But there is one exception. I think we should
retreat on the number of coordinated st~dies. Coordinated studies are the mode
of study which is the greatest cause of the kind of strain which causes faculty
burnout. For the following reasons:
They are almost always a complex, fragile organization. They take lots of
time to try to bring togeth~r. Lots of time for meetings week by week just
to figure out all the mechanics. A huge strain. The whole thing can go down
the drain despite one's best efforts.
The relationships between teachers are almost always complex and fragile.
Great strain there. Almost always the sense of an imminent fight or collapse.
It's almost always hard _to get agreement on crucial issues -- and even harder
to get agreement on the spirit of a coordinated studies -- and it is, after
all, the spirit of it that determines whether it will work.
In a coordinated study, you tend more often to be teaching out of your own
field; feeling that half of what you say is probably false; scrambling for
any sense of competence or security or competence.
r

One is more apt to feel bad because of a sense that the students aren't really
getting a solid grounding in anything.
I think we should have few enough coordinated studies so that teachers and students
are in them, because they have freely chosen to seek the particular and unique
values of~ coordinated study. And not just because they are freshmen or couldn't
find anything else to take.

v

THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE
May 13, 1974

M E MO R A N D U M
TO:

Rudy Martin

FROM:

Tom Foote

RE:

Curriculum Plan

Several things are on my mind regarding the whole process of determining what
gets to be curriculum and what doesn't. As you know it has been a source of
much anxiety and irritation for people at all levels involved with this process.
I thought that the Wednesday a.m. shot you did with the butcher paper flow diagram was a very worthwhile enterprise. It's too bad more people didn't show for
that presentation as at least they would have become more aware of the administrative hassle of getting the goodies out on the table.
I'm not pinging on you for our difference of opinion regarding whether the Country
Music Contract gets to be three terms or not so much as I think that is the short
of it. The long of it has more serious implications for growth and development
of Evergreen.
Consider this: we have no long-range curriculum plan. In some respects this
is good as it gives us additional latitude in moving swiftly in non-traditional
directions. I feel, however, that ultimately it will continue to create tensions
and make for a less than optimum operation. Some things are not clear to me yet.
For instance, when .we hire people we lay a mandate on them that demands they get
out of their credentialed areas and develop new, innovative approaches for the study
of subject matter. In doing so and complying with this, the Deans call for curricula proposals. The Deans then make cuts, as you noted in your presentation, and
some people are faced with double disappointment; (1) they don't get to implement
their innovative idea, (2) they get assigned to a program they don't want to be
in. Now, one doesn't have to be an Aristotle to follow that to its logical and
dangerous conclusion. How many double disappointments is one able to withstand
before one ceases to generate new and creative ideas? Two times? Three times?
How long will it be before one discontinues generating new ideas and settles back
into quiet acquiescence and resignation to an expeditious faculty assignment year
after year? I, for one, do not want to see Evergreen become a retirement colony
of disgruntled people merely going through the motions.
It seems reasonable if Evergreen is willing to commit to a faculty person for a
three-year t 'erm then that faculty person should get to do whatever he/she wants
to do for one of those three years. With the mandate from the Provost to function
successfully in all three learning modes, it also seems reasonable that thefaculty
person would do that best in a group contract designed in an area of prime interest.
If that interest coincides with the druthers of students, every consideration should
be made on the part of the administration to respond to that need.

Rudy Martin
Page 2
May 13, 1974
A long-range curriculum plan might not be the panacea to cure the myr.td of
curricula ills, but it would certainly ease pressures some if the one-out-ofthree policy could be implemented. Then the Deans could say, '~ook, your
idea is sound, has merit and is academically respectable, and it will ,fit
nicely into the curriculum for 1975-76 in conjunction with the BiCentennial
Celebration," or some such thing. That way the faculty person proposing the
learning experience is assured that it will happen in the near future, and he/she
can tell the students when it will be possible to pursue with vigor that particular
area of interest, and continue serious planning accordingly. The strain of duespaying in terms of an assignment to an unattractive learning mode or program
would be much lessened.
I am certain that I ani not the only faculty concerned with the problem based on
several conversations I have had regarding my own experience ~ith the curriculum
machine this year. That being the case, I hope that you and the other Deans
give this thorny matter every consideration.
cc:

Deans
Provost

"""

r

r--.J

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Some thoughts and feelings about our conversation in Creativity, Burn Out and
Time, a discussion group at Fort Worden. - Marilyn Frasca
As people spoke about what they felt were pressures at Evergreen, I realized that
they were describing my experience in Words, Sounds and Images. The people who
allowed as how they felt just fine described more or less my experience this
spring in a group contract. People who tried to focus on serious problems
usually took for granted that these would be in a coordinated studies program not
so much in individual or group contracts.

V

Mark Levensky said the worst thing he could imagine was having to come to school
here, in the winter, in the morning when its raining and dark, to work with a
coordinated studies team he wasn't getting along with. I came to school in the
winter to work in a program that wasn't going well. From the tales I heard about
programs at Evergreen during the past two years, I could see that our program was
short of the middle. To try a big change, if that were possible, would be to tempt
disaster. Disaster in this context would have been the truth. We weren't working
together, our program wasn't interdisciplinary it was difficult and unfocused.
I persuaded myself that I was an initiate and that I had better fear for the
program's dissolution rather than hope for it. I had already learned from the
same tales that if one didn't "save the program" one became personally responsible
for extracting Evergreen's eye teeth.
Helena said that personalsolutions to stress tend to be defensive. That seems
smart to me. I hadn't yet experienced a group contract but my intuition did
and helped me design two for next year. I gave these to Rudy during curriculum
planning week. He didn't say anything about these but welcomed me into the
Communications program. He said if it was impossible, I could get out. I've
never been drafted before and felt what I imagine Israeli women feel, charged with
an important task for their country. The difference here is that the program
wasn't my country. But when I came to Evergreen, I got rid of many of my own
possessions including half-worked, half-tried plans for learning and teaching.
Here was my chance to give it all up and start in new territory. Rudy's charge
could be taken as a throw of the I Ching. Or could it?
I was given a program title, a coordinator and two other faculty members. We
didn't know each other very well and had no agenda hidden or otherwise. Out
of this fertile soil we began our plans. Tom Rainey said when you have one bad
program experience, you exert more control on the next one and things get worse.
We began planning meetings, and I did what I could to control some of the structure
so I wouldn't be in the same mess I was in before. We are all busy learning what
and how to control next year now.
Dave Peterson thinks the reason we talk so much about control is that we are in
a hostile environment. A jungle he said. I think people who choose to go into
a jungle have some reasons to do that and prepare themselves for it as a matter
of course. I think they probably have a great time. If you fell out of an
airplane into Borneo or were told to go there cause it would be good for you,
it would be difficult. If you don't know and feel why you're there, all you can
do is talk about the weather and watch out for snakes.
The Deans are not the I Ching; you need six for a hexagram.
I cannot afford to go against my own doubts in an environment that allows those
doubts to enter my consciousness for the first time. I learned this year that one

Marilyn Frasca
Page 2
of the reasons programs have trouble is that some faculty are more or less
drafted into them.' I would like to abolish the draft. Rudy said that we feel
guilty because we try to say yes to everybody everytime, that we feel like sinners,
missionaries. I think that people feel guilty when they think they've done something wrong. The wrongness comes from going against .one's own intuitions, from
not paying attention to rational doubt. We should not draft people into coordinated
studies any more. We should instead develop volunteer interdisciplinary programs
where people get time and support to create focus and synthesis of real concern
to faculty and studentr. .

,....__
-..J

,,..._
-.J

,,....._
-...I

ADVANCED PROGRAMS AT EVERGREEN
We assume that the Evergreen curriculum should include advanced
studies in all areas where there is reasonable faculty expertise. Now
that we have had a few ; years of experience with more basic programs, we
have begun to see ways to facilitate and improve the more advanced. We
offer here a set of general principles, based on the college's current
practices, that should allow us to organize the kind of advanced work
that will give students the skills and expe~tise usually assumed of
someone with a B. A.

V

We are thinking here about preparation for careers or for further
study. But we are convinced that such preparation is only one element
of Evergreen's curriculum and that basic programs of all kinds, other
sorts of advanced work, and unclassifiable offerings are equally significant. Indeed it may be more important to help students to acquire
skills and expertise not usually assumed of B. A. 's than to do what we
discuss here.
We assume that we will continue to operate with a general student/
faculty ratio cif about 20:1. We assume that at any time there will be
relatively small numbers of students who want to study any subject at
an advanced level and that these students will be handled primarily by
one faculty member in each field who is assigned to contracts at a ratio
~about 15:1 and can group his contract students to some extent. But
we do not exclude other modes. In fact, we look forward eagerly to
advanced coordinated studies, interdisciplinary colloquia, overlapping
and rotating teaching, and every other sort of experiment.
Principle 1: Planned Faculty Rotation.- We want to be able to offer
advanced work without committing even the majority of Evergreen's small
faculty to the task, since we have other vital commitments to meet.
Equally important, we are not interested in binding ourselves to year-in,
year-out instruction in our individual, specialized competences. But we
want to ensure that advanced work continues to be available here for
students who need it.

Therefore, we recommend a loosely planned rotation of the advanced
teaching in each area. In a given year and area, one or two people would
organize advanced work around their areas of special competence (see
Expertise); the next year, one or two others would rotate in.
What is new about this? Only that the rotation would be agreed upon
for several years in advance. This is a considerable departure from our
present practice. We envisage plans being developed informally by the
small number of faculty concerned with each subject area and being harmonized with the rest o.f the curriculum year by year (see the section on
Mechanics). These plans are to be tentative (see Staying Loose) but very
public, so students can see ahead a little.

- 2 -

Principle 2: Expertise. - · Faculty member,s doing advanced work should
primarily do what they are most expert in, while maintaining a breadth
suitable for work with undergraduates. We recognize that Evergreen students will not be able to '.' cover their fields" at an advanced level, but
that kind of study is more appropriate for graduate school anyway. We
feel it is more important for them to learn general principles and
methods of their fields and to learn how to apply them in a few areas,
as determined primarily by the expertise of _the faculty. On this plan,
students will . do somewhat more limited work than the traditional undergraduate major, but what they do they will do very well. We think they
can learn best by working very closely with faculty members who are
doing the things they know best. Of course, we interpret "the things
they know best" in a qroad sense; we assume that faculty members will
extend themselves by teaching as broad an area as they feel reasonably
comfortable with and that they will want to educate themselves more
by helping students learn things in which they themselves are not experts.
(We should like to point out, incidentally, that by encouraging this
mode of teaching we are also addressing the problem of faculty burnout.
People should be able to look forward to doing what they do best as
professionals, hopefully with well-prepared student colleagues, every
few years at least.)
Principle 3: Innovation.- Faculty members should try to create
attractive nontraditional advanced programs. Or, other things being
equal, "if you must choose between the chances, choose the odd" (Auden).
Any other college can offer a series of traditional courses in the traditional subdivisions of a field. Evergreen should be able to do better.
Peopl~ should be able to generate group contracts that cut across traditional lines or look at an old problem from a new viewpoint. Advanced
coordinated studies which assume that their students have already gained
considerable knowledge in a few subjects could broaden the outlook of
students who might otherwise be tempted to overspecialize and could
serve as capstones which integrate and ro:und out a senior's previous work.
The variety possible for advanced work is as endless and exciting as that
for basic coordinated studies.
Principle 4: Staying Loose.- We should avoid several kinds of
rigidity. First, we must not let a plan carry us out of touch with what
students and faculty want and need (see Reality Checking). Second, we
must not let a plan make it hard for any two or several faculty to work
together because of being out of phase in the rotation. Third, a plan
should not result in students seeing the same faculty members year after
year.

Therefore, advance plans must be tentative rather than final. People
will decide to go on leave or become dean. Students will decide that only
taxid~rmy offers a secure, humane future. Think up an unpredictable contingency yourself; these things will continueto occur and we must continue
to respond to them by trading assignments, merging groups, postponing plans,
or whatever is necessary.

,,....
._/

,,.....

- 3 -

Principle 5: Reality Checking.- In particular, there must be constant attention to changes in the student population and in the faculty
that would call for modifications of the long-range faculty and program
arrangements. Advance planning of the kind we are suggesting carries
the real danger of creating machinery that grinds away on its raw material without knowing or caring whether it is. chicken, soy beans, or
rodents. This is a great way to make hot dogs, but lousy for a college.
We must avoid it. Student input, especially, must be sought in every
way--through hallway chats, questionnaires, student participation in
planning meetings, and so on.
Principle 6: Repetition.- No offering should have a permanent
place in the curriculum, but some should probably be repeated once or
twice. And when it seems to promise much improved results, some continuity of faculty in a repeating program may be useful (for example,
two out of five in a coordinated studies team might stay on for a
second year).
Mechanics.- So much for our assumptions and rhetorical principles.
How will this planning actually be done? We feel that much can remain
informal, as at present, but that one new formality is needed--a meeting
of faculty groups to agree on the tentative schedule. Here is how it
would work.

The final responsibility forwrriculum planning would remain with
the deans, counseled by a Curriculum Planning DTF. They would assess
the proposals for coordinated studies and group contracts, make the
definite faculty assignments, and look after the balance of the curriculum.
The distribution of advanced teaching would be worked out by "natural
faculty groups." These are to be divisional in size, .but might form
around other centers than the traditional divisions. They would be called,
for example, Humanities, or Communications. Each year the deans would
recognize a definite, small set of these groups--for the moment probably
only Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Faculty
members would choose which groul(g)they would belong to; an individual
might belong to more than one.
The natural groups would meet to work out tentative advanced offerings
and corresponding faculty assignments for the next several years. These
arrangements would be based on informal agreement among faculty concerned
with the various subareas· of the group. (For example, for literature, within
Humanities, Carlson and Simon's group would seem a good way of responding
to the · wave of interest in Shakespeare for next year, Curtz would try his
panel discussion format the year after, Daugherty's scheme would be postponed until he rotated back from running the food service, Elbow would
respectfully decline any advanced teaching so Powell's Drama of Sleep
idea would be set for the following year, and so on. Everyone would, of
course, Stay Loose and Check Reality, and it should be possible to stay
friends as well.)

- 4 -

Next, in the natural group's meeting, these agreements would be
harmonized with staffing needs in proposed coordinated studies and group
contracts. After the system gets under way, the natural group will
spend time reviewing the previous year's plans to see if they still make
sense for the next couple of years and to make necessary changes.
The deans and the Curriculum Planning DTF, composed of a person
from each natural group, would review the whole curriculum and future
plans for balance and realism. Finally, the whole would be published.
The members of the Curriculum Planning DTF are not to be political
representatives. They are to keep alive the reasons behind each natural
group's plans, to help generate ways of resolving difficulties, and to
help convey the rationale for the final curriculum back to the rest of
the faculty.
The whole business would be part of the yearly curriculum planning
process. The deans would charge the DTF and would ensure that the
natural groups met; they would probably attend the natural group meetings.
This needs debate. And before that we need to try to put together
plans for each natural group and subarea to see what price we would pay
in flexibility and breadth of offering under this proposal.
Bob Gottlie~
Burt Guttman
Jeff Kelly
Rob Knapp
Sig Kutter
Al Leisenring
Dave Milne
Peter Taylor
Byron Youtz

-..J

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Communica·tions Media Faculty - Margaret Gribskov
The almost total lack of non-white and female faculty able to teach about
comn'lunications media constitutes a serious problem at Evergreen, I believe.
I am the only female f~culty in this field, and we have no non-whites. Yet
the media are extremely important to both groups in two ways. First, the
media are important to non-whites and women as potential fields of employment; both groups are severely under-represented in all of the media, and
are practically nonexistent at higher levels of management. This situation
is changing, and future graduates should find opportunities with the media.
Second, some knowledge of the media constitutes a basic type of literacy in
this age, especially for anyone interested either in social or political
change. Neither of these objectives can be accomplished for non-whites and
women if the media faculty continues to be almost entirely white and male.
Suggested Action:
1)

Do not hire any more white males in the area of communications media.

2)

Actively search for female and non-white faculty with communications
media background.* In the case of. non-whites especially, consider
their non-llhite experience as a discipline for purposes of establishing interdisciplinary competence.

*Such individuals exist even if they are not applying to Evergreen. Journalism schools around the country are graduating several hundred non-whites
each year with backgrounds in a variety of media, and thousands of women.

FORT WORDEN POSITION PAPER

•
It seems that the TESC faculty have failed to come to grips with
priorities as far as coordinated studies are concerned.

In order to re-

late to one another and work together in a coordinated studies program
it seems only logical that the faculty should interact more outside their
current assignment, whether it be in faculty work day sessions or in
social ways, before even attempting to teach together.

The problem then

arises ,as to how; TIME is the deterring factor.
Evergreen faculty are terribly pressured now and what they don't need
is another commitment.

I can sympathize with this problem but I can't

help but feel that its a matter of priorities.
must first decide

Each and every faculty

that it is important to discover and meet the people

around them in order to make coordinated studies a more fulfilling experience as well as a means for faculty to "find" one another.
I have had an extremely good experience to relate the above to.

The

program secretaries were floundering with problems individually only to
find that all nine of us had mutual concerns.

Working together has created

a new closeness plus provides an outlet to ventilate problems whether
solvable or not.

We program secretaries, too, are pressured but felt that

our first priority must be to relate to one another in order to work more
effectively for Evergreen.
I feel that the faculty should put a type of "gathering" or "meeting"
as top priority and not feel it would be an imposition on their time.
.J

Joan Hopper
6/14/74

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Coordinated Studies - Richard M. Jones
David Powell finally asked it flat out: "Is coordinated studies worth it?" I
want to try to . give you my answer, David, but first I have to pose an intimately
related prior question: what makes the difference between a good coordinated
studies program and a bad one? Do we have enough experience with the thing by this
time to finger those critical make-or-break components which when they are present
leave the faculty in June saying: "Yes, I'm exhausted, but damn if that wasn't
one hell of a fulfilling year of work." And the students saying: "I succeeded
here and failed there. I learned this and didn't learn that. I got more of this
than I ever dreamed possible and less of that than I'd hoped. But, on balance,
my one complaint is it ended too soon."
And when they are absent leave the faculty saying: "There must be a better way
of earning a living than that. I'm bushed, wrung out, living in a jungle." And
the students feeling uncertain, incomplete, unsatisfie~ and vaguely guilty
about the way they lived a year of their lives.
Because what I impulsively wanted to say to you was: "Yes, a good coordinated
studies program is definitely worth it (I'll get to what I mean by "worth" and
what I mean by "it" in a moment) and a bad coqrdinated studies program is emphatically
not worth it."
I think we do have sufficient experience by now to identify those essential components
the presence of which makes failure impossible and the absence of which makes
failure inevitable. At least I feel I have sufficient experience to identify
them to my own satisfaction. I have taught in three programs (yes, I am looking
forward to doing a group contract next year) thus far: a remedial one (Human
Development I), a basic one (Human Development II) and an advanced one (Dreams
and Poetry). Each has been a good one; the first, marginally so; the second very
much so; the third exceedingly so (although it could be better if we did it again).
I also helped write Some Big and Littie Wheels Which Probably Don't Need To Be
Rediscovered," (see appended) which, I believe, stands as the single most useful
planning document the faculty has produced to date. But for the purpose at
hand, I am not concerned with fine-tuning ' considerations of how to make a good
program better; I want only to identify the make/break components. They are:
1

\..,..

(1)

The program is designed and taught by personally congenial faculty team;
people who get on well together and who enjoy and respect each other's minds.

(2)

The program is conceptually centered on a theme, problem or project which
genuinely invites a multi-disciplinary approach.

(3)

The team gives first priority in allocation of time and energy to weekly
faculty seminars, the primary purpose of which is faculty scholarship.

When present, these three key features, enhancing and reinforcing each other as
they do over the course of the program's life, turn all sorts of unpredictable
disasters into mistakes that faculty and students alike are happy to learn from.
When they are absent no amount of experience, fortitude or teaching skill can
prevent the program from deteriorating into something less than coordinated study.
(Yes, Peter, it is just like sex; if it's good it could be better, a~d if it's
bad it could be worse; but, first and basically; it is either good or bad. It
either means something to the well-meaning folks who are doing it regularly, or it
don't and they ain't.)

Richard M. Jones
'Page 2
If I am right in putting it this dogmatically, and I think I am, there are all
sorts of implications to be drawn for revising institutional policies and planning
procedures; which I am going to leave to those of my friends who are responsible
for drawing such things at those levels. All I want to do here is say yes, a
good coordinated studies program is worth it; and no, a bad coordinated studies
program is not worth it.
What do we mean by "it"?

I think we mean:

(1)

The fact that in any coordinated studies program, good or bad, the faculty
works harder and longer at teaching than the students work at learning-just the opposite of what we were accustomed to elsewhere. About twice as
hard as the hardest working students, I would estimate, and God only knows
how much harder than the goofoffs. I'll admit there have been times when
it has caused some resentment to stir in me to notice that I am working my
ass off in order to sustain conditions which make it possible for the students
to learn how to learn with pleasure, at their own sometimes quite leisurely
paces and in their own developing styles. But then I have had to remember
that working my ass of is what.!. was trained to do, that I have long since
come to enjoy it, and find my particular pace and style in it ~ And also
that to work at a place like Evergreen is to be on the outer lip of the
interface (to coin some phrases) of an adventuresome cultural waning (Hey,
Beryl, what is it that's waxing?). And those thoughts helped me get back
to feeling like an adult again, especially because I got to address them
to the program themes in faculty seminars--with other adults.

(2)

the fact (which Peter Elbow can say more eloquently than I) that it is
true of any coordinated studies program, good or bad, that there is no
place to hide from the full concentration of student expectations, and the
welter of their ambivalences about those expectations--whether and how to
express them, whether and how you will meet them, whether and how they will
respond to your meeting them or not meeting them. In coordinated' studies
you are all they've got, and even when they can forget that responsibility,
you can't. At Brandeis or Harvard, no student ever knocked on my door to
ask if he could borrow a paper clip, or what time was it, or where the can
was. And if any ever had, one reflexive look would have made it unnecessary
for me to tell him in so many words to fuck off. But here, where this kind
of thing interrupts my thoughts at least three times a day, I can't ever
be sure he isn't testing my approachability in respect to some more wei~hty
matter. And if I prove to be unapproachable ..•...•... So I give him - the
damn paper clip and ask if maybe he couldn't find use for two.
I'll admit there have been times when this sort of thing has got me feeling
~ike a high-priced baby sitter. Once or twice I've even said no to a
student who asked if I had a minute, which normally I almost never feel I
have, only to find, usually, that I do. But then that same student will
come back with a really important personal problem that I can really help
him with. And then he'll come back to ask where he can best read up on
Freud's instinct theory. And then he'll show me a paper he's written which
has an idea in it good enough to footnote in the one I'm working on.
And
I get to talk about that with my friends in faculty seminar, whom I know
will tell me what is good about the idea and what is lousy about it. And
then I remember that I left Brandeis and Harvard in large part precisely
to get away from the poses and mores of false dignity and misleading appearances
that I found so debilitating in those places. And so, if I really want to

r--.

Richard M. Jones
Page 3
work on something without interruption, I go hide in the library for an
hour or two, or until somebody finds me.
(3) , The fact that even in a good coordinated studies program there is less time

for one's own scholarship than there usually is in a traditional two or
three-course load set-up. (In a bad program there can be almost no time
for it, almost by definition.) I have to admit that I have produced less
publishable writing since coming to Evergreen than I did before coming here,
I also have to admit, however, that what I have done since coming here I
have enjoyed more, and it is better, The reasons are clear: what I did
before (a) I did partially out of desire and partially out of duty; (b) I
did as something adjunctive to my teaching activities; and (3) I addressed
to the vague and amorphous audience that I thought of as the "American
Psychological Community." Since coming to Evergreen, I have only written
things I had worked up a passion about, and they have consistently spun
directly out of or into my teaching activities and I have always known
exactly and well to whom I was most directly addressing my thoughts--my
friends in the fa~ulty seminar.
(4)

The fact that even in a good coordinated studies program the students end
up "knowing less" than they would have in a traditional three, four or fivecourse format, if by "knowing" we mean accumulation of information. But
right there is -a constant source of potential anxiety which is endemic in the
format of coordinated studies programs. For when I put it perjoratively
that way, I have no difficulty concluding that "knowing less" in that sense
is no loss. Especially when I see that what the students did learn they
learned with more enjoyment and confidence, and in ways that are much more
lastingly integrated with their personal and social development than is
possible in the traditional three, four or five-course format. I can feel
good about all this as long as my conscious system of values is operating,
I mean, I have reached the considered conclusion, by dint of observation
and reason, that intrinsically motivated learning, personally satisfying
learning, integrated learning--all the rhetorical stuff that does become
reality for most of the students in a good' coordinated studies program--is
far more valuable than the mere accumulati0n of information. The point is,
and I think this is true of most of us on the Evergreen faculty, I reached
this conclusion long after I graduated from college. What I learned E.Y_
experience in college was the other way around. So that when my unconscious
system of values is calling the tune, which it has for a time every year
round about May, I become haunted by suspicions (suggested by what I
learned in college) that this whole coordinated studies approach is,,...f or the
birds. What does it matter that Lloyd Houston who would have dropped out
of a traditional college, fell in love with reading and writing these past
two years, and will surely bring his love of literacy to everything he ever
does? He didn't read Freud or Polani, which were on the reading list!
What does it matter that Teddy Haggarty found his writing voice this year
and has had his first poem accepted for publication? He thinks he may want
to go to graduate school in psychology, and right now the guy couldn't score
in the twentieth percentile on the G.R.E.! And on .•... Having to be in on
this battle between our mature professional consciences and our immature
professional superegos is part of teaching in a coordinated studies program,
good or bad, In a good one, however, the experience of oneself being engaged
in intrinsically motivated, personally satisfying, integrated scholarship-in and in relation to the faculty seminars--is a source of steady support
on the side of mature professional conscience. Not to mention the models

Richard M. Jones
Page 4
it provides the students.
After spelling out what I think we mean by "it," I was going to try to say
what I mean by "worth it," but I see I've gotten myself wound up in a
tautology. So be it: what makes teaching in a good coordinated studies
program worth "it" are exactly those things which make a coordinated studies
good: the opportunity to bring teaching and scholarship into concert in
ways that invite the judicious involvement of my personal and social life,
and which confront me with the kinds of conscience crises I am most likely
to grow from. A congenial team, a real theme, problem or project and first
priority to faculty seminars. With those elements present, David, yes, I
think it's worth it; without them, no, it isn't worth it.
Of course, Bill was right, we each have to perfect our little individual
survival tactics at this place, which would eat us up if we always did
everything the system says we are supposed to do. For example, I decided
to write this position paper instead of doing my part of the Dreams and
Poetry program history. So I shall ease my conscience a bit by submitting
our experience in Dreams and Poetry as an example of what I've been saying.
By every index--what the students and faculty did, and what they said about
what they did, in evaluations, and in a final examination we all took--the
program was a resounding success (with a few exceptions, of course). But
the only feature of the program that "worked" the way it was planned to work
was the faculty seminar. Everything else we planned either did not work or
worked in some way other than planned. But we had a congenial team (Pete and
I hatched the idea over a beer at Spud and Elma's, Leo asked in and Tommy was
a gift from heaven); we had a real project (a book about dreams and poetry
was produced, although not the ~ne we had figured on); and our faculty seminars
were among the most rewarding intellectual experiences of our lives (about a
third of the students attended regularly, even though they weren't allowed
to make a peep). So, when Middle English defeated most of us, when we didn't
have time for Marc Bloch, when the research month flopped, when individual
projects floundered, when one seminar just never got off the ground, when we
had to re-design the program in the spring the thing as a whole not only held
together, but thrived; what we learned instead, it turned out, was something
almost all of us could look back on with pleasure and a solid sense of accomplishment. Because we never blinked our first priority and we were always glad
to see each other,
I said I would leave the drawing of implementational conclusions to Lynn,
Rudy, Willie, Charlie and, ultimately, Kormondy and Mccann; and I will. I
consider it appropriate, however, to conclude these thoughts with a set of
questions which I think it would be healthy to hear discussed when we get
back together in the fall to launch Year Four:
(a)

Is the College presently over-committed to coordinated studies as a
mode of instruction?

(b)

Do our existing approaches to program design provide optimal leeway
for the testing and development of faculty commitment, congenial
colleagueship, and yes, intellectual passion?

(c)

Is "assignment" the best approach to program staffing?

(d)

Should the present taboo against program .repetition be reconsidered?

Richard M. Jones
Page 5
(The planning faculty will know how much humble pie I had to eat in
order to ask that one!)
(e)

What may be the most effective ways in which the deans can encourage
program teams to give first priority to the first pleasure of teaching
in coordinated studies: the faculty seminar?

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Evergreen Community:

Appearance and Reality - Helena Knapp
Helen Hannigan
Oscar Soule
Willi Unsoeld

We see "Community," 1that much-maligned word, as referring to an organic .sort of
interd~pendence in which every member is seen as playing an essential part in the
total enterprise and is cherished by all the other members for the sake of that
contribution. Such community thrives in an environment which encourages mutual
respect and trust; although not necessarily agreement. What is needed for
community is the willingness to include diverse ideas and persons; rather than
the exclusion of all who disagree.
It has been suggested that the people arriving at TESC have been so shell-shocked
from the treatment received at their prior locations, they have automatically
shut off the bonds of community--even while maintaining an outward resemblance.
Thus, the much regretted, recent decline in community is really just a coming
to the surface of disruptive tendencies which have been always dominant here-though primarily latent. This constitutes a loss of the appearance of community
rather than of community itself--which we have not had since the college was more than
a few people.
It has further been pointed out that when the appearance of community is lost,
then the trust upon which such appearance is based must be replaced by an
increasingly rigid set of regulations. Detailed directions must be proliferated
for each transaction in order to insure that all obligations will be carried out
properly. We know there are other drawbacks to lack of c9mmunity, but we want
to emphasize solutions.
We see our task, then, as being the analysis of the causes for the loss of both
true community and the appearance of community at TESC--and the suggestion of ways
in which these causes might be eliminated--so that the multiplication of rules
and regulations might be reduced.
Real community, we have affirmed, is a general ambience which has its roots in
mutual respect for the individual contributions -made by each person to the total
college enterprise. The absence of such mutual respect and trust spells the end of
real community. The causes of such loss are doubtless manifold: individual incompetence, outlandishly different operating styles, failure to understand the
full function of many contributions, etc , But we suggest strongly that the single
most important factor contributing to the loss of community is the self-image
of many of the faculty members. So long as faculty members consider themselves
as being basically superior to members of other campus groups, real community will
be absent from the campus. The argument usually runs that since the faculty have
been more highly trained, because they are more intelligent, have broader worldly ·
backgrounds, and presumably more mature judgment, they are more valuable to the
operation of the college and therefore should take precedence over staff members
(and administrators).
This faculty attitude in turn is complemented by a staff feeling of inferiority and
resentment. As long as staff feel like third-class citizens (ranking even below
students), their resentment of such treatment is going to wipe out any sense of
real community. Of course, a few staff members will always have sufficient balance
to smile tolerantly at the childishness of faculty pretentions. But we cannot
expect such reactions to be strong enough to save the sense of community.
'--

H. Knapp, Hannigan, Soule, Unsoeld
Page 2
No, the only real hope is to alter such faculty attitudes of superiority. However,
prospects of success are not bright. They have been trained professionally to
set great store by their academic expertise--and in many cases, they have sacrificed
significantly to acquire it. Our whole culture also reinforces their distorted
self-image--right down to and including relative pay scales. So they cannot be
expected to change these attitudes with ease. When the great religions of the
world--with all their power and resources--have failed to significantly alter such
attitudes of superiority during the past several millenia, it seems unlikely
that a crash program at Evergreen will do the trick.
However, one logical suggestion has been made which might turn the tables in the
particular area of faculty-staff relations. An underlying assumption which fuels
the feeling of faculty superiority is that the staff member really covets faculty
status. However, in some cases such is clearly not the case and can be seen not
to be. When the faculty member can actually accept the fact that THIS staff
member simply does not covet faculty status, but is perfectly content to be and
do just what he or she is and does, then the faculty member has no logical grounds
for feeling superior to that staff member.
Now if, as we have argued, real community at Evergreen is impossible to resurrect
(if, indeed, it ever existed), then what about at least "preserving the appearances"?
In the case of Apparent Community, the mutual respect and trust would be gone and
some members would be seen as playing more important roles in the enterprise than
others--at least by an appreciable number of the members. However, many of the
modes of interaction would be similar to those characterizing real community.
Although it might be argued that such behavior would be spurious if it ran counter
to basic attitudes, we would reply strongly that even the APPEARANCE of community
is better than no community at all. Hence we see our major task at this point as
being the devising of ways of preserving the appearance of community at Evergreen.
Our first concrete suggestion is the enhancement of politeness in all our campus
dealings. You don't have to like a person or even feel he or she is your equal-before you can be polite to him/her. Voice tone, facial expressions, language
usage 1 and body language are all part of the common civility which we owe all
fellow workers at Evergreen--whether we like or respect them or not. Greater
attention to such details would inevitably contribute greatly to the sense of
apparent community on campus.
Closely associated with politeness, but going a step further, is ordinary consideration for our fellow workers. To think a bit about them as human beings-their work situations, how many other calls upon their time there might be besides
yours--in general, just a small effort at putting ourselves in their places from time
to time--an attempt to look at things from their point of view--would work wonders
at raising morale and repairing the fabric of our apparent community.
It has even been suggested that we should publish a "Book of Etiquette for Geoducks."
This would be a compilation of simple "do's" and "don't's" for faculty dealing with
secretaries, with custodians, with student services, with counseling, with the
business office, admissions, registrar, security, facilities planning, etc.-accompanied by reciprocal suggestions for smoother dealings with faculty. This
"Geoduck Code" would deal with those little niceties which have not been considered
important enough to become "contractual" or even "mandatory," but which still have
a significant long-term effect on the smooth running of the Evergreen enterprise.

H. Knapp, Hannigan, Soule, Unsoeld
Page 3
A recent example would have been "the timely completion of all student evaluations"
--which has only just recently been translated to "mandatory" status--a transition which can be expected of those code entries which become too widely ignored.
Another example would be the simple courtesy of letting the program secretary
know where you've gone when you are expecting a call and have asked her to let
y'ou know · when it has come in.
' The difficulty with such a code, of course, is the extreme variability of human
beings--especially Geoduck types. What one type insists on as a human necessity,
another type will repudiate as anathema. Still, there seems enough broad commonality
, to justify the effort at assemblying such a code--which could then be honored
by agreed-upon exceptions rather than by unconscious evasion. Format could be
innovative--perhaps simply the extension of the Library Bitch Ticket idea to
cover all college operations .••
Another concrete suggestion on this whole subject seems in order. The regular
inclusion of etiquette and consideration for fellow workers in evaluation sessions
would go far to keep them in mind. Comments from both deans and faculty team
members should become regularly expected and delivered during our scheduled evaluation
sessions. This expectation would require a "willingness to grasp the thistle"
since it is never easy to lay a case of impoliteness or discourtesy on a colleague.
It is even easier to refrain from comment when one's own feelings have been hurt
since confrontation is so often unpleasant. However, failure to bring out such
personal resentment will eventually result in future reprisals ,which are nearly
always of a more damaging nature than an immediate reaction would have been.
One last suggestion is that faculty should be given- the chance to learn supervisory
skills, just as they-a-re encouraged (by the Faculty Handbook) to improve--their: _teaching
skills. Such supervisory skills are essential in- working with progr-am secretaries, but
also include working relationships with other groups. Such skills could be dealt with
in the course of our faculty in-service training program runs under Learning Center
auspices.
As our DTF on Community discussed the foregoing Position Paper, we were troubled
by our own decision to knowingly settle for the mere appearance of community while
admitting that real community deesn't exist at Evergreen. It is clearly the pragmatic position to take. After all "Half-a-loaf is· better ••• " and all. But we
were still a little disappointed in our own stark realism. As an idealistic palliative
to these feelings, one of us suggested that "Pretending is often becoming." If we
become adept enough at politeness and consideration; who knows, we might end up
trusting and respecting one another. Well, maybe so; maybe not. It would appear
to be wort~ a serious try.

There Are Many Good Ways To Teach Individual Contracts Well
And People Are Using Them Now But For What It Might Be Worth
Here Is One Way To Teach Individual Contracts Well And Learn
Something Have Fun Sometimes If You Want To Besides
1.

Only accept a minimum number of individual contracts. Currently: 15 if you
are not teaching a module at the same time, 12 if you are.

2.

Before you accept any person for .an individual contract have a nice talk with
him or her and find out what, exactly, if anything, the person actually wants
to do that he or she possibly can do in one term working mostly on their own
that is also something that you know at least something about the more the
better and if there is no such thing say no and if there is some such thing
say yes or no or maybe depending. Sometimes this talk can last for hours.

3.

Don't accept anyone for an individual contract that you postively don't like
instantly or even a little later than instantly even if you don't know for
sure why.

4.

Once you accept a student for an individual contract come to an agreement as
to what publically visible thing the student must do each week and/or by the
end of the term in order to get credit for the contract such that if the
student does these publically visible things, then the student does get
credit, and if the student doesn't, then doesn't. For example: write thirty
five first draft type written pages a week, or write a ten page essay on an
assigned book, or make fifteen drawings and keep a written record, or work
two days a week -in a public school classroom and make an Event Book, or direct
a group of actors in rehersal of an original play and at the end of the term
make a performance or.

5.

Also come to an agreement as to what you will do which is to meet with the
student once a week for an hour a week of private tutorial at which time you
will discuss the student's work for that week, especially his or her publically visible work, and make suggestions as to what the student might do
next, and what you won't do, or at least won't promise to do, which is to
meet with the student more than once a week for an hour a week of private
tutorial, or do extensive homework in preparation for the tutorial, or anything else, although you might do any or all of these things.

6.

When you meet with a student for your once a week for an hour a week private
tutorial give the student your absolutely undivided attention and all of your
energy: no answering phones, doors, thinking about something that happened
that morning, or anticipating lunch. Also: no more than five minutes of how
are you how's your social life what do you think about Nixon aren't the movies
in Olympia awful. Instead: the student presents his or her work for that week,
and you respond to it as fully as possible.

7.

During the half of the week that you are not meeting with your individual contract students you can write lectures for your module, and offer to give special
guest lectures for programs, write the lectures, and give them, and write a
paper for a meeting in California, get the paper accepted, and go, and read the
current issue of half the journals in the library, and write a very long letter
to the administration and give them hell, and read all the books that you were
suppose to read in your program last year but didn't finally, and learn something. You can also do a DTF.
\

8.

Weekly Schedule:
..._,,

M

T

w

TH

F

1115

prepare

modules

additional

lectures.

papers

conferences

etc

9-10

Ill

118

10-11

112

119

11-12

113

.//10

12-1

lunch-- i---------

--------------- --------------- ~----------

1-2

114

fill

prepare

I

I

2-3

115

1112

modules.

3-4

116

1113

lecu~es

I
I

I
I

4-5

117

1114

Paoers .etc

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

Mark Levensky
June 13, 1971

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Notes and Comments on Individual Contracts and the Learning Process - Earle McNeil
Originally this essay was to be a typology of learning. I intended to show the
range of styles and structures that students used and/or were -placed in. Then
I wanted to show how our different teaching modes (coordinated studies, group
contracts and individual contracts) related to these styles and structures.
Finally I intended to show how and why students choose each of our modes and
reasons for success and failure.
Instead (you'll be happy to note) I have only completed a rather rambling narrative that focuses on several of the issues and ignores others. Despite its
obvious incompleteness I think I have raised points that will stimulate discussion
and so submit it for that purpose.

Earle

Notes and Comments on Individual Contracts and the ·Learning Process
Earle McNeil--June 3, 1974

•

It strikes me that ~umping a number of different types of learning experiences
and environments under the rubric title of individual contract tends to move us
away from looking at the true nature of the experience.
Among other things, individual contracts are usually not individual. Most
are carried out in groups. It jus't so happens that only one or two members of
the group are on contract at Evergreen or are in contract with the same faculty
member. I'm specifically not talking about groups of persons who are all or mostly
signed up with one faculty who is assigned to individual contracts but who is in
fact working mini-groups. I have nothing against this form and in fact support
the combination of individual and group learning in one contract, as much as is
practical and useful to the students. I'm mostly talltf_ng about students in modules,
free lance associative groups and internships.
One can easily find students who are on individual contract, working in truly
integrative interdisciplinary coordinated studies, in single focus intense group
work, and in truly •individual learning. An example of the first would be one of
my students who has been working in the criminal offender program at Western State.
The problem is defined as the need to find an adequate treatment model for sexual
psychopaths. His research has been intensive in sociology, psychology, philosophy, .
biochemistry, political science and economics. He has been working closely with
.many others who are dealing with the same issue.

~

..._,

A second example is a student who has been working with the Law and Justice
Planning Commission. The problem has been defined as the need to induce compliance
with affirmative action policy in local police and sheriffs offices. She has been
involved in intensive public relations and applied attitude change processes that
utilize elements from a wide variety of behavioral sciences.

An example of a student doing group work is a person who has been at Fircrest
School for the mentally handicapped. He has been both learning and applying behavior
modification techniques in the development of skills in the severely handicapped.
A student who has been doing almost a pure individual contract is a man who
has been reading and discussing issues in social organization, social change,
morality and devience. His only contacts with someone studying in these areas have
been with me for two hours a week.

And so I discovered that what goes on in most individual contracts is in fact
the same 'thing that goes on in our other modes, despite the name. · After I had
gotten my initial bias.es about the uniqueness of indivi.dual contracts out of the way,
I got to wondering why so many people felt the need to go to contracts when it would
not really change their style of learning. I have heard people talk about how
students run away from group competition. How we have to force them into partaking
in what we have defined as the ultimate learning experience·- coordinated studies.
Certainly the running away can be a fact. But I get really nervous about the forcing ~
part, For instance, one of my students this year was sent my way from a coordinated

~

program. His motivation and self esteem were so low that he seemed to have nothing
of interest except a serie_s of disconnected areas. Even those were marginal. The
only alternative to individual contract.was to drop him from school with or without
referral to counselling services. Yet his almost . irrational desire to stay enrolled
made it important to continue ~im, trying to keep up some academic activity and
at . the same time help hi~ come to some rational decisions about his future.
It turned out that his single biggest pro~lem was that as soon as he started
doing something in school that he would have been happy to do as a hobby, he lost
interest. He was avoiding a confrontation with his father ' s · desires for him to stay
in school when what he really wanted was to be on his own . Once he realized the
problem and faced it he was able to make h i s ~ decision t o take a leave of absence
and accept his own freedom. I'm quite sure he.~11 be back next fall and ready for
serious study. I'm quite sure that anything other than that one quarter of "official"
downtime ac'ademically would have either increased his depression or his hostility neither helpful emotion. All this might have been done by someone not in individual
contracts but was easier there since there were no committments beyond his and my
personal interaction.
Another student had to learn to understand and deal with a childhood competive
compulsion that was arroused when ever she was enrolled in a group learning environment. By doing a contract in psychology she both learned a great deal of academic
material plus analyzed her proolem and developed a model for dealing with it in
a group setting next year. She had to be releaved of t he group pressure to be able
to relax and ses what the problem was.
But these are the more exotic and unusual cases. I think most students move
toward contracts for more "rational" (or at least conscious) reasons. The two most
obvious are 1. there really is no one with whom they can work. in the area of their
interest except as devised through a contract and 2. the programs and groups do
contain some of what the student wants but either don ' t go into it in the style or
detail that the student needs or has so much other stuff that the student would
find it very oppressive to wade through it all to get what he/she wants.
The firs-t point is important for all of us as individuals. It may- only be that
the subject is not being taught at all. Or it may be that the personalities of the
faculty who are available in the proper area are in serious clash wit_h the student.
I think that all of. us tend to make unfair and unfounded judgements about people that
effect our rationality and it doesn't hurt to push people some to make them at
least check out reality. But I also think that with the intensive personal contacts
that develop in all our learning modes, we have to be sensitive to real clashes
that occur and help people find alternatives. Some of those alternatives may ' just
have to be contracts.
·
The ·second point is more serious as an institutional issue. In fact it may be
at just this point that our innovative coordinated program structure could end up
putting us at an ironic disadvantage with more "traditional" schools. Many schools
have officially recognized stud_e nts demands for individually tailored undergraduate
(and even graduate) programs. W.S.U., for example, has developed a large and well
staffed administrative unit that deals exclusively with interdisciplinary studies.
Even.12 years ago I graduated in a general studies program . Rudy just finished
his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies. What has happened is that a significant
number of students now can choose from an incredible number of specif.ic courses pick and choose from small units, building and shifting as the desire moves. Usually there are some college requirements for graduation buL they don't involve much

·------~_....:__..:.:.::==-=~=- ----------·-···•--

··

of one's four years.
not such a big deal.

Also, if you blow it or can't stand it in one course it's

In coordinated studies (and . to a iesser extent in group contracts) it's all
or nothing and for a lot ()f students they feel l .i ke they get an awful lot of nothing.
By defining their contrac_s carefully they can get all. Those who are really good
at contracts will predefine each units work so that even if they can't do everything the loss of credit is content specific. I .feei there are only two ways to
overcome this dilennna. One is to reduce the number of available contracts to the
point where students have no choice but sign up for another mode if they want to
/
come to Evergreen. Or we can involve the student so intensely in the development
of the next year's programs that each student has sweated and fought and compromised
and cooperated ~nd helped make a program that is his. Of course we've already
moved toward the first alternative. The results are that certain programs and groups
will in fact, be individual contracts under a coordinated program tit-le. Any official
procedure that makes people go that far out of their way to subvert the rules has
got serious problems. At the very least, it suggests that we are looking with blind
eyes to what is happening to us.
So, on top of that there is more. In our zeal to design an integrated approach
to learning we have become steadily more blind to another reality that youth intuitively understands and responds to (or against, as the case may be). That is
that every element in the universe is ultimately related to every other element.
The problem is that as we get older we form more and more associative boundaries limiting mind sets - that make us think of some things as related to each other and
other things as unrelated. Yet we all know that most of the great philosophical,
mechanical, scientific, artistic and religious revelat:Lons/discoveries/inventions
have been the result of someone's daring to try putting together pieces that everybody else said would not fit. That's why I am inalterably opposed to Rudy's "the
faculty are the ones who are trained to develop curriculum" policy. We are trained .
to do two things: 1. Show and tell students that if they want to get to 11 D11 then
we have found that progressing through "A-B-C" are most likely to get you there.
2. To be both primary and secondary resources for helping a student get material
and to do what she/he wants to do. (To a lesser degree we are trained to help a
student define what.she wants to do.) What we specifically don't have is a monopoly
on creative ideas. In fact, if we are honest, we may even have to take a second place
to quite a number of our students. A lot of those students know it even if we don't.
Fortunately a lot of people also get (or want) a lot of that resource material we
are now providing. But that doesn't make the problem any less important.
I have spent most of my life rambling from place to place with a few stops
long enough to get mildly "professional." Despite the reoc·c urring doubt by some
significant people (including myself) that I am "getting nowhere" I am finding that
in ' the past year (maybe only 6 months) there has been a geometically progressing
"rush" toward some definite yet still unspecified goal. My increasingly analytical
__.)
thinking and writing are ~ut one illustration (you'll have to decide how much of
this paper is just raving). My developing teaching style is another. None of my
college teachers would have approved and even I only felt inside that it really
all made sense (I never could have proved it to anyone's satisfaction so she/he
would feel easy accepting it as an integrated learning contract.) Hell, . I couldn't
even ftefine the problem that was under study. (Which is probably good because once
defined, I would have started building up prejudices on what studies would or would
not get the problem solyed and I would have avoided a 1ot of . my life's most rewarding
experiences.) So -r look with eynical eye on people who ton quickly say "That stuff
is not a coordinated (single problem) study. You're doing things which are unrelated

"-.
C:

and we don't write contracts that way." I'm more likely to seek mightily for a way
to s~ow the subject's interrelatedness in the students' life and philosophy. I'd
rather help him/her learn to generaliz~ that type of response to life than to teach
them to partition up the world - even in innovative ways. Maybe some students .
come to me to "rip off" credit but I' 11 bet if they do) not many go away feeling like
that's what realty ·happened.
All in all one of this year's best lessons is to respond to why student do
the things they do and then deal with that rather than get aggressively hostile
when strange things happen. Ive found no case where mutually agreeable solutions
could not be found. That seems to have made life a lot more aggreeable and productive for everyone - maybe even the Deans and Registrar (I don't know about Charles
yet.)

Em/mb

,

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Coordinated Studies, Faculty Seminar, Faculty Standards:
Position Paper - David Marr

A "Solutions Oriented"

Coordinated studies is being criticized again. It is said that science cannot
be taught in it, that arts cannot be taught in it, that students cannot be t'aught
:(.nit, that advanced work cannot be done in it, and that faculty "burn out" in it.
Someone announced a Law of Coordinated Studies: that any year-long program lasts
but two quarters, the third being a waste of time. Finally, someone said (again)
that Merv never intended Coordinated Studies to be Evergreen's chief mode of instruction in the first place.
This critique of Coordinated Studies is mainly ideological. That is, the charges
made against it are subtle rationalizations of something. I think they are rationalizations about the faculty seminar, which is the heart of Coordinated Studies
and which so far has only been practicable in that mode. In a nutshell: the
critique of Coordinated Studies is in substance a rationalization of the faculty's
fear of the faculty seminar.
The faculty seminar is the forum in which colleagues discuss books and ideas,
teaching problems, and eventually their respective performances as teachers. It
is the arena in which we expose to each other our respective educations -- "expose"
as in sex. I think many faculty members are more fearful of doing that than they
are of anything else. Such a fear Freudians have a name for. Such a fear is what
gives rise to the ideology proclaiming the inadequacy of Coordinated Studies. What
is really being proclaimed, however, is the inadequacy of the faculty members themselves. In this way, the Fort Worden critique of Coordinated Studies unwittingly
raises the issue of faculty standards, which is what most of our public discussions
are really about anyway.
President McCann's well founded concern over minimal faculty standards cannot be
acted upon so long as the faculty seminar continues to be regarded as optional.
The Faculty Handbook says i t is required; our practice has turned i t into ·fj!.ust
another option in Evergreen's academic market. By not exercising the option, one
shields oneself against "tough, factual" colleague evaluation. The objective
consequence of this maneuver, carried out by too many faculty members and presided
over by the academic administration itself,* is consolidation of faculty positions
as personal property. That development in turn further erodes standards, which
are inedible in any case.
Faculty standards will never be upgraded in a social vacuum. They will never be
upgraded outside the dynamic social structure which is the faculty seminar and
which is only possible to institute within Coordinated Studies.**
*Presided over by the academic administration in the sense that the administration
is responsible for the fact that only about one-half of the faculty in any year
work in Coordinated Studies--excepting the year 1971-72. The rest are cast--or
cast themselves--into the outer darkness of Contracts, isolated from the joys and
rigors of sustained collegial relationships.

~

David Marr
Page 2

**Chuck Pailthorp has offered an interesting alternative. He recommends that
our curriculum planning begin, not with Programs and Contracts, but with selfselected colleague groups--in effect, faculty seminars. The individuals within
each group would then decide which mode or modes to work in. This is a good
suggestion because it recognizes the centrality of the faculty seminar in what
we are trying to do here. It is also good because it might solve the riddle of
how to carry on faculty seminars in the Contract mode: a riddle which neither
the Deans nor anyone else have solved in three years. I do not see, however,
that this proposai applies to Coordinated Studies, of which the faculty seminar
is a built-in feature.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
"Terse, Communicative, Solution Oriented"
Removing Uncertainty From Student Curriculum Decisions - Dave Milne
!Problem! At present students have no way of knowing what will be offered more than
one year h~nce. This creates desperation and frustration; each year, they act
(with good cause) as though it's their "last chance" to take a particular program
since it won't exist in years hence. Evergreen is losing good students via transfers
generated by this P,rocess.
!Solution! Repeat certain programs. Every 3 years, check the record of the repeaters,
to see if their continued offering is justified.
!Specific Recommendation for Environmental Science Repeaters at Intermediate Levell

(1)

Evergreen Environmental, 2 quarters - terrestrial field biology and ecology
(2 faculty)

(2)

Marine Life and Water Quality, 2 quarters--marine ecology and analytical
techniques (1 faculty)

(3)

Organismic Biology, 3 quarters; anatomy, physiology, embryology of invertebrates; vertebrates and plants; evolutionary theory, fossils (2 faculty).

(4)

Analytical Techniques, 2 quarters; use of spectrophotometers, chromatographs
in pollution detection; pollutant chemistry (1 faculty)

(5)

Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2 quarters; microbes, cell structure and _
function (1 faculty)

The following schedule is recommended:
X

1

2

3

4

EE

X

X

X

X

X

MLWQ

X

X

X

OB

X

X

0

AT

0

0

MCB

X

X

6

6

' 6

every year; 2 faculty
2

of every 3 years; 1 faculty

X

2

of every 3 years; 2 faculty

0

0

every year; 1 faculty

X

X

2

5

6

TOTAL FACULT COMMITTED
(out of
13 Biology Faculty)

of every 3 years; 1 faculty

j.Advantagesl ·
(1)

The students gain a skeleton of good essential intermediate programs upon
which to hang their studies and plans.

(2)

Less than half of the biology faculty is committed each year. Some certainty
is introduced into faculty futures. Half are left for new or old advanced
programs and for coordinated studies.

!Imp lemen ta tionl
This should be the responsibility of the "natural groups" identified by the deans.

Dave Milne
Page 2
These groups should subdivide into lesser areas (such as "Life Sciences") which
should identify the courses to be repeated and decide upon scheduling.
Wolicy on Student Demand!
The repeated courses will appear as a fraction of the total list made available
each year. Students will not be able to sign up for them in advance, but will
simply know that they will be on th~ list. If there is insufficient demand in a certain
year, the course can be cancelled; if there is excessive demand, a faculty member
can be added.

l

THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE

•

J'une 13, 197 4

MEMORANDUM

TO:

The Deans

FROM:

Chuck Nisbet

SUBJECT:

A Proposal From Fort Worden

During the 1974 fall orientation week I propose one day be set aside to deal with
"on and off cclmpus stress". This topic would include such items of concern as:
faculty burnout, lack of creativity, family stress and others.
Every faculty member would be paired with another for a morning session and a
different person for the afternoon session.- The pairings would involve faculty
members who don't know each other and have no objection to a beginning. Where
possible people would be paired who have similar living arrangements. Each faculty
member would submit a list of six names sometime this summer to one of the deans to
facilitate the pairing procedure. The morning pairings will meet for breakfast
and the afternoon pairs will meet for lunch. Each person will bring to these seminars a written out "stress statement". This statement will include at least the
following: (1) a list of the _ten most stressful experiences of the previous year
ranked by order of magnitude, (2) a list of those actions you took in the past
year that were most successful at reducing stress, and (3) a list of those actions
you took that resulted in increased stress.
The purpose of this day is to (1) at least make fewer strangers among us and give
us some concrete basis to build new relationships, (2) to share with each other some
meaningful specifics about our Evergreen, and (3) to give us a little alternative to
the cool, formalness of large group information sharing.

P.S.

If you like I would be willing to handle the pairings.

THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE
June 13, 19?4

TO:

The Deans

FROM:

Lynn Patterson

Thoughts on the morning session called "Creativity, Burn...Out, Time"
Before we began, I wrote:
"We don't take enough time to do what is needed.
To be creative for me is to take time to look carefully at what is important.
To explore that thing which is important. To really think privately about
it. To write about it. Identify it. I have learned from several sources
now that learning better and better to ask questions usually provides
solutions. Phil Harding knows that. He helped to teach me that. Problems
may be only improperly posed questions. At Evergreen solutions seem to be
grabbed for - jumped at. When I attempt to ask questions, I hear answers.
Quickly - pat, sometimes. The answers are usually posed in terms of
structural solutions. The solutions posed are themselves too quickly
I

.......

criticized. People do little building - i.e. "that solution has merits what if we added this too it?" I believe that noghing much important happens
that way. I believe that we becom.,etodgy. Bureaucratic. Things get done
but the things that are done have a taste of being stop..gaps. Then the
stop..gaps become sacred. People forget that they were only stop..gaps.
People forget their history. People don't realize that they are living out
their own cultural myths. I don't have answers. I don't care to do more
than to learn how to. ask better questions. Maybe I don't even care to ask
questions - maybe I just care to learn and let answers form themselves.
We had an interesting morning discussing creativity, burn-out, and time. We
talked about things - we told each other how to survive. One dared question
assumptions. We all want to feel more comfortable. He didn't allow us to
be comfortable or smug. Others continued to talk. They helped me feel
guilty in the midst of my creativity - "where were you in the afternoon?"

Where I was in the afternoon:

(from the beach -

Lynn Patterson & Marilyn Frasca)

THE IDUNDING OF A TRADITION
Once upon a time there was a town composed of two parallel streets.
A dervish passed through one street into the other and as he reached
the second one, the people noticed that his eyes were streaming with
tears. 'someone has died in the other street! one cried, and soon
all the children in the neighborhood had taken up the cry.
What had really happened was that the dervish had been peeling onions.
Within a short space of time the cry had reached the first street;
and the adults of both streets were so distressed and fearful (for
each community was related to the other) that they dared not make
complete inquiries as to the cause of the furore.
A wise man tried to reason with the people of both streets, asking why
they did not question each other. Too confused to know what they
meant, some said: 'For all we know there is a deadly plague in the
other street. '
This rumour, too, spread like wildfire, until each street's populace
thought that the other was doomed.
When some measure of order was restored, it was only enough for the
two communities to decide to emigrate to save themselves. Thus it
was that, from different sides of the town, both streets entirely
· evacuated their people.
Now, centureies later, the town is still deserted; and not so far
away are two villages. Each village has its own tradition of how
it began as a settlement from a doomed town, through a fortunate
flight, in remote times, from a nameless evil.
COMMENT

In our search to solve burn-out, to deal with time, to recapture creativity
we may abandon something important. We may restore order. Ve may establish
new traditions. We may even leave. It may be that someone has been peeling
onions.
THE STORY OF FIRE
Once upon a time a man was contemplating the ways in which Nature
operates, and he discovered, because of his concentration and
application, how fire could be made.
Tltis man was called Nour.

He decided to travel from one community
to another, showing people his discovery.

Nour passed the secret to many groups of people. Some took advantage
of the knowledge. Others drove him away, thinking that he must be
dangerous, before they had had time to understand how valuable this
discovery could be to them. Finally, a tribe before which he demon•
strated became so panic-stricken that they set about him and killed
him, being convinced that he was a demon.

.J

Centuries passed. The first tribe which had learned about fire
reserve<Jthe secret for their priests, who remained in affluence
and power while the people froze.
The second tribe forgot the art and worshipped instead the instruments. The .third worshipped a likeness of Nour himself, because
it was he who had taught them. The fourth retained the story of
the making of fire in their legends: some believed them, some did
not. The fifth community really did use fire, and this enabled
them to be warmed, to cook their food, and to manufacture all kinds
of useful articles.
After many years, a wise man and a small band of his disciples were
travelling through the lands of these tribes. The disciples were
amazed at the variety of rituals which they encountered; and one and
all said to their teacher: 'But all these procedures are in fact
related to the making of fire, nothing else. We should reform these
people I'
The teacher said: 'Very well, then. We shall restart our journey.
By the end of it, those who survive will know the real problems and
how to approach them.'
When they reached the first tribe, the band was hospitably received.
The priests invited the travellers to attend their religious ceremony,
the making of fire. When it was over, and the tribe was in a state
of excitement at the event which they had witnessed, the master said:
'Does anyone wish to speak?'
The first disciple said: 'In the cause of Truth I feel myself constrained to say something to these people.•
'If you will do so at your own risk, you may do so,' said the master.
Now the disciple stepped forward in the presence of the trilai. chief
and his priests and said: 'I can perform the miracle which you
take to be a special manifestation of deity. If I do so, will you
accept that you have been in error for so many years?• ·
But yhe priests cried: 'Seize himl' and the man was taken away, never
to be seen again.
The travellers went to the next territory where the second tribe
were worshipping the instruments of fire-making. Again a disciple
volunteered to try to bring reason to the community.
With the permission of the master, he said: 'I beg pennission to
speak to you as reasonable people. You are worshipping the means
whereby something may be done, not even the thing itself. Thus you
are suspending the advent of its usefulness. I knew the reality
that lies at the basis of this ceremony.'
This tribe was composed of more reasonable people. But they said to
the disciple: •You are welcome as a traveller and stranger in our
midst. But, as a stranger, foreign to our history and customs, you
cannot understand what we are doing. You make a mistake. Perhaps,

-3-

even, you are trying to take away or alter our religion.
decline to listen to you.•

We therefore

The travellers moved on.
When they arrived in the land of the third tribe, they found before
every dwelling an idol repressing Nour, the original fire maker.
The third disciple addressed the chiefs of the tribe: "This idol
represents a man, who represents a capacity, which can be used.'

,.....
.._.,,

'Thia may be so,' answered the Nour-worshipera, 'but the penetration
of the real secret is only for the few.•
'It is only for the few who will understand, not for those who refuse
to face certain facts,' said the third disciple.
'Thie is rank heresy, and from a man who does not even speak our
language correctly, and is not a priest ordained in our faith,' muttered
the priests. And he could make no headway.
The band continued their journey, and arrived in the land of the
fourth tribe. Now a fourth disciple stepped forward in the, assembly
of the people.
'The story of making fire is true, and I know how it may be done,•
he said.
Confusion broke out within the tribe, which split into various
factions. Some said: 'Thie may _be true, and if it is, we want to find
out how to make fire.' When these people were examined by the master
and his followers, however, it was found that most of them were anxious
to use firemaking for personal advantage, and did not realize that
it was something for human progress. So deep had the distorted
legends penetrated into the minds of most people that those who
thought that they might in fact represent truth were often unbalanced
ones, who a:,uld not have made fire even if they had been shown how.
There was another faction, who said: •or course the legends are not
true. This man is just trying to fool us, to make a place for himself
here.'
And a further faction said: •we prefer the legends as they are, for
they are the very mortar of our cohesion. If we abandon them, and
we find that this new interpretation is useless, what will become of
our community then?'
And there were other points of view as well.
So the party travelled on, until they reached the lands of the fifth
community, where firemaking was a commonplace, and where other preoccupations faced them.
The master said to his disciples:
'You have to learn how to teach, for man does not want to be taught.
First of all, you will have to teach people how to learn. And

-4-

r._/

hefore that you have to teach them that there is still something to be
learned. They imagine that they are ready to learn. But they want
to learn what they imagine is to be learned, not what they have
first to learn. When you have learned all this, then you can devise
the way to teac,h . Knowlege ,v i thout special capacity to teach is not
the same as knowledge and capacity.'

COMMENT
We may be like these tribes. The fire is learning and teaching. We worship
some tools which were designed to aid learning and teaching. We worship
coordinated study programs.

We worship faculty seminars.

We have legends

which speak of the~e things. We try to emulate the ideals spoken of in
these legends. We don't understand our own history. The tribal fathers
1

usl

us

~ttempt to tell
once again. They come back to
through the fog of time
on video tapes and speak to us. But we can't hear. We are not only not
able to ask the right questions, but we are also not ready to hear or ask
1

I

anything different. We can only hear the answers we can imagine possible to
those questions we' already know. We are busy imagining answers before we
I

pose questions. We must learn to learn, learn to hear, and learn to imagine
before anything of significance can happen. But if we are unable to hear,
how can we 'hear
even that fact?
' .
The answer to this may be obvious.
one.

We are only practicing for the big

It may be inherent in an "experimental" institution which defines its experiment in terms of structural changes that the structure/the tools become
sacred for themselves.
This may indeed limit our ability to make fire.
We may be here only to learn this so that the next time
we will make fire.
r
Beware of the obvious. This may all be too obvious. Let us before we
change, before we fine~tune, before we do anything, think of ourselv~s
in the course of time and in the world. We are a little group of teachers
with traditions, m71;hs, values and problems seeking to find the answers
among ourselves • .All of this may be unnecessary - irrelevant compared
to the question of the future of education, the future of the world. We
may be fine-tuning a dinosaur.
anachronistic.

We may be refining an idea which is already

V

This piece of writing, done too hastily, attempts to open some doors.
is not a position. It is a point of view. It recommends nothing but
itself.

It

But if we become aware of ourselves living out our myths - and if we can
identify our myths - we may be able to manipulate them. If we can ack,,.
nowledge that onions h!lre been peeled, we may be able to consciously choose
doom for the old village and opt for new beginnings.

,-...
✓

LP:gw

,,......
._/

JUNE 1974
POSITION PAPER ON LACK OF COMMUNITY AT EVERGREEN
By Linnea Pearson
I think the 'r eason there is lack of community among the faculty at Evergreen
is because no one much likes anyone else among the faculty at Evergreen. I think
the reason no one much likes anyone else among the faculty at Evergreen is because
no one much knows anyone else among the faculty at Evergreen. I think the reason
no one much knows anybody else among the faculty at Evergreen is because everyone
is afraid that (a) everyone else is smarter than they (he-she is) are, or (b)
everyone else is dumber than they (he-she is) are. I think probably neither (a)
nor (b) of the above is true. I think it's all more likely 1that we all know some
things others don't know, and that we all don't know things others know and that
it all pretty much evens out. But we're all so obsessed with out individual
desires for idiosyncratic wholeness that we never take time to consider the situation.
During my first year at Evergreen, I was invited into the homes of six (6)
faculty members. One of these I had known back in Virginia (we had met two years
ago before I was hired); one invitation was directly after a party I myself had given;
two were the faculty persons with whom I was planning a program. If I had not known
anybody before I had come this year, if I had not given a party of my own, if I had
not planned a program for next year, I would not have gotten invited anywhere.
I would have been very lonely.
I

I was lonely, as is.
At first ! I felt there was a secret
knew nothing about. I felt bad. Then I
social life going on. I felt worse. If
secret underground social life going on,

underground social life going on that I
discovered there was no secret, underground
I now discover there was, indeed, a real
I will probably die of social embarrassment.

I think -what Susan Fiksdal's connnittee is doing to help the new folk next year
is good and important. I hope someone comes along with a similar plan to help the
old folk. I would be willing to help ••.

V

A Model for Problem Solving

•

Greg PortnQff

This year one of the ideas that•s been a lot of fun for me is the notion
that the experienc,as of "I" and "we" are perceptually reversible Gestalts, and,
as such, cannot co-exist. The major consequence of this is that to the extent to
which one perceives on~elf as a part-of any group, one is no longer an individual
but rather an aspect of 'a supraindividual entity. In thinking through my own experiences, the latter part of this idea has both a certain amount of explanatory
power (e.g. It says something about why, when someone closely related to me does
something I am shy of doing, I, myself, feel embarrassed.) and some hueristic value
(e.g. Could feelings I've had of heterosexual jealousy be at least in part energized by homosexual panic?). For the moment, however, I want to leave the juicy
stuff, and apply the notion of group-as-individual to problem solving at Evergreen.

,-.

___,,

It seems to me that a general schema for the way in which problems are typically
solved at the faculty meeting level is as follows: The problem is publicly stated.
The people in the group begin to think on it. Some of them arrive at a "solution".
(I use the term broadly to include reinterpretation of the problem or rejection of
it entirely. What I wish to emphasize by using the word "solution" is that what
is arrived at is typically a finished product of some sort.) Solutions are voiced,
and their assets and liabilities discussed. Ego investment sometimes runs high here;
as might be expected when dealing with "one's own" ideas. Finally, in a "successful"
meeting a choice is made among the ideas that have been raised •
I'd like to describe an alternative model that I have found useful in numerous
instances at the seminar level. It is an attempt to get a group to think as a group
rather than as individuals. (Brain storming does the same but doesn't go far enough.)
Here's how it goes:
1. The problem is stated
2. I attempt to solve it myself.
3. When I have arrived at a solution (it needn't be an adequate one), I drop
both its content and the content of the steps I went through to arrive at it; and focus
on the structure itself.
4. I take the group through the steps of my solution encouraging them to plug
in their own content at every level.
For example, let's say the .group is concerned with knowing something of the
nature of a particular emotion. In attempting to solve the problem I find myself
going through the following steps.
1. I try to think of a number of occasions on which I felt that emotion.
2. I list the situational contexts within which it has occurred.
3. I attempt to explicate what it felt like.
4. I think about how I behaved in each instance.
5. I list the circumstances of the disappearance.
6. I look at categories 2 - 5 cross-sectionally (e.g. What do all of the situations that precipitated the emotion have in common?).
7. I look at them longitudinally (e.g. Is there an internally consistant logic
in each instance?).
8. I repeat the process to whatever extent I can based upon my knowledge of
other peoples'experience.

-J

I have found that when I go through this kind of procedure with a seminar
group getting input from each student at each step, there is a reasonable probability of our arriving at a s,)lution(s) that is superior to what I think might
have been arrived at by any one of us.
I see the major disadvantag~ of this method as being its dependence on one
person's choice of methodology.~1;aepeating it using several methods can be overly
time consuming. Also, I am unsure of its range of applicability beyond the uses
I have put it to.
Beyond the two heads better than one
as having two major assets:

argument I presented I see the method

1. The understanding arrived at is everybody's property. This is important
to me because I find that one's own understanding is remembered far better and used
more readily than other peoples understanding that one~\rtored in one's head.

2. One way of summing up what makes for group cohesiveness is to say that it
is a function of the extent to which the members see the group functioning as a
unified whole (my supra-individual at the beginning). This method tends toward
maximizing that experience.

Faculty Burn-Out- - - -Questions of Consequences?
Lynn has sagely suggested we ask some questions, instead of chaif-ng ahead
for answers before the objective (or even field of battle) has been defined;
this paper accepts her suggestion, and it does so in the further appreciation
of one of Rudy's favorite words---"outrageous." Why not ask some outrageous
questions about faculty burn-out, overwork, fatigue?
Is it true that faculty at TESC are often exhausting themselves in ways that
do not always seem productive,--that in the dark of night even seem (sometimes)
silly?
Is it hard to admit this to ~nyone, especially oneself and especially in public ,
and is any open discussion of this contrary to the posturing we have to do to
keep the Legislature off our backs?

J

Aren't we usually told, when we bring the subject up, that the real problem is
that we "don't have our shit together" and t~•:it if we did, we would have figured
out this or that way, this or that technique, this or that device, this or that
"survival tactic" that would make us able to make it? (Do these metaphors
suggest a wartime or long trek through a hostile wildernes~ to you?)
Isn't this because we all (women, men, blacks, whites, etc.'s) have built deep,
deep into our guts an unquestionable conviction that we are really "going it
alone" and that all this rhetoric about community is more often used repressive
than in a form that would make us feel warm, cared for, very un-alone?
Is there a head-on-collision ALWAYS built into every Coordinated Studies Program
between the Puritan Individualism (to use our self-stroking word for it) that
we have all been taught and have self taught and the sudden demand for mutual
respect, subtle support (and even love??), integration of things we have never
never ever ever done except by ourselves, and the seemingly continuous demand
for mutual action? (Two persons can cross, holding to each other, a stream
impossible to each alone!!)
·
Is it true that, even though we were all hired to do these things, the execution
of them seems crunchingly more difficult after three years than it did at the
planning table? Have we admitted this? Have we discussed this in public? Is
this widening bifurcation between rhetoric and reality reducing our morale and
draining our energy? Is this a super-prime cause of stress?

-- 1

l

Is it true that we all genuinely feel that ALL FACULTY PERSONS are committed to
this subtly difficult task of coordinating unique individuals into teams?
Is there universal confidence that the evaluation process has guts and gives
us a feeling of security .that when we are assigned to a team our teammates
have proved they are wilt~nd capable of the rigor/subtleties/joys of such
integration?
Is there much much less stress in working in the Individual Contract or Group
Contract mode, and is this indicated by the happiness of those who just
completed such an assignment? Are folks moving toward such modes for reasons

1

- 2 -

,,. .

they don't talk about in public--perhaps not even with themselves?
'

Is the cost--energy--expenditure--/vs./ return--support--satisfaction of
Coordinated Studies worth it? Do we have the guts to ask this question?
. .
Do we feel that enough (exclude those so superior that they would shine no
matter what) Evergreen Students take our "gifts" of commitment, time, open
office doors and homes, etc., to make it worth it? Do we share, or do we
sometimes have a gnawing sense of being used?

L,

Is it true that our most beautiful, most unusual, most elegant form of
education is the Coordinated Studies mode and therefore, we should guard and
nurture it accordingly? Should we perhaps see Coordinated Studies as a
privilege--one to be earned by faculty and students alike, rather than push
and shove participants into an at best demanding integration of activity,
should we have a smaller, perhaps the smallest but finest, number of offerings
in such a mode?
Frankly these are only a few of the questions which the genuine investigation
of faculty stress and burn-out would have to look into; what they are represent
some of what was said, felt, and discussed for a full day by this group at
Ft. Worden.
ACTION: There is an immediate need/demand for a study of the problem. Right
now persons are making many decisions in private which constitute de facto
institutional and policy decisions about what this college is or ever will be.
Since the job market is what it is, those persons will not leave o~tfi~~own
job offer~~tut a colleague who is do~ and burned out,- a colleague who is
turned off and cynical,- a colleague who just doesn't show up for faculty
seminars,- a colleague who seeks to avoid serving-------sur~ly all the~e (and
there are parts of each of these in us all) are colleagues we will erode the
outrageous joy with which we once said: • • • I got the job at Evergreen!!!!!

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Faculty Seminar - Bob Sluss
Most of us agree on the importance of good faculty book seminars. There is,
however, a great deal of variation of opinions about what faculty do in good
book seminars. What follows is my position on faculty seminars along with
some reasons for the position and some consequences.
Position: The faculty seminar should be one aspect of serious scholarly
examination or the program theme by the program faculty team.
The faculty seminar should not be a place to "bone-up" for the student seminars.
The faculty seminar should not be a place to feel like a co-learner with the
program students by reading books out of our field.
Reasons for the Position: Traditional schools choose between serious scholar-- -ship and teaching. Serious scholarship has come to mean narrow professionalism
and publications by experts and generally is at the expense of students. Schools
that have opted for teaching have come to consider scholarship a bad word and
are generally, in my opinion, second-rate institutions of higher learning.
Evergreen provides, through well designed coordinated studies, a unique opportunity for serious faculty scholarship which directly enhances student learning.
This opportunity is given by a group of faculty each of whom can examine a
program theme from their own professional perspectives.
Some Consequences: Programs need to be designed around themes that can be
explored from the perspective of several disciplines -- not merely themes
which include several disciplines.

r
-.J

Programs need to be staffed by people who want to explore the theme -- not
merely with people who are willing to offer their discipline to the theme.

,......,_
-.J

-.J

(

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Submitted by Nancy Taylor

Problem:

How to have fun? talk to old friends and meet new ones

Solution:
The Two Cities of Destiny Program
invites · everyone
to
Afternoon Tea
every Tuesday afternoon from 3:30 - 5:00
in
the Green Room 2101
starting October 8

Faculty and Student Evaluations for Permanent Academic Records
(A Fort Worden discussion, morning, June 11, 1974:
Richard Alexander, Carie Cable, Beryl Crowe, Jim Gulden,
Dum.i Maraire, Gail Martin, K~n Mayer, Charles Teske)
Issues:

I.
Il • .
III.
IV.
V.
VI.

I.

Importance of Written Evaluations
Problems in Writing Evaluations
A Strategy for Improvement
Some Tactical Suggestions for Faculty
Evaluations
Some Tactical Suggestions for Student
Self-Evaluations
Behavioral Objectives: on Whose Authority?
and Other Thoughts about Educational Philos~phy

Importance of Written Evaluations:
-

they provide an assured periodic feedback to students and faculty
members on individual performances, strengths, weaknesses; as well
as on whole programs and ways of doing things
they cumulatively provide a permanent record of a student's progress,
a sense of history, of growth
they substantiate awards of credit
they provide the student with an official short-term pay-off, before
the long-term benefits of the student's efforts can become apparent
to'the student
they help wrap things up, clear away ambiguity, give some symbolic
order
they give information to other faculty members who will be advising
or working with the student (hearsay is less reliable)
they give information to prospective employers, graduate schools, and
other people outside the school interested in who a student is, what
the student has done, and what the student knows how to do.

The theoretical ideal of narrative evaluations at TESC is one of our strongest
points; the practice of writing them is frequently weak. We need to develop
consistency. We need to make them good.
Why else •is the fact that they must be written crucial?
to foster precision and the kind of responsibility relevant to what
people will work at later
to strengthen people's writing, as learning experiences in themselves
to commit oneself to judgments beyond the ebb and flow of conservation
and daily fluctuations in attitude.
BUT: We must not allow concern about the written result ~o replace attention
to the process of learning.

'-.J

Faculty and Student Evaluations
Page 2
II.

Problems in Writing Evaluations:.
Good evaluations take a lot of time, a lot of work; they're hard just
because they're so important.
People think they can't write good ones, so they can't.
It's often hard to measure growth by reference to earlier evaluations
in the student's portfolio, because many people don't keep portf olios.
(Richard Alexander: "He who puts his faith in portfolios has put his
faith in the wind.")
It~s hard to fill the gap between describing a student's attitudes
(letter-of-recommendation style) and the bare details of course equivalencies; but it must be done; TESC evaluations tend to be good about
attitudes but not very informative about the student's performance and
ability to do certain things.
It's hard .to convince students just how important their own evaluations .
are, to encourage them to develop a sense of history and of the future.
It's often hard for faculty members to avoid laying their own attitudes
and ideologies on future outside readers ("This student is so great
because she's so radical, so far out, so much -- in fact . -- like me.").
Problems of time-pressure in getting them typed lead to such irritating
distractions as spelling errors and other typographical messes which
cut down their usefulness.
They are especially hard to do if the evaluation process feels tacked
on, something relegated to •~evaluation week."
Designs of programs and of contracts don't indicate much thinking early
on about what the results should be, what forms they will take , and how
anyone can measure the growth/learning which they embody; "evaluation
week" can then be all the more difficult and frightening. And memories
of collaborative seminars do not, by themselves, help much in estimating
the performance of individual students.

(Teske's note: No one discussed the problems specifically relating to course~
equivalencies or to the calendar with which we have been working. These practices wer~ taken for granted.)
III.

A Strategy for Improvement (to help faculty members, who will then help
students):
(A)

Define "good" and "bad" evaluations; including their utility to future
sponsors, program faculty, employers, etc.

Faculty and Student Evaluations
Page 3

IV.

(B)

Develop procedures for reviewing faculty evaluations, sampling all
faculty members' work to see who can write "good" evaluations and
who has trouble.

(C)

Develop a kit of materials about faculty evaluations, including
suggested guidelines; checklists for what the combination of
program-description or contract, faculty evaluation, and student
evaluation should tell the reader; and aids to writing.

(D)

Provide opportunities for training those faculty members who need
help -- by expert colleagues? by a specialist on evaluation?
by clinical work at a campus center? or?

(E)

Keep this process going so that faculty members can have feedback
on whether or not their ability to write evaluations is improving.

Some Tactical Suggestions for Faculty Evaluations:
When thinking about "good" or "bad," informative or weak evaluations,
pay attention to what the reader will want to know from the whole
package of description/contract, faculty evaluation, student evaluation -- and even the whole portfolio.
Be aware that a reader, whether prospective faculty sponsor or prospective employer, will be reading in minutes the written history of
years of learning.; focus on communicating under these conditions.

n

'-../

A good evaluation tells
who the person was;
where she or he was at the beginning in attitudes,
knowledge, and competencies;
how all of this changed;
to what extent the ·student's expectations were met or
perhaps changed in the process;
and to what extent the student met the expectations
of the program or fulfilled the contract.
-- A good evaluation contains objective indications of what the student
has learned; it will hit the high points, using convincing details;
thus the reader will believe other, brief summary comments.
Good evaluations will characterize the individual students -- warts,
beauty-marks, and all; they will not come across as interchangeable
program-parts or faceless persons.
It's a good exercise (said Nancy Taylor later) to listen to another
team member read several evaluations he or she has written about
students in your program without hearing their names: Who is it?
How early can you tell? Why? If you can't tell, what are we going
to do about it?

,,....

Faculty and Student Evaluations
Page 4
According to the original assumptions about how coordinated studies
teams, and even groupings of faculty members doing contracts, would
work, ~embers of teams were to offer editorial help and information
to their colleagues during the drafting of evaluations. Do they?
If not, let's do it.
Especially when a faculty member has worked with a student on a contract, the faculty member should make the student responsible for
providing the details of the work in the student's self-evaluat~on
and then write a "validating evaluationtt which also qualifies, or
heightens, or adds to, or explains what the student has said.
-

If~ concern with evaluation has been clearly articulated in the
program-design or contract at the beginning -- and if the procedures
work well -- the faculty member's final evaluation would be a drawing
together of the results of frequent small evaluations, perhaps of one
or two paragraphs of precise summary which the student has written
at the end of each week (moving from journal entries toward objective
"publication").
Therefore, the designers of programs and negotiations of contracts
ought to pay a good deal of attention to a continuing process of
evaluation leading to the final, formal evaluation narratives.
To recognize differences in expectations of students and from students
(said Richard Alexander, as he had said in the planning year), why
not arrange all students' work by individual contracts, or perhaps
group-contracts with individual clauses? Then the evaluations should
be fitted to these individual expectations and performances.
If possible, a faculty member preparing to write an evaluation (especially
if it will be the student's last one from Evergreen), should read through
all previous evaluations in the student's portfolio -- so as to measure
growth, to set the record straight when the student has overcome weaknesses, to call attention to changed interests and thus to make the new
evaluation a summary of cumulative learning.
\

To emphasize the student's most mature work and the cumulative impact
of the most recent faculty evaluations, the transcript should be -and is -- organized as curricula vitae are, giving the most recent
position or level of education first and then working backward in time.
Who should review faculty evaluations to find out who needs help and
who appears to be capable of giving advice? The deans, who read the
evaluations written by the faculty members in their groups as part of
the dean-faculty evaluation process.
-

Who should develop materials, guidelines, checklists, writing aids?
Not specified; TO BE DECIDED BY DEANS.

Faculty and Student Evaluations
Page 5
-

V.

Who should carry out the training function?
DECIDED BY DEANS.

Not specified; TO BE

Some Tactical Suggestions for Student Self-Evaluations:
encourage students to pick out the learning experiences most
important to them and tell why they were important
encourage students to do the initial job of telling what happened
but then encourage them to insist that the faculty evaluation
avoid superficiality, bland facelessness.
en~ourage students to be advocates for their own performances at
evaluation-time
because their self-evaluations generally contain more hard data
than faculty evaluations of them can, allot them more of the
official pages in a final evaluation of a long program than
you will be taking up
explain carefully to students the purposes of their self-evaluations
and who will be reading them; you can't choose for the student or
catch him in the rye if he doesn't want to be caught, but it's
your responsibility to make him aware of the implications of
writing his own history
as you learn how to write better evaluations, help your students
learn (when to suggest and when to state, how to use convincing
examples, how to show that you have learned something by the very
way in which you talk about it)
share with your students the reasons why Evergreen wants to do
things this way in the first place.

VI.

Behavioral Objectives:
Educational Philosophy

on Whose Authority? -- and Other Thoughts about

Everyone found, as the morning wore to a close, that thinking about designing programs or negotiating contracts with a view toward measurement of growth
leads to the formulation of behavioral objectives. We agreed only that behavioral objectives are easier to write for some endeavors and subject-matters
than others, and that they can be negotiated between sponsor and student in
individual contracts. Then the issue arose of who should decide the behavioral
objectives for group contracts and coordinated studies programs. This led to
a discussion of the grounds of academic authority, including descriptions of
Shona master/apprentice relationships, Crowe's gambit, the more or less appropriate side-effects of higher education. We were on the point of defining
this purpose when the meeting adjourned for lunch, sine die.

CT/eh
6-13-74

,,

TEACHING AND LEARNING
Kirk ~ompson
(Being a position paper on teaching and learning, especially about the problem
of "nurturing academic excellence," and about being a teacher, qr more exactly
a professor, rather than a facilitator or resource person.)
I attended the "Teaching and Learning" discussion group at Fort Worden because
I was particularly concerned about the issue Priscilla Bowerman raised:
"Nurturing Academic Excellertce." Let there be no doubt about it: I think
Evergreen has a serious problem about academic excellence. Yes, I am sure that
there is such a thing as academic ~xcellence to have a problem about. I do not
mean the competitive, product-oriented behavior encouraged at those institutions
we meant to leave behind. I mean the stuff that's present or absent if we put
questions like these to our students: "Have you read much about the subject you
want to investigate?" "Have you made a really serious effort to understand
what the authors meant to say?" "Have you really tried out differ~nt interprt- ·
tations or approaches?" "Are you sure you're making sense?" "Have you studi~,
the subject or issue deeply enough to know what the real intellectual and
practical problems are in that field?" I believe that overall we are in troub:.e
for not having asked our students enough pushy questions like these. Too often
we act like Dr. Spock's parents encouraging Dr. Spock's children to train
th~mselves at their own pace--which is just fine, . if we do get around to making
some judgements (yes, making judgments; that's what e-valu-ation means) about
how well the training is proceeding. I believe we do not make such judgments
clearly enough and often enough to sustain a reputable s~ of academic standards
(norms) at Evergreen. I think that one way we consistently cop out on this
responsibility is to claim we are "facilitators" or "resource persons." I
think we should accept the position that we are teachers, with much to teach.
I do not mean that we are teachers of specialized disciplines; most of us were
hired because of a commitment to transcending these, at least as they are
conventionally defined. I think we are teachers of intellectual and practical
problem-solving strategies, applicable to broad fields of inquiry. We should
"profess" these strategies and approaches avidly, not just by convening discussion groups but by guiding them to important destinations with our utmost skill.
In other words, I think the place we can best nurture some higher academic
standards are in hard-working, one-to-one tutorials, and in our .program and
contract seminars.

V

There is at least one· large background factor which makes "nurturing academic
excellence" a problem at Evergreen: We have the wrong kind of diversity (or,
to put it less judgmentally, we have a kind of diversity with which I and others
do not seem to cope very well). As an avid reader of the college's first
catalog, I learned that we intended to appeal to a cross-section of society;
it was actually a commitment of the college that it contain a richer mix of
class, ethnic, and minority groups than the population of the state at large.
This notion fired my enthusiasm, and that, I presume·, of my faculty peers: We
were going to take some of the teaching methods usually available in honors
programs and at expensive private colleges--small seminars; freedom from competitive
grading; interdisciplinary, non-bureaucratic curricular organization; etc.--and
lay these upon students of all backgrounds equally. This was the reason for
the original admissions policies. The legitimate assumption s·eemed to be that

I
- 2 the students who had been turned off by high school were just as capable as those
who were high achievers. If we just delivered the goods, we would attract a
racially, culturally, and socio-economically diverse student body, and a great
release of creative potential would result, This was the sort of diversity I,
or maybe we, anticipated, and it was going to produce a democractic, high-energy
learning process in which it would be a joy to participate.
I, or we, did not get what was anticipated, though--ours is indeed a diverse
student body, but not in the way intended; rather, in a way that causes a
serious· problem about "nurturing academic excellence." We do not have, racially,
culturally, or socio-economically, a particularly diverse student body; rather, we
have a very homogeneous group of middle-class students who comprise a kind of
youth~ghetto in which everyone is pretty much alike. Such diversity as obtained
at Evergreen is basically a diversity of levels of motivation within an essentially
middle-class framework. The norms of a connnunity so constituted are more conducive
to social conformity than to academic excellence.
The minority student tends to stay away from Evergreen because he recognizes the
norms all too well. The majority who come are "Dr. Spock's children;" middleclass (or petty-bourgeois), raised permissively, and generally turned off by 1.he
academic institutions they have encountered before. Within this group, there is
indeed diversity, and there is a serious problem about whose norms are going to
be reinforced, which direction the faculty is going to point.
I mentioneci in the "Teaching and Learning" discussion group, and a lot of people
seemed to nod in agreement, that I often feel that I do not have any regular,
undergraduate college students: I seem to have a large number of high school and
junior college students looking for a replay of their previous low-energy
experience, and on the other hand a very important minority of high-energy,
highly motivated students who are at least as inquiring as were my peers in graduate
school. These are the two extremes, within our basically middle-class student
body.
On the one hand, a large number of kids, probably raised fairly pe::-:nissiv~ly, turned
off by the institutions they have encountered, who have not yet caught onto ways
of becoming self-motivating; they are consumer-oriented, as their society trained
them to be, and they tend to be the under-achieving, passive recipients of their
educational experience. They are by and large replaying their previous lowenergy high school and junior college experiences, but do not feel very good
about this. They want to get started on something but just can't quite find it
or make sufficient effort when they do. They feel a very deep ambivalence about
education itself. One name for this ambivalence is "competence anxiety"-anxiety because they are aware that they don't know how to do much of anything
that is rewarding, but also because all of the things that were said to be rewarding--job, status, wealth, power, etc.--turn out in our strange society to
look less like rewards than like traps. Education itself, which is heralded as
a key to competence, is perhaps just another trap, and so it is best to be wary;
maintain a low profile, don't take it too seriously, consume whatever looks good
as it comes along but don't get too involved. There's always another program or
product later, anyhow; you are the judge of whatever you are buying today, and
the store is always open tomorrow, so don't let them con you into buying too much.

(With this consumer orientation goes a special attitude towards "experience:"
Everything matters as it is offered to me, as on television or in advertising; I
am the ultimate "experiencing" agent, and what I get off on or don't get off on
is the main criterion of value. That Socrates or Sophocles, Einstein or Freud

I
I

I

I

-.....,

- 3 -

or Joyce or Picasso or Sartre has had some experiences that I can barely begin to
identify with, is not readily imaginable. It is more important that we sit down
and share our "real" experiences with others just like ourselves in some sort of
encounter group. It is this sort of attitude that likes to get "facilitated" in
seminars--a point to which I will return below.)

--On the other hand, there are a substantial number of students at Evergreen who
tend more to be self-determining agents, able to choose what they want to study,
to pick up the ball and run with it. These tend to be people who came to Evergreen
for the · "right" reasons according to the catalog literature; they tend to have
chosen Evergreen rather than to have drifted into it. These are the middleclass high achievers, and we are useful to them; the highly motivated student is
a kind of tautology who will always be highly motivated and will always learn a
lot, and will probably benefit a great deal from the Evergreen way of doing things.
If Evergreen had the real diversity of students that were counted upon but to
whom Evergreen apparently was not attractive, then the sheer diversity would itself
be a good source of energy. As things stand, however, with the vast majority of
the students seeming to fall into one or the oth~r of the two middle-class bags
I have been trying to describe, there is a dangeJ : that we will end up with a kind
of lowest-common-denominator reductiveness, rat~~r than synergy. Synergy means
that all of the organs or elements that are comb:..ned are actively offering·
something. If too many folks are, however, basically consumer-oriented then we
get the familiar "tragedy of the commons," in which the tendency of action is to
stabilize or reduce the amount of good stuff available. I honestly believe that
we are getting into this kind of situation.

V

Another model of this kind of situation is Gresham's law, in economics, which is
popularly understood to mean that a debased currency always drives good money out
of circulation. Gresham's law seems to me to be at the heart of the problem of
"nurturing academic excellence" at Evergreen • . Within our basically middle-class
culture, the vague, laid-back, uncommitted, consumer-oriented style, always cooler
looking than the alternative, tends to drive out the other currencies of more
legitimate intellectual and creative exchan~e. The nature of such a social
process is so general and diffuse that it is probably folly to attempt to control
it; to a large degree, we are simply an institution that mirrors, for better or
worse, the times in which it was created. Evergreen really is a strange, late-1960's
social product, catering to the needs of the young displaced persons who began to
become numerous at that time, and not to a full range of students from all classes
and cultures. We can do only a little bit to correct this. One crucial point
was in recruitment, but now it is a little late to change whom we attract. We
should be enormously supportive of any and all groups that introduce a breath of
diversity into the socially all-too-close atmosphere here, but we should also
admit that we have made an "image" for ourselves, and it is only slightly and
slowly amenable to change. It is not a very good image, from the standpoint of
getting by in teaching-and-learning situations, it will have to do. It is the
latter situations, not recruitement and image-building, which are my present
concerns.
Obviously the gist of what I am saying is that we, as faculty members, must
be hard at work to try to seduce a fe,1 more consumer-oriented, laid-back, doyour-own-thing souls towards adulthood in a world which we have little capacity
to imagine--but more than most of them do. Every indication is that it will be
a world with which people who are basically consumers will be ill-prepared to
cope. It will be a world of scarcer resources, a declining standard of living,
and less to consume. Few of us have a vision of--let alone an ethic, art, or
science for--such a world. What we do have are some learning strategies, some

- 4 ways of tough-minded and/or creative thinking that maybe are better than nothing
to have inside one's head or under one's skin. This, finally, is what "academic
exc.ellence" is for: It's supposed to support and transmit strategies of coping.·
In giving up rigid adherence to the duly constituted academic disciplines, we
have admitted that the disciplines themselves do not, as packaged bodies of knowledge,
tell us how to cope with much of anything at all. So anything we might have to
teach must lie in the intellectual and practical strategies and processes which
we are _a ble to transmit. As Masters of Arts and Doctors of Philosophy, or as
people broadly experienced in the world, we presumably have ways of coping with
the world in an inquiring and hopefully creative manner. Even if we are skeptics,
that is a way, a consis~ent way that most students have not learned to put to use.
My point is therefore that it is our job to hold out these ways and strategies,
to profess and exemplify them, not just to mirror our students' own ~orld-view.

The problem of thinking of ourselves as facilitators who only enable the student
to do what he already has in mind is that there may be a terrible narrowness
about the "experience" on which the student is drawing. The model here is that
every individual i, a seed of growth and needs only to be nurtured to share his
experiences and hi~ hangups with others who have the same problems only slightly
differently, so that they can be accepted and/or transcended. I can buy this;
we do all contain the seeds of infinite wisdom, even as little children--and I
mean this seriously. But I am frightened that mere facilitation of open discussion
in seminars is not enough; the p~oblem is also to get in touch with rare insights
and unusual experiences. Here is where the problem of "nurturing academic
excellence" arises. It is possible to nurture mediocri~. When we allow that
the students are all offering equally valid attempts at insight and expression,
we are on firm ground; to the extent that we nurture the viewpoint that all consumer
dollars are equal and that all insights and expressions are equally valid, we are
becoming what Socrates thought Sophists were, mere mirrors of an environment upon
which we have no intellectual or practical perspective.
Nor do I think we offer as much as we are responsible for if we think of ourselves
in ~~ teachi~,g situations as "resource persons." In a few situations, the student
does have a grip on some valid investigative or creative principle, and our job is
to provide a few missing pieces or some tools and hardware. But this is not
usually the case. The students I have worked with usually need more help finding
an investigative perspective or a creative stimulus which will actually carry
the day. I am quite wary of the impulse to help students "get into" something
via an individual contract, if they and I have not worked together before. They
probably do not need access to resources anywhere near as much as they need
somebody to sit down and talk to,someone who will ask the sort of questions I
mentioned at the outset; e.g., "Have you really got a hold of what that book was
saying?"; "Have you considered another aspect of the problem which looks something like this?" The point is that unless he has already practiced a lot, the
student will have trouble keeping the ·basis of inquiry straight; he needs not
just the resources of reading lists or hardware or permissiveness, but also the
well-guided, hard-headed, constructive criticism of someone intellectually more
practiced than he. A contracted studies student needs not just a resource person
but a friendly critic and guide.
Thus, besides facilitators and resource people, I think that Evergreen needs
teachers who are not basically insecure about having something to teach. This is
who I hope and think we are. My own position is finally ambivalent: I acknowledge
that the facilitative and resource-oriented styles are extremely valuable for

I

l

- 5 -

some people--both teachers and students--in some learning situations. I also
believe that they are most dangerous, because we are building · up a kind of lowgear conformity around them. They are the styles perceived as the least demanding
and most warmly open and accepting by Dr. Spock's children. But in many areas
of inquiry and for many people--particularly for people trained to be rather
passive--they may not lead the student into anything really challenging in the
world of non-ordinary experience. Since most people like being facilitated and
resourced, and since people trained as consumers tendtolike this more than
being challenged or redirected, there is a real danger of building a solid
mass of conformity in the wrong place. This is not to say that people who teach
as facilitators or resource persons are bad teachers; rather, it is to say that
to the extent that other reaching styles wither away, we are institutionalizing
some of our least motivated students' preferences. In a context of real diversity,
all teaching styles would presumably appeal to somebody. In a context of substantial conformity, we must be seriously concerned that we institutionalize
the ways that are missing. As it stands, I think we are gravitating in the
direction of sophistry--of just doing what the _ student "audience" appreciates.
Here are some teaching styles that seem to me to run against the grain at
Evergreen:
--Faculty member coming to seminar knowing that if certain issues don't get
brought up voluntarily he'll damn well see that they get considered anyhow.
(Rudy Martin is famous for doing this; ·students say that he gets away with it
because they like him, but they don't appreciate it as a strategy.)
--Faculty member insisting that people read a passage together until they really
figure out what it means. (A Dave Marr strategy; again, students seem to
accept it only reluctantly.)
--Faculty member implying, in book seminars, that he really does know where the
author was trying to lead the reader. (A Kirk Thompson strategy; very unpopular.)
--Faculty member asserting that he is a master of his art, and that students are
in a sense his apprentices. (A proposal for a new learning mode from Sid White.)
None of these strategies have been absolutely "driven out" by other more popular
teaching styles, but they tend to be characterized as somewhat curious, or even
as perversely authoritarian; they all seem to imply that the faculty member is not
a co-learner, but is already somewhat learned. To the extent that we have made
this implication seem unusual, I think we have institutionalized a bias that
appeals to lots of our students, but runs against common sense. I believe I am
quite sane when it crosses my mind that I am a Master of Arts and a Doctor of
Philosophy, not_ by virtue of certain documents but by virtue of some concrete
experience--experience that is rooted in the same kind of perceptions that my
students have, but which in quantity and depth has in most instances transcended
what they are familiar with. In these moments I am quite sure that I have
acquired some learning strategies that I may justifiably transmit to my students,
and that I am a teacher, or more exactly a professor, of these perspectives.
I am pretty sure that when I present these clearly and make definite judgements
about who has got a hold of them and who has not, I am helping to nurture academic
excellence. If the student hears the beat of my little drum but chooses to follow
different ones, or follows mine only part of the way, that's O.K.; but if he
doesn't hear it because I just facilitate and give access to resources, that's
not O.K. It is my job to send as well as to elicit messages--to send out some
clear beats, and to be not only tolerant but clear about what constitutes a
~ell-delivered performance.

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Development of Academic Resources for local, off-campus, part and full-time
students - E. J. Webb
Premises and Background
The continued healthy growth of any college relies in part on its contribution
to both the people and the environment immediately surrounding it. Historically,
those colleges that have attended to these interests have had fewer periods of
tension or crisis and greater stability of growth than those that have not.
Historically, Evergreen has--from its inception and because of its location and,
curricular philosophy--been in an advantageous position to raise its own expect~tions,
and the expectations of local citizens as a potent educational partner in both the
public and private sectors of our vicinity. However, as is quite natural with
such plans, the concept has been far in advance of the logistics and effort needed
to make it a workable reality. The few steps that have been taken--advertising,
some part-time admissions to regular offerings, Coop internships and off-campus
contracts--do not (though successful in themselves) represent an orderly, longrange planned development of such a program that would benefit local citizens as
well as th~ college. With the decline of in-state college age applicants it
seems propitious to consider now what kinds of forms such a program might take.

,-...
._,

J

Some Possible Future Directions
Many of the reconnnendations of the State Council on Higher Education's "Dynamics
of Change" report to the legislature have already been implemented here on campus.
But there is a marked disparity between the contemporaniety of our regular curricular
stance and that regarding the off-campus adult learner. This disparity, considering our leadership in some areas, -needs responsive consideration if we are to
maintain a consistent image and a homogeneous educational philosophy in our
practice. Some studied response to the Council's recommendations regarding the
off-campus adult, then, needs to become an integrated part of our total curricular
planning. If we were to set goals in this area contiguous with our progressive
activities elsewhere, we might wish to undertake the following typical off-campus
adult education programs:
(1)

Daily FM Education Broadcasts of courses, symposiums, visiting lecturers,
etc. Sources could be locally produced, procurred from the vast national
and international storehouse of academically originated tapes, or commercial
products.

(2)

Ditto for Cable TV and Micro-wave (both have 2-way capacity).

(3)

Enter into partnership agreements with classes of clienteles; state agencies
that match or complement our resources; other institutions (penal, aging,
hospitals, libraries) that already run educational programs.

(4)

Operate store-front learning resource centers with personnel and various
media in local outreach and rural areas for classes, counseling and SPLU's.

(5)

Operate "University-Mobiles"--large vans with two classrooms, two offices,
with walls lined with books.

(6)

Establish a true office of credit external to the institution and its
constraints on distance and time, All of these ventures (almost without
exception federally funded) have proved successful for the clientele served
and have enriched the inner life of the institutions conducting them.

,-..

E. J. Webb
Page 2
How To Begin?
We need to gather as much data as possible in a central locale that will support
gradual, healthy consecutiye decisions on how to proceed. We have some data
now; but we need to make a concerted, thorough and statistically valid study of
the educational needs of at least the tri-county, area. We need to coordinate
more thoroughly the responses of top and mid-level administration, faculty and
learning resources to evaluate this data and make cogent decisions. Our current
off-campus adult services have the characteristics of spasticity and randomness
that are inefficient for all concerned in time, effort and expenditures.
Specifically, a DTF should be formed to conduct such a study--financed externally-that would be thorough and professional enough to indicate whether the institution
should now proceed in some of these given areas. The DTF should, therefore, be
in close counsel with those who decide and implement major policies for this
institution. And it should also consult with other staff and faculty on campus
both for their expertise in this area and , to determine the degree of the institution's abilities and its willingness as a whole to begin such a venture.
It is clear that without specific knowledge of the local off-campus adult's
educational needs and without a clear sense throughout the institution as _to
how or whether it is willing to respond to these needs, we are simply shooting
impotent arrows into an impenetrable underbrush. But it should be equally
clear that if we wish to maintain--let alone improve--the quality of our
institution in the face of drastically declining enrollments among the traditional
college clientele, some concerted effort in this direction should soon be made.

THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE

•
June 13, 197.4
To:

EVERGREEN FACULTY

Subj:

Position Paper

Position The Evergreen State College is firmly committed to the moral curriculum.
Major resources will be committed to this goal, and all students will be
_required to complete a coordinated study program that embodies this moral
curriculum.
Rationale The primary responsibility of any public institution of higher learning
is the political education of America's citizens.

The moral curriculum is one

way of providing that absolutely essential political education.

Sometime it

r..__,,

is described as the liberal arts or the liberating arts, whatever the labels, it. is
a curriculum in the rights and duties of creative, critical and responsible
membership in a self-governing body politic.

It is the education of our citizens

must have if our democracy is to work and especially i f the unfinished business
of perfecting our democracy is to continue.
Implementation At least X number of coordinated studies designed to embody the moral curriculum will -be offered each year.

.,.__

..__,,

All incoming students will be required to enroll

and successfully complete one of these programs.

In order for the moral curricu-

, lum to be taught successfully it is essential that Evergreen faculty be encouraged
to teach in such programs.

'
Al Weidemann

Paul Sparks

Neils Skov

Nancy Taylor

Bob Barnard

Andrew Banfman

Merv Cadwallader

Jovohina & Bill Brown

Don Humphrey

Phil Harding

Eric Larson

Larry Eickstaedt

Betty Estes

Hap Freund

Jeanne Hahn

r_,,

'lllE MASTER-APPRENTICE MODE AT EVERGREEN?

HERESY!

Some of Evergreen's rhetoric has become ritualized into head nodding mumbojumbo that is chanted all over the place. A prime example of this chanting
is the all too familiar "Students should be given the freedom to learn on
their own" or "You have to let them make mistakes so they will learn from
them."*
I

These are pious half truths that demand careful examination: Which students?
How? Under what conditions? To what degree? Yes, under some conditions they
can best learn on their own. Under other conditions, no. It can bd damned
inefficient and sometimes dangerous and often a foolish waste of time. Yes,
under ~ conditions students can learn from their mistakes. But noe--always !'
Sometimes they need someone to nudge them or maybe kick them in the pants l~st
they continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again at app~lling
human and institutional cost.
'~
',,

These "some" conditions are what I call "clear and prompt feedback situations."
~e can teach ourselves to ride a bicycle (I don't know of any other way to
learn) and we can learn from our mistakes because we have clear and prompt
messages (cuts and bruises) when we screw up. This is nature kicking us in the
pants and commanding us to pay attention.
The above cited half truths obscure the fact that our students need reliable
feedback if they are indeed to learn from "experience" or "m;i.s takes." They (we)
are never too advanced for this, and that is why teachers (and books and
knowledge and evaluations and colleagues and a certain amount of conventional
stuff) are needed. They need teachers who function as part of the natural order
of things; teachers who can help them to test themselves tc determine ~ow things
are really going.
Since this kind of testing is an integral part of teaching/learning such subjects
as physics or brain surgery, it is largely invisible and nonproblemFtic. Why?
Because:
1.

Few students have delusions about learning it on their own. Certainly
not Qeginners. But, then, even Einstein didn't seem to suffer from
that delusion.

2.

The -feedback is clear and relatively hard to avoid. You know it or
you don't. The experiment works or it doesn't. The patient lives
or dies.

3. 'l'h.e phenomenon that is being studied is nature and the method is that
of learning how to pay careful attention to it.

*In

actual practice this is a rationale for the Do Your Own Thing mode at
Evergreen, a mode that is for the most part a non-teaching and a non-learning
mode. Unfortunately this mode is frequen~ly confused wiLh the Individual
Study mode with disastrous results.

I
I

I
I

!
!

I

- 2 -

In America (and Evergreen especially) the situation seems to be radically
different when we examine the behavior of arts and media students. It is too
easy for them to avoid feedback and delude themselves and others. All too
often their teacheri;;; se_em to aid and abet this foolishness. ·--~
Why does this happen?

Observe a Catch 22 game that threatens to ''t-u rn -Evergreen
into an Elementary School: After all, everybody is creative (Elementary School
chant). Also, feedback (sometimes bluntly called criticism, but never in
. Elementary School) can hurt fragile egos. Now, as we know (remember, We All
Studied Ps~chology) the more fragile the ego the more anxiety about loss or
damage to creativity (never mind that creative people are known to have
incredibly tough egos). Therefore, (we are admohished) don't say anything
negative if you have to criticize. Be Constructive. Just smile and be
encouraging and let them do !Jleir ~ thing! In other words, don't teach and
above all don't kick anybody in the pants.
\
How utterly unnatural.

How insidious.

How artsy.

How Evergreenish.

The idea of a master-apprenticeship relation.ship runs counter to the local
mores. At Evergreen it is nothing short of heresy!* Especially for the visual
arts and media population. Sorry about that; I know that it works and I will
continue to promote it as a necessary (though not exclusivE.ly or predominantly
so) learning mode for this college. If nothing else, it would be a welcome
counter-balance to the Do Your Own Thing mode. The Master-Apprentice mode is a
perfect compliment to the Individual Study mode and it would be interesting to
see what would happen if students knowingly moved from one to the other.
·A master is someone who has done something for a long time and done it well.
Wnen I think of the master-apprentice relationship I have something in mind that
is very close to the European guild system or the Japanese practice of Zen (I
invite my readers to try to set aside any prejudices they may have for or against
tradition or mysticism). The "Jaster's know-how is not outside of himself, nor
is it exclusively inside of himself. It is not accessible in convenient how to
do it informational packages. It cannot be processed and standardized as a
self-paced learning unit or sold to Good Housekeeping as a do it yourself recipe.
The know-how is centered inside of the master. It is part of his nervous system,
a part of his mentality, a part of his sensibility; in large measure it is what
he knows intuitively, tacitly. What he knows is that there can be no distinction
between what is inside and what is outside; that we cannot learn to ride
bicycles if we dwell on one to the exclusion of the other. Thus, the master
smiles (and sometimes kicks) when the apprentice asks simplistic questions or
seeks simplistic answers.
It is for this reason that there is an inevitable gulf that separates the master
from the apprentice, and it is for this reason that the master can best teach by
'demonstrating--by being a model. Much of what he knows cannot be taught directly.
The master can do what the apprentice cannot yet do. He knows what\he knows and
he knows what h~ does not know because he has covered the terrain. He knows
how the whole and the parts fit together.

*Except, perhaps, in the cas~ of visiting hit and run Gurus.

!

j
I
r--1
~ i

I

I

I
l

--l

~

i

i

I!
i

- 3

L

Patience. Humility. Discipline. How alien to Evergreen and Dr. Spock's
America! The apprentice has to be patient so that someday he might become a
master. Not master over others but master over himself. This can only happen
if the apprentice submits himself to certain necessary disciplines. He must
learn that being a master has nothing whatsoever to do with ego or status--that
mastery is a matter of nature taking its course--of being in tune with nature
in the sense that we are in tune with it when we learn to ride a bicycle.
This process of knowing and doing is the essence of what we glibly label
"Learning h~ to Learn." It is far easier said than done. It requires time,
patience, example. Above all it involves un-learning a lot of everyone-can-doit-for-themselves cultural gap.
For a number of years I have seen myself as a non-conformist who simply won't
bend _w ith some of Evergreen's local mores . I am more than ever convinced that
some of these mores must be resisted and, if possible, altered. In the meantime
I take comfort in knowing what's what with myself, my students and this Spockian
ddcrocosm of America.
Again, I see the Master-Apprentice mode to be a perfect compliment to the
Individual Study mode and a needed counter-balance to the Do Your Own Thing mode.
! therefore propose that it be formally adopted at Evergreen and so advertised.
Further, I propose that members of this faculty be invited to designate areas in
which they regard themselves to be teaching masters, so that students may
negotiate apprenticeships with them.

t

SID. WHITE
June 1, 1974

ADDENDUM

r

have benefited from a number of discussions which were stimulated by this
position paper and it seems evident that the following points of clarification
are needed:

1.

I am not merely proposing that I be allowed to do my thing at TESC (i.e.,
do a master-apprentice trip.) In actual practice, I employ a variety of
teaching/learning modes and I do not advocate any one as the mode for me
or the college. What I am proposing is that:

A.

There be college wide acknowledgement and endorsement of the masterapprentice mode.

B.

Specific means be adopted to assure its more visible and wide-spread
use.

,_

- 4 2.

I see the master-apprentice mode as being most appropriate in individual
and group contract situations. A strong case can be made for its role in
coordinated studies (Socrates was a master-teacher of the seminar mode,
moral curriculum and all), but that might be pushing things a bit ,at this
time.
'

3.

I do not feel that the terms "individual contract" and "group contract"
define what I regard to be teaching/learning modes; they merely designate
TESC credit bearing arrangements. I think it is time for us to give more
precise definition to our rhetoric and I feel that my position paper is a
step in~this direction. Such terms as "co-learner" and "facilitator" have
gotten us into a lot of trouble--especially in obscuring other- important
teaching and learning functions. The term "master-apprentice" may help
us and our students to refocus attention on some of these functions.

4.

The master-apprentice mode has potential in all disciplines. I see it
functioning best in situations where the master carries out a "real"
project with students working as assistants, observers and facilitators.
Tpe master could conduct a research project, work on a problem solving
activity or engage in the act of creation much as Gully Jimison did in
Joyce Carey's The Horses Mouth. This kind of activity would greatly
strengthen the impact of the college on community and regional affairs
and would do much to resolve the research vs. teaching dichotomy.

5.

The master-apprentice mode does not presume the existence of a faculty
or student elite on this campus. The real issue is that of appropriateness and readiness, and it would therefore be necessary for faculty and
students to exercise considerable discrimination in electing to pursue
. this mode.

6.

I believe that the machinery already exists for acknowledging and facilitatittg the master-apprentice mode at Evergreen. All that would be needed are:

A.

A faculty survey to identify proposals for master-apprenticeship
projects.

B.

Along with a list of proposed projects, a catalog statement could be
drafted to explain the function of this mode.

SID WHITE
June 20, 1974

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
MUSIC AT EVERGREEN - William Winden
Whatever else music at Evergreen becomes -- and it is already many wonderfully
diverse things -- it should always offer something which is unobtainable at
traditional colleges and universities. This is said with the difficult realization that a great deal of the most imaginative and vital music-making currently
' taking place in this country is happening at our institutions of higher learning.
It is not difficult to clarify the responsibilities from which Evergreen musiciaas
have been released. We don't have to build a music department. We don't have to
convince ever-increasing numbers of moderately talented students that they should
train themselves systematically for music careers, knowing ourselves how few
professional outlets there actually are. We don't have to play that kind of
student numbers game in order to survive professionally ourselves. Playing that
kind of game is a criminal activity, I think, and I'm very grateful to have escaped
from the machinery which is oiled by the impossible dream.
If professionalism is not our focus, then, what should we be up to? What is music
for at a college like Evergreen? Certainly the college can serve the art by
stimulating the sort of enthusiasm for music of all kinds that will leave students
hopelessly addicted to concert-going and amateur playing: ('d.m,/ a • t~r! n. 1. a
person who engages in an activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit
( <F, alter. of L amator, lover, s. of amare, to love.) Music needs audiences
to complete its cycle: composer/performer/audience.
Not long ago, people involved with professional and amateur music tended to segregate into clumps consisting of composers on one hand, performers on another (often
opposing forces) and audiences whose involvement was passive -- and frequently
emotionally cool. The current college-age generation, and its immediate predecessors, has fitted the splinters of this musical trichotomy together. Music is
becoming whole and healthy again in the sense that it was when a Renaissance
businessman composed a tune, then called together a group of friends to try it
out at home in the evening. This is an example of the sort of "music making as
life enrichment" which our culture was losing but which young people today have
rediscovered. And it provides a basis for the direction of music at Evergreen.
The students with whom I have worked at Evergreen have expanded my definition of
music, and of music as an important part of life. Most of them listen to all
kinds of music: rock, classical, jazz, country, bluegrass, and the varieties of
non-Western music. Almost everyone plays the guitar, of course; but singers play
instruments and instrumentalists sing, flautists fiddle and drummers are fascinated by synthesizers. These players and singers also compose; adolescent
stringency sometimes leads them to declare that a person is only giving an honest
performance when she/he is performing his/her own music. The compositions reflect
the eclecticism of their listening. They borrow from rock, Bach, the classical
avant-garde and oriental scales. Integration is not always achieved, but that
leaves room for facilitating Evergreen educators.
Students are also fascinated by the effects that electronics may have upon music.
They compose with the Buchla and ARP synthesizers. They play Bach on the electric
I.....

Music at Evergreen
Continued
Page 2
guitar. They compose pieces by layering one track of sound upon the other in
the recording studio, and when the studio is not available -- as it frequently
is not -- they improvise combinations of equipment which will somehow do the
job. They explore the changes of sound created by tampering electronically with
traditional instruments. They ask why it is necessary to project the singing
voice by controlling the diaphragm when a microphone can amplify any voice to
more decibels than the ear can tolerate -- and the aural area known as the threshold of pain sucks many of them repeatedly into its orbit like a siren lure.
Evergreen also possesses a quotient of students who grew up in such affluent
surroundings as McLean, Virginia, and attended prep schools which were designed
to funnel them directly into Yale or Harvard. Several of these are primarily
interested in country music. One has taken a quarter off to build a log cabin
and another plans a future in which farming will be his means of earning a living
while bluegrass music will provide for his intellectual and emotional sustenance.
There are also a surprising number of students who follow the more traditional
path to musical nirvana by focusing on one instrument and one musical style.
The faculty is thrice familiar with that route and is easily able to give aid
and comfort.
If the diversity of this activity suggests diverse curriculum planning it is not
by accident. I have written about what the students are interested in doing
because their interests, which have substance, provide the soundest suggestions
for what we should be doing. If Evergreen can offer something which music departments can not, that something must capitalize upon our flexibility and our
ability to cope with diversity.
So far in this paper I've proceeded into a kind of fuzzy maze in which everyone
is acting out his/her hearts' desire, however outrageous that may be: in short
the typical outsider's view of Evergreen. In the remainder of the paper I'd
like to serve as a guide through the maze, suggesting some specific directions
and perhaps showing that the maze can be designed in such a way that it is no
longer a maze.
By not stressing ~rofessionalism in music and by describing the kind of scattered
activity which ma~es quality difficult I have not meant to suggest that quality
should not be an important factor in Evergreen's musical activity. Quite the
contrary. First of all, our students are at the age where many of them have not
yet learned what is impossible, or at least very difficult, and they demand quality.
Secondly, music is one of those delightful but frustrating activities in which
the greater .the expertise one brings to the situation, the more fun one has.
Several others come to mind.
And so we want our music to be well done, whether it's bluegrass, chamber music,
jazz, or African drumming. Sloppy music doesn't make anyone happy.
Many factors create goodLmusic, in varying proportions depending upon the kind of
music being played. Discipline and skill development are important in a great
many musical styles. The kind of spontaneity which springs from a liberated
spirit is equally important if the music is to communicate the kind of joy it is
capable of communicating. The richest music making is done by people who understand life and are committed to it. Musicians need to know more than music.

Music at Evergreen
Continued
Page 3
Non-musicians will be more whole as they come to know music.
These are the factors which must be considered in planning ways to integrate music
• with Evergreen's total learning fabric.
We should try to reach the emotions of pe9ple who hate music with music of some
kind.
We should make it possible for amateurs to attain at least the kind of foundation
that will keep them in£erested and growing throughout their lives.
We should ~ven be able to give the very few students who have real professional
potential the education they will need to go to graduate school or continue in
professional music. But these few must be interested in a broad education. They
should not be satisfied with becoming musical idiot savants.
Music divides easily -- too easily, too often, and too sharply -- into three areas.
There is music theory: learning to read and write music. There is applied music:
learning to play instruments, as a soloist or in group ensembles. There is music
history: studying music which has already been written and relating it to the
world in which it was created politically, socially, historically, and artistically.
I will use these divisions in describing how music might function at Evergreen,
· but always with the understanding that whenever possible activities should be dealing with all three areas at once. A player in an ensemble should simultaneously
be learning how to improve upon the instrument, how to read music more easily and
something about the background of the piece being played,
Music is a language, the reading of which must be learned. It is possible, of
course, to play music by ear and many students begin in this way. Curiosity and
impatience with limitations soon drive musicians to the desire for reading ability,
however.
It is not easy to learn to read and write music. It requires regular, concentrated
effort, spread over a long period of time. Music is similar to spoken language in
this way. As with spoken languages, it is most easily learned when one is surrounded
by people who speak the language. Musicians need musicians; this is one of the
advantages of performance ensembles.
Evergreen must find a way to provide continuous, progressive work in music theory
for the many students who want it. For a large number this needs to be spread
over several years, progressing from music fundamentals to work in counterpoint
and orchestration.
Much of the basic work might be done with such aids as the Learning Services Center.
Ear training can certainly be progrannned, as well as elementary harmony. More advanced music writing requires the assistance of a teacher, and someone should be
available to work in this area each year if students are not to be trapped partway
down the line. This work is probably best done in one of the contracted modes, but
could also be part of an advanced coordinated studies program such as Interplay or
America's Music -- but what becomes then of the student who is ready for advanced
music writing but is not interested _in · oth~r elements of the particular coordinated
studies program? We need a faculty member with advanced music background in the
contract pool each year.

Music at Evergreen
. Continued
Page 4
For private lessons on an instrument, a student will almost certainly have to go
off campus, unless the talent is so spectacular that a faculty member is inspired
to take on the studen,t privately in addition to a regular teaching assignment.
This may be a financial problem, but is not otherwise problematica~ ·many students
in large music departments choose to study privately off campus.
Evergreen faculty can work with groups of students in performance areas. This can
be done as part of a group contract, as a module or even as a workshop in a coordinated studies program. Group study is a very valuable supplement to private lessons.
For students who are unable to afford private lessons there are advanced students
at Evergreen who are willing to teach without pay or ' for very little money. They
are not available in the case of every instrument and they are exploited, but they
seem to enjoy the exploitation and mumble things about "the so-called sense of
community at Evergreen."
Evergreen ensembles provide some of the most valuable musical experience at the
college. In them, students learn to play and read music. They learn repertoire.
They develop a very real sense of community. They travel into the communities
outside of Evergreen eolympia, Lacey, Tacoma, Spokane, Captain Coyote's) and in
some cases invite people from those communities to perform with them. They provide
Evergreen with visibility in the outside world. They are also an unsolved Evergreen
problem.
They are essential to the students' growth and the students want them very much.
It would be the best of all possible worlds if students knew that participating
in certain programs would not make musical ensemble participation impossible. Most
people would agree, I think, that such participation could be a valid part of a
student's education as a whole person. Most of the ensembles meet late in the
afternoon or in the evening to facilitate campus-wide participation.
Ensembles are a problem for the faculty members who sponsor them. They fit well
into the contracted modes, but unless they are a part of the coordinated studies
program in which the faculty member finds himself, they must be done in addition
. to work in the coordinated studies program. Is it possible to lighten the faculty
members' involvement in a particular coordinated studies program to compensate fer
this extra load? That probably depends upon the nature of the program. Anyone who
believes that directing an ensemble is purely recreational, incidentally, should
give it a try. Even for a week.
Performance ensembles made up of small groups of students are particularly well
suited to Evergreen's flexibility. So far they have largely been formed and
directed by students and have taken such diverse forms as rock bands,. Elizabethan
consorts, jazz ensembles, and chamber music ensembles.
What is traditionally called music history is the area of music which most easily
fits into the interdisciplinary patterns of Evergreen's coordinated studies programs.
Music's relation to historical time slices, the way in which it reflects the
societies in which it exists, the way in which it has been used politically and
continues to be used to sway opinion, and its interactions with other arts are all
considerations by means of which music may be laced into programs which are interdivisional as well as divisional. The acoustics of sound also relate music to
science programs.

.J

Music at Evergreen
Continued
Page 5
How would music function in the programs of students who spend four years at Evergreen? Let's create a few very general examples.
For the student who wants to Get His Head Together: He's only really comfortable
when he's alone, pecking out tonic and dominant chords on his guitar. He expresses
his frustrations through the songs he composes; this serves as a kind of catharsis .
If he wants to write them down (he will, eventually) he learns to read music, either
in a module or through the Learning Services Center. He meets other people by join•ing or forming an ensemble. He Learns about Learning and passes through the
P.O.R.T.A.L.S. into a wider understanding of himself and his world. Music gives
him an emotional anchor which helps alleviate the pains of the rites of passage.
If he is lucky, no one will encourage him to try to earn his living by selling his
songs or performing professionally.
For the student who has her head together, is ecology-minded, and plays the bassoon:
In her first year she joins a coordinated studies program which includes a scientist,
a sociologist, and an artist. It is called The Northwest Form Divine. Because the
artist is a welder of three-dimensional metal works, using recycled materials, music
is not mentioned. However, she plays in the chamber orchestra, improves her sight
reading, strengthens her lip, and learns a good deal of Baroque repertoire. She
continues this activity throughout her stay at Evergreen. In her third year she
joins a group contract in Environmental Pollution. There she discovers sound pollution and enrolls for a module in Musical Acoustics. High frequencies, she learns,
can destroy life. Low frequencies subtly encourage trauma. Electric guitars and
electronic synthesizers waste energy and make people the slaves of their gadgets.
In her last year she goes on an internship, the purpose of which is to restore the
· balance of nature in Shelton. One of her missions is to convert the town's rock
musicians to the acoustic guitar.
For the visual artist: In her first year she joins a coordinated studies program
which includes a scientist, a sociologist, and an artist. She is delighted that
the artist is,,not a musician, because she is into batik. Unfortunately the artist
is a welder of three-dimensional metal works using recycled materials so she takes
a leave during the spring quarter. In the second year she joins a divisional program which includes an artist, a musician, a dancer, and a theater arts person as
faculty. Unfortunately the artist is a photographer, but she discovers that her
batik works can be used in creating costumes for a theater piece which includes all
of the arts and begins to become aware of some inter-relations between the arts .
Before the year is completed she has become familiar with some music and learned
that
design is an ingredient of musical composition j as well as visual art. In her
'
last year she applies what she has learned about design from batik and musical
composition to the welding of three-dimensional metal works using recycled materi als.
She also takes a module in Musical Improvisation East and West.
For Leonard Bernstein: In his first year, Lenny joins a coordinated studies program
which includes a scientist, a sociologist and an artist. He is delighted that the
artist is not a musician because he already knows a great deal about music -- more,
indeed, than most of the faculty at Evergreen. However, he knows very little about
welding, crustaceans native to Puget Sound, and the Nisqually Indians, not to mention the ways in which these things are inter-related. He goes through a year of

Music at Evergreen
Continued
Page 6
intensive learning in areas which are new to him. Once a week he travels to
Seattle for private piano lessons, always staying overnight to catch a performance by the Seattle Opera, the Seattle Symphony, the Grateful Dearl, the Repertory
Theater or the Bolshoi Ballet. He visits the Learning Services Center to brush
up on his musicianship but discovers that what is offered there is too elementary
for him. Therefore he improves his musicianship by forming, directing, and performing with a student jazz ensemble. In his second year he joins a divisional
program which includes an artist, a musician, a dancer, and a theater arts person
• as faculty. They are all delighted with him, especially when he composes a piece
called On The Town, the production of which involves all of their students in a
community effort in which all of the arts are integrated. Because the program
includes no book seminar, Lenny continues to read on his own in those areas in
which he became especially interested during the preceding year. His trips to
Seattle continue and he learns something about composition and jazz improvisation
from the program's music faculty member.
Stimulated by his nocturnal reading, Lenny goes to New York on an internship in his
third year to do a field study of street life among New York's teenagers. While
there he also becomes interested in the Black Panthers and contemporary enactments
of the Catholic Mass. He continues his piano lessons in New York and plays with
and directs a pick up jazz group. That summer he joins an Evergreen film group
in Italy, for which he writes background mu~ic. He is exposed to the inner workings of Italian film companies; he gains weight.
An internship in Seattle during his last year puts him in daily contact with the
management of the Seattle Symphony. He rents a room in the house of his piano
teacher and takes daily lessons. The piano teacher will not let his jazz group
practice at her house, but they have regular sessions at the drummer's place.
The Evergreen faculty sponsor regularly scans the original compositions which
Lenny mails to him and sends them back with comments. Once he even drives to
Seattle to hear him play. The internship with the Seattle ~ymphony is going well
he conducts sectional rehearsals once in a while in addition to setting up the
mµsic stands and passing out scores. One particularly soggy day, Milton Katims,
conductor of the Seattle Symphony, leaves home without his galoshes and catches
~old. An important concert is scheduled for that evening and the management, in
a frenzy, searches , about for a young conductor who is able to take over at the
last minute ....

POSITION PAPER - Fred Young, June 10, 1974
Since the time of Pytha~oras, or certainly since Plato, mathematics has
been considered to be one of the ;Liberal arts. By "mathematics" the classical
Greeks referred only abstract reasoning about points, lines, and numbers.
Here, in its purest form, was logical reasoning; logical consequences were drawn
from hypotheses. The problems that were solved were abstract ones, and applica•
tions to business and technology were considered to be on a much lower level,
fit work for slaves. With the revival of learning in the Renaissance, this split
between pure and applied math and science disappeared. The artist, for example,
was always a craftsman, more or less equally adept at painting, sculpture, architecture, and design of fortifications and military hardware. Michelangelo was
primarily a sculptor, but in 1508 Julius II overruled his plea that painting was
not his trade and commanded him to paint the frescos of the Sistine Chapel, and
we know the result. In 1528 he was appointed governor of fortifications at
Florence and designed and directed the execution of a scheme of defense that
still survives. In his old age he solved enormously difficult engineering problems
in the design of the huge dome of St. Peter's. We are all familiar with the
engineering prowess of Leonardo da Vinci. Up until the beginning of the nineteenth
century a knowledge of mathematics and science was a part of every educated man,
and no distinction was made between pure and applied. It is only in this century
that a return to the ancient Greek schism has occurred, but the split. is now
doubledo Not only have pure math and science been separated from the applied,
but far worse, math and science have been too frequently separated from the liberal
arts. And something of the Greek snobbishness returned; the "pure" mathematician
or scientist was until very recently accorded a higher position in the social
scale. The technological successes of the space and military pro~rams have
elevated the applied scientist. For the first time the present· administration
has discriminated against free, pure science by restricting financial support
to goal-directed research.
This brings me to Evergreen, where a peculiar situation exists which, of
course, I deplore. The situation is th~t mathematics and science here are strictly
Nixonian. There is essentially no attention paid to the pure aspects of mathematics
or science. The only math offered for the student is that which can be used
immediately as a tool, that aspect which the Greeks relegated to slaves, and
even this is done inadequately, inefficiently, and, I think, indefensibJy.
All right, let us start with the following premises1
1)

2)
J)

The basic concepts of mathematics
liberal arts.
Mathematics and science, in their
think and on the way we relate to
A solid foundation in mathematics

and science are indispensable parts of the
purer aspects, shed light on the way we
the world around us.
is necessary for the applied sciences.

With these premises, and given the highly touted flexibility of Evergreen,
what should be done?

,....

1.....,

For one thing, we should have coordinated studies every year that bridge the
gap between mathematics and science and the rest of the humanities and liberal
arts'. This is not done by having either a "sanity seminar" attached to a science

-

L

•-

program or a "science workshop" or two added to a humanities program, It means
having programs in which the forms of Pope's poetry and the metaphors of the metaphysical poets are related to the science of the day. It means having programs
that examine seriously wh,y Galileo was considered such a threat to the established
Church that he was subjected to the inquisition, .It -means having programs that
look seriously at Godel 1 s findings about the consistency of logical systems,
How did the mathematics of Bolyai and Lobachevsky break down one of Kant's major
theses? How did Alan Turing solve the lo~ician•s problem concerning logical
solutions of classes of problems? What is the only logical axiom that has been
added to the framework given by Aristotle? What similarities, and what basic
differences, exist between computers and the human mind? Can a machine think?
These are questions and ideas that Evergreen is potentially able to handle better
than most colleges. Why don't we do it? Is it true that our coordinated studies
are beginning to fall into predictable patterns,• that we are paying far too much
attention to doing something better than we did it last time rather than seeking
to do new things?
The preceding discussion pertained to the first two of my premises. For the
third, I suggest that the absolute minimal commitment requires that four math
modules (courses) be given each term of every year. A possible math core would
consist of the following year-long sequences1
1)

2)
3)
4)

Precalculus, Finite Mathematics, and Statisticsr
Calculus of the First Three Dimensions;
Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and Number Theory or Numerical Calculus;
Advanced Engineering Mathematics (one year), or Algebraic Structures and
Introduction to Topology, to be offered in alternate years,

An offering of this sort is probably exceeded by every liberal arts college
in the United States, That it represents a considerable advance over what we
are now doing is shameful.
These suggested modules are not limited to mathematics alone, I am sure that
there are other areas with similar problems (music, art, foreign languages, etc.).
I am not proposing a return to the conventional course structure. I am still
convinced that coordinated studies, contracts, and cooperative education are of
the utmost importance, However, I suggest that these modes can actually be enhanced by our devoting approximately 1oi of our faculty FTE to modules given
regularly.
There is no way, so far as I can see, that this can be .done so long as
coordinated studies and contracts remain 1ooi programs, Our present 4-unit-perterm scheme, however, makes it relatively easy to establish 3-unit-per-term
programs. The simplest, most direct and honest way of accomplishing my proposed
goal is to permit a student to register separately for a program and a module.
The reduction of coordinated studies from 100~ to 75'1, programs must entail an
actual reduction in the program, Some of the faculty must be able. to give a
module while functioning on the faculty team of a coordinated study, just as many
faculty members now direct one or more contracts while on a coordinated study team,
To prevent a return to conventional structures, I suggest that no student ever be
permitted to register for more than one module at a time, This must be rigorous.l y
enfo~ced. One simple way to do this is to have all modules offered at the same

time, say 4100 to 5100 in the afternoon or from 8:00 to 9:00 in the morning,
and that other programs refrain from making program commitments during this time,
An alternative and, I think, clumsier procedure is
subcontract, with evaluation made the responsibility of
clearly puts an increas~ burden on the seminar leader,
is that the student's work in the module is not clearly

to treat a module like a
a seminar leader, This
but a greater objection
apparent in his transcript,

Finally, I suspect that a set of modules like those described rill attract
a reasonable number of townspeople,

POSITION PAPER - Ft. Worden, June 1974
Final Recommendations - Jeanne Hahn, Richard Cellarius
The foregoing evaluative essay contains numerous recommendations and suggestions
based on the experience of MODULAR SCIENCE and NATURE & SOCIETY. We offer here
what we feel to be the most important of those recommendations. Specifically,
we recommend that:
1.

Elementary reading and writing components be built into every basic
program.
We feel that this is of critical importance, but it must be done
in a manner which is compatible with and enhances a program's
theme. We do not recommend "bonehead English" as a substitute
for basic coordinated studies programs.

2.

In addition to reading and writing, every basic program make an effort
to insure that its students become well grounded in the rudiments of
critical analysis, the use of the library, and the various skills
necessary to produce a research paper.
We feel that all intermediate program and contract faculty should
be able to assume that students coming from basic programs have
acquired and are able to use these skills.

3.

An exchange of portfolios and a frank discussion of philosophies of
education be a beginning task for all newly constituted coordinated
studies teams.

4.

Coordinated studies teams make a determined effort to develop programs that
are both coordinated and interdisciplinary. This should include team
teaching across disciplinary fields whenever possible.

5.

Successful program ideas and/or models be repeated and, to lend continuity
and help avoid prior pitfalls, one faculty member from the earlier program
join its successor.

Source

Box 1A3.3, Accession 1971-07, Provosts Office: Academic Planning Conferences.

Item sets

The Evergreen State College Planning Conferences Records

Media

1971-07_000001.pdf