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Part of Larry Eickstaedt Oral History Interview

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Larry Eickstaedt
Interviewed by Sam Schrager
The Evergreen State College Oral History Project
Interview 2, August 25, 2016
FINAL
Schrager: Okay, so let’s start with what you were wanting to pick up on.
Eickstaedt: I just wanted to fill in a few things from the first interview. Going back to my early
educational experience, I wanted to mention my second-grade teacher, Miss Gleason. She is still my
favorite teacher, and I’m still in touch with her. She’s in her 90s. She’s in a rest home back in Maryland,
but I call her every once and a while and keep in touch. In second grade, she was really interested in
natural history. We started a bird club. We had a set of shelves in the back of the room. We were
bringing in nests and eggshells and feathers and stuff. Then we’d go out looking for birds and what not.
Then she got leaflets from the Audubon Society and from the Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago, and we kept those in a little three-ring binder.
But one event really captures, I think, not only my educational experience but my orientation.
We were in an old school that had the old sash windows that you could raise. It was in the winter time,
and in the afternoon it started to snow, big flakes coming down. And Miss Gleason essentially said,
“Well, we’re going to stop what we’re doing, we’re going to do something else.” She had some fruit jar
lids, and she set those out on the sill of the window and then closed the window. And then after they
cooled down enough, the snowflakes started to land in the jar lids. I think she borrowed a microscope
from the high school class, had it there in the classroom. Then we would bring the snowflakes in--we
also put slides out there to get them cold—and then under the microscope we’d look at these
snowflakes, and it just blew my mind, I couldn’t get enough of it. But while I was watching these
snowflakes, all of a sudden they started to disappear, one after another, just poof, nothing there. I called
Miss Gleason over and I said, “What’s happening here? The snowflakes are disappearing, but there’s no
water left behind.”
She said, “Well, you have observed sublimation.”
“What’s that?”
She says, “Well, that’s when a solid becomes a vapor without the liquid phase in-between.”
And it’s a common thing that can happen, you know, depending on the atmospheric conditions
and stuff. Sublimation. And many years later I thought about that, holy mackerel, here I am a second
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grader learning this big word and understanding what it means because I saw it with my own eyes. So,
her interest in science and natural history, that really had a strong influence on me.
Then later on, I was thinking back about where my interest in seminars came from. Well, when I
was a freshman in college I took an introductory sociology class. It was a large class; I would guess there
were maybe 40 of us. But the professor, Dr. Sampson, he ran it as a seminar. He never lectured. He
would come in and he’d ask a question or talk about something, then, “What do you think?” Then pretty
soon the class is involved in this big discussion, you know. I had a great time in that class, I just loved it.
Then the next semester he was teaching an advanced class in criminology. Well, I probably didn’t have
any reason to try to take that class except that I really liked him, and sociology was interesting. So I went
to him more than once in his office. At first he said, “Well, you have to have these prerequisites first.
This is an advanced class and it’s mostly seniors.” But I just persisted and finally he said, “Okay, I’ll let
you in, but it probably won’t work out.” And he ran that class the same way, seminar, smaller, a lot of
pre-theological students in there for some reason. But anyway, I handled things reasonably well.
Then another class I had as an undergraduate was in Christian Ethics. And it was taught by a
former minister, a Presbyterian minister who had been a missionary in Africa. And we had a textbook to
read, but then when we met it was always a seminar format. Once again he didn’t lecture. And I felt that
I really got a good grasp of ethics. Even though it was called Christian Ethics, why the principles can
apply universally. Once again, it was a lot of pre-seminary, pre-theological students in there. But in any
case, had a great time.
Then, two books that were critical. One was the Sand County Almanac. That still is probably my
number one book as an excellent introduction to ecological ethics. And then, 1962, Silent Spring was
published. Silent Spring, one of the big messages there is that science and technology, not only they do
not have all the answers, but they often don’t consider the ramifications of what they’re doing. So, Sand
County Almanac and Silent Spring, they kind of became my bibles I guess you would say.
I know last time we talked about the teaching of science at Evergreen. While I recognize the
necessity to have a strong science curriculum for students that are interested, for me it should be
science with a heart. That there should be ethics involved in the teaching of science. That really caused
me to move more and more towards natural history, and books like Sand County Almanac.
Now, I understand that it’s possible for freshmen students at Evergreen to start with a program
like Matter in Motion, which is strictly science. There’s no emphasis on writing, no emphasis on politics,
social problems, on and on, it’s just strictly science. Given the fact that there aren’t any requirements, all

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you can do is depend upon good advising. But anyway, that’s what we’re left with, and I worry in the
long term about students who don’t get a more well-rounded liberal arts education.
Schrager: Natural history seems to have been a real emphasis in environmental studies at Evergreen
from the beginning. That seems one of the most distinctive areas at the college, offering a broader way
of thinking about science. Did faculty identify themselves as being interested in natural history? Are
there a group of faculty? Can you talk about how that developed at Evergreen?
Eickstaedt: I think one of the key people would be Steve Herman. He taught ornithology and
mammalogy. The one thing that he brought was the use of the field journal, a systematic way to keep a
field journal. And so quite a few other faculty have adopted the field journal as part of what they’re
doing, whether it’s marine biology or whatever it is. Well, I know when I taught in ecological agriculture
program with Mike Beug, I modified the field journal so it could be used in agriculture, but much the
same way: that there would be a section that would be a day-by-day account. And then, instead of
species accounts, as is true in a natural history journal, I had the students keep accounts of specific
plants, so that they would, over time, build up a record of carrots and broccoli, how they grow, how they
germinate, what kind of pests they had, that sort of thing. But, Steve and then Al Wiedeman, they
taught together frequently, did the Evergreen Environment program. A few of the science faculty
referred to it as the “Bugs and Bunny” program. As if it’s not quite legitimate science?
For me, one slant on the natural history approach: typically, when a student takes a beginning
biology class in college, they start with chemistry. And then you go from chemistry and you move up a
line—chemistry, molecules, cells, tissues, organisms, and then, way at the end, you start talking about
ecology and natural history. Well, I’ve always thought that that’s really backwards, that the first
encounter people have with nature is not with chemistry. They have an interaction with plants and
animals, just like your observation of the otters the other day. Well, why not start with that and then
from there work backwards asking questions? And then eventually you’ll get down to the level of
chemistry. And for a student, whatever they’re going into in the liberal arts, I think it’s much more useful
to have a background in natural history rather than a little biology, a little chemistry, a little physics.
Because if they’re working in counseling or teaching or business, whatever it is, they can carry that with
them throughout their life, that interest in natural history. And then combining that with all of the
environmental problems that we face, that background in natural history and ecology I think really gives
you a better understanding to understand politics and legislation and so forth as it relates to the
environment. So, that’s kind of in a nutshell, I think.

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One other little thing that I wanted to put in here: I talked about the faculty seminar last time,
and then faculty leading seminars with students. One of the issues that comes up is: How can a faculty
member, let’s say, who’s trained as a chemist lead a seminar that has to do with history? Aren’t the
students getting short shrift? But I’ve always looked at the seminar, the role of the faculty leader, as
being a model of an active learner. That even though you’ve got all this training in field X, you can still go
into a new field, a new book, and by asking questions and probing and so forth demonstrate to the
students that, well, you can still be a lifelong learner. You don’t have to stay in one box, you can
continue to ask questions, and be a role model. That was just one thing that I wanted to mention with
respect to the seminars.
Schrager: Along those lines, we talked a little about learning by teaching with other faculty. I was
wondering if you’d want to talk some about faculty like Herman, like Pete Sinclair, that you learned from
by teaching with them, and that you may have influenced as well. What sorts of broadening did you get
in your own thinking about what matters, beyond your own training, by teaching with faculty? Who
were they and what did you learn together? To me it seems really crucial to what Evergreen offered that
other schools didn’t.
Eickstaedt: Well, I could go back to the first year. And although I didn’t teach with him, I learned a lot
from Charlie McCann. I may have mentioned that, during the first couple of years, the cafeteria was on
the fourth floor of the library, and at noon time it was a gathering place. Charlie was always there, and
he would always join a table that had usually some students with faculty having lunch. He didn’t always
say a great deal in the discussions that were going on, but he always asked excellent probing questions.
Then the fact that after his presidency ended, when he came back to Evergreen, he went back to the
faculty and taught excellent programs in the Great Books and literature. I regret that I never had a
chance to teach with him. I wish I had. But he was a real role model, and a great role model in terms of
administration. I could probably sum that up with one of Charlie’s statements about how he wanted to
do business. He said, “No chicken shit.” He didn’t want to have extraneous stuff going on, he wanted to
get down to business, get the job done, no chicken shit.
In terms of faculty, probably the most important one in the first year was Phil Harding. He and I
taught together in the Environmental Design program. I learned a great deal from him about design,
architecture, but probably most of all the creative process. He was a very creative guy. He really liked
being challenged with a perplexing problem related to design or building, or whatever, and then
thinking through. I remember him saying one time that, when you’re trying to solve a complex problem,
it’s kind of like a bowl of spaghetti, and what you want to do is search for a free end, and then you start
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to unwind, kind of work through it, but try to find a free end first. In other words, find something you
can latch onto that you understand, and then work back from there. In my observations of him, that was
usually the way he approached teaching the students. He didn’t like to lecture at all. But asking a few
questions, and then letting the students stew and swim, and help them along, and then hopefully they’d
come up with a solution. He was a great model for me.
Schrager: You talked about this Environmental Design program some last time. I’m thinking how this is
the first time that you’re teaching at Evergreen. Is this the first time you were team teaching as well and
putting together anything like a full-time program of inquiry?
Eickstaedt: I had the experience of teaching in New York with Merv Cadwallader and the other folks in
that program. But that was my first experience of starting from scratch. With Sid White, my officemate,
with his help, talking things through, and then finally getting a focus that it all revolved around issues of
the environment and design and ecological design. And then being involved in helping to hire the first
faculty, and Phil Harding was one of the people that was hired specifically to teach with me. And then
that first year it was really a challenging experience to try to carry this off with a very diverse group of
students. We as a faculty, we all came from different disciplines and so forth. But it was a great
experience and really reinforced the notion that you can really tackle these things in an interdisciplinary
way and have a good deal of success.
Schrager: What do you remember of the students from this pot they were thrown into? Was there a
sense that everyone was in this together and exploring together…you’re doing this for the first time.
Eickstaedt: I may have mentioned that when the students signed up for programs, Environmental
Design had a relatively small number of students that selected that for their first choice. So we had to fill
it in with second, third and fourth choice students. So not everybody was entirely happy that they were
there at the beginning. That was a big issue right from the start: How do we fold these folks in? But early
on we started talking about potential things that we could look at in the way of projects. And really got
the students involved in thinking about that. Then from that we developed various projects that I talked
about. And all of them were quite successful. And the students really carried the load, once they were
given the opportunity and I guess made to feel like, “You can do it. You can do it.” And they did, they
came through big time.
Let’s see, other faculty: of course Merv Cadwallader was a big influence on me because of his
ideas and philosophy about interdisciplinary teaching. Once again, the only chance I had to teach with
him was in New York, and when he came to Evergreen he was a dean, so he wasn’t teaching then. But I
stayed in close contact with him in those early years. He was very much aware of what was going on in
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the various programs, what problems were coming up and what successes and so forth. He was a big
influence.
Then of course Bob Sluss: he and I became fast friends in New York, primarily because we were
both biologists. We both came from somewhat a similar background, a poor background, we both had
to work our way through school, college, and so forth. He was interested in bugs and I was more
interested in marine and freshwater critters. Then he was committed to interdisciplinary teaching, and
during his career of Evergreen the vast majority of his teaching was in programs. The only time I
remember him teaching by himself: he was going to do a group contract in, I think it was just called
Natural History. He was not the best administrator. So students would come to get his signature to sign
in, and he never kept track of how many people he was signing up. Well, he ended up with 40-some
students! And I said, “I’ll help you out.” So I joined forces with him, and I ended up teaching essentially
half-time with him and whatever I was doing full-time--went on field trips and everything. We just had a
wonderful time teaching together.
Another thing I learned from Sluss--I learned a lot about ecology and bugs and so forth—but,
when it came to critiquing students’ papers, Sluss was not a writer. I can remember at times when he
would be giving a lecture, and he would spell the same word, two or three times differently each time
on the chalkboard. He just couldn’t spell. He didn’t know grammar. But what he did, when the students
wrote a response to a book and handed it to him, he didn’t try to critique their writing, he wrote a
response to them. He wrote his own mini-essay. Which was I think a great idea, rather than fumbling
around and trying to look for prepositions or correct punctuation. By writing a response to the students,
I’m sure they said, “Wow, somebody really paid attention to what I was saying! Now I’ve got something
more to think about!”
I did teach with him three or four times. Probably the best one was when he and Pete Sinclair
and I did a program called “Vancouver and Puget.” As part of that program we built four longboats, the
type of boat that would have been aboard Vancouver’s ship when he came. Well, the ship was anchored
in upper Puget Sound, and then the crews would go down in these longboats to map southern Puget
Sound. And that’s where the name Puget Sound came from. One of the crewmembers on his ship, I
think his name was Peter Puget. We held our faculty seminars onboard Bob’s boat. We would go out
into Budd Inlet and watch birds and discuss the book. That’s when Dan Evans was president, and he
came with us one time, out on the boat. We spent some time talking about the book, but a lot of it was
he wanted to get more acquainted with us and find out more about this program, Vancouver to Puget.

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And he said at one point, “Boy, if this had been available when I was a college student, boy, it would
have been my first choice.” (laughing) So Sluss was a great influence.
Then I’d say: Pete Sinclair and Rudy Martin--that really broadened my knowledge and interest in
literature. They each had their own approach to how they taught literature, but I learned a lot from both
of them. Of course Rudy was part of the planning faculty, and so we became friends early on. And in
addition to literature, the whole issue of race relations: we spent a lot of time talking about that, and
then how to do it at Evergreen. And then of course when you and I and Pete taught together: so then
from you I developed a really new interest in folklore and cultural history and so forth. And then with
Pete we continued on with the literature. I remember when we were trying in our faculty seminar to
discuss Ulysses. I was hoping that Pete would offer some explanation, that he would give a little lecture
or something, because, I dunno, I was kind of bamboozled by it. But I remember in that faculty seminar,
I remember him sitting up on his chair, seated on the back of the chair, kind of perched, and basically, he
just let us struggle, searching for whatever answers we could come up with. And I know when he ran
student seminars, his approach was to sit off to the side and let the students run the seminar, and then I
guess, once in a while he would interject and try to steer them back or something. I still remember that
one, struggling with Ulysses. Oh man.
Two more people that had an influence on me, pretty strong influence, were Marilyn Frasca and
Susan Aurand, in terms of art. I only taught with Marilyn once, and that was when we did a summer
institute. It was called “Drawing from the Landscape,” and it was focused on this region, and David
Whitener joined us, so the three of us worked together. It was kind of a mixture of natural history,
drawing, Native American history. It was a weeklong institute. We spent two nights, three days out on
Squaxin Island. David was able to arrange that, because normally you can’t go, you certainly can’t camp
on Squaxin, and you’re not supposed to even set foot on the island because it belongs to the Squaxin
Tribe. So, when we went out there, we spent our whole day drawing, just whatever we wanted to draw
from the landscape. And when we came back to campus, Marilyn had arranged that we would have the
space in the gallery in the library, and so we had a show of our work. It was a mixture of sketches,
finished drawings and writing. We filled up the place, and that was so much fun. I remember she got Bill
Ramsey, a printmaker, to come over and help us lay things out. I remember he stretched a sightline, I
can’t remember exactly how, but it’s about the height that your eye would meet the middle of the
drawing or photograph or painting. We stretched that out and then divided, “Okay you’ll have this much
space, you’ll have...” It was a great show. Lots of people came to it. We didn’t have an opening or
anything like that, with champagne, but anyway...
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The other thing was, a couple different times I did the Progoff Journal workshop with Marilyn.
Although I haven’t kept up with keeping a journal that way, that approach still sticks with me kind of in
terms of sorting things out and keeping track of things the way you do in the Progoff Journal.
Schrager: Can you say a bit about that?
Eickstaedt: The journal technique was developed by a psychologist by the name of Ira Progoff, back on
the East Coast. I believe he was working as a psychiatrist in a hospital. He started having patients keep a
journal. And then as time went on, he gradually developed this journal technique so that there were
different sections to the journal, quite a large number. There was one that was called “The Daily Log,”
which would just be the events of the day. Everything was dated, so when you made an entry you had
the date there. Let’s say you’re writing along something that happened that day, and you’re reminded of
your father. Well then there’s a section devoted just to I think it was “Relatives.” Then you’d go to that
section, date it, and then you’d write what you want to about your father. Well, maybe in the process of
writing that you’d think, “Ah, this kind of relates to my work.” Well, then there’s a section about Work.
By doing that you can track through the journal how your thought process went. Then there was
another section called “Dialogue.” So you could actually set up to have a dialogue with your father, with
your sister, with a student, or a dialogue with work, even. It’s a very rich way to keep a journal. If a
person were really religious about it, whew, you could spend a lot of time. Anyway, Progoff started
doing these writing gatherings in one place in this hospital, one wing, and then over time more and
more other patients from other parts of the hospital would come. They heard about it, and they’d came
to join in. They’d come in their wheelchairs and walkers, however they could get there. He found that it
was a very effective tool for counseling, for working out problems and so forth.
And then Marilyn trained with him to become a certified teacher. So she taught, she did this
more than once at the college. It was open to whoever wanted to sign up. But then she used it as part of
her teaching when she was teaching art. She found that when students got stuck at some point with
their artwork by writing in their journal, they were often able to figure out what the problem was and
how to overcome it.
And then Susan: I never taught with Susan, I always admired her work. She was one of the folks
that came on the Drawing from the Landscape institute that we did. And she was very prolific. When we
came back from Squaxin Island, she must have had a dozen completed new pieces of work, all in pastel.
When I was recovering from when I had surgery, one day outside our door, when we lived on Madrona
Beach, was a package, and here was one of those pieces that she gave me. It’s a beautiful piece. I have it
downstairs.
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One person that I don’t want to forget, that would be Larry Stenberg. He wasn’t a member of
the faculty, but he was here right at the beginning. He was what would be called the Dean of Students, I
think, other places. He was in charge of counseling, admissions, financial aid. He did a great deal in the
way of community building when we first got together. He organized various workshops and so forth.
Sometimes he ran them, other times he had other people come in. He was really a genius when it came
to organizing things. And he was the one who came up with the idea for Super Saturday as a celebration
for the larger community to come out to Evergreen and have some fun. Then as you remember it grew
to be the biggest one-day event in the state of Washington. I don’t know, like 25,000 people would
descend on the campus. And it was always held graduation weekend, so that families could come and
everything.
Then I got to work with him when I worked as the academic advisor, so he was my boss then. I
learned quite a bit about how to be a good administrator from him. Every week he had a visit with the
various areas that he was in charge of. He would come see me, and we’d talk about how things are
going, any problems coming up, any idea for workshops, stuff like that. And then when it came to work
on the budget, each of us were in charge of coming up with requests for the next biennium. Then we’d
have a meeting, we’d all get together, and everybody would present what they thought they needed,
and then everybody would vote. Whoever came out number one got the most votes—okay--and so
forth. It was a very democratic way to handle divvying up the budget. But we all got to hear the
rationale from each area. He became a really good friend of mine too. We actually then went into
business at one point together, we ran a restaurant. But that’s another thing. (laughing)
So anyway, those were some of the people.
Schrager: That’s great. I was thinking about the shift as the college got going, the first five years, in the
‘70s If you want to talk about how things developed and the issues that became prominent. The hopes
of that faculty had about what the college could be. Whatever those visions were that started it and
how they unfold in those first years. Did the college become whatever blueprint people had in mind?
Obviously it became something else. But that tension is a really interesting one to me. How faculty dealt
with the realities of actually teaching this.
Eickstaedt: Well, let’s see. One thing that still amazes me is how closely the curriculum still matches
what we had in mind originally. And that is I think still interdisciplinary programs are still the heart of
Evergreen. Even now, I visit with quite a few students and former students, mainly through the coffee
shop I go to. I’m always amazed that when I talk to them about their experience, more likely than not,
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they talk about one or maybe two programs that just transformed their lives. I’m amazed at that, that
that still holds true, because there certainly were times where it felt like maybe they’re just going to
throw the whole thing out and start from scratch. Maybe go back to a traditional school or something.
Let’s see. One of the big issues that came up in the early years was enrollment. We had quite a
bit of trouble getting enough students. We actually fell below the target different times. One of the
things that grew out of that was the faculty decided we needed to have an advising system. Now prior to
that, right from the beginning, as part of doing the program, the idea was that each student would keep
a portfolio of their work. And so the portfolio would contain the program descriptions, faculty
evaluations, the student’s self-evaluations, and examples of their best work. The original notion was that
each time a student went to a new program they would present their portfolio to their new faculty
seminar leader, so that there would be an ongoing thing. There were some faculty, Richard Jones for
example, would tend to write his evaluations to the next faculty member the student was going to work
with. Because that was another thing that we were expected to do in the program, was that toward the
end of the program, you’d talk with the students, “What are you going to do next?”, and give them
advice. “You ought to check out this program, or this program, or better yet, go see this faculty
member.” So often times, you knew that, next year, these students would be going on to these
programs. So like I say, Richard Jones would write the evaluations, to maybe Sam, you know. But in any
case, the portfolio was going to be kind of an ongoing thing, and the idea was the faculty would be
heavily involved in advising. Well, it became obvious after those early years that it wasn’t working very
well. A lot of students were getting lost. I don’t remember the year, but Kirk Thompson was chosen to
be the faculty advisor, and then there was a small number of faculty who volunteered to be the guinea
pigs: that we would start a formal advising system. So that when the students were admitted to the
college they would be assigned an advisor. The first year it was a small group of students and a small
group of faculty to test it out. Kirk did that for one year. And then I was chosen to be the advisor the
next year, and that was the year all faculty would be involved, and all students. During the latter part of
the summer, we had to put together the academic records and prior evaluations and get them to
whoever the faculty advisor was going to be. And then during orientation week the students would find
out who their advisor was, and they’d go see the advisor, and the advisor would work with them to help
them decide on their first program. Fortunately I had a great assistant. I don’t even like to use the word
secretary, because she was an assistant. We were able to get that off the ground. Then Stenberg lobbied
the deans to have me continue a second year as academic advisor. And that helped a great deal in terms
of student satisfaction and making better choices. But like any system, some faculty took it very
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seriously. Some faculty, during orientation week, they weren’t to be found. These poor students, you’d
tell them, “Okay your advisor is so-and-so, here’s the office number.” and they’d come wandering back
to the advising office and say, “I sat around for an hour and nobody showed up.” Then I would be stuck
with helping out. But it did help, and it did have an impact on enrollment and retention.
That was the other thing that was a big issue, retention. It was around that time that Dan Evans
was named president. An ongoing issue for the college had been, prior to that, almost every time the
legislature came to town there would be at least one bill introduced to either close Evergreen or to
change Evergreen into something else. So when Dan Evans came in he told the faculty, “Look, I can
handle the legislature. I’ll take care of the off campus work.” He said, “What you folks are doing is great,
and I’ll predict that in not too many years, people from other places, other schools, colleges and
universities, will be coming here to find out how you do it.” He said, “You keep doing what you’re doing,
try to do it better. I’ll take care of the off campus stuff.” And he was just a consummate politician. There
was a great story: he went to, I don’t know if it was the local Kiwanis or Rotarians, to give a noontime
talk. The issue of enrollment came up. And he said that they had increased the enrollment of students
from Thurston County by 100 percent. Well, one of the people in the audience said, “Well, how many
students was that?” And Arnoldo Rodriguez, the head of admissions, was there so Dan Evans turns to
him, “Arnoldo, do you remember?” And Arnoldo says, “Ah, off the top of my head I don’t remember the
precise numbers.” Well it had gone from one to two. (laughing) But anyway, they got around that issue.
One to two. Well, that’s a hundred percent! (laughing)
Trying to think of other issues that came up. I think another issue that gradually became more
and more important was the old issue of faculty evaluation, faculty retention, since there was no tenure.
All the faculty were supposed to keep their own portfolios with evaluations from their colleagues and
evaluations from their students. Then, in terms of faculty retention it was left up to the deans. Each year
they would have a meeting with each faculty member, they would exchange portfolios. The deans kept
their own portfolios, President McCann kept his own portfolio. But anyway, then you’d have a meeting.
All the deans could rely on was what was in the portfolio. Then I think it was maybe toward the end of
the time I was there, they finally instituted that new plan where there would be a team of faculty that
would sit down with a faculty member and really do the evaluation and then make whatever
recommendations. But that was an ongoing issue, because some people didn’t feel folks were doing
their share in terms of interdisciplinary teaching. There were all sorts of these issues. You couldn’t talk
about salary, because the salary was set, you couldn’t argue, “Well, the dean gave him a hundred dollars
more,” but you could debate about the merits of one faculty or another.
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Schrager: Was this usually at the team level, writing evaluations of one another.
Eickstaedt: Sometimes. Then some folks taught primarily with the same people, so it wasn’t a very
broad spectrum of evaluation you were getting.
Schrager: Being able to write an honest evolution of students and colleagues seems to be the challenge
of the evaluation system narrative. Was that a part of the structure from the beginning that faculty
evaluated one another?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, very much so. And as I mentioned, everybody in the college at the beginning kept a
portfolio, even the people outside of the academic realm. The people in the business office took that up.
Everybody was getting evaluated, and on up the line. The vice presidents, they would have a meeting
with the president, exchange portfolios. The deans would have an evaluation with the provost. People in
the library kept portfolios. But that’s pretty much disappeared, I think.
Schrager: I remember you started your evaluations, “Collegial evaluation of…” when I taught with you.
It’s something I picked up from you was the way you headed your evaluation “collegial evaluation,”
that’s how you titled it—of, by. What was that like to you, to be evaluating your colleagues and to be
evaluated by them as a teacher?
Eickstaedt: Hm, well initially it was a struggle in much the same way as writing those first student
evaluations, because it was a new experience. And so when it came to writing faculty evaluations, it
took a while for me to figure out, I guess, what to pay attention to, what points should be covered. But
over time I think I came up with a reasonable approach to that.
I’m glad you brought that up about collegiality because for me that was extremely important.
That we were all in this together. We were all colleagues. We were all equally responsible to each other
and especially to our students. So that the faculty evaluation, among other things, should be helpful
giving some constructive criticism, how a person could improve. But it took time to develop an approach
to that.
Schrager: And with students, evaluating them, what about that side?
Eickstaedt: Once again I gradually developed what I hope was kind of a holistic approach to student
evaluations. So it was not only talking about the quantity of their work, the quality of their work, but
also how well they worked with others, their participation in seminar, whether they were an active
listener.
(NOTE: At this point, the recorder ran out of memory space—and the interview had to stop. Larry’s
stories continue in the third session, the following week.)
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—Transcribed by Lori Larson

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