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An
Educator Beyond Compare
 Professor
Emeritus Margaret “Peg” Clifford,
66, who passed away September 23, 2003, was a problem solver,
an achiever, a provider for her students, an exacting taskmaster,
a great teacher, and a caring friend. Above all, she strove
to excel.
Like many who achieve much, her life is not easily summarized,
and certainly cannot be neatly categorized. Her work in motivation
and academic risk taking was widely respected by her colleagues.
She had a talent for building theoretical structures and tying
findings of research to educational practice. Her studies
were widely cited and even so many years after her retirement,
her name still appears in educational psychology books.
“Peg believed that basic principles of learning, motivation,
and development should guide the efforts of teachers, and
had little patience with those who did not share her enthusiasm
for an empirically based science of education,” said
colleague Professor David Lohman. “She
began her own teaching career with only the most rudimentary
knowledge of how children learn and develop. Many years later,
as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, she
came to understand how much more effective her teaching might
have been had she had a stronger foundation in educational
psychology before she ventured in to the classroom.”
The conviction that teachers needed to know theories and principles
of learning, development, and motivation, and know how to
apply them, guided her work with undergraduates in the survey
course that is taken by all pre-service teachers at The University
of Iowa.
Clifford received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
in 1970, the year she joined The University of Iowa College
of Education faculty. She served with distinction from 1979
to 1980 as the College’s acting dean, and retired in
1997.
But Clifford knew tragedy as well. “Peg’s early
and meteoric rise through the academic ranks ground to a halt
as her battles with Lupus started to take their toll,”
Lohman said. “Her war against this disease was fought
with an optimism that collapsed only when it became painfully
apparent to her that she could not continue in the professorial
role that she cherished and had struggled so hard to achieve.”
She knew professional defeat as well. The publisher decided
not to issue a second edition of her text. And a disgruntled
graduate student senselessly murdered her great friend and
mentor, T. Anne Cleary.
“Many of us thought that Peg never really recovered
from that loss,” he said. “True to form, her last
professional effort was to develop what she dubbed ‘a
constructive theory of failure.’ She sought to use her
own experiences of failure to help others overcome disappointment
in their own lives.”
And yet, her kindness toward international students remains
one of her assets that goes beyond compare. As an excellent
teacher, she continued to advise her students even after graduation.
Her enthusiasm and passion in educational psychology affected
everyone who worked with her.
“I find myself following her model as a professor—being
demanding and responsive, loving and caring, and inviting
my students over for holidays,” William Lan
(MA ’88/PhD ‘90) said. “I hope
that someday, my students will also adopt these practices
with their own students.”
Lan thinks this is the beauty of the profession—that
work will continue expanding generation after generation.
“So, even though Peg is no longer with us,” he
said, “her impact lives on through the work of her students
and her students’ students and so forth for generations
to come.”
Alumni
and friends who want to honor Margaret Clifford may do so
through a gift to the T. Anne Cleary Psychological Research
Scholarship Fund, an endowment that she helped to establish
at the time of Anne’s death, and which she generously
supported. Contributions should be sent to The University
of Iowa Foundation, Levitt Center for University Advancement,
P. O. Box 4550, Iowa City, Iowa 52244-4550. Note that it is
for the Cleary Scholarship Fund in memory of Margaret Clifford.
Memories
from William Lan (MA ’88/PhD ’90)
During
my first semester as a graduate student in the College of
Education at University of Iowa, I saw a flier at the second
floor of the Linguist Center announcing that Dr. Peg Clifford
will be giving a speech on her recent trip to China during
the lunch hour. As someone who left China not long ago, I
was interested in learning what an American professor thought
about the country. When I found the room, it was packed with
students and I could only sit on the floor in the front of
the podium. Peg walked in with her trademark smile and asked
the class, “Is anyone here from China? I would like
to have your input on my impression about China after the
speech.” I raised my hand.
We had a pleasant conversation in her office that day. She
tolerated my broken English most of the time. (She was less
tolerant after I became her student.) We talked about the
trip to China that she and Dr. Ann Cleary took a month earlier,
and then the conversation shifted to my studies at UI. When
she learned that I just had enough money to pay the tuition
for the first semester and did not know what I would do for
the next spring, she was silent for a few seconds, and then
she said, “Let me see if I can do something.”
During the Thanksgiving holiday, Peg invited me to her home
to have dinner with many other international students in the
college. Later I found out that this was a tradition that
she and Ann kept for years: Every year, they took turns to
entertain international students in their homes for the Thanksgiving
and Christmas holidays. During the dinner, she whispered to
me, “I may be able to find an RA for you, but I will
know for sure next week.” I was thrilled with the good
news because it meant that I would be able to continue my
graduate education at UI. The week after, I learned that Dr.
Feldt funded the RA position from the Iowa Testing Program,
and I became Peg’s student.
I had the privilege to study with Peg for the four years during
the time she developed her theory of academic risk-taking.
I had the first-hand experience of learning how a good theory
was created in educational psychology. Several graduate students
were working as her assistants. Every week, she held a meeting
with us to discuss her research projects. She shared with
us her thoughts, which were always intriguing and insightful.
She was talented in building theoretical structures for her
studies and tying findings of research to educational practice.
Her theory of academic risk-taking precisely pointed out the
origin of motivational problems many educators observed in
classrooms: a common practice of overdosed reinforcement.
Her research provided many applicable suggestions for teachers
to encourage students to take risks in academic tasks by structuring
classroom environment and instruction differently. The theory
was gaining a prominent status among motivational researchers
rapidly. Her studies were widely cited by other researchers
and in many textbooks. Even so many years after her retirement,
her name still appears in the educational psychology books
I use in my teaching.
Peg was an excellent teacher. No doubt she was a demanding
advisor and supervisor, but this is exactly what I am grateful
to her for after so many years. Working as an RA for Peg was
very challenging because she always assigned new tasks for
us to learn. She equipped us with most the skills we would
need as an independent researcher after we finished our training
at UI. She was always very critical of our work. My peer graduate
students often teased me that my dissertation got her approval
only after 30 revisions.
Although the number is a little exaggerated, it is not far
away from the truth. I never had formal training in English,
but I learned so much from her criticism on my writing. More
importantly, her enthusiasm and passion in educational psychology
affected everyone who worked with her, including myself. Even
now, I still deem myself lucky to be working in such a fascinating
discipline.
Peg was always my advisor even after my graduation from the
University of Iowa. I could always bring problems and questions
I had in my teaching and research to her for advices, and
she was always interested in what I accomplished in my work.
I find myself following her model as a professor; loving and
caring for students, being demanding and responsive at the
same time, and inviting them over for Christmas or Chinese
New Year. I hope that someday, my students will also adopt
these practices with their own students. I think this is the
beauty of our profession that our work will continue expanding
generation after generation. So even though Peg is no longer
with us, her impact lives on everywhere through the work of
her students and her students’ students and so forth
for generations to come.
Memories
from Professor David Lohman
Peg
Clifford was a problem solver, an achiever, and a provider
for her students, an exacting taskmaster, a great teacher,
and a caring friend. Above all, she strove to excel. Like
many who achieve much, her life is not easily summarized,
and certainly cannot be neatly categorized. Her work in motivation
was widely respected by her colleagues. She was active in
the political affairs of the American Psychological Association,
and served as the president of the Division of Education Psychology.
She believed that basic principles of learning, motivation,
and development should guide the efforts of teachers, and
had little patience with those who did not share her enthusiasm
for an empirically based science of education. She began her
own teaching career with only the most rudimentary knowledge
of how children learn and develop. Many years later, as a
graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, she came
to understand how much more effective her teaching might have
been had she had a stronger foundation in educational psychology
before she ventured in to the classroom.
The conviction that teachers needed to know theories and principles
of learning, development, and motivation, and know how to
apply them, guided her work with undergraduates in the survey
course in Educational Psychology and Measurement that, now
as then, is taken by all pre-service teachers at The University
of Iowa. She taught multiple sections of this course herself,
and, for many years, coordinated the teaching of those who
taught the other sections of the course. This work culminated
in her educational psychology text that was published by Houghton
Mifflin about the same time that she was also elected president
of Division 15 of APA.
But Peg knew tragedy as well. Her early and meteoric rise
through the academic ranks ground to a halt as her battles
with Lupus started to take their toll. Her war against this
disease was fought with an optimism that collapsed only when
it became painfully apparent to her that she could not continue
in the professorial role that she cherished and had struggled
so hard to achieve.
She also knew professional defeat. The publisher decided not
to issue a second edition of her text. And a disgruntled graduate
student senselessly murdered her great friend and mentor,
Anne T. Cleary. Many of us thought that Peg never really recovered
from that loss. True to form, her last professional effort
was to develop what she dubbed ‘a constructive theory
of failure.’ She sought to use her own experiences of
failure to help others overcome disappointment in their own
lives.
As division chair, I was much involved in her efforts to secure
an early leave from the University. However, I did not see
her after she left until I went to visit her in Mercy Hospital
shortly before she died. Her eyes still sparkled, but that
was about all that I recognized of her in the frail elderly
woman in the bed. But she was still optimistically planning
a trip to Mayo, where she expected to be cured. Defeat was
not an option – not earlier in her life, and not at
the end of it either. The department and the college are lesser
places without her.
Remembering
a Great Teacher
 Professor
Emeritus George Robert Carlsen, 86, who passed
away December 13, 2003, will be remembered as many things—as
a person generous beyond reason, as a superior craftsman,
and especially, as a great teacher of teachers.
“It’s
hard to imagine what the teaching of literature in public
schools might be without the gentle, intelligent influence
of Bob Carlsen,” Associate Dean James Marshall
said. “He mapped a path for change in the kinds of literature
students read and in how they read that literature, which
greatly expanded the boundaries of the English classroom.”
Carlsen believed there was room for both the classics and
young adult literature in the classroom. “He was a missionary
for young adult literature,” Curriculum Lab Director
Paula Brandt said. “He was so passionate
about and committed to its legitimacy for classroom use, he
inspired everyone around him.”
Born in Bozeman, Montana, Carlsen received his bachelor’s,
master’s, and doctoral degrees from the University of
Minnesota. He began his career at the University of Colorado,
serving there for five years; the University of Texas (Austin)
for six years; and at The University of Iowa for 25 years,
retiring in 1982 as a professor of English and education.
Carlsen served as president of the National Council of Teachers
of English, received the Distinguished Service Awards from
NCTE and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, and authored
among other important work, Books and the Teenage Reader,
which went through three editions and was the standard text
in the field for more than 20 years. In addition, he was the
general editor of the Themes and Writers Series for the McGraw
Hill Publishing Company.
Along the way, he introduced English teachers and those preparing
to teach to the cultural and intellectual value of literature
written expressly for young people. “He was a vast reader
himself, a rememberer of poems, a craftsman who made homemade
Christmas presents for his children and warm, memorable dinners
for his doctoral students,” Marshall said.
Those students include a generation of University of Iowa
graduates who, as university faculty, carried on Carlsen’s
work in adolescent literature. These alumni include
Ben Nelms (PhD ’67), now of the University
of Florida, Richard Abrahamson (PhD ’77)
of the University of Houston, Alleen Pace Nilsen (PhD
’73) and Ken Donelson (BA ’50/MA
’51/PhD ’63) of Arizona State University, Catherine
Anne Sherrill (PhD ’81) of East Tennessee State
University, and John Conner (MA ’62/PhD
’66), professor emeritus at The University of Iowa College
of Education.
“Bob’s over-riding interest throughout his career
was centered on exploring ways to produce lifelong readers,”
Sherrill said, “and he felt the teenage years were crucial
in that development. He believed that literature should get
inside the psyche rather than be a cultural artifact, that
literary appreciation grows slowly, and must be nurtured by
young people reading books of interest to them.”
His ideas found fertile ground and quickly spread to schools
throughout the country. There are “generations of teenagers
who just may have become lifelong readers because of the efforts
of Bob Carlsen,” Sherrill added.
“To the end, Bob was a generous friend, mentor, colleague,
and scholar,” Marshall said. “His presence is
still felt in the way literature is taught in our schools.”
“Carlsen
IS… and Reading IS…”
…“Bob
had no sympathy for English teachers who wanted young adults
to fit into certain molds. He believed that one of our most
important jobs—maybe the most—was to find out
where our young people were in their reading and to start
with them at that point.
Bob taught me to respect and to care about young people…
Bob taught me to read what young people read and to know all
sorts of books for them. That meant adolescent literature,
but it also meant mysteries and the classics and drama and
fantasy and everything in between…
Bob taught me to listen to young people and provided me with
several ways of hearing what they had to say. He taught me
that honest responses were always better than rote and traditional
ones that were aimed at satisfying teachers and reducing any
likelihood of communication.
Mostly, Bob taught me because he IS.” - by Ken Donelson
from Literature IS
Note from Professional Resources Column
editor:
This
column is a tribute to a person whose life and career have
been foundational professional resources in the field of Adolescent
Literature and English Education, Dr. G. Robert Carlsen. Because
I enrolled in the University of Iowa in 1968 and graduated
for a third time in 1996, and am now a column editor for this
journal, I was, so to speak, in the right places at the right
times to help organize this memorial column. I took an M.A.
seminar from Dr. Carlsen in 1975. The editors of the ALAN
Review asked Richard F. Abrahamson to write the anchor piece
and invited several of Dr. Carlsen’s other doctoral
students to contribute additional comments. My thanks to my
fellow Iowa alums who contribute below.
Bill
Broz
University of Northern Iowa
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1996
*****
***** *****
Assembly
on Adolescent Literature Loses a Pioneer
By
Richard F. Abrahamson
University of Houston
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1977
Dr.
G. Robert Carlsen died on December 13, 2003. Born in Bozeman,
Montana in 1917, Bob received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from
the University of Minnesota where he did his doctoral work
with legendary English educator Dora V. Smith. In 1982, Carlsen
retired after 25 years as professor of English and education
at the University of Iowa.
Bob’s
scholarly work in the reading interests of young adults and
adolescent literature form the underpinnings for much of today’s
thinking on reading stages, reading interests, individual
response to literature, and the important role books for young
adults can play in the creation of lifetime readers.
Books
and the Teen-age Reader (Harper, 1967) melded Carlsen’s
theories with his real world experiences teaching young adults.
The result was a very popular book read by parents, teachers,
and librarians. Books and the Teen-age Reader went into three
editions and cemented Carlsen’s stature in the field
of English education.
In
his role as English department chair at the University of
Iowa high school, Carlsen pioneered one of the first English
elective programs. His successful implementation of free reading
classes at the school caused such individualized reading programs
to pop up throughout Iowa and across the United States.
Carlsen
served as president of the National Council of Teachers of
English from 1961-1962 and was an early supporter in the creation
of the Assembly on Adolescent Literature. For his work in
the profession, Bob won the NCTE Distinguished Service Award
and the ALAN Award for outstanding contributions to the field
of adolescent literature. But Bob Carlsen did so much more.
He changed lives.
I
made the trek from the woods of Maine to Iowa City and the
University of Iowa because of Bob Carlsen’s Books and
the Teen-age Reader. A native New Englander, I started teaching
high school in the northern woods of Maine armed with an M.A.
in English, a thesis on Steinbeck, and the certain knowledge
that high school seniors would sign up in droves for my senior
seminar on Chaucer. The first book I was told to teach to
sophomores was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Imagine my
sense of panic when I went to the local pharmacy (there was
no bookstore) to try to buy a copy of the Monarch or Cliff’s
Notes for Conrad’s book and found out they didn’t
sell them. For several weeks I stumbled through teaching that
book. The students didn’t like it, and neither did I.
I was too new a teacher to know that this was the wrong book
for the wrong students at the wrong time. I muddled through
with more confidence than my students because left for me
in the file drawer of my desk was the one-hundred-item multiple-choice
test on Conrad’s novel published by a company in Iowa.
Those first few weeks of teaching I bluffed my students, and
they bluffed me.
One
weekend I stopped at the University of Maine bookstore and
happened to pick up a copy of Books and the Teen-age Reader.
I read it with the excitement of a desperate English teacher
who feared he had chosen the wrong profession. In that book
someone spoke to me for the first time about adolescents as
real people with specific reading interests. These students
weren’t just empty vessels to be filled. Here was information
for me about Haivighurst and developmental tasks, subliterature,
and adolescent literature. I ordered some young adult novels
from one of the teen book clubs, put Conrad and his friends
on the shelf, and started teaching with books the class agreed
on. It was exciting. Students perked up, read more, and discussed
more; and I knew I had chosen the right profession.
My
B.A. in English from the College of William and Mary and my
M.A. in English from the University of Maine hadn’t
taught me anything about teaching English to adolescents.
I just needed to know more. After a couple of telephone calls
to Iowa, I was enrolled in Bob Carlsen’s correspondence
course on adolescent literature. I was hooked from the first
assignment of writing my reading autobiography to submitting
the fifty book cards.
Toward the end of the course Bob wrote something on one of
my papers asking if I’d ever thought about a doctorate.
Three months later my wife and I rolled into Iowa City in
our Volkswagen Beetle packed with everything we owned. It
is fair to say, I went to Iowa because of Bob, Books and the
Teen-age Reader, and adolescent literature. Bob Carlsen did
for me what Dora V. Smith did for him: He was my mentor and
my inspiration. He changed my life.
In
the end, it seems only right that I should give Bob the last
word. In the final professional article he wrote, Bob summed
up his fifty years of teaching this way.
“I
have been fairly consistent in my point of view throughout
my fifty years in teaching. I always favored the teenage book
over the literary canon, speech over writing, expression over
grammar, intensive exploration over close reading, process
over product, and what literature does over how it is constructed.
One summer, it must have been about 1950, while I was teaching
a course at the University of Colorado, a New England teacher
in my class said, ‘You just can’t be right or
we would have heard about it in Massachusetts.’ Still,
I have held the faith in my beliefs about teaching English
although sometimes, just sometimes, I speculate whether New
Englanders have yet heard the message.”
(“Conclusions
from Fifty Years of Teaching English,” in Literature
IS :Collected Essays by G. Robert Carlsen, edited by Anne
Sherrill and Terry C. Ley, Sabre Printers, Johnson City, TN,
1994, p. 272)
*****
***** *****
From
Terry C. Ley
Auburn University, Emeritus
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1974
The
Teaching Goes On
I
recently bought a copy of Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie
to give to Josh, a college-aged friend, for Christmas. At
home, I reread portions of the book before wrapping it. Reflecting
on how Morrie Schwartz, Mitch’s college philosophy professor
twenty years earlier, affected Mitch’s adult perspective
on life through the series of meetings that they had just
before Morrie’s death, I thought about my own mentors.
Those who have shaped my life by detecting my potential as
a teacher and challenging me to become the best teacher I
could become are a group very dear to me! Prominent among
those mentors is Bob Carlsen.
Dr.
Carlsen was my advisor and major professor for my master and
doctoral work in English Education at the University of Iowa.
While working under his guidance to redesign English language
arts curricula for Cedar Rapids (Iowa) secondary schools,
where I taught, I admired his leadership style, how he led
diverse and sometimes recalcitrant teachers through negotiations
that resulted in innovative curricula of which we could be
proud. Watching him operate successfully on my home turf,
with teachers I knew, kindled my desire to become a teacher
educator, specifically, an English educator. On campus, watching
Carlsen function as a professor, researcher, advisor, and
national leader in our field helped me to shape my perception
of what I might do as a professor of English education.
When
I began my graduate work with him, Dr. Carlsen helped me to
assess my academic and professional strengths and to fill
gaps of knowledge and practice that I wanted to fill. The
relationship between doctoral student and major professor
generally becomes a very close one, especially throughout
the dissertation process. Doctoral students pray that their
major professors will be helpful and benevolent. Surely I
did, and Dr. Carlsen was the ideal person to help me deal
with my initial reservations about myself as researcher. We
explored research topics together, settling on one that intrigued
both of us; after I gathered my data, we solved problems about
data analysis together; he read and responded kindly to several
drafts of each chapter. With his help, I gained confidence
in myself as a researcher, a professional role that I knew
I must play if I wished to pursue a career in teacher education.
Products of Dr. Carlsen scholarship were both abundant and
influential. Concepts that he taught me, especially about
integrative language arts curricula, young adult literature,
and directed individualized reading (a precursor to Sustained
Silent Reading and Nancie Atwell’s reading workshops)
became keystones of my own teaching and scholarship, ideas
upon which I built my own career.
At
the end of his account, Albom wrote, “Have you ever
really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious
thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud
shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers,
you will always find your way back. The teaching goes on.”
Effective mentors also inspire their protégées
to move beyond their mentors’ circles and, in doing
so, to affect the future in profound ways.
Through
his students and, now, their students as well, Bob Carlsen’s
teaching will continue.
*****
***** *****
From
Alleen Pace Nilsen
Arizona State University
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1973
Lucky
stars were shining on me when in 1971 I applied for graduate
admission to the University of Iowa. My husband had finished
his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and had taken his
first “real” job at UNI in Cedar Falls. We always
said it would be “my turn,” when Don finished,
but now we were going to a school located more than 90 miles
from the nearest doctoral program, plus we had three young
children (one a diabetic) to worry about. The whole thing
looked impossible, but I decided to apply anyway. I knew nothing
about Bob, nor even about adolescent literature, although
I had been teaching children’s literature as a faculty
associate at Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti. When I was deciding
whether or not to apply, I remember thinking that if I were
one of Richard Nixon’s “White House” daughters
someone would figure out how I could do this. That someone
turned out to be Bob Carlsen. He let me work as a grad assistant
while still living in Cedar Falls, and before I ever took
a “live” class at the University of Iowa, I took
adolescent literature from Bob via correspondence. This was
when I learned how hard people in Iowa work and that I too
could write more than a page a day. But no matter how fast
or how much I wrote, Bob would get it back to me within a
couple of days. Sometimes he wrote more than I did, and for
years I cherished the lesson on which he had casually noted,
“Someday I think you will write a book on adolescent
literature.” Whenever I find myself frustrated by the
expectations of my own doctoral students or the need for more
work on their dissertations, I think back to Bob and Ruth
and remember how they picked me up at the airport and let
me stay at their house when I flew in from Arizona to defend
my dissertation. This kindness was only one more indication
of their unselfishness and their willingness to go the extra
mile for those of us fortunate enough to have been his students.
*****
***** *****
From
Ken Donelson
Arizona State University, Emeritus
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1963
My
first encounter with Bob Carlsen was hardly auspicious. He
had been invited by someone important—so I gathered—to
talk to us English Teachers at Thomas Jefferson High School
in Cedar Rapids and to help us improve our teaching. Since
the English faculty was deservedly proud of our reputation,
locally and otherwise, and since Thoreau had taught me to
doubt anyone who delibertly came to do me good, Bob faced
a cynical and slightly hostile audience of me—and several
of my friends.
My
second encounter took place a few months later. My school
required that all its teachers pile up a set number of university
hours after we had taught five years, and it was my turn.
Since Bob was teaching an adolescent literature course, I
bet my closest friend on our faculty that I could get an “A”
in his course. I got the grades but I got much more. He challenged
me, I learned, and I became a better teacher, all to my amazement.
By
the end of the second week that summer, I had become a Carlsen
convert. Equally surprising, we planned when I was taking
time off for my doctoral work, we decided what courses I would
take, we worked out what my dissertation was going to be,
and we deviated little from all these grand plans in the year
that followed. How Bob managed all this still puzzles me,
but he brought me into a life that for 37 years has given
me professional satisfaction and personal joy, and for that
I am eternally grateful to Bob Carlsen.
*****
***** *****
From
Ben F. Nelms
University of Florida
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1966
Memories
of G. Robert Carlsen
When
I first presented myself to Bob Carlsen, I had taught Algebra
II and English IV. As a college instructor, I had taught freshman
composition and the British Lit. survey, creative writing
and remedial writing (a la Ken Macrorie). I thought I was
an experienced and competent teacher. I didn’t know
from nothin’. Four years at University High in Iowa
City remade me as a teacher and changed me as a person.
Bob
took me under his professional guardianship early on, before
he had any clear idea who I was. I had been accepted into
a doctoral program at Iowa as well as four or five other universities.
But Iowa was the only one where I had received no financial
award (because, I was later to learn, they had misfiled my
GRE scores under Helms instead of Nelms.)
So
I had accepted an appointment elsewhere. But somehow it just
didn’t seem right. I couldn’t get Iowa and G.
Robert Carlsen out of my mind. The English Journal in February
of 1963 led off with his presidential address, “The
Way of the Spirit and the Way of the Mind.” It had spoken
to my spirit, to my mind, and to my heart. I could not forget
it. Finally, early one Saturday morning, while I was driving
somewhere in Abilene, Texas, I decided I just couldn’t
give up that easily. It was pouring down rain, but I stopped
the car and jumped into a telephone booth, getting Carlsen’s
home phone number from information in Iowa City. He answered
and was gracious, to someone he had never heard of, even early
on a Saturday morning. I can’t imagine that I had such
chutzpa, and I still am in wonder that he responded with such
grace. I explained my situation and told him a little bit
about myself. “Well, yes,” he said, “I think
we will be able to find you a place as a part-time teacher
in the University School.” He made the offer on the
phone; I accepted on the phone. What a risk he was taking.
I hung up, and the rain stopped.
How
well I remember the first day in his adolescent literature
class. We met in the library of Uni-High. We checked out books
all summer from that library, from the Curriculum Library
in East Hall, and from the Iowa City public library. I began
my collection of adolescent novels, mostly Bantam books to
share with my students, as I remember.
Bob’s
first “lecture,” if you could ever call one of
his talks a lecture, began with one of those apt analogies
that characterized his professional thinking. He was NCTE
president, a university professor, and a frequent contributor
to EJ, but he began by saying,
When
my daughter was about fifteen, she came home one evening and
precipitated a family crisis. She had been asked to her first
formal dance. After the excitement of the invitation had worn
off, we got to the crux of the matter: “I haven’t
got a thing to wear.”
Her
little-girlish Sunday school dresses, of course, would not
do. Neither would one of her mother’s formals. He told
the story with gusto, humor, and detail. Finally, they had
given in and bought her “yards and yards of pink nylon
net gathered at the waist,” a frock that would have
looked ludicrous on her mother or her little sister. He concluded,
“For everything there is a season, and a time for everything
under heaven.” The same is true, he concluded, of teenagers’
reading: neither children’s books nor sophisticated
adult fare would suit them.
The
analogy eventually made its way into a speech to the American
Library Association, later published as a widely read and
cited article in Top of the News (“For Everything There
Is a Season,” Jan. 1965, 41.2: 103-110).
Bob’s
first assignment in that adolescent literature class was for
us to write our own reading autobiography. Regrettably, I
did not keep a copy of my response. When he and Anne Sherrill
published their scholarly analysis of years and years worth
of those autobiographies in Voices of Readers (NCTE, 1988),
I kept scanning the book to see if I might recognize anything
I had said. I found quotations in every chapter, on almost
every page, that could have been me. He knew me before he
knew me, before I knew myself. Which was the point of course.
The growth of readers through adolescence tends to follow
a pattern.
What
a guide and mentor, Bob Carlsen became for me. Within two
or three years, he had me teaching that same adolescent literature
class one summer in that same Uni-High library. He had me
making speeches at NCTE and writing my first EJ article about
my eighth-grade readers. Shy as I was, at my first NCTE convention
he made sure I talked with DoraV. Smith, Wilbur Hatfield,
and Lou LaBrant, his professional Big Three. He fostered and
encouraged my interest in poetry for adolescents, which has
never waned. He let me review books for him and help with
booklists for the first edition of Books and the Teen-age
Reader. For the next twenty years or so, he kept springing
new books and authors on me every time we talked. I still
have the letter he wrote me on March 4, 1995, comparing his
experience upon leaving the presidency of NCTE with my lethargy
upon giving up the EJ editorship: “You are everything,
and then nothing. No longer do you have mail arriving in batches
every day. It is almost like having the catalogues quitting
the week after Christmas.” Once again Bob was there
with an apt analogy. After all, for everything there is a
season, and a time for everything. Christmas has come and
gone again.
How
much I will miss him.
Remembering
Can-Do Cal
 Cal
Mether (MA ’67), 78, who passed away November
20, 2003, was a passionate photographer, a licensed hybrid
rose grower, and a technology wizard. For the College of Education,
Mether taught pre-service teachers for 23 years, assisted
faculty in producing and using media properly, and served
as coordinator of the Audiovisual Production Lab in the Learning
Resources Center (LRC), retiring in 1990. He also served as
educational media director at University Schools from 1967-72
and co-authored a text on audiovisual fundamentals.
Over the years, Professor Emeritus Harold Engen
asked Mether to assist him with several video projects including
production of Irving Weber’s Iowa City, the nine-part
local history video series for the Iowa City Public Library
and noon Lion’s Club, and Engen’s instructional
video series on microcounseling.
“All you need to do is to see the quality in the videos
that Cal created,” Engen said. “They are good
enough that 30 years later, they’re still being used.”
Although not all of Mether’s contributions attract such
recognition, all who had the opportunity to work with him
appreciate his organizational and systemized approach to audiovisual
materials.
“Cal succeeded in not only acquiring much-needed new
equipment,” said Professor Emeritus John Haefner,
“but most significant of all, his cooperativeness and
willingness to expend time and effort resulted in a great
deal of experimentation by many faculty members with new media.”
Ron Osgood worked with Mether in the College’s LRC as
video coordinator from 1981-86. One of their biggest projects
dealt with audio-visual equipment operation, which Mether
eventually turned into a book. This book was later used as
the basic script for a series of video programs that The University
of Iowa marketed and sold around the world. “Cal’s
book was very good at explaining technology for students studying
to become teachers,” Osgood said.
“Cal was a great guy to work with,” he continued.
“He worked hard and never felt he was too good for any
task. His job was service and he always provided that service
in a most positive way.”
Mether’s optimistic approach is still felt in the College.
Fondly remembering Mether as a mentor and friend, John
Achrazoglou (BA ’81/MA ’94/PhD ’03),
the College’s current director of the Educational Technology
Center added, “Cal’s example of unconditional
dedication to our students’ educational experience is
something I try to carry on and emulate to this day.”
In
Memoriam
1920s
Idella
H. Burns (BA ’23)
Fern D. Kenline (BA ’24)
Hadley Kirkman (BA ’25)
Grace B. Sharpe (BA ’25)
Margaret C. Obermann (BA ’27/MA ’33)
1930s
Lars
Grant (MA ’32) spent his career serving as
superintendent for school districts in Minnesota and North
Dakota. He was one of the first three members inducted into
the Hillsboro (N.D.) Public School Hall of Fame in Oct. 2003—a
tribute from the many teachers, students, alumni, friends,
and family who were touched by his spirit and dedication.
Lars Grant was born and raised in Kindred, N.D., where he
graduated from high school. He received his Bachelors degree
in 1929 from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and his Masters
degree in 1932 from the University of Iowa. He did graduate
work at NDSU in school administration.
Grant served as superintendent of schools at Walcott, N.D.,
for five years; at Felton, Minn., 1940-1043; at Borup, Minn.,
1943-1946, before coming to Hillsboro in 1946.
He was instrumental in bringing many changes to the educational
system in Hillsboro. The first, a gymnasium and band facility,
was built and dedicated in December 1949, and the first district-operated
hot lunch program was started. In 1958, he led the first wave
of reorganization, which included Bloomfield, Eldorado, Hillsboro
Common, Kelso, Blanchard and Hillsboro City. The Hillsboro
school bus system was started at that time.
Under the direction of Grant, land was purchased and a new
elementary school was built in 1960, followed by construction
of a new high school building in 1966.
Grant was the superintendent in Hillsboro for 22 years, retiring
in 1968. He came out of retirement to serve the Tower City
School from 1968-1970, when he again retired and returned
to Hillsboro.
In addition to his work as superintendent of schools, Grant
was active in other activities. He was the first president
of the Hillsboro Kiwanis Club, and as a member of Our Savior’s
Lutheran Church, he served as president of the church council
and superintendent of the Sunday School for several years.
He was an active member of the North Dakota School Administrators
Association, the Hillsboro Civic and Commerce and the Luther
College Alumni Association. Never one to be idle for long,
he often did crop adjusting when time permitted during the
summer months.
Well-known throughout the state, Lars could strike up a conversation
with anyone, friends fondly recall. Invariably, wherever he
went or whomever he talked to, he could find some common link
to that person. He had a fabulous memory for people, places
and events.
Lars Grant died at the age of 88 in 1993, leaving behind many
teachers, students, alumni, friends and family who were touched
by his spirit and dedication.
Pauline K. Ruegnitz (BA ’32)
L. Virgil Briggs (MA ’36)
Robert A. Gosselink (MA ’36)
Elizabeth Minkel Myser (BA ’36/MA ’38)
Sanford D. Rolke (MA ’36)
John L. Ford (MA ’37)
Dean Alfred M. Gowan (MA ’39)
Eloise L. Hager (BA ’39)
1940s
Dean
W. Darby (DDS ’45/MS ’62/PhD ’64)
Carolyn A. Piburn (MA ’47)
Prudence B. Reitzel (BA ’47/MA ’54)
Paul R. Arms (BA ’48/MA ’54)
Bernard I. Green (BA ’48)
Harold Pohlman (MA ’48)
Bruce Lord (MA ’49)
1950s
George
C. Meadows (MA ’51)
Donald S. Adams (BA ’52)
Robert M. Brackett (BA ’53)
Gerald G. Eggers (BA ’53)
Ervin W. Harder (MA ’53)
Daniel M. McBride (BA ’53)
Wayne S. VanDeest (MA ’53)
Bill M. Creger (BA ’54)
Ruth P. Gerard (BA ’55)
Jeanne K. Haack (MA ’55)
Donald Moskowitz (MA ’55)
George M. Oveson (MA ’55)
Kenneth D. Orton (MA ’56/PhD ’58)
Delma M. DeLapp (MA ’57)
Robert J. Mahnke (MA ’57)
Gary S. Isaacson (BA ’58)
Everett A. Ludley (MA ’58)
Mary A. Bergeson (BA ’59)
Genevieve Hartman (BA ’59)
Ruth E. Lane (BA ’59)
Eugene F. McGivern (MA ’59)
1960s
Joyce
E. Corley (BA ’60)
Robert B. Smiley (MA ’60)
Doris Bieterman (MA ’64)
Helen M. Larson (MA ’64)
Wallace M. Mays (BA ’64)
Earnest G. Beemblossom (MA ’65)
Adolph E. Goedeken (MA ’65)
Carol P. Jackson (BA ’65)
Kathleen Crowley (BA ’66)
Barbara C. Hubbard (BA ’66/MA ’70)
Winifred E. Smith (MA ’66)
Mary A. Dallas (MA ’67)
Frances D. Evans (MA ’67)
Cal Mether (MA ’67)
Helen E. Tatge (BA ’67)
Orville J. Pederson (PhD ’68)
Anthony V. Sinicropi (PhD ’68)
Lanelle M. Klein (BA ’69)
1970s
Dorothy
M. Hall (MA ’70)
Corinne Horras (MA ’70)
Mitchell A. Greene, Jr. (PhD ’72)
Thomas C. Knutson (BS ’72)
Beverly Ver Steegh Prine (BS ’72/MA ’79)
Phyllis K. Sommers (BA ’73)
Donna R. James (BS ’74)
Elizabeth Minjares-Mares (BA ’75)
Bruce M. Anderson (BS ’76)
June A. Criswell (BS ’76)
Richard A. Persoon (BS ’76)
Kathy Caven Jacoby (BS ’78)
1980s
Virginia
A. Howes (MA ’80)
Rebecca A. Baker (BS ’82/MA ’91)
Patricia E. Siepker (MA ’83)
Elliko Shimosato Shutt (BFA ’87/MA ’93/MFA ’94)
1990s
Nadine
A. Link (BA ’91)
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