37 research outputs found
Dr. Robert Threatt, Interviewed by Loretta Parham, September 24, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Robert Threatt, President, Morris Brown College 1973-1991
Dr. Robert M. Franklin Jr., Interviewed by Loretta Parham, August 18, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Robert M. Franklin Jr., President, Interdenominational Theological Center 1997-2002; President, Morehouse College 2007-2012
Dr. Robert L. Albright, Interviewed by Dr. Barbara R. Hatton, August 14, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Dr. Barbara R. Hatton, President, South Carolina State University 1992-1995, President, Knoxville College 1997-2005. Interviewee: Dr. Robert L. Albright, President, Johnson C.Smith University 1983-1994
Robert Kully oral history interview, California State University Archives; Oral History Project on the Origins of The California State University System, Phase II, 1998
No full textTranscripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History on the Origins of the CSU System, Phase II
ROBERT KULLY
CSU ACADEMIC SENATE AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
April 7,1998
Processed in cooperation with CSU Fullerton Oral History Program
2002
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the California State
University Archives under a grant from the Office of the Chancellor, CSU.
Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of the transcriptions
without obtaining permission as long as proper credit is given to the interviewee,
interviewer, and the institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this manuscript
are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU Archives and the interviewee.
Therefore, scholars must obtain permission from California State University
Archives before making more extensive use of the transcription and related
materials.
None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by any party except the
California State University Archives. However, because it is the goal of this
project to preserve and make accessible significant documentation relevant to the
history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted transcriptions may be
obtained at cost by writing to the CSU Systemwide Archivist at California State
University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, California 90747.
Copyright © 2002 by the Board of Trustees
of The California State University
PREFACE
The purpose of Phase II of the California State University Oral History Project
is to record and make available to researchers using the California State
University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who participated in
development of the CSU system.
Creation of the California State Colleges in 1961 united fifteen formerly
independent colleges into a single identifiable system, with its own Board of
Trustees and a Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a formula
that stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of resources and programs, the
California State Colleges sought to offer Californians quality higher education at
reasonable cost. Key to the success of the State Colleges was the decision to
implement a Master Plan adopted in 1960 that divided higher education into three
distinctly separate segments. The State Colleges were mandated to emphasize
undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University of California
campuses were to emphasize graduate education, and the Community Colleges
vocational training and college preparation.
The present California State University, starting from a base of fifteen campuses
and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to where it provides a wide variety of
innovative programs to more than 320,000 students on 22 campuses. It is the
largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the
strongest institutions of higher education in the country.
In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University
Historical Archives, to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its
establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been supported by the
Chancellor’s Office through the funding of a professional archivist.
The Archives currently houses a collection of materials from a variety of sources.
These include the Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private
individuals such as former Chancellor Glenn Dumke and former Trustee Paul
Spencer. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers as well as
official systemwide documents. As part of its collection policy, the Archives also
has a responsibility to gather individual recollections and oral histories of the
system.
Phase I of the CSU Oral History Project, conducted from 1986 to 1989, and
funded by the Chancellor’s Office, covered the formation and early years of CSU
through 32 interviews with participants within and without the system. These
interviews, housed at the CSU Archives, have proven useful to research into
iii
higher education in the 1950s and '60s. A major quality is their standardized
format, developed at the Oral History Program at CSU Fullerton.
Phase II is an ongoing oral history project that is decentralized but
administered by the CSU Archives. Its intent is to assure that the reminiscences
of retiring chancellors, principal staff members, Academic Senate chairs,
Student Association presidents, trustees, and local campus presidents be
recorded as closely as possible to their retirement date and that this be done
routinely as a regularized process. Phase II also seeks information on the
growth of the CSU during two mid-decades, 1964-85.
The project has three long-range purposes. First, it will help to increase interest
in the history and accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it
will be a tool in aiding the acquisition of additional materials concerning the
System now in private hands. Finally, it will create needed documentation for
understanding the System' s historical role in state and national education;
many issues it has confronted have become matters of national concern, such
as meeting the needs of a multicultural student body and finding adequate
resources in a time of scarcity. Oral history can provide background
information on these developments that is not available in bulletins, brochures,
and minutes.
Funding for the project is provided by the Office of the Chancellor, Dr. Charles
Reed. We thank the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also
acknowledge the pioneering work of the CSU Fullerton Oral History Program
in providing a model. Transcribing was performed by Suzanne Walter, who in
the process contributed many wise editorial suggestions. Mahnaz Ghaznavi
has been responsible for the publication coordination process.
Lawrence B. de Graaf Karen Jean Hunt
Judson A. Grenier CSU Archivist
Project Co-directors
MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Christopher Castañeda
Robert Cherny
Lawrence B. de Graaf
Lori Erdman
Kristie French
Donald R. Gerth
Judson A. Grenier
Gloria Lothrop
James E. Lyons
Robert Marshall
Ellis McCune
Sandra Parham
Ralph R. Pesqueira
Michael Reagan
Charles Reed
IV
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This interview of Dr. Robert Kully took place at the office of the California State
University Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association, of which he is executive director,
on the California State University, Northridge campus, on April 7, 1998. Topics include
Dr. Kully’s rise to the chair of the CSU Academic Senate, three years service in that role,
and appointment to the CSU Board of Trustees. Interviewer is Judson Grenier, professor
emeritus of history.
JG: We usually begin with some basic biographical information. Could you tell me a
little bit about where you were bom and reared?
RK: Well, I don’t think there’s anybody that I know who doesn’t know that I’m from
Nebraska.
JG: There is no place like that.
RK: There is no place like Nebraska, and even though I’ve been living in California
for over forty years, when I go back to visit family, people say, “Where are you
going?” I say, “I’m going back home.” And I think that’s tme of most
Nebraskans, and probably a lot of Iowans and Kansans as well. I don’t know
about people from Minnesota. I was bom in a town called Hastings, Nebraska.
At that time it was a small town of about twenty, twenty-five thousand. I went to
high school there during World War II, and before I graduated from high school I
had already been through my physical for military service, classifie d 1 A. I don’t
think I was sworn into the Army yet. We generally had the graduation at that
high school on Friday night, but the superintendent and the principal recognized
that many of us from that class were leaving the following Monday for the Army.
They wanted to give us at least a few days after we graduated, so they moved the
graduation to a Tuesday night. And the following Monday we were on the train,
and the next day we were sworn into the Army. So there wasn’t much time
between graduating from high school to do anything.
JG: When did you graduate, exactly?
RK: I graduated from high school in 1945, and three years ago went back for my high
school fiftieth reunion. It was a fairly good-sized crowd and we had a very nice
time. Enjoyed it.
KULLY 2
JG: What did your folks do for a living?
RK: My father had a business. He was in the metal business. He collected metals and
furs. The fur business was a big business in those days.
JG: It gets cold there.
RK: He died when I was fifteen. I had three brothers, one of whom was in a clothing
business in Grand Island, so he was out of the family business. That town is
about twenty-five miles away and was very close. He was my oldest brother.
The brother next to him decided in 1941 that he and some of his closest friends,
some of whom were in the National Guard, would volunteer—that was nine
months before the war started—and they’d get their one year of service over.
Well, of course, four years and nine months later, they were discharged. He was
overseas in the north Pacific. Then the brother next to me tried to keep the
business going. It was just difficult for him to do so, and just a little over a year
my father died, they sold the business, closed it down, and he and his wife
and daughter moved to California. So, in what had been a rather comfortable life
for me at the age of fourteen, with three brothers, two of whom were married and
with children, and a mother and a father and a business, a year later there was no
business, two of the brothers were gone, one was still in Grand Island, and I at
that time was a sophomore in high school. So, for three years, my mother and I
survived, and then I went in the Army.
JG: How long were you in the Army?
RK: About two years. A little less than two years.
JG: Where were you sent?
RK. Oh, I was stateside. I finished my basic training, and just as I was finishing my
basic training, the war ended, but they kept us in the military. We finished our
basic training and then they sent us to specialized areas. I ended up in the
mountain and winter warfare troops, training in Colorado Springs, climbing
mountains. Unfortunately, I was injured while climbing, and they wanted to give
me a medical discharge. I wouldn’t take it, I didn’t want it, so they kept me
around and put me in an office job. But I still climbed when I could. Then they
took us up for ski training, and I really wanted to do that, but my legs were such
that they sent me home immediately. So I got discharged almost toward the end
of the year in 1946.
JG: And you entered Hastings College the following January?
RK: Yes. In January I went to Hastings College. I finished in about three and a half
years because I went a couple of summers. I was going under the GI Bill;
KULLY 3
otherwise I could never have afforded Hastings College. I was very tempted to go
to University of Nebraska. I really wanted to go, but my mother was alone, and
she’d been alone for a long time, and I thought I would just stay in my hometown.
JG: It was a fairly small student body, wasn’t it?
RK: Well, while I was there a lot of the GIs were returning so it was just bursting at
the seams. I still recall that there was an article or headline in the local newspaper
that the Board of Trustees was threatening to resign en masse because the
president had suggested that they take the enrollment up to eight hundred. The
Trustees did not want, as they said, to turn Hastings College, which was a small
liberal arts college as it was intended to be, and still is—they did not want to turn
it into this big educational machine. Of course that was true all over the country,
where the schools were starting to expand. I don’t remember exactly what the
enrollment was, but last year for the first time, Hastings College took in over a
thousand students, and that was a major change. So in almost fifty years, they
increased enrollment by two hundred.
JG: That was, at least nominally, a Presbyterian college, wasn’t it?
RK Right. It is a Presbyterian college. They still had chapel and they still have fairly
close connections with the Presbyterian church. The students could be expelled
for drinking. There was no smoking, as I recall, on campus. But with GIs coming
back, they just had no choice. It was a matter of either expelling a third of the
student body, or permitting smoking in selected areas. Of course there was no
drinking on campus or at campus events. I don’t know what it’s like now, but
obviously most of the GIs belonged to the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the
American Legion and would go there on Saturday nights and drink and dance.
JG: Did you belong to any student organizations or fraternities?
RK: They did not have national fraternities. They had local fraternities, and everybody
who wanted to be in a fraternity was taken into a fraternity. You put down your
first and second choices, and you were in one of those fraternities. Fraternities
could select their first choices, but they had to take people who did not get into a
fraternity. I was very active in debate and participated in the forensics program
the three years I was there. My debate colleague our senior year, who had been a
Navy officer and was married and had a child, or two children, was the president
of the Associated Students, or student body.
JG: Now, after you graduated, you then were a teacher for two years?
RK: I taught high school for two years.
JG: How was that?
KULLY 4
RK: My basic preparation when I started in college was in prelaw, and my
undergraduate major, really, was in economics and business administration. But
then I was taking debate, and I really liked the debate coach and the speech
teachers, so I got more and more into debate and into speech. One day I went to
see my advisor, who was head of the economics area. He looked at all the speech
courses and fewer and fewer business courses on my schedule, and he said, “Well,
how come you just don’t major in speech?” And I thought, that’s not a bad idea!
So I stood up, picked up my papers, walked over to the speech department. But
by that time I practically had a major in economics and business administration,
and then I also got a second major in speech. In the meantime, I also got a
credential. At that time, and I think it’s probably still true, the core curriculum,
the general education program, was half of your education. It was two full years,
and it included traditional liberal arts and sciences, so that getting a major... was
only twenty-four semester units. The idea was not to produce professionals.
There were pre-med and pre-law and there was education, but the assumption was
that it was strictly a liberal arts college.
JG: So, armed with these many talents, you went to a town called York, right?
RK: I went to a small community called York, Nebraska, a town of about ten
thousand. A nice town, nice students, nice parents.. .everybody knew everybody.
But even in a small high school they had their cliques, and you had the rich kids
and then the not so rich kids, and you had the athletes, the boys’ group, and then
you had the outside group. But it was much closer there. No one really was
absolutely excluded from groups, because it wasn’t very large. I forget what the
enrollment was. But it was a nice school building. They had the mixture of some
young faculty and very old faculty. I think the students at that school got a very
good education. I was more familiar with the English faculty... No, that’s not
really true. I was familiar with everybody, but the people that I knew who taught
the sciences, who taught art, who taught English were very good, and I think the
students worked very hard.
JG: Those two years gave you certainly sympathy toward the kinds of things that high
school teachers have to face.
RK: Well, yes and no. Trying to compare the high school between 1950 and 1952 in a
fairly nice small farming community about fifty miles almost straight west of
Lincoln—Lincoln was the big city, and Omaha was a metropolis, of course—to
today’s school, especially inner-city urban schools, you just didn’t have the kind
of problems there. The talk of the school for years was that some student, who
was kind of a bully and roughneck, challenged a teacher. They stepped out the
door and the student took a swing at him, and the teacher did not hit the student
but took the student under control. That was the big event for years after that. So
it really was quite a different school.
KULLY 5
JG: What then turned your attention to [University of] Oregon?
RK: I had decided to get a credential when I was in college, because I got calls from
both the local high school, where I had debated as a high school student, and at
the local Catholic school, because the Catholic school in town wanted to start a
debate program. So I assisted, just because I enjoyed it, the high school debate
coach, because I knew him and he was my old coach. Then I worked with the
priest from the local Catholic high school. I enjoyed both of them very much, and
I got to be really quite good friends with the priest. That’s when I decided I
would get a credential. And my real question was: Did I really want to go into
law school, or did I want to stay in teaching? After two years at the high school,
my family, especially my mother, encouraged me to make a decision to either go
to law school, or if I was going to stay in teaching, not to stay in high school
teaching.
I decided I wanted to stay in teaching, and so I wrote to the University of
Oregon...I knew some faculty names there. Also, I went to the University of
Nebraska for an interview. I just didn’t feel comfortable with the people that I
met there. But the letters and the encouragement I got from Oregon were very
strong, and I’d never been to Oregon. It had a nice ring to it. I had a friend that
had gone there—not in communication or speech, in another area—and really
liked it. So they offered me a teaching assistantship to help coach the debate
team, and I decided to go there. I went the first summer, and the following
summer I finished my master’s. So I was there a year and two summers. They
did not have a Ph.D. in speech at that time, but you could get an Ed.D. in speech
communications.
I was really dragging my feet finishing the thesis. My advisor, Robert
Clark, who was then a speech professor, quite well-know nationally, and also the
associate dean of the college that the department was in, knew I was doing it. I
loved being in Oregon, I loved the school, I enjoyed the area around there very
much, it was beautiful. A lady I was seeing had been runner-up to Miss Oregon
the year before she came to Oregon, and I had a lot of friends there. There was a
fraternity that a lot of my friends belonged to, Sigma Alpha Mu. It was at that
time a predominately Jewish fraternity, and so I was just going to live in the
house. I mean I was just going to live with them, but they said, “Why don’t you
join?” So I did, and immediately got a houseful of, quote, “brothers.” So I had a
lot of friends, and really did enjoy it. At the national convention of the Speech
Communication Association, which is held in December, my advisor, quite
without my knowledge or permission, talked to a number of his friends about my
going on for a Ph.D. When he came back he told me, “Here are your choices.
You write to each of them and we’ll see what you get.” The choices were Iowa,
Illinois, and Washington University, which had very good programs, and one or
two others—four or five schools. So I wrote them, and I got assistantships offers
from all of them. The schools that had the strongest speech programs in the
KULLY 6
country at that time were Iowa and Illinois, and the response I got from Illinois
was much more supportive than from Iowa, so I went to Illinois.
JG: You did your master’s thesis on George Norris.
RK: Yes.
JG: You analyzed his rhetoric and his style.
RK: Yeah, at a very specific time. That had to do with the League of Nations.
JG: Right. So George Norris was, or course, another Nebraska senator.
RK: Oh yes, that was one of the reasons I got interested in it. Someone else had done
a master’s thesis on him, but in a completely different area, and I didn’t think it
was very good, almost a puff piece. Norris’s opposition to the League of Nations
had always interested me, even when I was in high school. I can remember
Norris coming to Hastings and speaking when he was running for reelection. I
was very young, but I still remembered it. And he was very popular. You know,
he switched parties, became an Independent later. I think I was in college when
he was defeated, and that was just a shock to a lot of people. But he’d been in
Congress a long time. At Oregon, speech was my major field, but I took a minor
in political science and studied with some really outstanding people. I don’t know
if you know the name William Appleman Williams.
JG: Oh, sure.
RK: He was an historian rather than a political scientist, but I worked with him, took
courses from him, and he was at that time working in some areas of importance to
me. He was beyond working on Russian-American relations. He was interested
in the League of Nations period and collecting a lot of information. He invited
me to go through all the papers that he collected in his office.
JG: Oh, that was very lucky.
RK: So, all of this together, the political science background and the speech
background, being a Nebraskan, having heard Norris, and having the opportunity
to be able to write directly to people still living, many from Hastings, who had
been ver
Dr. Barbara R. Hatton, Interviewed by Loretta Parham, September 24, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Barbara R. Hatton, President, South Carolina State University 1992-1995; President, Knoxville College 1997-2005
Dr. Joseph B. Johnson, Interviewed by Loretta Parham, September 17, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Joseph B. Johnson, President, Grambling State University 1997-1991; President, Talladega College 1991-1998
Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Interviewed by Loretta Parham, June 14, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, President, Spelman College 1987-1997; President, Bennett College 2002-2007
Dr. Thomas W. Cole Jr., Interviewed by Loretta Parham, August 19, 2012
No full textVideo interviews with a complementing monograph providing reflections of former presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities discussing leadership, mission, challenges, successes, and issues of race and education. Interviewer: Loretta Parham, CEO & Library Director, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Interviewee: Dr. Thomas W.Cole Jr. President, West Virginia State College 1982-1986; President, Clark Atlanta University 1989-2002; Interim President, Interdenominational Theological Center 2009-2010
Interview with Alan Pisarski, January 2015
No full textThis document contains the content of an oral history interview and is part of a series of interviews conducted by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC). These interviews are personal, experiential, and interpretative, reflecting the memories and associations of individuals. All reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, but statements should not be interpreted as facts endorsed by Rutgers University, the Edward J. Bloustein School, or VTC. The associated website also contains links to other resources, but does not endorse or guarantee their content
Interview with Martin Robins, October 2012
No full textThis document contains the content of an oral history interview and is part of a series of inter-views conducted by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC). These interviews are personal, experiential, and interpretative, reflecting the memories and associations of individuals. All reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, but statements should not be interpreted as facts endorsed by Rutgers University, the Edward J. Bloustein School, or VTC. The associated website also contains links to other resources, but does not endorse or guarantee their content.Transcrip
