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Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University
Paul Black Interview
July 29, 2008
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Brady Crytzer
Transcribed by Angela Rimmel
Proofread and edited by Morgan Bonekovic and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Paul Black
BC: Today is Tuesday July 29th, it is 1:35 p.m. and I am Brady Crytzer.
PB: My name is Paul Black. I‘m a retired faculty member, I‘ve been retired for five years—
retired in ‗03. [I] came to Slippery Rock in 1972, just as the collective bargaining agreement
came into operation. I also was here as a student from 1960 to 1963. So I bring two perspectives
to this interview, that of a student and that of a faculty member.
BC: Okay, you mentioned your two perspectives. Could you talk [in] a little more detail about
your affiliation—starting from your time as a student and then into a faculty member—with the
university?
PB: Well in 1960 I came as a transfer student from Duquesne University, graduated in January of
‗63. [Pause] we basically only had one men‘s dorm: that was Patterson. It was new and we really
liked it. It was divided into two wings, and a fellow by the name of Herb McGibney was the
dean of students—I mean the dean of men. He may have become the dean of students, I don‘t
know, but the female students were housed in North Hall and there was a dean of women and I
think that was Lois Harner. I came as an education major; social studies and English were my
two certification areas. My preference was social studies, and particularly history and political
science.
I left Slippery Rock in ‘63. I returned as a faculty member in 1972 and what a pleasant
experience that was. Some of my former professors were still on the faculty, and the
professionalism with which they greeted me was just overwhelming. And these were professors
from a number of departments who became my colleagues and have since retired, and here I am
in their shoes, retired after thirty-one years on the faculty. I was a professor in secondary
education. Three different times I was chair of the Department of Secondary Education, and I
think that‘s it.
BC: Okay. Obviously we have listed the different periods: teacher‘s college and state college . . .
do you remember anything about the transition periods, you know any particular changes?
PB: [Pause] not really. Even though I taught this in my history of education class: the
demarcations of when Slippery Rock moved from a state teachers college to a state college to a
state university. It was a state college when I was here as an undergraduate. When I returned in
1972 it was still a state college, and then we became a university, I believe in the 1980s, about
mid ‗80s, somewhere around ‗83 to ‗84. As a faculty member we didn‘t notice much of a
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transition, expect that it better reflected the mission of the college slash university. But graduate
programs didn‘t come to Slippery Rock until after I left in 1963. I think one of my colleagues,
Bev Lewis, was one of the first recipients of a graduate degree from Slippery Rock and I think
that was in ‘64 or ‘65. But I was teaching in the public schools at that time.
BC: If they were available when you were here do you think you would‘ve continued into that or
would you have gone and taught regardless?
PB: No, I wanted to teach and I graduated at half year, and was lucky enough to get a teaching
position for a half year, and then I switched school districts and I began to pursue my master‘s
degree at Duquesne University.
BC: Okay. The department you were hired into, can you talk about some of the changes . . . ?
PB: Oh yes. I was hired into Secondary Ed[ucation] and the department was very, very small at
the time. One of my colleges was Dr. Henry Lenz who was also in the Secondary Ed Department
along with Dr. Bill McKay, who became chair of the department. The Secondary Ed Department
was so small when I came that much of it was housed in the dean‘s office under Narciso
Gamberoni. And when the collective bargaining agreement came into force administrators and
faculty were separated, so Dr. Gamberoni became associate dean in the College of Education,
and Bill McKay was elected as chair of Secondary Ed. I believe there were about eight of us in
the department at the time.
Elementary Ed was maybe three times the size of our department and then during my ten years,
Dean Walker—Wayne Walker—decided to merge the two departments along with Library
Science and we formed a Department of Curriculum and Instruction. That was in the eighties and
I chaired that department, but I wasn‘t the first chair of the combined department. And then in
the ‗nineties we again separated. By that time Library Science had become defunct as a
department and those faculty members were absorbed into the Elementary and Secondary
[Education] departments.
BC: Okay. You mentioned that Secondary [Education] was very small, now I think Secondary
Ed/History is probably the biggest group of majors we have on campus. Do you remember the
steps that made that progression happen from very small to the biggest?
PB: Well there‘s a long tradition. I was a secondary ed/social studies major; English was my
minor when I was a student here in the ‗60s. So it has a long, a long tradition, and some of the
faculty members that I had were Duncan and Frasier and Halt and Moore, and some of those
professors. And so the Secondary Ed Department just kind of evolved and there wasn‘t one
impetus that created the influx of majors in social studies in English. But basically I taught a
Secondary Methods class to future social studies teachers briefly and Dr. Lenz was the principal
individual doing that. And then following Dr. McKay‘s retirement, I began to teach English
Methods to secondary students.
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BC: Could you talk about the buildings that you worked in or lived in on campus and kind of
what you thought?
PB: Well when I came back as a faculty member I moved into McKay Education Building and
had a number of offices in that building. When I was a student I just remember it as a functioning
elementary school as part of the school district and not necessarily as part of the campus. Most of
my classes were in West Hall and in Old Main. And Old Main was a thriving classroom
building; professors had their offices in the small—what we would now call closets almost, and
the West Hall and Miller Auditorium. So there weren‘t that many classroom buildings per se.
The whole lower campus was just starting to be built and I never had any classes in any of the . .
. in Vincent or Morrow Field House.
BC: Okay. As a student we have first impressions of the university. What did you think when
you first came as a student as compared to . . . ?
PB: Well it was just such a small place. We only had about fifteen-hundred students total. We
probably only had six to seven hundred on campus. As I said the female students were in North
Hall, the males were in Patterson. The art building was there as I remember it and they were just
completing Rhoads and the . . . and I did have a couple of classes in the Behavioral Science
Building too. So that was the range of the campus; anything below the N. Kerr Thompson
Stadium really was nonexistent.
BC: Did you ever think that when you graduated that you would actually eventually come back
to work here?
PB: Oh no, [laughs] it was the farthest thing from my mind. I was a typical undergraduate
student, I was never comin‘ back. I was glad to get out, I was glad to move on to my chosen
career, and . . . first of all when I came back, the time period between 1963 and 1972, it was like
coming back into a new world because the whole lower campus was developing; many buildings
had been built: Spotts, Eisenberg, Vincent, Morrow Field House . . . . [I] couldn‘t believe the size
of the place and the number of thousands of students that we had at the time. I think it was
around four or five thousand students, maybe not quite that high.
It was a different place, and the size of the faculty, the fact that the faculty didn‘t have a lot of
connections to the town; it was more of a university atmosphere than I had been used to in my
master‘s and doctoral programs where I went to larger universities. So [pause] it was indeed a
revelation and I think I was thankful that some of the faculty members that I had as professors
hadn‘t retired because they were the link, they were the bridge between me as a new faculty
member and the huge institution that Slippery Rock has become.
BC: Do you remember the process when you first heard about the opening, and was that
something you jumped on because . . . ?
PB: Well that was interesting, it actually has a . . . how I heard about the job was that I called the
chair of the History Department, Dr. Duncan. I was teaching at the University of Akron in
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Akron, Ohio, and tragically in May of 1971 my father passed instantly—he just dropped dead
right in the kitchen of my parent‘s home, and I was finishing the semester (we were on quarters
at the University of Akron) and my mother really wanted me to come back. And so I thought of
Slippery Rock, obviously being the graduate, and I called Dr. Duncan and I said, you know, ―Are
there any openings?‖ I felt an obligation to complete the next year at the University of Akron
where I was under contract as an assistant professor. So he said, ―Well, why don‘t you call Dr.
Gamberoni, I think he‘s looking for someone in history and philosophy of education and we have
such a course here,‖ and so I called Dr. Gamberoni and the rest is history.
What was most interesting as a faculty member when I came: I taught only night classes, and in
four different locations each night of the week. Monday through Thursday I was in a different
location and I taught only one class on campus and three were off campus because at that time
student teachers had to take history and philosophy of education as part of their student teaching
semester. So we, so I taught and got to know about the different school districts and the buildings
that I taught in off campus. So I felt like an itinerant teacher . . . but I really liked it and got to
know the students and found that Slippery Rock‘s still the same. The best thing about Slippery
Rock [is] the students that come here and the camaraderie and the family atmosphere that we
create here. And I was so glad to be a part of it, and I really think that the fact that I was a former
student helped me in relating to the students that I taught.
BC: Okay. You mentioned [the] positions you held. Can you talk about some of the activities in
terms of committees, things like that you were involved in?
PB: Well faculty members and committees . . . most of those thoughts are not positive [laughs]
because the committee work is, you know, just incredible, the amount of time that you put in, but
necessary time. It also documents the need for full time faculty members, because part time
faculty members really can‘t do a lot of committee work because they have other obligations.
But I was on some fun committees; some involving the student government, where I was the
faculty liaison to some of the committees. The Greek God and Goddess Committee was
interesting; and also the Volleyball Club was formed.
But what you need to understand is this: you can‘t get money, if you‘re a student and you‘re in a
student organization, you can‘t get money from the Student Government Association unless you
have a faculty representative, and it legitimizes your student activity. So some of those things,
fortunately I never had to sit on the disciplinary board or other aspects of student government.
But most of my committee work was obviously as a faculty member and I probably served on
every committee in the department, chaired most of them, or many of them I should say, and
that‘s really where a lot of the work is done. Everything from hiring to curriculum, to [pause]
strategic goals and things like that that the department wants to achieve. Some with some service
with a lot of success and some with a lot of frustration.
BC: On that note, what do you consider your biggest accomplishments at the university?
PB: Staying power [laughs]! The thing is I that I have to honestly say I never thought of it as a
job, I always thought of it as a career choice and I think that‘s one of the things that distinguishes
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a professional, and having a professional career is a commitment, you know, that you make
personally to the, to your students and to the institution. And I think two or three things: one is
that I really cherished being an advisor to students, and I know not all faculty members like that
role but I received a number of awards from student government as advisor of the year and
advisor within the College of Education. So I was recognized for that and I think I offered some
real good advice, in particular to students and particularly the ability to go through the maze of
curricular choices and make sure that they kept their eye on the prize. So that was one of the
things.
Obviously to chair the department and see it grow, build a graduate program. One of the fine
additions that we had to the faculty was Dr. Lehman who really spearheaded a lot of our graduate
work in science and math, and we‘ve been able since to extend that to social studies and English.
So the department has really grown and now thanks to Dean [Jay] Hertzog, we have a principals
program in the College of Education and I was able to become an evaluator for secondary school
principals. So anyway they researched some things that I feel very, very strongly about, and the
obvious recognition that I received for the various benchmarks for teaching here and being a
faculty member. And I really enjoyed being on university committees. I was on everything from
promotion to academic affairs, which is basically curriculum, and I enjoyed seeing that process,
the university-wide committees and helping with the governance of the institution.
BC: Okay. From a teaching standpoint, you mentioned some of the things you enjoyed about it.
Do you have any specific best or worst moments or situations you can remember?
PB: No, but I have a number of stories. And the thing is that when you see students who you had
in class and obviously their growth and their professionalism, and following them out into the
schools through field experience and student teaching, and then seeing how they professionally
have grown into various positions within the profession and some outside. You know, I always
said to the students, ―You have a college degree; now go do something with it, and do something
that you like to do.‖ But I‘ve had students who have become millionaires by winning the lottery,
and the young lady who did that was teaching down in Beaver Falls School District, and I think
[she] and [her] husband won sixty-eight million dollars, and I haven‘t seen a penny of that, so
apparently I didn‘t create a great influence [laughs] on her, [because] she didn‘t remember me.
But the thing is that one of the nicest things that always happened is that I had a number of
colleagues who I taught with in the public schools and knew from the University of Pittsburgh
and Duquesne University, and seeing their careers move in a different direction than mine and
yet always coming back to Slippery Rock ‗cause I had known them and gone to school with
them as undergraduates and they in turn would mentor many of our students. And I can think of
a number of superintendents and principals and so forth. But students are, they‘re just the
lifeblood of any higher ed[ucation] institution, and you remember a hundred stories, you know.
One of the things I used to always say, that as students used to come into my office and I just had
this series of bookshelves and so forth and with books, they‘d always ask questions like this,
―Dr. Black, have you read any of these books?‖ And I would say, ―Well how do you think they
got there?‖ I said, ―There‘s at least one person who has read them in here.‖ I said, ―Well do you
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have a particular interest?‖ and they might go and I would let the students borrow the books and
they would say, ―Don‘t you have a sign-out sheet, how do you know that you‘re gonna get these
books back?‖ I said ―Well, some of you will bring them back, some won‘t, but remember to
leave them to me in your will; but really don‘t worry about that because I‘ll be long gone before
you.‖ So anyway, but creating that type of environment: curiosity, willingness to learn, that‘s
what being a professor is all about in the higher ed institution. And I keep in touch with some of
the students and you never know who you‘ll keep in touch with you know, because they have to
take some initiative. And some of them were just crazy when you had them as a student and
they‘re still crazy after all these years. That‘s a line from an old song, so anyway . . . .
BC: Okay, leaders on campus? In terms of presidents, or deans, things like that?
PB: Well, when I was a student [Dr.] Weisenfluh was the president, and we didn‘t know much
about him. He wasn‘t very visible even though the campus was extremely small, and then he
kind of disappeared right after I graduated. I remember the longest conversation I had with him
was when I graduated. I graduated at mid-year in January and he had a couple lines because I
had distinguished myself as a student and so forth but he wasn‘t very visible.
And then when I came back we had the old Syracuse University offensive lineman as president.
And the story was that he had been on the offensive line with Jimmy Brown—Jim Brown. [He]
was running for Syracuse—the great NFL back and mediocre to unskilled actor. So anyway, [Dr.
Albert] Watrel, and he wasn‘t that visible either but I was a young faculty member and he had
his staff of people who were administrative aides to him. So basically he might have been very
visible. I know his wife was involved in a number of projects; I think her name might have been
Carol, and she was well-liked among the faculty.
But stories are all what this is about: so I look out my window of [pause] McKay Education
Building at three o‘clock on a Friday afternoon and there must‘ve been fifteen state police cars.
And they ring the building, Old Main, and this is when he was disposed, and [pause] he was
banned from his office ands he wasn‘t able to get into his office. And then the Slippery Rock
legends basically came forth, and that is that no president had ever left Slippery Rock willingly
of their own volition. We never had a female president, so it was a ―he,‖ and they had never left
on their own volition and naturally that‘s not true since. But Slippery Rock presidents were
always getting fired for a number of reasons, either political or financial malfeasance or
something like that.
So anyway, Watrel came, was [deposed] by the governor [and] removed from his position. And
then we had an interim, Dr. [James] Roberts, the vice president for academic affairs served as
president for a while, maybe a year or so, and then the Board of Trustees or maybe the powersthat-be in Harrisburg moved the Park in here from Mansfield. And Dr. Larry [Lawrence] Park
came in, and a very nice guy, wound up playing in the Monday night golf league. I wound up
playing a match or two with him, and he was a pretty decent golfer and I‘m a very mediocre
golfer so anyway . . . .
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But the long and the short of it is we really didn‘t have a president after Watrel left. And the
faculty decided they would band together collectively and make sure the institution was held
together, moved on, everything as far as the students were concerned you know, seemed to be
kosher. But there was a lot of internal fighting and bickering. Our understanding was that part of
the powers-that-be in Harrisburg wanted Park out of Mansfield and they sent him here, and
whether that was true or not . . . . And so then came Herb Reinhard.
And if you talk about a guy who should‘ve never been a president of [a] university, that was
Reinhard. He came from Florida and his idea of management was dictatorial. And no aspersions
to his German ancestry but somewhere along he must‘ve had strong Prussian strains. So anyway,
he thought he could fire faculty when he felt like it. And he created a terrible environment for the
faculty but for the community and for public relations he was hell-bent on building the Slippery
Rock image. He was not an academic, he basically had come through the student personnel route
into higher education and he was at one of the big Florida schools, it might‘ve been Florida
State.
But anyway, while the faculty were at odds with Reinhard, the community loved him. He was
the one that brought in the McDonald‘s or so he claimed, and he tried to build the community.
He was very interested in PR [public relations]. And he decided because there was an Allegheny
Club, as the story goes—there was an Allegheny Club at Three Rivers Stadium—that he was
going to have one at our new football field. And so in quotes the ―box‖ over at the, on the other
side of where the stands are at our football stadium, he helped build. And it‘s like the old Johnny
Cash song you know, taking a part out every weekend type of thing. ["One Piece at a Time" by
Wayne Kemp, recorded by Johnny Cash in 1976]. And he apparently got into some violation of
contracts in the bidding process and so forth, and it turned out to be his undoing. And he helped
fulfill again the legend or the myth, whatever you wanna call it, that Slippery Rock presidents
never retire. So the faculty was not sorry to see him go, and he went on to another presidency
and I believe it was in Kentucky if I‘m not mistaken.
There‘s a great story that I had with Dr. Reinhard: I was chair of Secondary Ed – no I was chair
of Curriculum and Instruction I think at the time, and he wanted something on his desk by
Monday. And as I tend to procrastinate . . . . So it was a recommendation for a faculty member to
receive an award. I thought it was very meritorious [and] I wanted to make sure that it got to
him. And I think he had set an artificial deadline of either Friday or Saturday, and my
recommendation arrived on Monday, Monday morning. And he calls me at home, and he says,
―Dr. Black, I asked that these recommendations and yours in particular be on my desk either
Friday or Saturday.‖ And I said, ―Well Dr. Reinhard, it‘s on your desk now as we talk.‖ And he
said, ―Yes, but it wasn‘t here when I arrived this morning; mail didn‘t come till about ninethirty.‖ And I said, ―Oh well, you know Dr. Reinhard, maybe you ought to institute Saturday
mail delivery.‖ Well that gives you an example of the angst, if you will, between certain faculty
members and Dr. Reinhard. So we weren‘t sad you know – we didn‘t shed a tear when he left.
And then Dr. [Robert] Aebersold: finer individual you couldn‘t have met. Bob was just great and
we were so surprised as faculty members as he rose through the ranks from department chair
over in PE [Physical Education] to coming over as vice president for Academic Affairs, and we
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were so glad that one of our own had risen to [the] presidency. And Dr. Aebersold understood
how to deal with faculty members and he understood what the mission of the university was.
And even though the students at times always have a little rebellion in them and things that they
wanna do or see that may not have happened, he served as a very successful president and as we
all know, retired. When he chose to retire and help break the long line of nobody retires from
Slippery Rock unless they—there‘s some reason so.
And then [Dr. G.] Warren Smith came in, and then he was president for a while. Got along with
him very well and enjoyed him, as I do [Dr.] Robert Smith. So that was the interesting thing
from the faculty perspective when we had President [G. Warren] Smith and Vice President of
Academic Affairs [Robert] Smith who is now our current president. And I think the three of
them really helped the institution build and develop and so forth, and I feel very good about my
alma mater and about the university that granted me emeritus status.
BC: Do you have any events that you can remember on campus, whether they be national or
more local that stand out to you?
PB: Yes. [Pause] I remember when Jimmy Carter was running for president and Andrew Young
came. Andrew Young I think at the time may have been the mayor of Atlanta and he had
experience in the cabinet and so forth, and he goes back to the days of Martin Luther King. That
was kind of a highlight and event that you remember.
I‘m sure there‘s a number of other things that faculty always tend to remember, some things that
students don‘t remember. And the whole atmosphere of the faculty and having our own dining
area over in North Hall was just wonderful, and I think it still continues today and bringing
faculty in from various parts of the campus. The lower campus versus the upper campus: that‘s
the perspective among the faculty that not everybody will acknowledge. If you‘re in the upper
campus, meaning around Old Main, the faculty of the lower campus where the majority of
faculty are, and the majority of liberal arts departments are that tend to be a little more liberal,
and a little more rebellious in their thinking and in their actions. When you‘re a faculty member
and your offices are in the upper campus they tend to think of you as the administration, even
though you aren‘t, because you‘re so close to Old Main. And the lower campus is really where
the action is and the students are and faculty, you know, teach and reside as far as their offices
are concerned. And in a lot of ways where the action is because of the student government and
student union and so forth.
So you have that kind of artificial divide between the lower campus and the upper campus which
I think is interesting from a faculty perspective; students [are] not aware of it but the faculty live
here. You know, they live in the lower end of campus either in the dorms that they‘ve since
bulldozed, [pause] and the Rock Apartments that they built and so forth. So that‘s one of the
biggest things you hear from people, like [people] that I stay in touch with [from] when I was a
student here, and you know they say, ―I can‘t believe how the place has grown and how big it is‖
and so forth.
[Pause] I think one of the things that‘s really helped Slippery Rock, two events: one is the whole
emphasis on diversity. Black History Month, the whole black cultural [pause] affairs offices and
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so forth have really helped. And then the other is the International Dinner and bringing all
peoples, you know, students from different backgrounds together and I think that basically really
helps create an atmosphere here.
There‘s just so much more to do – I know the students today don‘t believe that – there‘s just so
much more to do as a student here at Slippery Rock [pause] in the first decade of the twenty-first
century than there was when we were here in the ‗60s. I mean there was nothing. And we were
always trying to find cars . . . .
You asked me for interesting events when I was a student: one of the biggest things was the
Steelers [football team] came to train here; they spent a summer here just as they are at St.
Vincent‘s [College] as we speak now. But they came to Slippery Rock. They were going to
always . . . . And the size of the players such as ―Big Daddy‖ Lipscomb and George Tarasovic
and so forth, and Bobby Layne and a number of these people have become Hall-of-Famers. And
they came up that summer and I was here as a student . . . and [they] just took the place by storm
and [pause] created an experience probably that if I had been Dr. Lowry and some of the other
administrators at the time . . . they probably were so glad to get rid of them. But anyway, that
was a real interesting experience and you know, for the guys seeing professional athletes [pause]
and for the gals seeing a different type of grown men in their mid- to late twenties and into their
thirties and so forth . . . so that was an interesting story that came out of summer school in the
summer of ‗61 or ‗62 and I don‘t know which, or maybe even ‗60.
BC: Okay. What do you miss about being here at SRU?
PB: Well obviously the students. I love teaching – I still do – I‘ve been retired five years. I mean,
this became my second home. [Pause] but what has happened to being a faculty member these
days—there‘s many things you don‘t miss. You know, you don‘t miss the tons of paperwork, the
committees, the committee work, all the things that take away from teaching.
I do miss the advising, I still do some advising to the sons and daughters of friends of mine who
are going away to college and that type of thing, and then I have two children of my own and so
was able to offer advice, but when you offer advice to your children its like offering no advice at
all. And I always try to keep in mind what advice is: it‘s free, cheap, and you can ignore it. But
the students—I really miss the students and I miss a number of my colleagues who obviously
have become lifelong friends.
BC: Do you have any words of wisdom for current or future Rock community members?
PB: No . . . but come to learn, come to enjoy, come to grow. It‘s an incubation period and it‘s
going to be one of the best times of your life even though you think it isn‘t when you‘re here.
You know you come, you spend x number of years and then you‘re off to do whatever and then
when you read the alumni magazine, The Rock you get to see what a number of people have
done. Naturally my classmates . . . when I was an undergraduate practically everybody went into
education and today people go into everything.
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And it‘s refreshing how widely [beloved] Slippery Rock is out there in the world, you know, and
in our community. People who went here as undergraduates still love the place, still like to come
back and have good memories. And one of the things that I can add as a faculty member is there
were a number of my classmates who went on to teach in higher education at different
institutions. Like two I can remember: one I grew up with in my hometown who wound up
teaching at Bloomsburg [University of Pennsylvania], and one who was a classmate here wound
up being an administrator and a teacher at our sister school California [University of
Pennsylvania]. And when I talk to them they always talk about that Rock identity even though
they spent a career at some of our sister institutions. So it grabs you, and when it grabs you it‘s a
part of your life. It‘s like returning to your hometown and some of those memories that you were
so glad to get away from, and here you are cherishing them in a number of ways.
BC: We like to close with this one: how would you like to be remembered?
PB: Personally?
BC: M-hmm.
PB: Well I don‘t know how to answer that. I‘d like to be remembered as an undergraduate who
came and learned a lot, took academics seriously. I was very much of an athletic type when I
came here and as I like to say: when I came here I had athlete‘s feet and when I left I had jock
itch. So the thing is that I became less and less of a jock and I had a very strong athletic
background, so I turned to academics and never regretted it. And still I am a big sports
enthusiast.
And then as a faculty member: someone who gave his best to his students, created a leaning
environment for them. And in some ways every student‘s different – what they take out of your
class. And particularly my advisees . . . I hope they‘re doing well, whether they listened to my
advice or not [laughs].
But basically you know I‘ll probably be remembered as a faculty member in secondary education
here at Slippery Rock and I don‘t know if I‘ve made that great a mark. I sure have in terms of
carrying Slippery Rock‘s message to the state and to the national [level]. I was teacher educator
of the year for our statewide organization, the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher
Educators, in the year 2001. And then we have a National Association of Teacher Educators and
I‘ve received a number of awards and honors from that association. But that‘s all a tribute to
Slippery Rock, because if I didn‘t have the base as a faculty member at Slippery Rock I couldn‘t
have gained those recognitions at either the state or the national level. So I think that‘s about it.
BC: Alright, well Dr. Black thank you very much for coming in.
PB: My pleasure.
BC: If you ever need to come in we‘d be more than happy to have you.
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PB: Okay great, and if you have any follow up I‘d be glad to participate.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Paul Black Interview
July 29, 2008
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Brady Crytzer
Transcribed by Angela Rimmel
Proofread and edited by Morgan Bonekovic and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Paul Black
BC: Today is Tuesday July 29th, it is 1:35 p.m. and I am Brady Crytzer.
PB: My name is Paul Black. I‘m a retired faculty member, I‘ve been retired for five years—
retired in ‗03. [I] came to Slippery Rock in 1972, just as the collective bargaining agreement
came into operation. I also was here as a student from 1960 to 1963. So I bring two perspectives
to this interview, that of a student and that of a faculty member.
BC: Okay, you mentioned your two perspectives. Could you talk [in] a little more detail about
your affiliation—starting from your time as a student and then into a faculty member—with the
university?
PB: Well in 1960 I came as a transfer student from Duquesne University, graduated in January of
‗63. [Pause] we basically only had one men‘s dorm: that was Patterson. It was new and we really
liked it. It was divided into two wings, and a fellow by the name of Herb McGibney was the
dean of students—I mean the dean of men. He may have become the dean of students, I don‘t
know, but the female students were housed in North Hall and there was a dean of women and I
think that was Lois Harner. I came as an education major; social studies and English were my
two certification areas. My preference was social studies, and particularly history and political
science.
I left Slippery Rock in ‘63. I returned as a faculty member in 1972 and what a pleasant
experience that was. Some of my former professors were still on the faculty, and the
professionalism with which they greeted me was just overwhelming. And these were professors
from a number of departments who became my colleagues and have since retired, and here I am
in their shoes, retired after thirty-one years on the faculty. I was a professor in secondary
education. Three different times I was chair of the Department of Secondary Education, and I
think that‘s it.
BC: Okay. Obviously we have listed the different periods: teacher‘s college and state college . . .
do you remember anything about the transition periods, you know any particular changes?
PB: [Pause] not really. Even though I taught this in my history of education class: the
demarcations of when Slippery Rock moved from a state teachers college to a state college to a
state university. It was a state college when I was here as an undergraduate. When I returned in
1972 it was still a state college, and then we became a university, I believe in the 1980s, about
mid ‗80s, somewhere around ‗83 to ‗84. As a faculty member we didn‘t notice much of a
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transition, expect that it better reflected the mission of the college slash university. But graduate
programs didn‘t come to Slippery Rock until after I left in 1963. I think one of my colleagues,
Bev Lewis, was one of the first recipients of a graduate degree from Slippery Rock and I think
that was in ‘64 or ‘65. But I was teaching in the public schools at that time.
BC: If they were available when you were here do you think you would‘ve continued into that or
would you have gone and taught regardless?
PB: No, I wanted to teach and I graduated at half year, and was lucky enough to get a teaching
position for a half year, and then I switched school districts and I began to pursue my master‘s
degree at Duquesne University.
BC: Okay. The department you were hired into, can you talk about some of the changes . . . ?
PB: Oh yes. I was hired into Secondary Ed[ucation] and the department was very, very small at
the time. One of my colleges was Dr. Henry Lenz who was also in the Secondary Ed Department
along with Dr. Bill McKay, who became chair of the department. The Secondary Ed Department
was so small when I came that much of it was housed in the dean‘s office under Narciso
Gamberoni. And when the collective bargaining agreement came into force administrators and
faculty were separated, so Dr. Gamberoni became associate dean in the College of Education,
and Bill McKay was elected as chair of Secondary Ed. I believe there were about eight of us in
the department at the time.
Elementary Ed was maybe three times the size of our department and then during my ten years,
Dean Walker—Wayne Walker—decided to merge the two departments along with Library
Science and we formed a Department of Curriculum and Instruction. That was in the eighties and
I chaired that department, but I wasn‘t the first chair of the combined department. And then in
the ‗nineties we again separated. By that time Library Science had become defunct as a
department and those faculty members were absorbed into the Elementary and Secondary
[Education] departments.
BC: Okay. You mentioned that Secondary [Education] was very small, now I think Secondary
Ed/History is probably the biggest group of majors we have on campus. Do you remember the
steps that made that progression happen from very small to the biggest?
PB: Well there‘s a long tradition. I was a secondary ed/social studies major; English was my
minor when I was a student here in the ‗60s. So it has a long, a long tradition, and some of the
faculty members that I had were Duncan and Frasier and Halt and Moore, and some of those
professors. And so the Secondary Ed Department just kind of evolved and there wasn‘t one
impetus that created the influx of majors in social studies in English. But basically I taught a
Secondary Methods class to future social studies teachers briefly and Dr. Lenz was the principal
individual doing that. And then following Dr. McKay‘s retirement, I began to teach English
Methods to secondary students.
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BC: Could you talk about the buildings that you worked in or lived in on campus and kind of
what you thought?
PB: Well when I came back as a faculty member I moved into McKay Education Building and
had a number of offices in that building. When I was a student I just remember it as a functioning
elementary school as part of the school district and not necessarily as part of the campus. Most of
my classes were in West Hall and in Old Main. And Old Main was a thriving classroom
building; professors had their offices in the small—what we would now call closets almost, and
the West Hall and Miller Auditorium. So there weren‘t that many classroom buildings per se.
The whole lower campus was just starting to be built and I never had any classes in any of the . .
. in Vincent or Morrow Field House.
BC: Okay. As a student we have first impressions of the university. What did you think when
you first came as a student as compared to . . . ?
PB: Well it was just such a small place. We only had about fifteen-hundred students total. We
probably only had six to seven hundred on campus. As I said the female students were in North
Hall, the males were in Patterson. The art building was there as I remember it and they were just
completing Rhoads and the . . . and I did have a couple of classes in the Behavioral Science
Building too. So that was the range of the campus; anything below the N. Kerr Thompson
Stadium really was nonexistent.
BC: Did you ever think that when you graduated that you would actually eventually come back
to work here?
PB: Oh no, [laughs] it was the farthest thing from my mind. I was a typical undergraduate
student, I was never comin‘ back. I was glad to get out, I was glad to move on to my chosen
career, and . . . first of all when I came back, the time period between 1963 and 1972, it was like
coming back into a new world because the whole lower campus was developing; many buildings
had been built: Spotts, Eisenberg, Vincent, Morrow Field House . . . . [I] couldn‘t believe the size
of the place and the number of thousands of students that we had at the time. I think it was
around four or five thousand students, maybe not quite that high.
It was a different place, and the size of the faculty, the fact that the faculty didn‘t have a lot of
connections to the town; it was more of a university atmosphere than I had been used to in my
master‘s and doctoral programs where I went to larger universities. So [pause] it was indeed a
revelation and I think I was thankful that some of the faculty members that I had as professors
hadn‘t retired because they were the link, they were the bridge between me as a new faculty
member and the huge institution that Slippery Rock has become.
BC: Do you remember the process when you first heard about the opening, and was that
something you jumped on because . . . ?
PB: Well that was interesting, it actually has a . . . how I heard about the job was that I called the
chair of the History Department, Dr. Duncan. I was teaching at the University of Akron in
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Akron, Ohio, and tragically in May of 1971 my father passed instantly—he just dropped dead
right in the kitchen of my parent‘s home, and I was finishing the semester (we were on quarters
at the University of Akron) and my mother really wanted me to come back. And so I thought of
Slippery Rock, obviously being the graduate, and I called Dr. Duncan and I said, you know, ―Are
there any openings?‖ I felt an obligation to complete the next year at the University of Akron
where I was under contract as an assistant professor. So he said, ―Well, why don‘t you call Dr.
Gamberoni, I think he‘s looking for someone in history and philosophy of education and we have
such a course here,‖ and so I called Dr. Gamberoni and the rest is history.
What was most interesting as a faculty member when I came: I taught only night classes, and in
four different locations each night of the week. Monday through Thursday I was in a different
location and I taught only one class on campus and three were off campus because at that time
student teachers had to take history and philosophy of education as part of their student teaching
semester. So we, so I taught and got to know about the different school districts and the buildings
that I taught in off campus. So I felt like an itinerant teacher . . . but I really liked it and got to
know the students and found that Slippery Rock‘s still the same. The best thing about Slippery
Rock [is] the students that come here and the camaraderie and the family atmosphere that we
create here. And I was so glad to be a part of it, and I really think that the fact that I was a former
student helped me in relating to the students that I taught.
BC: Okay. You mentioned [the] positions you held. Can you talk about some of the activities in
terms of committees, things like that you were involved in?
PB: Well faculty members and committees . . . most of those thoughts are not positive [laughs]
because the committee work is, you know, just incredible, the amount of time that you put in, but
necessary time. It also documents the need for full time faculty members, because part time
faculty members really can‘t do a lot of committee work because they have other obligations.
But I was on some fun committees; some involving the student government, where I was the
faculty liaison to some of the committees. The Greek God and Goddess Committee was
interesting; and also the Volleyball Club was formed.
But what you need to understand is this: you can‘t get money, if you‘re a student and you‘re in a
student organization, you can‘t get money from the Student Government Association unless you
have a faculty representative, and it legitimizes your student activity. So some of those things,
fortunately I never had to sit on the disciplinary board or other aspects of student government.
But most of my committee work was obviously as a faculty member and I probably served on
every committee in the department, chaired most of them, or many of them I should say, and
that‘s really where a lot of the work is done. Everything from hiring to curriculum, to [pause]
strategic goals and things like that that the department wants to achieve. Some with some service
with a lot of success and some with a lot of frustration.
BC: On that note, what do you consider your biggest accomplishments at the university?
PB: Staying power [laughs]! The thing is I that I have to honestly say I never thought of it as a
job, I always thought of it as a career choice and I think that‘s one of the things that distinguishes
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a professional, and having a professional career is a commitment, you know, that you make
personally to the, to your students and to the institution. And I think two or three things: one is
that I really cherished being an advisor to students, and I know not all faculty members like that
role but I received a number of awards from student government as advisor of the year and
advisor within the College of Education. So I was recognized for that and I think I offered some
real good advice, in particular to students and particularly the ability to go through the maze of
curricular choices and make sure that they kept their eye on the prize. So that was one of the
things.
Obviously to chair the department and see it grow, build a graduate program. One of the fine
additions that we had to the faculty was Dr. Lehman who really spearheaded a lot of our graduate
work in science and math, and we‘ve been able since to extend that to social studies and English.
So the department has really grown and now thanks to Dean [Jay] Hertzog, we have a principals
program in the College of Education and I was able to become an evaluator for secondary school
principals. So anyway they researched some things that I feel very, very strongly about, and the
obvious recognition that I received for the various benchmarks for teaching here and being a
faculty member. And I really enjoyed being on university committees. I was on everything from
promotion to academic affairs, which is basically curriculum, and I enjoyed seeing that process,
the university-wide committees and helping with the governance of the institution.
BC: Okay. From a teaching standpoint, you mentioned some of the things you enjoyed about it.
Do you have any specific best or worst moments or situations you can remember?
PB: No, but I have a number of stories. And the thing is that when you see students who you had
in class and obviously their growth and their professionalism, and following them out into the
schools through field experience and student teaching, and then seeing how they professionally
have grown into various positions within the profession and some outside. You know, I always
said to the students, ―You have a college degree; now go do something with it, and do something
that you like to do.‖ But I‘ve had students who have become millionaires by winning the lottery,
and the young lady who did that was teaching down in Beaver Falls School District, and I think
[she] and [her] husband won sixty-eight million dollars, and I haven‘t seen a penny of that, so
apparently I didn‘t create a great influence [laughs] on her, [because] she didn‘t remember me.
But the thing is that one of the nicest things that always happened is that I had a number of
colleagues who I taught with in the public schools and knew from the University of Pittsburgh
and Duquesne University, and seeing their careers move in a different direction than mine and
yet always coming back to Slippery Rock ‗cause I had known them and gone to school with
them as undergraduates and they in turn would mentor many of our students. And I can think of
a number of superintendents and principals and so forth. But students are, they‘re just the
lifeblood of any higher ed[ucation] institution, and you remember a hundred stories, you know.
One of the things I used to always say, that as students used to come into my office and I just had
this series of bookshelves and so forth and with books, they‘d always ask questions like this,
―Dr. Black, have you read any of these books?‖ And I would say, ―Well how do you think they
got there?‖ I said, ―There‘s at least one person who has read them in here.‖ I said, ―Well do you
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have a particular interest?‖ and they might go and I would let the students borrow the books and
they would say, ―Don‘t you have a sign-out sheet, how do you know that you‘re gonna get these
books back?‖ I said ―Well, some of you will bring them back, some won‘t, but remember to
leave them to me in your will; but really don‘t worry about that because I‘ll be long gone before
you.‖ So anyway, but creating that type of environment: curiosity, willingness to learn, that‘s
what being a professor is all about in the higher ed institution. And I keep in touch with some of
the students and you never know who you‘ll keep in touch with you know, because they have to
take some initiative. And some of them were just crazy when you had them as a student and
they‘re still crazy after all these years. That‘s a line from an old song, so anyway . . . .
BC: Okay, leaders on campus? In terms of presidents, or deans, things like that?
PB: Well, when I was a student [Dr.] Weisenfluh was the president, and we didn‘t know much
about him. He wasn‘t very visible even though the campus was extremely small, and then he
kind of disappeared right after I graduated. I remember the longest conversation I had with him
was when I graduated. I graduated at mid-year in January and he had a couple lines because I
had distinguished myself as a student and so forth but he wasn‘t very visible.
And then when I came back we had the old Syracuse University offensive lineman as president.
And the story was that he had been on the offensive line with Jimmy Brown—Jim Brown. [He]
was running for Syracuse—the great NFL back and mediocre to unskilled actor. So anyway, [Dr.
Albert] Watrel, and he wasn‘t that visible either but I was a young faculty member and he had
his staff of people who were administrative aides to him. So basically he might have been very
visible. I know his wife was involved in a number of projects; I think her name might have been
Carol, and she was well-liked among the faculty.
But stories are all what this is about: so I look out my window of [pause] McKay Education
Building at three o‘clock on a Friday afternoon and there must‘ve been fifteen state police cars.
And they ring the building, Old Main, and this is when he was disposed, and [pause] he was
banned from his office ands he wasn‘t able to get into his office. And then the Slippery Rock
legends basically came forth, and that is that no president had ever left Slippery Rock willingly
of their own volition. We never had a female president, so it was a ―he,‖ and they had never left
on their own volition and naturally that‘s not true since. But Slippery Rock presidents were
always getting fired for a number of reasons, either political or financial malfeasance or
something like that.
So anyway, Watrel came, was [deposed] by the governor [and] removed from his position. And
then we had an interim, Dr. [James] Roberts, the vice president for academic affairs served as
president for a while, maybe a year or so, and then the Board of Trustees or maybe the powersthat-be in Harrisburg moved the Park in here from Mansfield. And Dr. Larry [Lawrence] Park
came in, and a very nice guy, wound up playing in the Monday night golf league. I wound up
playing a match or two with him, and he was a pretty decent golfer and I‘m a very mediocre
golfer so anyway . . . .
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But the long and the short of it is we really didn‘t have a president after Watrel left. And the
faculty decided they would band together collectively and make sure the institution was held
together, moved on, everything as far as the students were concerned you know, seemed to be
kosher. But there was a lot of internal fighting and bickering. Our understanding was that part of
the powers-that-be in Harrisburg wanted Park out of Mansfield and they sent him here, and
whether that was true or not . . . . And so then came Herb Reinhard.
And if you talk about a guy who should‘ve never been a president of [a] university, that was
Reinhard. He came from Florida and his idea of management was dictatorial. And no aspersions
to his German ancestry but somewhere along he must‘ve had strong Prussian strains. So anyway,
he thought he could fire faculty when he felt like it. And he created a terrible environment for the
faculty but for the community and for public relations he was hell-bent on building the Slippery
Rock image. He was not an academic, he basically had come through the student personnel route
into higher education and he was at one of the big Florida schools, it might‘ve been Florida
State.
But anyway, while the faculty were at odds with Reinhard, the community loved him. He was
the one that brought in the McDonald‘s or so he claimed, and he tried to build the community.
He was very interested in PR [public relations]. And he decided because there was an Allegheny
Club, as the story goes—there was an Allegheny Club at Three Rivers Stadium—that he was
going to have one at our new football field. And so in quotes the ―box‖ over at the, on the other
side of where the stands are at our football stadium, he helped build. And it‘s like the old Johnny
Cash song you know, taking a part out every weekend type of thing. ["One Piece at a Time" by
Wayne Kemp, recorded by Johnny Cash in 1976]. And he apparently got into some violation of
contracts in the bidding process and so forth, and it turned out to be his undoing. And he helped
fulfill again the legend or the myth, whatever you wanna call it, that Slippery Rock presidents
never retire. So the faculty was not sorry to see him go, and he went on to another presidency
and I believe it was in Kentucky if I‘m not mistaken.
There‘s a great story that I had with Dr. Reinhard: I was chair of Secondary Ed – no I was chair
of Curriculum and Instruction I think at the time, and he wanted something on his desk by
Monday. And as I tend to procrastinate . . . . So it was a recommendation for a faculty member to
receive an award. I thought it was very meritorious [and] I wanted to make sure that it got to
him. And I think he had set an artificial deadline of either Friday or Saturday, and my
recommendation arrived on Monday, Monday morning. And he calls me at home, and he says,
―Dr. Black, I asked that these recommendations and yours in particular be on my desk either
Friday or Saturday.‖ And I said, ―Well Dr. Reinhard, it‘s on your desk now as we talk.‖ And he
said, ―Yes, but it wasn‘t here when I arrived this morning; mail didn‘t come till about ninethirty.‖ And I said, ―Oh well, you know Dr. Reinhard, maybe you ought to institute Saturday
mail delivery.‖ Well that gives you an example of the angst, if you will, between certain faculty
members and Dr. Reinhard. So we weren‘t sad you know – we didn‘t shed a tear when he left.
And then Dr. [Robert] Aebersold: finer individual you couldn‘t have met. Bob was just great and
we were so surprised as faculty members as he rose through the ranks from department chair
over in PE [Physical Education] to coming over as vice president for Academic Affairs, and we
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were so glad that one of our own had risen to [the] presidency. And Dr. Aebersold understood
how to deal with faculty members and he understood what the mission of the university was.
And even though the students at times always have a little rebellion in them and things that they
wanna do or see that may not have happened, he served as a very successful president and as we
all know, retired. When he chose to retire and help break the long line of nobody retires from
Slippery Rock unless they—there‘s some reason so.
And then [Dr. G.] Warren Smith came in, and then he was president for a while. Got along with
him very well and enjoyed him, as I do [Dr.] Robert Smith. So that was the interesting thing
from the faculty perspective when we had President [G. Warren] Smith and Vice President of
Academic Affairs [Robert] Smith who is now our current president. And I think the three of
them really helped the institution build and develop and so forth, and I feel very good about my
alma mater and about the university that granted me emeritus status.
BC: Do you have any events that you can remember on campus, whether they be national or
more local that stand out to you?
PB: Yes. [Pause] I remember when Jimmy Carter was running for president and Andrew Young
came. Andrew Young I think at the time may have been the mayor of Atlanta and he had
experience in the cabinet and so forth, and he goes back to the days of Martin Luther King. That
was kind of a highlight and event that you remember.
I‘m sure there‘s a number of other things that faculty always tend to remember, some things that
students don‘t remember. And the whole atmosphere of the faculty and having our own dining
area over in North Hall was just wonderful, and I think it still continues today and bringing
faculty in from various parts of the campus. The lower campus versus the upper campus: that‘s
the perspective among the faculty that not everybody will acknowledge. If you‘re in the upper
campus, meaning around Old Main, the faculty of the lower campus where the majority of
faculty are, and the majority of liberal arts departments are that tend to be a little more liberal,
and a little more rebellious in their thinking and in their actions. When you‘re a faculty member
and your offices are in the upper campus they tend to think of you as the administration, even
though you aren‘t, because you‘re so close to Old Main. And the lower campus is really where
the action is and the students are and faculty, you know, teach and reside as far as their offices
are concerned. And in a lot of ways where the action is because of the student government and
student union and so forth.
So you have that kind of artificial divide between the lower campus and the upper campus which
I think is interesting from a faculty perspective; students [are] not aware of it but the faculty live
here. You know, they live in the lower end of campus either in the dorms that they‘ve since
bulldozed, [pause] and the Rock Apartments that they built and so forth. So that‘s one of the
biggest things you hear from people, like [people] that I stay in touch with [from] when I was a
student here, and you know they say, ―I can‘t believe how the place has grown and how big it is‖
and so forth.
[Pause] I think one of the things that‘s really helped Slippery Rock, two events: one is the whole
emphasis on diversity. Black History Month, the whole black cultural [pause] affairs offices and
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so forth have really helped. And then the other is the International Dinner and bringing all
peoples, you know, students from different backgrounds together and I think that basically really
helps create an atmosphere here.
There‘s just so much more to do – I know the students today don‘t believe that – there‘s just so
much more to do as a student here at Slippery Rock [pause] in the first decade of the twenty-first
century than there was when we were here in the ‗60s. I mean there was nothing. And we were
always trying to find cars . . . .
You asked me for interesting events when I was a student: one of the biggest things was the
Steelers [football team] came to train here; they spent a summer here just as they are at St.
Vincent‘s [College] as we speak now. But they came to Slippery Rock. They were going to
always . . . . And the size of the players such as ―Big Daddy‖ Lipscomb and George Tarasovic
and so forth, and Bobby Layne and a number of these people have become Hall-of-Famers. And
they came up that summer and I was here as a student . . . and [they] just took the place by storm
and [pause] created an experience probably that if I had been Dr. Lowry and some of the other
administrators at the time . . . they probably were so glad to get rid of them. But anyway, that
was a real interesting experience and you know, for the guys seeing professional athletes [pause]
and for the gals seeing a different type of grown men in their mid- to late twenties and into their
thirties and so forth . . . so that was an interesting story that came out of summer school in the
summer of ‗61 or ‗62 and I don‘t know which, or maybe even ‗60.
BC: Okay. What do you miss about being here at SRU?
PB: Well obviously the students. I love teaching – I still do – I‘ve been retired five years. I mean,
this became my second home. [Pause] but what has happened to being a faculty member these
days—there‘s many things you don‘t miss. You know, you don‘t miss the tons of paperwork, the
committees, the committee work, all the things that take away from teaching.
I do miss the advising, I still do some advising to the sons and daughters of friends of mine who
are going away to college and that type of thing, and then I have two children of my own and so
was able to offer advice, but when you offer advice to your children its like offering no advice at
all. And I always try to keep in mind what advice is: it‘s free, cheap, and you can ignore it. But
the students—I really miss the students and I miss a number of my colleagues who obviously
have become lifelong friends.
BC: Do you have any words of wisdom for current or future Rock community members?
PB: No . . . but come to learn, come to enjoy, come to grow. It‘s an incubation period and it‘s
going to be one of the best times of your life even though you think it isn‘t when you‘re here.
You know you come, you spend x number of years and then you‘re off to do whatever and then
when you read the alumni magazine, The Rock you get to see what a number of people have
done. Naturally my classmates . . . when I was an undergraduate practically everybody went into
education and today people go into everything.
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And it‘s refreshing how widely [beloved] Slippery Rock is out there in the world, you know, and
in our community. People who went here as undergraduates still love the place, still like to come
back and have good memories. And one of the things that I can add as a faculty member is there
were a number of my classmates who went on to teach in higher education at different
institutions. Like two I can remember: one I grew up with in my hometown who wound up
teaching at Bloomsburg [University of Pennsylvania], and one who was a classmate here wound
up being an administrator and a teacher at our sister school California [University of
Pennsylvania]. And when I talk to them they always talk about that Rock identity even though
they spent a career at some of our sister institutions. So it grabs you, and when it grabs you it‘s a
part of your life. It‘s like returning to your hometown and some of those memories that you were
so glad to get away from, and here you are cherishing them in a number of ways.
BC: We like to close with this one: how would you like to be remembered?
PB: Personally?
BC: M-hmm.
PB: Well I don‘t know how to answer that. I‘d like to be remembered as an undergraduate who
came and learned a lot, took academics seriously. I was very much of an athletic type when I
came here and as I like to say: when I came here I had athlete‘s feet and when I left I had jock
itch. So the thing is that I became less and less of a jock and I had a very strong athletic
background, so I turned to academics and never regretted it. And still I am a big sports
enthusiast.
And then as a faculty member: someone who gave his best to his students, created a leaning
environment for them. And in some ways every student‘s different – what they take out of your
class. And particularly my advisees . . . I hope they‘re doing well, whether they listened to my
advice or not [laughs].
But basically you know I‘ll probably be remembered as a faculty member in secondary education
here at Slippery Rock and I don‘t know if I‘ve made that great a mark. I sure have in terms of
carrying Slippery Rock‘s message to the state and to the national [level]. I was teacher educator
of the year for our statewide organization, the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher
Educators, in the year 2001. And then we have a National Association of Teacher Educators and
I‘ve received a number of awards and honors from that association. But that‘s all a tribute to
Slippery Rock, because if I didn‘t have the base as a faculty member at Slippery Rock I couldn‘t
have gained those recognitions at either the state or the national level. So I think that‘s about it.
BC: Alright, well Dr. Black thank you very much for coming in.
PB: My pleasure.
BC: If you ever need to come in we‘d be more than happy to have you.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Black, Paul 11
PB: Okay great, and if you have any follow up I‘d be glad to participate.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
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