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Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University
David Taylor Interview
November 20, 2015
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Amy Brunner
Transcribed by Amy Brunner and Andrew Hill
Proofread and edited by Judy Silva and Amy Brunner
Approved by D. C. Taylor, June 27, 2016
AB: Well, let me get my glasses on, because [pause] I can’t read anything without them either,
so . . . .
DT: [laughs]
AB: I do have the voice recorder going.
DT: I’ll tell you if I have my glasses off, all I can do is smell things [laughter]; and it’s a poor
substitute for reading.
AB: Yes, yes. I can see far away with[out] them, but I got to that point, that late thirties point
where . . . [laughs].
DT: Oh, gee. You know I hit the age of 44 in the summer of 1983, and I was teaching Organic
Chemistry that summer. And I suddenly went from being able to read students’ problem sets to,
“Oh my God.” I had to get a set of bifocals so quickly that summer, it was not funny.
AB: Oh, I can imagine.
DT: It was just startling [laughs].
AB: Well, I always had really good vision and then all of a sudden, I went to the eye doctor and
they said, “Oh, you need readers now.”
DT: Well, that’s not a disqualifier of vision quality. That’s age, and you can retain good visual
acuity readily. I was really surprised. I started learning how to fly a plane when I was 47 years
old.
AB: Really?
DT: And the optometrist that I was going to was also a pilot, which I did not know at the time.
So he would really take his time ripping on me. My corrected vision at that time was 20/15, and
that surprised me because I have been wearing glasses for 69 years now. But it turns out that it’s
not necessarily how good your visual acuity is but how you interpret the images that you see.
AB: Of course.
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DT: I found that I could pick out an airport fifteen to twenty miles away just by a different
textural pattern on the horizon. A friend of mine [laughs] he usually couldn’t see them until we
were setting up for our landing approach [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] Oh, man. Well, let’s go ahead and circle back to the beginning. Okay?
DT: Okay.
AB: If I could just have your name, your . . . approximate date of birth, where you’re from, and
just some background.
DT: Okay. My name is David C. Taylor, and my expected birth date was July 29th 1939. I was an
early arriver, and I haven’t stopped since. And I was born, grew up, and graduated from
Bowdoin College in Maine. I had to go out of state for further education, as . . . as an M.A. at
Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. It’s also known as UConn,
and that creates confusion with people too. My specialty was analytical chemistry with a minor
in organic chemistry.
AB: Okay.
DT: I arrived at Slippery Rock State College with a half complete dissertation, and in November
1970, slightly more than two years after arrival, I finished.
AB: Yay! [Laughter] And what exactly did you do for us here at Slippery Rock University?
Well, I guess it was the State College back then.
DT: Yeah. I was hired in the fall as a temporary assistant professor in the Department of
Chemistry. And along the way, I was the director of the Slippery Rock University Planetarium,
The Rocket Room, from 1979 through 1987. I retired from the Department of Chemistry and
Physics in 2004. The merger of Physics and Chemistry was only a . . . two year proposition, but
it turns out that it’s very appropriate because in order to teach chemistry, you have to teach
physics.
AB: That is true. I mean, in my particular case, I’ve taken my chemistry classes.
DT: Good.
AB: I have, and at this point, all I remember is how to do the little dot diagrams [laughs].
DT: Good. Well, it took me until I was about 40 years old to discover that not everybody dug
chemistry the same way that I did. And I think part of it was a consequence of the fact that
practically every innate and learned capability or ability that people have has to be brought to
bear when you do study chemistry. My experience studying chemistry has really made anything
that I have done over the years extraordinarily easy.
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AB: That’s true. I mean because there is the math aspect, there’s the spatial aspect.
DT: Yes, it’s very much a head game. If you have a vivid imagination, that works very, very well
in chemistry.
AB: Yes.
DT: I ascribe that to old radio programs . . . listening to The Shadow, the hairs on the back of
your neck stood up . . . even if you didn’t have any at that time.
AB: [Laughs] As I mentioned, you were here during the State College era, but when . . . do you
remember or do you have any thoughts or any recollections about the transition from state
college to university?
DT: No, because chemistry is hardly ever affected by name changes [laughs]. It’s interesting that
when I came here in 1968, many local people were still referring to Slippery Rock State College
as Slippery Rock State Teachers’ College. And I even hear today people referring to Slippery
Rock University as Slippery Rock State College. It takes a long time to adjust to changes, and
the irony is that in chemistry when changes in theories or changes, well . . . not many changes in
laws however, but when changes in theory come along you have to respond, you know, quite
promptly, quite quickly to make sure that your students are current with contemporary practice.
AB: [Clears throat] Excuse me. Did the department--you mentioned that the department was
Chemistry, and then became Chemistry and Physics. How exactly did that change come about?
DT: I think that was a consequence of what was perceived to be a personnel type of challenge
that was occurring at the time. I, at that time, did not really feel too strongly involved in that
aspect because that was about three years before I retired or so. That was not really a big issue.
AB: I see here that you said that the leadership within the Chemistry Department did change
fairly regularly.
DT: Yeah. According to the collective bargaining agreement, chairs are elected for a three-year
period of time, and it is a challenging task. It takes a lot of time. It’s . . . not the world’s easiest
task when you have a . . . group of people to represent, rather than govern. College professors are
notoriously ungovernable [laughter].
AB: Which building did you work in?
DT: I spent my entire career in Vincent Science Hall, which I guess is now known as Vincent
Science Center. I missed the move-in of 1968, although I did tour the building while it was under
construction when I was here for an interview. And I missed the move-out to Advanced
Technology and Science, which I was happy to do. I had two separate office locations in Vincent
Science Hall in thirty-five years. After I had a chance to visit the renovated building, I could not
find the doorway, which still existed, that actually went into my old office [laughs].
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AB: It’s a very nice building. I mean, this is my first semester here, but it is a very nice building.
DT: It is an incredible building with the exception of the lack of right angle corners in many
parts of it. That was one of the few things they could not rectify.
AB: Well, it is difficult inside of a round building, not impossible.
DT: Yeah . . . it’s not impossible, but it is a bit of a challenge. You have to be careful how you
place file cabinets so that nothing can fall off the top and be lost forever.
AB: [Laughs] That is true. What was it like when you came here for your interview? What was
your first impression of Slippery Rock College?
DT: Most of the university, at that time, was located on the top of the hill. I think only [Spotts]
World Cultures Building was down significantly. We had Maltby Library, Old Main . . . the
[Miller] Auditorium. The original lab school was basically abandoned at the time. We had
Morrow Field House, the Special Education Building, the heating plant, and where the present
art building’s located, that was known as El Gato. That was the student union . . . and part time
food service facility, and the bookstore was in the basement. Weisenfluh was the only eating
facility on campus at the time. And the interesting thing is that, in one of my offices I could look
over the entire eastern section of the campus, which didn’t exist in 1968. And then, periodically
I’d think, “How much is changing around here?” I’d go look out the window and enumerate the
years which all of the succeeding buildings were built. And we were looking at a new building
here about every two to three years.
AB: Wow.
DT: Either a new building or a major renovation going on somewhere.
AB: I know that my experience was, the first time I set foot on this campus was in ’88 . . . there
was nothing to the east. Basically the campus ended with what’s the Old Union now.
DT: Yea, Bailey Library and the [Swope] Music Building did not exist. Eisenberg, the library
and the student union building were it. Yeah, fortunately, we have a huge campus, and that has
made a wonderful opportunity for new buildings to be designed. I like to see the variation in
architecture that now exists on campus.
But when I first came here in March of 1968, a select group of faculty were organizing a vote of
no confidence for the current president, at that time, Robert Carter. Very quickly, I still
remember the names of many of the people who were involved in that because most of them at
that time were in Strain Behavioral Science Building, which in 1968, was the science building.
Two of them, at least, were colleagues in the Physics Department, which were on the same floor
in Vincent Science Hall as the Department of Chemistry. So no question about the fact they were
committed to quality and students, and were themselves dedicated and very human. That was the
employment situation that I was seeking.
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The changes that I witnessed were almost invisible to anyone who did not purchase, use or
maintain any electronic equipment. For a couple of years, we would have to merely approximate
requesting sealed bids for equipment repair. In my teaching field, chemical instrumentation, if
equipment doesn’t work, a laboratory experiment often could not be completed. About a year
later my purchase request for a replacement transistor, powering an ultrasonic cleaner, reached
the president’s office after hanging fire for three months. The purchasing process had started to
change. So that was important.
This was important to me as I think I had been hired because I could repair electronic scientific
equipment. I recall that I had replaced the power transformer in a--at the time--$20,000 piece of
equipment . . . twice [laughter]. The transformer, I think at the time, was about $500 and, you
know, an hour and a half of work on my part saw the new transformer installed. So that helped a
lot when we had to deal with the usual and regularly recurring budget restrictions.
The second change occurred much greater, during 1986-87, when we convinced the General
Services Administration that a special type of lamp, that cost about $125, had a limited useful
operating lifetime. We threw them away when they no longer functioned, but the auditors would
put an inventory number on them. When they arrived, they physically wanted to view all the
lamps we were supposed to have in our possession. We could not produce them.
AB: Of course not.
DT: We could not produce the item, or any of the items, so we showed them our remaining entire
supply of lamps, ensuring that they read the expected lifetime on each label. At this point, GSA
changed their threshold value on capital equipment to $500, and then began indexing the value
according to inflation in the future. GSA had wanted us to account for all items costing more
than $100 on a six hundred item list. Most of the items had been purchased between three to
fifteen years previously. We didn’t, as faculty, have the time or the desire to pursue such trivia.
The list shrank to about thirty-five items the following year, and everyone was extremely happy.
No, they were gleeful!
AB: [Laughs]
DT: The first few years of summer school had the first semester courses of both General and
Organic Chemistry running in the pre-session: three weeks, minus one day for Memorial Day.
With fourteen days and two and a half hours of lecture a day, and three and a half hours of
laboratory a day, this was a horrendous workload for both the instructor and the students. In the
mid-‘70s, the three week pre-session and the six week regular session were dropped in favor of
two five-week sessions. With our entry into the 21st century, the schedule for the equivalent of
studying a full year of chemistry was revised to two four-week sessions. This is still a tough
schedule for both students and instructor, in my opinion. But, it’s cost-effective in terms of
transportation and it does work very well. As a matter of fact, one of the local pharmacists was a
student of mine in the summer session. She’s a very nice person to know, in the age group that
I’m in now.
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AB: [Laughs] Yeah, I have to admit that—that two weeks of six hours a day of just Chemistry-that’s intense.
DT: Yes, it is intense. It’s very tough, yeah.
AB: Oh, wow. And what were your . . . what campus activities were you involved with? Any
committees? Anything like that?
DT: Early on, I confined most of my committee activities to dealing with the Department of
Chemistry matters. I wound up being largely involved in instrument purchase and instrument
maintenance. That did a good job of keeping me very, very busy; and as we acquired more
scientific instrumentation each year, the maintenance workload or instrument check for
performance capabilities got busy. But I wound up being secretary for department meetings. I
forget for how many years I did it, but it was a very, very good experience. I was sort of an
illegal secretary for the local Sigma Xi chapter, because I was not a member of Sigma Xi.
AB: Oh really [laughs]?
DT: I also spent a year on the University Promotion Committee--a year as a temporary
replacement. During that time, I read every application that any faculty member submitted for
promotion at that time. And then, I would serve on various short-term ad hoc committees.
AB: One of the things that I found when I was researching was with Sigma Xi, the lecture series
in the ‘70s.
DT: Yes.
AB: I found that really interesting, and I have to admit that I don’t know if it still goes on.
DT: I don’t know either.
AB: I haven’t seen anything, but I looked at some of the lecturers you had in, and it was a very
impressive list.
DT: It was. I recall one of the speakers was Robert Silverstein, who wrote the . . . was co-author
of a book called Interpreting Infrared Spectra. It was a significant textbook in chemistry and
really very quickly became a classic. It was a wonderful lecture too.
AB: I know I was impressed when Mr. Rittelman, who was a local architect, fairly well-known
architect in this area. He came in, in I think it was ’74, and talked about solar energy. I thought
that was pretty far ahead of the curve.
DT: Before anyone knew what solar energy was. Yeah, very good.
AB: What do you feel were your greatest accomplishments at the school?
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DT: Running the planetarium, which became interesting from the standpoint of view that I had
had a very long-term interest in photography. I wound up using my own 35 mm film camera, at
the time, simply because I knew how it behaved. I look upon the planetarium operation really as
applied scientific instrumentation, which with the photography experience, really made it a very
easy thing for me to jump into. People might say, “Well, what’s a chemist doing running a
planetarium?” The answer is, “Well, why not [laughter]?” I had the skill, background, and
interest to pursue that type of work.
Then I got involved in the environmental science program back in the late ‘70s. I also had an
opportunity to teach the course, The University: Thinking and Change, and discovered a lot
about myself as a consequence. One aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed was finding Chemistry
students who were ready to undertake changes of which they did not know they were capable.
Being accorded the opportunity to teach basic math, the freshman English courses, Research
Writing and Composition, Reading and Composition, Research Writing, and I also taught
Aviation Meteorology [laughter]. I think that I undertook the more challenging tasks. The
interesting thing is that some of my colleagues wondered for what reason would I teach Aviation
Meteorology, but at that time I did have an instrument rating for single engine land aircraft.
Before I retired from teaching, I actually did get a seaplane rating . . . at the age of 62, and the
instrument rating at the age of 57, which is advanced for earning that type of rating, which
people who do fly professionally say is the toughest one there is.
AB: Really?
DT: Yeah.
AB: Could you tell me a little bit more about this class, The University: Thinking and Change?
DT: Yeah, The University: Thinking and Change course was largely the brainchild of Bob
Macoskey. It was predicated on pretty sound educational knowledge at the time that the process
of education creates conflict within people because it insists that they change; and change is
something that human beings are very resistant to. Of course, the process of change you really
want to bring out in a person studying in a university environment is you want them to be able to
think critically. A lot of students come from an environment where thinking critically simply
does not exist. So, the course would explore areas in architecture, art, science, the humanities,
history, and use faculty from those areas to sort of serve as special resource people. I recall one
of the prerequisites for being accepted by the faculty who were already teaching the course, was
to take the Myers-Briggs Type [Indicator] test, which proved to be very interesting because the
colleague who administered it, when he came to see my results, he suddenly popped up and said,
“Oh my,” because I landed exactly on the borderline between an extravert and an introvert. What
struck me about that is that I have no discomfort at all in dealing with public speaking.
Classroom teaching does that to you.
On the other hand, I do very often enjoy, you know, a degree of solitude and private time. And
one of my other colleagues also involved in the program once responded that he simply goes into
the classroom and does his act, and to a certain extent that is true. But it’s fascinating from the
standpoint of view that [pause] I began to understand: one, how I could improve the quality of
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my communication, because I tend to work quite intuitively which means I hear something and a
conclusion comes out of me that’s perfectly valid but nobody understands why. I don’t have to
understand why because [laughter] because I figured it out. So, that was really quite a vivid
experience for me for at least three years until the Department of Academic Support Services
decided that this was something that really could be more widely used on campus and they took
the program over. We all got fired [laughs].
AB: Oh [laughs]! Of course I think I might know the answer to this, but I definitely want [pause]
I am kind of curious as to how a chemistry professor ended up teaching writing and composition.
DT: [pause] Yeah, that’s a good question because I found when I entered college, writing was a
very, very serious challenge for me on a literary basis. And throughout my undergraduate
experience I discovered that I had worked very, very hard on putting together written thoughts.
And the extra effort was vindicated because I had to write a paper in Sociology my sophomore
year and I got an A minus on the paper. That was basically a consequence of the quality and
interpretation of the content, but the expression left something else to be desired. Senior year, I
was taking a course--Roman Classics in Translation--and the instructor offered people an
incentive, “You can write a paper and if you get a grade of B or better on it, you don’t have to
take the final exam.” Well, you have already discovered that I am open to challenges.
AB: Exactly.
DT: And I did and I got a B minus on the paper. I was very, very happy because I actually was
dealing with a literary area of knowledge. Additionally as I went through graduate school, I had
to write a master’s thesis. I had to take, at that time, a number of examinations which were
known as cumulative exams, in which you would learn of the topic a week before the exam.
AB: Oh dear.
DT: It would be independent study on your part and then you would sit down and take the exam,
not having the slightest idea of what would be on the exam. Well, out of nine exams we had to
pass six. The first three I was not successful on; the next six I was completely successful. And
when I went from Wesleyan University to the University of Connecticut, my research advisor,
who was a proud son of England, insisted that students write papers in each of the courses which
he taught. I think I took three courses from him and had a seminar course as well. So, I started
getting a lot of experience writing papers in the sciences. And when I came to the dissertation,
including figures, my dissertation was two hundred and ninety pages long . . . which is one of the
reasons why it took me two years to finish it.
I looked on my experience as something, well, you know, “if I had to work extra hard on this
type of thing, how can I make students’ lives in college easier in the long run for them [laughs],
but also encourage a little of productive suffering along the way?” So, I would require them to
write a paper in each of the advanced courses that I taught: Analytical Chemistry and Chemical
Instrumentation.
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Soon the Writing Across the Curriculum requirement came along and I volunteered to be the
department Writing Across the Curriculum person. I had my students put in their extensive
papers that met that requirement. And I have not heard of any complaints in the long run.
AB: Honestly, I think it’s a great idea. I mean, right now there’s the big push on what they call
STEM, which is just the science, the tech, the engineering, and the math. I do sometimes wonder
if maybe the writing aspect falls along the wayside. So, I am glad that it was brought together.
DT: Well [pause] one of the great benefits out of the Reading and Composition and Research
Writing courses for me was that I think during the course of the semester, I would have students
write about a 500-word paper on a weekly basis. So by the end of the first course, I would have
read about 300,000 words. One thing I did discover was that my reading speed markedly
increased, and it was already quite up there. Secondly, out of a class of twenty-four students, I’d
find that one student in each of the two classes at that time, was a born writer. I mean, that really
thrilled me because, gee, here is a person who inherently knows how to write effectively, and
well, and clearly, and so on. About three or four students out of the class really had serious
problems writing, which may--and I don’t know exactly what the answer is--but may have had a
problem reading.
Research Writing was a different ball of wax by that time. Some degree of filtration had
occurred, and it was mainly getting people brought into the realm of “How do you find
information?” and at that time, the internet had not developed to the extent that it did. Sites that
were of dubious quality for information had not been fully identified, and in retrospect, I might
say that [pause] Wikipedia, in at least the technical and scientific areas, is surprisingly good
because only the people who have the knowledge that is appropriate there do contribute to it. As
a matter of fact, I have actually contributed to it as well.
AB: Oh wow.
DT: Yeah.
AB: I just also wanted to ask you, what do you think were your best and worst teaching moments
while you were here.
DT: Well, one of the best moments was in thirty-five years of running chemistry laboratories
[pause] I never had an accident occur to any one of my students. The irony is when I was an
undergraduate that I had two of those incidents. The interesting thing is that because I wore
corrective glasses for a long time, they caught the brunt of the “ceremony.” The second thing is
seeing students make discoveries about their capabilities and be able to both discover and turn
those capabilities from dreams to reality on a regularly recurring basis. That has to be the close
second best thing to safety.
The worst situation occurred in late 1969, when the president at that time, Albert Watrel, told the
Chemistry Department to buy the best nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer that was
available. At that time, I had no tenure and I was not even a full assistant professor. Sinking an
elevator was the worst moment [laughs]. I figured I would be on the road within the year. Well,
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the magnet for the instrument weighed 4,400 pounds and the elevator had a placard indicating a
capacity of 4,000 pounds and I figured, “Oh, that’ll work.” So, we loaded the magnet onto the
elevator and I am pressing the up button. The elevator sank by twelve feet into the Vincent
Science Hall basement. It took a chain fall hoist and an elevator repair technician to raise the
elevator the necessary eight inches to get the magnet into the basement of Vincent Science Hall.
That was really a much better location because of the lack of vibration. Actually, the source of
vibration we had, it took us a total of ten years to solve.
AB: Really?
DT: Yeah, yeah, yeah it was because people would not listen to us [laughs] . . . and the problem
with the vibration was that a piece of sound-deadening insulation in the housing of one of the
ventilating blowers was stuck on the rotor. The rotor would vibrate, and you could feel the floor
of the instrument room going up and down with changing amplitude with respect to time because
all the blowers would blow in the instrument room. So, we turned out to be quite lucky with that
particular incident and I was very surprised, very pleased when I did not get [laughs] when I did
not receive opportunity to go elsewhere.
AB: We’re very glad that you didn’t either; we’re very glad that you stayed [laughs]. When you
first arrived here back I think in ‘68, who were the leaders, the president, the deans; who was in
charge of the union?
DT: Robert Carter was the president who was about to be deposed when I was interviewing in
March of ‘68. Robert Lowry was the interim president until Albert Watrel was selected. Al
Schmittlein was the dean for Arts and Sciences, and I don’t recall . . . the name of an academic
vice-president, if we had one at that time. We didn’t have a bargaining agent at that time. The
Faculty Assembly, which is primarily an advisory body as near as I can tell, was chaired by
Murray Shellgren of the department of Biology.
I never met President Carter. He had departed before I had ever arrived. Dr. Schmittlein, a hard
negotiator, was wearing a lot of hats for the School of Arts and Sciences, which had only
recently been created. Professor Shellgren was an able, respected leader, carefully pointing out
the situation that faculty were going to face as college and faculty expansion was taking place.
Of course in ’68, we had about 3,500 students; enrollment was predominantly the area of health,
physical education and so on. The sciences were just getting started with the Department of
Chemistry being created I think in--certainly by 1967, possibly 1966.
AB: Okay and who are the other people here who influenced you or were significant in your time
here?
DT: Well, the influential people at Slippery Rock for me were W. G. Sayre and, that is his legal
name now, and Melvin Willis from Chemistry. These gentlemen opened me to seeing situations
in life much more broadly, and then Monte Holland, Brian Kearney, James Fearday, and Ben
Shaevitz in Physics. To me, the members of the Department of Physics always seemed much
more concerned with both the ethics and morality of academic teaching and personnel situations.
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Robert Macoskey in Philosophy: eloquent oratory used most effectively to advance a (which was
his) holistic view of society, culture, and environment. Mike and Penny Kelly in English: these
faculty supported my unexpected candidacy to teach first-year English courses during a period
when Chemistry enrollment was running low. And Henry Lenz in Education opened me to the
world of international travel and cultural customs. Mike Wartel (Dean, Natural Sciences and
Math ‘76 to 1982), he unequivocally supported the development of the planetarium as the Rocket
Room, as a public relations tool to further connect to the public at large. Glen Brunken, James
Myford, and Bob Crayne, Art introduced to me to some of the fundamental principles of art that
apply so well to daily life and I am sad to say that surprising number of those gentlemen are no
longer living.
AB: I have to admit that I recognize a lot of these names, and not just Robert Macoskey, who
obviously has the center named after him over across the way, but I see a lot of names because I
am a Slippery Rock kid myself. And so a lot of these names are either names of people I went to
school with or the last names I think maybe their wives were my teachers.
DT: Yeah.
AB: So it is very interesting to see “Oh . . . of course, the wives were teachers because the
husbands were professors. What were the [pause] what were the major events or activities that
went on while you were here? I am sure I mean you were here for quite a while [laughter].
DT: [Laughs] And I still am!
AB: So, I am sure you have seen a lot of different things. So, maybe just give some examples of
those.
DT: Yeah. Well, the student affiliate chapter of the American Chemical Society ran a Meeting in
Miniature in the early ‘70s, that to me as the faculty advisor, was an unbelievable success both in
the content of the work presented by students and the quality of the organizational structure for
the meeting itself. I have never seen anything go so smoothly in my life, especially when there
was absolutely no prior experience [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] Could you maybe describe that? Because when you say “Meeting in Miniature,” I
just picture little, tiny miniatures of people and I know that’s not what it is [laughs].
DT: No, [laughs] The American Chemical Society has two annual meetings--two semi-annual
meetings a year, very large meetings in major cities. For any one particular hour, there may be
somewhere between five to ten different talks being given in twenty minute segments.
AB: Okay.
DT: So, you are looking at [pause] let’s see, fifteen to thirty different sessions going on at one
time. So, a Meeting in Miniature is a student version of the same thing except for the . . . you
know, three to eight meetings going on, perhaps for a half hour at a time or so. Then you have to
arrange for lunch for people, you have a keynote speaker, and it’s the challenge of getting
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everybody to the right place at the right time, putting the program together so people can make
intelligent decisions and not feel that everything they want to hear they have been excluded from.
So, it was just an unbelievable experience to watch students handle, and I always took the idea
that the student advisor was basically the liaison between the student organization and the
University. The challenge there was to simply arrange for students to be able to talk to the right
people to achieve whatever goals they needed. I did not take a role deliberately where I ran the
operation. I’d advise, I’d answer questions and make suggestions, but the final decisions were up
to them.
And during a couple of summers, and this was back in the ‘80s, we had an on campus festival
that went beyond all expectations for a cultural high. We had ultra-light aircraft flying, tentative
hot air balloon rides, and concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as conducted by
Morton Gould. Living just off the northeast corner of the campus, as I do, I had a terrifically
convenient ringside seat for all of this, and I really miss having a continuation of that event.
Then we had the three winters of ‘76-‘77, ‘77-‘78, and ‘78-’79. These made any winters before
or since seem like this is the tropics. Twelve foot high snow drifts soared on the west side of
Harmony Road, and I spent thirty of forty-five days in ‘76-‘77 blowing snow out of my
driveway. In ‘78 the drive home became a one hour nightmare as cars were unable to make the
northbound climb on the hill by Mihalik-Thompson Stadium. Back then I was driving frontwheel drive Saab and could climb almost any slope. Nobody else could. Many would start up the
hill and then do a reverse random slide downhill. By the time I reversed direction to drive
through downtown Slippery Rock, I arrived home after an hour on the road [laughs].
AB: Oh dear.
DT: And as far as national events that occurred during ‘68 through 2003, I don’t really recall any
significant campus reaction, and perhaps that’s because my office location didn’t give me a very
good view of the campus, if or when any student protests might have occurred. When I arrived in
1968, the lower campus contained only Vincent and the World Cultures Building, later named
Spotts. From ‘72 on, upon every three years a new building project: the University Union, Bailey
Library, N. Kerr Thompson Stadium (now Mihalik-Thompson Stadium), Eisenberg Classroom
Building, Boozel Cafeteria, the new Art Building completely rebuilt from its previous life as
[pause] slightly renovated from the previous union and bookstore, Swope Music Building, the
Art Sculpture Building, the Aebersold Recreation Center, Egli Soccer Field, Storm Harbor
Equestrian Center, a complete set of new dormitories and apartments, and Critchfield Park. At
times little activity seemed occurring on the campus. However, given an opportunity for thought,
the campus was surprisingly busy with construction, nothing was constant.
AB: [Chuckles] I just wanted to jump back a little bit [pause] we’re going to skip on . . . well we
are not going to skip but we will get to the next question. I just wanted to maybe skip back a little
bit and talk about your time with the Rocket Room, with the planetarium. I know you said that
you came into it out of your love of photography [pause] and I just wanted to . . .what I really
just wanted to know is how . . . successful was it within the community, at the college and with
the community at large?
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Taylor, David 13
DT: It’s really hard to say in many respects. I was not the first choice as the person to run it, but
basically, according to Dean Wartel at the time, he really wanted someone who was more
involved with astronomy, but the astronomy people in the Physics Department weren’t that
comfortable with the ancillary tasks involved with the [pause] that would be involved with the
planetarium. I wound up getting involved in it because it involved an awful lot of electronic and
electrical work. In other words, we completely wired the planetarium to operate all of the special
effects projectors. We had to run an immense amount of cabling, build a shelf to hold the
equipment, which was the best approach that we could achieve at the time. The fundamental idea
behind the planetarium was to use it as a public relations tool. Mike Wartel sold this idea very
effectively to the administration at the time and it [pause] it worked out.
We would run two planetarium shows a week, Thursday nights and Saturday nights. During
Christmas season, we would run a--for planetariums--a very traditional Christmas story, “The
Star of the East.” We would run daytime programs for [pause] for elementary and high school
classes coming in. The first six and a half or so years went very well with getting our word out to
people. One member of the Public Relations office at that time was very good at taking copy that
I submitted and getting it out into newspapers around the area. Then that person departed, and
then it suddenly started going downhill. I never saw so many errors occur in public information
published regarding the planetarium in my life. That’s really what brought it to an end because
we became totally undependable, unpredictable for people. So, that was . . . while information
entered the public realm effectively well, reliably, we developed quite a following; but when
stuff became challenging that was moving toward the end. I simply could not handle that type of
situation.
AB: Understandable. It’s a shame because I thought it was . . . I found it to be a very interesting
program. I found it to be, again, a very good PR move with the community at large. That’s
actually really upsetting. Are there other memorable events or maybe other things that really
stand out to you during your time here?
DT: Given enough time I could probably enumerate almost every one of them but I am not going
to [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] What if anything do you miss about working and being a professor here?
DT: Well, I miss students. I miss interacting with colleagues. I don’t miss the administrative or
collecting bargaining unit required tasks, and only the development of the word processor made
the repetitive five year task of preparing a self-evaluation tolerable. It’s simply because you
could edit and add very, very easily. But that was the major problem: the collective bargaining
unit, knowing how things were done prior to the presence of the faculty [union] APSCUF. I
could see potential problems arising of a significant nature if we had not had APSCUF. On the
other hand, I realize that . . . actually encouraged faculty and the administration to work
somewhat more closely together too.
AB: And just to wrap up, what words of wisdom do you have for the Slippery Rock community
or how would you like to be remembered?
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Taylor, David 14
DT: Well, be human [laughs]. Every and each student deserves a reasonable hearing; so do
colleagues. Try to learn continuously. Whatever new that you learn does not necessarily have to
have a strong direct connection to academia. New knowledge changes your mental flexibility and
enhances overall perspectives on everything.
AB: Well Dave, thank you so much for coming in. I think . . .
DT: You’re welcome.
AB: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
David Taylor Interview
November 20, 2015
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Amy Brunner
Transcribed by Amy Brunner and Andrew Hill
Proofread and edited by Judy Silva and Amy Brunner
Approved by D. C. Taylor, June 27, 2016
AB: Well, let me get my glasses on, because [pause] I can’t read anything without them either,
so . . . .
DT: [laughs]
AB: I do have the voice recorder going.
DT: I’ll tell you if I have my glasses off, all I can do is smell things [laughter]; and it’s a poor
substitute for reading.
AB: Yes, yes. I can see far away with[out] them, but I got to that point, that late thirties point
where . . . [laughs].
DT: Oh, gee. You know I hit the age of 44 in the summer of 1983, and I was teaching Organic
Chemistry that summer. And I suddenly went from being able to read students’ problem sets to,
“Oh my God.” I had to get a set of bifocals so quickly that summer, it was not funny.
AB: Oh, I can imagine.
DT: It was just startling [laughs].
AB: Well, I always had really good vision and then all of a sudden, I went to the eye doctor and
they said, “Oh, you need readers now.”
DT: Well, that’s not a disqualifier of vision quality. That’s age, and you can retain good visual
acuity readily. I was really surprised. I started learning how to fly a plane when I was 47 years
old.
AB: Really?
DT: And the optometrist that I was going to was also a pilot, which I did not know at the time.
So he would really take his time ripping on me. My corrected vision at that time was 20/15, and
that surprised me because I have been wearing glasses for 69 years now. But it turns out that it’s
not necessarily how good your visual acuity is but how you interpret the images that you see.
AB: Of course.
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Taylor, David 2
DT: I found that I could pick out an airport fifteen to twenty miles away just by a different
textural pattern on the horizon. A friend of mine [laughs] he usually couldn’t see them until we
were setting up for our landing approach [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] Oh, man. Well, let’s go ahead and circle back to the beginning. Okay?
DT: Okay.
AB: If I could just have your name, your . . . approximate date of birth, where you’re from, and
just some background.
DT: Okay. My name is David C. Taylor, and my expected birth date was July 29th 1939. I was an
early arriver, and I haven’t stopped since. And I was born, grew up, and graduated from
Bowdoin College in Maine. I had to go out of state for further education, as . . . as an M.A. at
Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. It’s also known as UConn,
and that creates confusion with people too. My specialty was analytical chemistry with a minor
in organic chemistry.
AB: Okay.
DT: I arrived at Slippery Rock State College with a half complete dissertation, and in November
1970, slightly more than two years after arrival, I finished.
AB: Yay! [Laughter] And what exactly did you do for us here at Slippery Rock University?
Well, I guess it was the State College back then.
DT: Yeah. I was hired in the fall as a temporary assistant professor in the Department of
Chemistry. And along the way, I was the director of the Slippery Rock University Planetarium,
The Rocket Room, from 1979 through 1987. I retired from the Department of Chemistry and
Physics in 2004. The merger of Physics and Chemistry was only a . . . two year proposition, but
it turns out that it’s very appropriate because in order to teach chemistry, you have to teach
physics.
AB: That is true. I mean, in my particular case, I’ve taken my chemistry classes.
DT: Good.
AB: I have, and at this point, all I remember is how to do the little dot diagrams [laughs].
DT: Good. Well, it took me until I was about 40 years old to discover that not everybody dug
chemistry the same way that I did. And I think part of it was a consequence of the fact that
practically every innate and learned capability or ability that people have has to be brought to
bear when you do study chemistry. My experience studying chemistry has really made anything
that I have done over the years extraordinarily easy.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 3
AB: That’s true. I mean because there is the math aspect, there’s the spatial aspect.
DT: Yes, it’s very much a head game. If you have a vivid imagination, that works very, very well
in chemistry.
AB: Yes.
DT: I ascribe that to old radio programs . . . listening to The Shadow, the hairs on the back of
your neck stood up . . . even if you didn’t have any at that time.
AB: [Laughs] As I mentioned, you were here during the State College era, but when . . . do you
remember or do you have any thoughts or any recollections about the transition from state
college to university?
DT: No, because chemistry is hardly ever affected by name changes [laughs]. It’s interesting that
when I came here in 1968, many local people were still referring to Slippery Rock State College
as Slippery Rock State Teachers’ College. And I even hear today people referring to Slippery
Rock University as Slippery Rock State College. It takes a long time to adjust to changes, and
the irony is that in chemistry when changes in theories or changes, well . . . not many changes in
laws however, but when changes in theory come along you have to respond, you know, quite
promptly, quite quickly to make sure that your students are current with contemporary practice.
AB: [Clears throat] Excuse me. Did the department--you mentioned that the department was
Chemistry, and then became Chemistry and Physics. How exactly did that change come about?
DT: I think that was a consequence of what was perceived to be a personnel type of challenge
that was occurring at the time. I, at that time, did not really feel too strongly involved in that
aspect because that was about three years before I retired or so. That was not really a big issue.
AB: I see here that you said that the leadership within the Chemistry Department did change
fairly regularly.
DT: Yeah. According to the collective bargaining agreement, chairs are elected for a three-year
period of time, and it is a challenging task. It takes a lot of time. It’s . . . not the world’s easiest
task when you have a . . . group of people to represent, rather than govern. College professors are
notoriously ungovernable [laughter].
AB: Which building did you work in?
DT: I spent my entire career in Vincent Science Hall, which I guess is now known as Vincent
Science Center. I missed the move-in of 1968, although I did tour the building while it was under
construction when I was here for an interview. And I missed the move-out to Advanced
Technology and Science, which I was happy to do. I had two separate office locations in Vincent
Science Hall in thirty-five years. After I had a chance to visit the renovated building, I could not
find the doorway, which still existed, that actually went into my old office [laughs].
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 4
AB: It’s a very nice building. I mean, this is my first semester here, but it is a very nice building.
DT: It is an incredible building with the exception of the lack of right angle corners in many
parts of it. That was one of the few things they could not rectify.
AB: Well, it is difficult inside of a round building, not impossible.
DT: Yeah . . . it’s not impossible, but it is a bit of a challenge. You have to be careful how you
place file cabinets so that nothing can fall off the top and be lost forever.
AB: [Laughs] That is true. What was it like when you came here for your interview? What was
your first impression of Slippery Rock College?
DT: Most of the university, at that time, was located on the top of the hill. I think only [Spotts]
World Cultures Building was down significantly. We had Maltby Library, Old Main . . . the
[Miller] Auditorium. The original lab school was basically abandoned at the time. We had
Morrow Field House, the Special Education Building, the heating plant, and where the present
art building’s located, that was known as El Gato. That was the student union . . . and part time
food service facility, and the bookstore was in the basement. Weisenfluh was the only eating
facility on campus at the time. And the interesting thing is that, in one of my offices I could look
over the entire eastern section of the campus, which didn’t exist in 1968. And then, periodically
I’d think, “How much is changing around here?” I’d go look out the window and enumerate the
years which all of the succeeding buildings were built. And we were looking at a new building
here about every two to three years.
AB: Wow.
DT: Either a new building or a major renovation going on somewhere.
AB: I know that my experience was, the first time I set foot on this campus was in ’88 . . . there
was nothing to the east. Basically the campus ended with what’s the Old Union now.
DT: Yea, Bailey Library and the [Swope] Music Building did not exist. Eisenberg, the library
and the student union building were it. Yeah, fortunately, we have a huge campus, and that has
made a wonderful opportunity for new buildings to be designed. I like to see the variation in
architecture that now exists on campus.
But when I first came here in March of 1968, a select group of faculty were organizing a vote of
no confidence for the current president, at that time, Robert Carter. Very quickly, I still
remember the names of many of the people who were involved in that because most of them at
that time were in Strain Behavioral Science Building, which in 1968, was the science building.
Two of them, at least, were colleagues in the Physics Department, which were on the same floor
in Vincent Science Hall as the Department of Chemistry. So no question about the fact they were
committed to quality and students, and were themselves dedicated and very human. That was the
employment situation that I was seeking.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 5
The changes that I witnessed were almost invisible to anyone who did not purchase, use or
maintain any electronic equipment. For a couple of years, we would have to merely approximate
requesting sealed bids for equipment repair. In my teaching field, chemical instrumentation, if
equipment doesn’t work, a laboratory experiment often could not be completed. About a year
later my purchase request for a replacement transistor, powering an ultrasonic cleaner, reached
the president’s office after hanging fire for three months. The purchasing process had started to
change. So that was important.
This was important to me as I think I had been hired because I could repair electronic scientific
equipment. I recall that I had replaced the power transformer in a--at the time--$20,000 piece of
equipment . . . twice [laughter]. The transformer, I think at the time, was about $500 and, you
know, an hour and a half of work on my part saw the new transformer installed. So that helped a
lot when we had to deal with the usual and regularly recurring budget restrictions.
The second change occurred much greater, during 1986-87, when we convinced the General
Services Administration that a special type of lamp, that cost about $125, had a limited useful
operating lifetime. We threw them away when they no longer functioned, but the auditors would
put an inventory number on them. When they arrived, they physically wanted to view all the
lamps we were supposed to have in our possession. We could not produce them.
AB: Of course not.
DT: We could not produce the item, or any of the items, so we showed them our remaining entire
supply of lamps, ensuring that they read the expected lifetime on each label. At this point, GSA
changed their threshold value on capital equipment to $500, and then began indexing the value
according to inflation in the future. GSA had wanted us to account for all items costing more
than $100 on a six hundred item list. Most of the items had been purchased between three to
fifteen years previously. We didn’t, as faculty, have the time or the desire to pursue such trivia.
The list shrank to about thirty-five items the following year, and everyone was extremely happy.
No, they were gleeful!
AB: [Laughs]
DT: The first few years of summer school had the first semester courses of both General and
Organic Chemistry running in the pre-session: three weeks, minus one day for Memorial Day.
With fourteen days and two and a half hours of lecture a day, and three and a half hours of
laboratory a day, this was a horrendous workload for both the instructor and the students. In the
mid-‘70s, the three week pre-session and the six week regular session were dropped in favor of
two five-week sessions. With our entry into the 21st century, the schedule for the equivalent of
studying a full year of chemistry was revised to two four-week sessions. This is still a tough
schedule for both students and instructor, in my opinion. But, it’s cost-effective in terms of
transportation and it does work very well. As a matter of fact, one of the local pharmacists was a
student of mine in the summer session. She’s a very nice person to know, in the age group that
I’m in now.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 6
AB: [Laughs] Yeah, I have to admit that—that two weeks of six hours a day of just Chemistry-that’s intense.
DT: Yes, it is intense. It’s very tough, yeah.
AB: Oh, wow. And what were your . . . what campus activities were you involved with? Any
committees? Anything like that?
DT: Early on, I confined most of my committee activities to dealing with the Department of
Chemistry matters. I wound up being largely involved in instrument purchase and instrument
maintenance. That did a good job of keeping me very, very busy; and as we acquired more
scientific instrumentation each year, the maintenance workload or instrument check for
performance capabilities got busy. But I wound up being secretary for department meetings. I
forget for how many years I did it, but it was a very, very good experience. I was sort of an
illegal secretary for the local Sigma Xi chapter, because I was not a member of Sigma Xi.
AB: Oh really [laughs]?
DT: I also spent a year on the University Promotion Committee--a year as a temporary
replacement. During that time, I read every application that any faculty member submitted for
promotion at that time. And then, I would serve on various short-term ad hoc committees.
AB: One of the things that I found when I was researching was with Sigma Xi, the lecture series
in the ‘70s.
DT: Yes.
AB: I found that really interesting, and I have to admit that I don’t know if it still goes on.
DT: I don’t know either.
AB: I haven’t seen anything, but I looked at some of the lecturers you had in, and it was a very
impressive list.
DT: It was. I recall one of the speakers was Robert Silverstein, who wrote the . . . was co-author
of a book called Interpreting Infrared Spectra. It was a significant textbook in chemistry and
really very quickly became a classic. It was a wonderful lecture too.
AB: I know I was impressed when Mr. Rittelman, who was a local architect, fairly well-known
architect in this area. He came in, in I think it was ’74, and talked about solar energy. I thought
that was pretty far ahead of the curve.
DT: Before anyone knew what solar energy was. Yeah, very good.
AB: What do you feel were your greatest accomplishments at the school?
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 7
DT: Running the planetarium, which became interesting from the standpoint of view that I had
had a very long-term interest in photography. I wound up using my own 35 mm film camera, at
the time, simply because I knew how it behaved. I look upon the planetarium operation really as
applied scientific instrumentation, which with the photography experience, really made it a very
easy thing for me to jump into. People might say, “Well, what’s a chemist doing running a
planetarium?” The answer is, “Well, why not [laughter]?” I had the skill, background, and
interest to pursue that type of work.
Then I got involved in the environmental science program back in the late ‘70s. I also had an
opportunity to teach the course, The University: Thinking and Change, and discovered a lot
about myself as a consequence. One aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed was finding Chemistry
students who were ready to undertake changes of which they did not know they were capable.
Being accorded the opportunity to teach basic math, the freshman English courses, Research
Writing and Composition, Reading and Composition, Research Writing, and I also taught
Aviation Meteorology [laughter]. I think that I undertook the more challenging tasks. The
interesting thing is that some of my colleagues wondered for what reason would I teach Aviation
Meteorology, but at that time I did have an instrument rating for single engine land aircraft.
Before I retired from teaching, I actually did get a seaplane rating . . . at the age of 62, and the
instrument rating at the age of 57, which is advanced for earning that type of rating, which
people who do fly professionally say is the toughest one there is.
AB: Really?
DT: Yeah.
AB: Could you tell me a little bit more about this class, The University: Thinking and Change?
DT: Yeah, The University: Thinking and Change course was largely the brainchild of Bob
Macoskey. It was predicated on pretty sound educational knowledge at the time that the process
of education creates conflict within people because it insists that they change; and change is
something that human beings are very resistant to. Of course, the process of change you really
want to bring out in a person studying in a university environment is you want them to be able to
think critically. A lot of students come from an environment where thinking critically simply
does not exist. So, the course would explore areas in architecture, art, science, the humanities,
history, and use faculty from those areas to sort of serve as special resource people. I recall one
of the prerequisites for being accepted by the faculty who were already teaching the course, was
to take the Myers-Briggs Type [Indicator] test, which proved to be very interesting because the
colleague who administered it, when he came to see my results, he suddenly popped up and said,
“Oh my,” because I landed exactly on the borderline between an extravert and an introvert. What
struck me about that is that I have no discomfort at all in dealing with public speaking.
Classroom teaching does that to you.
On the other hand, I do very often enjoy, you know, a degree of solitude and private time. And
one of my other colleagues also involved in the program once responded that he simply goes into
the classroom and does his act, and to a certain extent that is true. But it’s fascinating from the
standpoint of view that [pause] I began to understand: one, how I could improve the quality of
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 8
my communication, because I tend to work quite intuitively which means I hear something and a
conclusion comes out of me that’s perfectly valid but nobody understands why. I don’t have to
understand why because [laughter] because I figured it out. So, that was really quite a vivid
experience for me for at least three years until the Department of Academic Support Services
decided that this was something that really could be more widely used on campus and they took
the program over. We all got fired [laughs].
AB: Oh [laughs]! Of course I think I might know the answer to this, but I definitely want [pause]
I am kind of curious as to how a chemistry professor ended up teaching writing and composition.
DT: [pause] Yeah, that’s a good question because I found when I entered college, writing was a
very, very serious challenge for me on a literary basis. And throughout my undergraduate
experience I discovered that I had worked very, very hard on putting together written thoughts.
And the extra effort was vindicated because I had to write a paper in Sociology my sophomore
year and I got an A minus on the paper. That was basically a consequence of the quality and
interpretation of the content, but the expression left something else to be desired. Senior year, I
was taking a course--Roman Classics in Translation--and the instructor offered people an
incentive, “You can write a paper and if you get a grade of B or better on it, you don’t have to
take the final exam.” Well, you have already discovered that I am open to challenges.
AB: Exactly.
DT: And I did and I got a B minus on the paper. I was very, very happy because I actually was
dealing with a literary area of knowledge. Additionally as I went through graduate school, I had
to write a master’s thesis. I had to take, at that time, a number of examinations which were
known as cumulative exams, in which you would learn of the topic a week before the exam.
AB: Oh dear.
DT: It would be independent study on your part and then you would sit down and take the exam,
not having the slightest idea of what would be on the exam. Well, out of nine exams we had to
pass six. The first three I was not successful on; the next six I was completely successful. And
when I went from Wesleyan University to the University of Connecticut, my research advisor,
who was a proud son of England, insisted that students write papers in each of the courses which
he taught. I think I took three courses from him and had a seminar course as well. So, I started
getting a lot of experience writing papers in the sciences. And when I came to the dissertation,
including figures, my dissertation was two hundred and ninety pages long . . . which is one of the
reasons why it took me two years to finish it.
I looked on my experience as something, well, you know, “if I had to work extra hard on this
type of thing, how can I make students’ lives in college easier in the long run for them [laughs],
but also encourage a little of productive suffering along the way?” So, I would require them to
write a paper in each of the advanced courses that I taught: Analytical Chemistry and Chemical
Instrumentation.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 9
Soon the Writing Across the Curriculum requirement came along and I volunteered to be the
department Writing Across the Curriculum person. I had my students put in their extensive
papers that met that requirement. And I have not heard of any complaints in the long run.
AB: Honestly, I think it’s a great idea. I mean, right now there’s the big push on what they call
STEM, which is just the science, the tech, the engineering, and the math. I do sometimes wonder
if maybe the writing aspect falls along the wayside. So, I am glad that it was brought together.
DT: Well [pause] one of the great benefits out of the Reading and Composition and Research
Writing courses for me was that I think during the course of the semester, I would have students
write about a 500-word paper on a weekly basis. So by the end of the first course, I would have
read about 300,000 words. One thing I did discover was that my reading speed markedly
increased, and it was already quite up there. Secondly, out of a class of twenty-four students, I’d
find that one student in each of the two classes at that time, was a born writer. I mean, that really
thrilled me because, gee, here is a person who inherently knows how to write effectively, and
well, and clearly, and so on. About three or four students out of the class really had serious
problems writing, which may--and I don’t know exactly what the answer is--but may have had a
problem reading.
Research Writing was a different ball of wax by that time. Some degree of filtration had
occurred, and it was mainly getting people brought into the realm of “How do you find
information?” and at that time, the internet had not developed to the extent that it did. Sites that
were of dubious quality for information had not been fully identified, and in retrospect, I might
say that [pause] Wikipedia, in at least the technical and scientific areas, is surprisingly good
because only the people who have the knowledge that is appropriate there do contribute to it. As
a matter of fact, I have actually contributed to it as well.
AB: Oh wow.
DT: Yeah.
AB: I just also wanted to ask you, what do you think were your best and worst teaching moments
while you were here.
DT: Well, one of the best moments was in thirty-five years of running chemistry laboratories
[pause] I never had an accident occur to any one of my students. The irony is when I was an
undergraduate that I had two of those incidents. The interesting thing is that because I wore
corrective glasses for a long time, they caught the brunt of the “ceremony.” The second thing is
seeing students make discoveries about their capabilities and be able to both discover and turn
those capabilities from dreams to reality on a regularly recurring basis. That has to be the close
second best thing to safety.
The worst situation occurred in late 1969, when the president at that time, Albert Watrel, told the
Chemistry Department to buy the best nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer that was
available. At that time, I had no tenure and I was not even a full assistant professor. Sinking an
elevator was the worst moment [laughs]. I figured I would be on the road within the year. Well,
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Taylor, David 10
the magnet for the instrument weighed 4,400 pounds and the elevator had a placard indicating a
capacity of 4,000 pounds and I figured, “Oh, that’ll work.” So, we loaded the magnet onto the
elevator and I am pressing the up button. The elevator sank by twelve feet into the Vincent
Science Hall basement. It took a chain fall hoist and an elevator repair technician to raise the
elevator the necessary eight inches to get the magnet into the basement of Vincent Science Hall.
That was really a much better location because of the lack of vibration. Actually, the source of
vibration we had, it took us a total of ten years to solve.
AB: Really?
DT: Yeah, yeah, yeah it was because people would not listen to us [laughs] . . . and the problem
with the vibration was that a piece of sound-deadening insulation in the housing of one of the
ventilating blowers was stuck on the rotor. The rotor would vibrate, and you could feel the floor
of the instrument room going up and down with changing amplitude with respect to time because
all the blowers would blow in the instrument room. So, we turned out to be quite lucky with that
particular incident and I was very surprised, very pleased when I did not get [laughs] when I did
not receive opportunity to go elsewhere.
AB: We’re very glad that you didn’t either; we’re very glad that you stayed [laughs]. When you
first arrived here back I think in ‘68, who were the leaders, the president, the deans; who was in
charge of the union?
DT: Robert Carter was the president who was about to be deposed when I was interviewing in
March of ‘68. Robert Lowry was the interim president until Albert Watrel was selected. Al
Schmittlein was the dean for Arts and Sciences, and I don’t recall . . . the name of an academic
vice-president, if we had one at that time. We didn’t have a bargaining agent at that time. The
Faculty Assembly, which is primarily an advisory body as near as I can tell, was chaired by
Murray Shellgren of the department of Biology.
I never met President Carter. He had departed before I had ever arrived. Dr. Schmittlein, a hard
negotiator, was wearing a lot of hats for the School of Arts and Sciences, which had only
recently been created. Professor Shellgren was an able, respected leader, carefully pointing out
the situation that faculty were going to face as college and faculty expansion was taking place.
Of course in ’68, we had about 3,500 students; enrollment was predominantly the area of health,
physical education and so on. The sciences were just getting started with the Department of
Chemistry being created I think in--certainly by 1967, possibly 1966.
AB: Okay and who are the other people here who influenced you or were significant in your time
here?
DT: Well, the influential people at Slippery Rock for me were W. G. Sayre and, that is his legal
name now, and Melvin Willis from Chemistry. These gentlemen opened me to seeing situations
in life much more broadly, and then Monte Holland, Brian Kearney, James Fearday, and Ben
Shaevitz in Physics. To me, the members of the Department of Physics always seemed much
more concerned with both the ethics and morality of academic teaching and personnel situations.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Taylor, David 11
Robert Macoskey in Philosophy: eloquent oratory used most effectively to advance a (which was
his) holistic view of society, culture, and environment. Mike and Penny Kelly in English: these
faculty supported my unexpected candidacy to teach first-year English courses during a period
when Chemistry enrollment was running low. And Henry Lenz in Education opened me to the
world of international travel and cultural customs. Mike Wartel (Dean, Natural Sciences and
Math ‘76 to 1982), he unequivocally supported the development of the planetarium as the Rocket
Room, as a public relations tool to further connect to the public at large. Glen Brunken, James
Myford, and Bob Crayne, Art introduced to me to some of the fundamental principles of art that
apply so well to daily life and I am sad to say that surprising number of those gentlemen are no
longer living.
AB: I have to admit that I recognize a lot of these names, and not just Robert Macoskey, who
obviously has the center named after him over across the way, but I see a lot of names because I
am a Slippery Rock kid myself. And so a lot of these names are either names of people I went to
school with or the last names I think maybe their wives were my teachers.
DT: Yeah.
AB: So it is very interesting to see “Oh . . . of course, the wives were teachers because the
husbands were professors. What were the [pause] what were the major events or activities that
went on while you were here? I am sure I mean you were here for quite a while [laughter].
DT: [Laughs] And I still am!
AB: So, I am sure you have seen a lot of different things. So, maybe just give some examples of
those.
DT: Yeah. Well, the student affiliate chapter of the American Chemical Society ran a Meeting in
Miniature in the early ‘70s, that to me as the faculty advisor, was an unbelievable success both in
the content of the work presented by students and the quality of the organizational structure for
the meeting itself. I have never seen anything go so smoothly in my life, especially when there
was absolutely no prior experience [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] Could you maybe describe that? Because when you say “Meeting in Miniature,” I
just picture little, tiny miniatures of people and I know that’s not what it is [laughs].
DT: No, [laughs] The American Chemical Society has two annual meetings--two semi-annual
meetings a year, very large meetings in major cities. For any one particular hour, there may be
somewhere between five to ten different talks being given in twenty minute segments.
AB: Okay.
DT: So, you are looking at [pause] let’s see, fifteen to thirty different sessions going on at one
time. So, a Meeting in Miniature is a student version of the same thing except for the . . . you
know, three to eight meetings going on, perhaps for a half hour at a time or so. Then you have to
arrange for lunch for people, you have a keynote speaker, and it’s the challenge of getting
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Taylor, David 12
everybody to the right place at the right time, putting the program together so people can make
intelligent decisions and not feel that everything they want to hear they have been excluded from.
So, it was just an unbelievable experience to watch students handle, and I always took the idea
that the student advisor was basically the liaison between the student organization and the
University. The challenge there was to simply arrange for students to be able to talk to the right
people to achieve whatever goals they needed. I did not take a role deliberately where I ran the
operation. I’d advise, I’d answer questions and make suggestions, but the final decisions were up
to them.
And during a couple of summers, and this was back in the ‘80s, we had an on campus festival
that went beyond all expectations for a cultural high. We had ultra-light aircraft flying, tentative
hot air balloon rides, and concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as conducted by
Morton Gould. Living just off the northeast corner of the campus, as I do, I had a terrifically
convenient ringside seat for all of this, and I really miss having a continuation of that event.
Then we had the three winters of ‘76-‘77, ‘77-‘78, and ‘78-’79. These made any winters before
or since seem like this is the tropics. Twelve foot high snow drifts soared on the west side of
Harmony Road, and I spent thirty of forty-five days in ‘76-‘77 blowing snow out of my
driveway. In ‘78 the drive home became a one hour nightmare as cars were unable to make the
northbound climb on the hill by Mihalik-Thompson Stadium. Back then I was driving frontwheel drive Saab and could climb almost any slope. Nobody else could. Many would start up the
hill and then do a reverse random slide downhill. By the time I reversed direction to drive
through downtown Slippery Rock, I arrived home after an hour on the road [laughs].
AB: Oh dear.
DT: And as far as national events that occurred during ‘68 through 2003, I don’t really recall any
significant campus reaction, and perhaps that’s because my office location didn’t give me a very
good view of the campus, if or when any student protests might have occurred. When I arrived in
1968, the lower campus contained only Vincent and the World Cultures Building, later named
Spotts. From ‘72 on, upon every three years a new building project: the University Union, Bailey
Library, N. Kerr Thompson Stadium (now Mihalik-Thompson Stadium), Eisenberg Classroom
Building, Boozel Cafeteria, the new Art Building completely rebuilt from its previous life as
[pause] slightly renovated from the previous union and bookstore, Swope Music Building, the
Art Sculpture Building, the Aebersold Recreation Center, Egli Soccer Field, Storm Harbor
Equestrian Center, a complete set of new dormitories and apartments, and Critchfield Park. At
times little activity seemed occurring on the campus. However, given an opportunity for thought,
the campus was surprisingly busy with construction, nothing was constant.
AB: [Chuckles] I just wanted to jump back a little bit [pause] we’re going to skip on . . . well we
are not going to skip but we will get to the next question. I just wanted to maybe skip back a little
bit and talk about your time with the Rocket Room, with the planetarium. I know you said that
you came into it out of your love of photography [pause] and I just wanted to . . .what I really
just wanted to know is how . . . successful was it within the community, at the college and with
the community at large?
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Taylor, David 13
DT: It’s really hard to say in many respects. I was not the first choice as the person to run it, but
basically, according to Dean Wartel at the time, he really wanted someone who was more
involved with astronomy, but the astronomy people in the Physics Department weren’t that
comfortable with the ancillary tasks involved with the [pause] that would be involved with the
planetarium. I wound up getting involved in it because it involved an awful lot of electronic and
electrical work. In other words, we completely wired the planetarium to operate all of the special
effects projectors. We had to run an immense amount of cabling, build a shelf to hold the
equipment, which was the best approach that we could achieve at the time. The fundamental idea
behind the planetarium was to use it as a public relations tool. Mike Wartel sold this idea very
effectively to the administration at the time and it [pause] it worked out.
We would run two planetarium shows a week, Thursday nights and Saturday nights. During
Christmas season, we would run a--for planetariums--a very traditional Christmas story, “The
Star of the East.” We would run daytime programs for [pause] for elementary and high school
classes coming in. The first six and a half or so years went very well with getting our word out to
people. One member of the Public Relations office at that time was very good at taking copy that
I submitted and getting it out into newspapers around the area. Then that person departed, and
then it suddenly started going downhill. I never saw so many errors occur in public information
published regarding the planetarium in my life. That’s really what brought it to an end because
we became totally undependable, unpredictable for people. So, that was . . . while information
entered the public realm effectively well, reliably, we developed quite a following; but when
stuff became challenging that was moving toward the end. I simply could not handle that type of
situation.
AB: Understandable. It’s a shame because I thought it was . . . I found it to be a very interesting
program. I found it to be, again, a very good PR move with the community at large. That’s
actually really upsetting. Are there other memorable events or maybe other things that really
stand out to you during your time here?
DT: Given enough time I could probably enumerate almost every one of them but I am not going
to [laughs].
AB: [Laughs] What if anything do you miss about working and being a professor here?
DT: Well, I miss students. I miss interacting with colleagues. I don’t miss the administrative or
collecting bargaining unit required tasks, and only the development of the word processor made
the repetitive five year task of preparing a self-evaluation tolerable. It’s simply because you
could edit and add very, very easily. But that was the major problem: the collective bargaining
unit, knowing how things were done prior to the presence of the faculty [union] APSCUF. I
could see potential problems arising of a significant nature if we had not had APSCUF. On the
other hand, I realize that . . . actually encouraged faculty and the administration to work
somewhat more closely together too.
AB: And just to wrap up, what words of wisdom do you have for the Slippery Rock community
or how would you like to be remembered?
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Taylor, David 14
DT: Well, be human [laughs]. Every and each student deserves a reasonable hearing; so do
colleagues. Try to learn continuously. Whatever new that you learn does not necessarily have to
have a strong direct connection to academia. New knowledge changes your mental flexibility and
enhances overall perspectives on everything.
AB: Well Dave, thank you so much for coming in. I think . . .
DT: You’re welcome.
AB: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
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