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I'm Gayle Davis, provost at GVSU
and I'm really pleased to see you all here
for this our third of four lectures in the
"50th at Noon" lecture series.
This is a series about GVSU's evolution
from the little, alternative,
not very well known institution
to the premiere, comprehensive university
in the Midwest that it is today.
Our planning committee has done a great job
of putting the series together
as so many other aspects
of our 50th anniversary have been wonderful
and I want to thank them.
So thank you planning committee.
Appreciate it.
The anniversary committee asked people
to present their lecture whatever topic they
were talking about from their own personal
history with GV.
So if you haven't been able to come to these
yet except for today.
For all of them, except for one,
that is today, we scheduled pairs of people
to come and talk about their experiences.
For instance Don Lubbers
and Glenn Niemeyer were here.
They talked about the college
in the cornfield.
Joan Boand and Jim Scott discussed the
inception and growth of physical education
and intercollegiate athletics at GVSU.
And for our last lecture, that will be held
on March 30th, Ron VanSteeland,
vice president for finance
and administration emeritus and Vern Ohlman,
one of our often used architects here
and designers here
for our buildings will present ,"
Incorporating the Village Experience
in Grand Valley's Campus Design."
So that's coming up.
One more to go after today.
But today is different.
The committee could think of no reason
to pair anyone with today's speaker.
She is standing in a corner--
I'm not sure what we're up for.
She herself and her experience at GVSU
as history unfolded are so completely unique.
She not only knows all the skeletons,
she also knows where they're buried,
why they were buried
and what they were wearing
when they were buried.
Lynn Chick Blue started working
at GVSU in 1968.
She has served the university
in a whole variety of roles,
the longest one as registrar 30 years.
Chick is currently the vice provost and dean
of academic services and technology.
As she took on each of these successively more
and more responsible and crucial roles,
Chick increasingly became the person
with not only the general institutional
history but also the fine details
of our operations throughout the years
and throughout all the academic services
complex of responsibilities.
As my vice provost for the past five years,
I have seen how she never shirks an
opportunity to make us better;
particularly our students.
She brings the integrated knowledge
of our culture and history as well
as our practices in her work resulting
in creative and wise decisions.
She has not gotten tired of any of this;
at least not most days.
I know Chick to be both practical
and idealistic, down to earth and humorous
but also a fighter for her beliefs.
Dedicated, loyal, student-centered
and solution oriented.
And although Chick is completely
and fiercely devoted to this university,
she is not blindly so.
She can spot its weaknesses and she is not shy
about voicing her concerns
about them nor is she hesitant
about finding a way
to strengthen Grand Valley.
So I would not be surprised
if today what we hear are some humorous
anecdotes mixed in with informed
and serious reflections about where we've been
as a university and where we're headed.
I know this is going to be a huge treat.
Please join me in welcoming our colleague
and dear friend,
Lynn Chick Blue to the podium.
This is really nerve making I hope you
understand but I'm going to get on a role here
and I brought some things
that afterwards you may want
to come and look at .
I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time
in the current decade;
maybe not even in the last decade.
But I thought I'd start
by staying I learned a lot
of stuff from my mom.
One of the things I learned from her
when I was a Girl Scout and trying
to run my first Girl Scout meeting
and I was complaining to her
that the other girls wouldn't listen.
And she said, "Well Chick, this is what I do.
If you want the kids to listen, have candy.
If you want them to be quiet
and listen, make it taffy."
So we have some taffy to come around.
That was my first lesson
in management from my mother.
Now, this is titled
"GVSU a Tradition of Change."
I've been at Grand Valley for 43 years
and that is really an awfully long time
and I was young once and enjoyed this place
when I was a youngster,
and a middle-aged kid now an old kid.
But one of the things that is so true
of Grand Valley is a year didn't go
by without some fairly significant change.
And the changes all got represented
in these things called catalogs.
Right. This is my life.
My job from pretty much the first day I got
here and that would be this catalog was
to know this and understand this
and make it work.
So, my whole life is just mired
in all this detail that is piled
up here on this table.
I'm going to start with a few old snaps.
I did some research to find some pictures
to use and I found some really great old ones
that maybe you guys haven't seen before.
In the Beginning: This was the first sign
on GVSUs Allendale campus.
There was a pink farmhouse
and a grey farmhouse at the time and a barn.
And there was the nice new sign.
Looking for Money: I'm sure there are none
of you here that bought a brick
to build grand valley but we did sell bricks
to build grand valley.
The Farmhouse-Allendale:
This was when the president
and a few employees, cuz there weren't many
at the time, moved from GR
out to the Allendale campus
and into the gray farmhouse and you'll notice.
I don't know how many
of you remember the bucket chairs,
big and orange, you see what's right there
in front.
We kept them for a very long time.
We were very frugal in those days.
We were First with Arches:
McDonald's didn't start the arches, we did.
If You Build It Will They Come?
Now there's a look.
That's LMH and this is Lake Superior
in this pile right here.
Lake Michigan and Superior:
And this as is when we got a little closer.
New Student Orientation:
This was the first new student orientation.
Orientation people, what do you think?
"Hoot'n nanny?"
Isn't that sweet, and there's the barn.
Opening Day: This was opening day
for the first class.
Now, one of the things I want to point
out to you right away and maybe it's
to give credit to Admissions people
around the world.
Can you imagine recruiting for the class
to start in 1963?
You didn't have a college,
you didn't have a campus-well, you did,
you had a campus.
You were out there going
to high schools visiting
and you had this catalog.
This catalog has 35 pages including the
back cover.
We were a simpler college then.
This talked all about what was going
to happen.
Kudos to admissions people years ago
that they managed to find 226 students
that would enroll that first day in buildings
that weren't quite done.
As a matter of fact, the day classes started,
those buildings weren't quite done.
And the library was still
in the pink farmhouse.
LMH looking north -
Seidman House under construction:
This is LMH looking
at Seidman House being built.
Beanies, white sox, loafers,
knee sox and hose?
Now, check that out beanies-we had those then.
Some of this is going to be about Ozzie
and Harriet days.
Mind you I plan to spend the majority
of my time back in yesteryear rather
than the current year.
Building a Bridge:
We were building a bridge then.
Cultural Beginnings -
Board of Control Policy 1963:
And this is the first thing that I have
that I would actually read to you.
I found a booklet which I will turn
over to the Archives
because I m' not sure they actually have one.
But, it's how to afford and pay for GVSC.
In here I found some messages
that shape our culture today and I'll read it.
This is what are other responsibilities
of employees?
Share work.
Though each position carries
with it specific responsibilities,
employees are expected to share work
which is the principal responsibility
of others, according to priorities established
by your supervisor.
The holder of each position also has a
responsibility to be an informed
and an informative representative
of the college, ready always
to answer questions about the college
and to interest people in its accomplishments.
Standards of excellence,
which are the objectives
of the academic program for students.
By each letter written, by each personal
or telephone contact made,
and by each task an employee undertakes
for the college,
its quality may be judged critically
by some observer of its development.
Earning the admiration of both students
and the general public for this newest
of Michigan's state colleges is a function
of every position on staff.
1963 passed by Board of Control,
isn't that interesting?
And it hangs with us today.
In the beginning - GVSCollege: As I said,
this was our first catalog.
It's all talking about what will happen
because they were all
out there recruiting before it had happened.
It had courses in there numbered Math 1,
Math 2 and Math 3.
I think there were 12 courses
that were offered that first year.
Yes, cornfields and cows:
You've heard people joke about the cornfield.
Now notice that's the Fieldhouse
and you see what's there.
This was a cornfield, seriously.
Our Doomed Dome: There it is the doomed dome.
You'll see another shot of it later on.
Building a Library Draws a Crowd:
It's too bad Lee isn't here.
This is the crowd that gathered
to watch the building of the library.
That's the library Zumberge in the background.
I'm sure the same thing will happen
as we start digging out here.
Loutit Hall and the Climeatron: This is,
many of you probably don't know,
but this is Loutit Hall.
The thing there in the front is
the Climeatron.
It think that it was about the ugliest thing
that we had on our campus.
All it would get was full sun.
So things that grew in there were cacti.
And you'd walk by
and you'd go aren't you longing
for something green and leafy
and it just never had any.
And that Loutit Hall,
Doug maybe that was coretem metal is
that right, that was designed to oxidize
and it looked like a rusty building
from the get go and it really looked
like you ought to get the scowering powder out
and go take care of it.
Card Playing in the New Library: Okay, now,
to give you just a sense of what it was
like in Ozzie and Harriet days.
This is a report by the Dean
of Students at the time.
He got a note from a fellow in the library
to say, " I threw the under named students
out of the library on Tuesday morning
for playing cards and talking in the carrels.
I told them that they would have
to see you before Wednesday night
and tell you why they had so much free time
that they could play cards
in a $400,000 facility instead of studying."
I am not making this one up.
So Dean Stomatakis met with these students
and the first student right away immediately
fessed up to inappropriate behavior and no,
they should not have been playing cards.
Amber, the next one,
right away said that it was
totally inappropriate.
It wasn't the right thing to be doing.
David, said well I know I heard them
over there and I just went
over to see what was going on
and I wasn't playing cards at all.
Cathy said, "I am so sorry,
please don't tell my mother blah, blah, blah."
So they did tell all the parents, of course,
cuz that's what you did then,
you told the parents.
Along came Marion and you'll have
to hear this one.
This young lady stated
that she was just playing cards.
We weren't disturbing anyone.
She further stated that if there was a rule
against playing cards in the library,
the school should post a notice
to that effect in the library.
No amount of discussion to get
through to this young lady that playing cards
in the library was not at all appropriate
or acceptable in a collegiate society she
seemed completely unable to accept
or understand accepted standards
of decorum or propriety.
The Dean of Student Services could not help
but feel that this girl needed a great deal
of personalized attention, counseling
and direction before she would be able
to take her rightful place in society.
Isn't that one great!
I pull that one out every once in a while
when Bart Merkle is talking
about a problem he's has with a kid
and think there were simpler days.
One more to get the Ozzie and Harriet affect:
Male Guest in Room: I, Carol Wilcox,
acknowledge involvement in violation
of the rules and regs
of the college on October 6.
I was found to have a male guest
in my apartment in Muskegon House
of the Grand Valley apartments.
Realizing, college attendance
to be a privilege and the reasonable behavior
to be an important criterion
for continued college attendance,
I agree to act in an appropriate manner
for the 65-66 academic year.
She was restricted to her room and needed
to check in after classes
and could not leave her room
after 6 p.m. for 3 months.
Things change.
My first book of details:
This is my first book of details.
I was carrying you through yesteryear.
But that's my first book of rules
and we had gone from 35 pages
to almost 100 rules of pages by that time.
Details...
It's all about the details:
Now I want to tell you it' basically all
about the details.
Everything is important
to know everything calculated properly,
be able to pick things precisely,
be certain of every detail.
It could kill ya.
The 1968 Campus Map:
This was my GV when I started here.
You'll notice we have the Lakes buildings
and we have a library, we had MAK and MAN
and we had a couple of dorms
and we had the doomed dorm, and Loutit,
the rusty building.
My New Typewriter 1968:
This was my typewriter.
I was a brand new position at GV
so I got a new desk,
a new typewriter, everything.
I still have the manual for this
if anybody wants to do it.
It had a bouyant keyboard
which meant you didn't have to pound
on the keys like you had to do
with old typewriters.
Smile for Your ID: This is to remind us
of our frugality.
When I started here,
you know ID cards are always a big deal
with students.
There always kind of a pain
in the neck to administer.
But, when I started here we didn't have an
ID camera.
We were poor, I mean like really poor.
We borrowed GRCC's Polaraid camera.
So, they would start classes and then 2 weeks
into the term we would go down and pick
up their camera and bring it out to campus
and we would call all the students to come
to the GT Room-you guys know that,
that used to be the Grand Traverse Room,
where Accounting is right now,
that used to be where the lunchroom was
and everything.
So the people would come there
and we would take their pictures.
And the returning students would come.
And this was printed on the back
of the ID cards, and I can't find mine,
but it said present this and be punched
by the registrar.
It was just one of those things that we did
in the olden days-be punched by the registrar.
Actually, after using their camera
for 5 years, they were able to buy a new one
and they sold us theirs for $50.00
which we then used for the next 5 years.
State of the Art Study Carels:
This was our study carels.
See the nice typewriter and the monitor there.
We can credit Casey Bosman
for these high tech things.
I hope you're taking special note
of the suit jacket.
Typical Dorm Room: This was a dorm room.
See the nice tape recorder
up there on the shelf.
Campus Security in the Early Days:
In the early days, we didn't have police
so we armed executive officers.
We had them wander the campus,
keep the hippies in order.
Don didn't holster his, he liked to carry his.
And you notice how he smiles so nicely.
Our New Police Vehicle: Well,
soon enough we got a police car.
Isn't that a beaute?
Don't you just picture Barney Pfife hopping
into that puppy?
Angus: And, we got a boat.
We didn't have a camera but we had a boat.
We had the Angus.
We kept that over in Grand Haven.
New Rowing Shell: Then we got this other boat.
I think you'll see Mary Seeger standing right
over there.
Mary Seeger has always been the queen
of rowing.
The fellow in the front
with the nose is Don Dufek.
You could always tell Don Dufek
from a pretty fair distance.
Field House Registration:
That's me at Fieldhouse registration.
Pretty nice hairdo don't you think.
The glasses were really big.
I don't have them.
Before the Collapse: Right here, that's me.
That's when short skirts were
in style once before.
And, this is Fieldhouse registration.
And what we used to do, and remember we were
on quarters then, so you got to do this many,
many times a year.
You'd have to pack up everything you owned
and pencils and papers and books
and all this crap and you'd haul it
over to the Fieldhouse and you'd put it
out on all the tables
and then everybody would have to come.
And they had to come at certain hours,
by like 15" blocks
and if they didn't you didn't let them
in the door cuz you didn't want them
to steal any registration or anything.
Feed Me Cards...:
This was our first processing machine.
This was pre the computer.
Isn't he a dandy?
That was in the basement of LMH.
We'd go over to the Fieldhouse and we'd figure
out what everybody was taking,
then we'd have to go to LMH go
to the basement, go to the keypunch machine,
punch it all in and put the cards in it
and feed them into that puppy
and out would pop a printed schedule.
I don't know why we did
that because we could have just written it
but we needed to do that.
By the way, I do have the manual
for that machine here
in case anybody is interested in the details.
It also tells you in here how
to wire the boards because there were boards
in there that you connected
to make things work.
Right, Terry?
Punch the Cards: Keypunch machines.
That was a pretty new one.
Then there were colleges: Now we're getting
into some really interesting times.
When I started in 1968,
it was the first semester
of Thomas Jefferson College.
May of you have heard that before, I'm sure.
We then started adding colleges and institutes
until we had quite a collection of them.
This was a catalog long about '74
and you can see that we had a bit
of a split personality; not sure, who we were
but we were a pile of colleges at the time.
We have a computer!
About this same time,
we got our first computer.
I've highlighted the area.
It's a great good thing.
It's 32K and over the next seven years we hope
to build up to 64K now those of you
that have little MP3 players that's
about a tenth of a song.
So this had a lot of power.
First Selectric Typewriter in Records:
That was my next typewriter, a Selectric.
Strapped for Space:
The next few years were all
about not enough space, always cozy.
Lake Huron - Records Office:
This was the Records office.
See how spacious it is
and you notice the paper.
Everything was about paper,
we didn't have computers yet.
We didn't even have the good old heath
kit yet.
Champagne Punch: We also had parties.
We had them after grading at Christmas time
and I made the meanest champagne punch
on the planet.
Enjoying the punch...
Lot of people would join in.
That's how we got to have champagne punch cuz
of the people that came to the party.
That thing behind them there,
that's the Diebold.
That is like a big ferris wheel
of record cards and that's
where we stored all of our records.
Humpty Dumpty: There's the dome.
It fell down.
It fell down the night before we were set
up for registration in the Fieldhouse;
another minor detail, oh what to do.
So you pack everything up
and you go, go...where?
Maybe the Kirkhof Center,
so we'll take over the Kirkhof Center.
That brought about a lot of other things,
where do you hold the classes?
What about your basketball games?
Cuz we didn't fix this right away,
quick a minute, this took a while.
Absent a Field House:
So absence the Fieldhouse we set everybody
outside for all their activities.
We don't have this anymore but there used
to be a ski hill out there with a tow rope.
I see some people nodding
that might have been there.
Vote for Me: There were interesting elections.
This was definitely the hippy era.
Someone who had been looking
at this earlier said,
"ya-all look like hippies," well, ya.
Lake Huron - Home to TJC: This was the staging
of a photograph that would become a
recruitment brochure, Jodi.
Recruitment Poster in the 70s:
Pretty good, huh?
We had a kind of a mixed face back in the day.
National Poetry Festivals:
Then there was the national poetry festival.
We entertained that several times during
that period.
And it brought quite a collection
of people to campus.
Clown Class: Clown class,
who remembers clown class?
Anybody? Anybody?
Great, I can tell every lie I know.
Performing Arts Center
and Thomas Jefferson College celebrated a lot
of things in the arts.
And one of the things they had every summer,
for several summers, was clown class.
So you'd walk in from the parking lot,
we were at the time in Lake Huron Hall,
come traipsing come around the corner
from Seidman House,
hanging from a tree is a mime then you'd see
some others bouncing balls around.
And all the while the Admissions office was
right next door and entertaining
prospective students.
It's that face that we put forward
that was difficult at the time.
Willie J: William James College came along
in that time.
The Module Mobile - College IV:
College IV Maybe we could use it today:
and the module mobile for the convenience
of taking coursework directly to the factory
and the workplace, right Doug?
I was going to check and see
if we still had it to see
if Moyer could set it up for us
since we're low on classrooms.
This was set up as a classroom by the way.
College IV - 1/2 Credit Modules:
College IV had something pretty unique.
They had half credit modules.
This was our tuition chart.
So you could come up to the window in Records
and say, " like to buy me five half credits
of math."
You bet. If you're College IV
but if you're CAS you can't because you have
to buy in whole multiples.
Only College IV people could buy in halves.
What Grows in the Valley?
Any of you seen this stationery before
with the nice leaf in the middle.
I bet Glenn is ever so proud to have his name
on a piece of that.
Jazz & Blues Festivals: We had jazz
and blues festivals.
There's Zumberge back there.
Every summer we'd have one of these.
Don wouldn't be at work then.
I think there was a great deal of pressure
on people to maybe not have so many of them.
Blizzard 1978 or 2011?
Then there was the blizzard of 78.
What, close the College?
Actually this was the blizzard of 78
that was Labrador.
This was the Kirkhof.
A little story about that blizzard.
We didn't close school.
Some crazy people drove
to campus (she raised her hand).
And since I didn't want to be alone,
this young woman who worked for me,
named Joan Smith, got to have a ride with me
out to work so that I wouldn't be by myself.
So long about maybe 11:00
and the snow was getting more intense
and more intense and more intense.
Somebody called from the KC to say,
ya the college is closing.
We want you all to come over to the Kirkhof
where we'll have cots.
This was my 30th birthday.
No way, José.
Not on your life.
So to be mindful,
because it was my boss actually that called,
we did report over to the Kirkhof but not
without being totally scared to death.
We walked out of the north side of LHH,
AuSable was there by the time.
We got about half way from LHH and AUS
and we could see neither.
It was terrifying.
There were three of us.
We grabbed hands and we started walking
like the three of us together
and then we stopped all at once and thought,
"Where's the pond?"
We knew it was between us
and the Kirkhof Center.
We did actually make it over there.
It took us 20 minutes to get there.
It was terrifying.
It was what people say a white out,
it was totally that.
Unbelievable!
As I said, it was my 30th birthday
and I had some other plans
and they weren't in Allendale.
They were in Grand Rapids.
So, my friend Joan and I decided
that we would go to GR.
My car was over in Lake Michigan's parking lot
so Joan and I made our way
over to LM parking lot.
It was my car so I was driving.
I had Joan walk alongside the car holding
on to the rear mirror guiding my way
down Campus Drive and walked all the way
over to Lake Michigan Drive.
It was crystal clear.
So we drove into town
and had a birthday party.
Joan continued to be a friend,
though she never rode to work
with me ever again.
She was a good sport though we were younger.
Cuz see you could do it when you were younger.
Fateful Visit by Auditors:
So we're going to leave some levity behind
on the 70s.
In the Forum at the time, was posted this note
that the state auditors were going to be
on campus and that was pretty customary.
They would come to campus to audit everything
that you got...all your credits,
all your grades, all of this, all of that.
And so, he was acknowledging
that the auditors were going to be there
to do the 74-75, 75-76 year and that was
so that ya'll would behave, right?
Well, on this Monday morning,
when they going to come over to Records,
we were in Lake Huron at the time
and Lake Huron upstairs the Center core
of it was the Records office.
On either flank, men's room , women's room
and doors opened on both sides
so basically a circle.
On the NE corner
of that building it was wide open,
space probably about this big.
Thomas Jefferson held their common meeting
there every Monday and when you would come
in on common meeting day you'd open that door
to walk into LHH and you'd go, (sniff, sniff,
sniff) hmmm what's that smell, oh,
Jefferson is holding their common meeting.
Some people were fairly open
about what they smoked then
and during common meeting I think just crowd
caused other people to join in.
Well that Monday morning guess who else walked
in that door, 2 state auditors.
So they had to come upstairs we lived right
up there by the common room.
And this one auditor, this was his third
or fourth time at GV and he was the meanest,
crankiest man on the face of the earth.
I don't think his lips smile
so here he comes walking down,
"What's that smell?"
I said, "Well, the air handlers aren't working
very well in the building today."
What are you going to say, oh well, its grass!
So I'm trying to hurry up a minute
and get this guy and his smiling pal,
cuz he liked my answer into a room
so that they could sit down
and start auditing.
The crabby guy wanted to stay
and talk some more about what was going
over there and what is all
that noise going on.
I mean that sentence is out of his mouth
and here comes a conga line
through the men's restroom of every TJC kid
and they're hopping and jumping and carrying
on and they've got flowers and oh my Lord,
my Lord, my Lord.
And so, here's this auditor, "What's that?"
It's a group of students.
"I understand that.
What program are they in?"
Thomas Jefferson.
That was a fateful day
because that audit turned
out to be pretty brutal actually
because they did break into the course work.
At the time we were so eager to be unique
that we uniqued ourselves right into a whole.
We had schedule booklets
that had floating seminars in them.
"What's a floating seminar?"
the auditor would ask.
And what's a pear orchard project
and what's clown class
and you get credit for that?
So, it really opened up some issues.
It wasn't as though Jefferson was nothing
and we produced some absolutely fabulous
students out of Jefferson and they went
to absolutely fabulous law schools
and professional schools and graduate schools.
Now that wasn't without an awful lot
of help writing letters
to explain their transcripts.
The average Thomas Jefferson person had a
15-50 page transcript.
The longest is 136 pages
because they had narrative transcripts.
Now I don't know if you know anything
about law school data assembly services
but they like As and Bs and credits.
They don't really like stories.
Grading Complications - 21!
This, you can't see it in its entirety
but this is my summation to a task force
on common grading and numbering.
We had 21 grading symbols...that's 21.
A, B, C, D, E takes care of 5 of them.
We had a bunch more.
Every institute,
every college had a grading scale.
When you were in one college
and you took a course in another college,
you had yet another way
of applying the grading scale.
We didn't have computers to do this then kids,
we did this by hand.
Everybody had a set that they used
and then everybody, every college in order
to show their individuality,
had their own transcript too.
So we had what was known as the,
"all college card" which was the one
that the auditors would accept,
and LSDAS would accept
and graduate schools would accept.
And, then we had the Thomas Jefferson card,
and the Willie J card.
Kirkhof, or College IV,
was a computerized puppy except when you were
from another one of the colleges and then
that was a paper copy.
So we were really pretty complex in the day
and it was all about differences at the time.
It felt like, if you were
in the Records Office, it kind of felt like,
"I'm a new college so what kind
of grades would I like to use?"
A is all taken.
So how about M, yes M - Mastery,
yes...how about that.
And then not to be outdone
because A was taken,
Kirkhof and I think Performing Arts Center
decided to have A asterisk instead
of A. We had a grade called U
for unsatisfactory that went into disuse
after a couple of years because we didn't want
to damage the children's psyche
by showing things
that weren't completed satisfactorily.
Now you can understand why the auditors
preferred to look at the all college card
as opposed to the individual transcripts
because they really were a little fictional.
Lantoon Calls It: At the time,
things were very, very complex.
Each college had its own registration system.
Each college had its own records office.
Each college had its own advisors.
The central records office was always the
place to place as much blame as you could
for not having the correct record.
Well, when you had 6 records offices,
it was pretty much a crap shoot as to
which records office was the right
records office.
And, the registration system,
so if you wanted to take something over there.
The whole idea was you could take things
from across the campus
but you couldn't register for them.
That was the big problem.
Do you people know what the Lantoon is?
The April 1st edition of the Lanthorn.
This is a little clip from there.
The Lanthorn got it right,
"director of records, Lynn Chuck Breshnev,
(I was controlling then too) announced today
that a new registration procedure combining
all of the colleges would be instituted
next year.
Students have enough difficulty deciding
whether to ___ or go blind let alone picking
out classes that don't conflict,
Breshnev explained.
The simplified registration procedure will
require students to list the number
of credits they want to take
and the hours they're available for class.
This information will be fed
into the deluxe Ronco computer and Vegomatic
which will assign classes compatible
with the student's schedule and then spit it
out all over the floor.
The vice president for academic
and extramarital affairs, Gland Kneebender,
sees the new system as a boon
to the harried college student.
It's not only simple
but its also perfectly compatible
with the idea of a liberal arts education."
It was really confusing folks.
I see Pat Haynes nodding her head back here.
She's one who'd remember it having worked
in Jefferson's office right and then Kirkhof.
1, 2 3, Punch by NCA 1979: And this really led
to a kind of 1, 2,
3 punch in kind of a serious way.
We were first accredited in 1968
by North Central.
We had a re-accreditation visit in 1978
as was customary if you got the 10 year thing.
They wrote back to us
that we had some problems
and they thought there might be three of them.
The NCA regulators feel
that the colleges are hurt
by a number of factors.
One is too many academic
and administrative units.
Another is individual colleges functioning too
independently of each other
and a third factor is the competition
between colleges, institutes for students,
money and resources.
These factors combine to hinder communication
between the individual academic units
and administrative offices.
Having worked then it was a lot of fun
and there were a lot of laughs.
We did laugh.
But one thing that did happen
and happened increasingly
as the 70s wore along.
First we were losing enrollment.
We were focused internally on what we do
and how we do it and our own uniquenesses
and not so very focused externally.
Many of the administrative people,
not at the executive level,
but Records office level,
Financial Aids office level,
were pitted against one another
for these scarce resources.
So much so, that there was really incivility,
that how dare you say that we ought to do this
because we should really do it this way
because it's unique to our school.
One that is so telling came out of Jefferson.
There was a woman who worked
in the Records office there at the tail end
of Jefferson who would routinely send memos
to the Records office
or the Financial Aids office
and she had a unique rubber stamp.
You know how you can make a gesture
with your hand and one finger stands up.
That was her rubber stamp and she would place
that upon communiqués
to the central records office.
Okay, so this was a dam getting ready
to burst right.
Cuz we were spending all of our time focusing
on ourselves instead of getting students.
When you'd go to a recruitment event,
you had no idea what face you would see,
"Keep on truckin"
or would you see a faculty member
from Colleges of Arts and Sciences.
Our face out in the community,
nobody understood us because what would be
in the newspaper would be the Conga line
through the men's restroom or Clown Class
or something like that.
So ultimately it ended up that we were going
to do some common numbering, common grading,
and eventually the collapse of all
of the colleges and into what is known
as the divisions.
The Feather Letter: As I say,
we were really struggling with enrollment.
Some people in what is now Institutional
Marketing, though the ones
that are here were not here then,
came up with the brilliant idea
of the feather letter.
You can see what a handsome feather that is.
We sent this letter to everybody
who had attended Grand Valley
and had not yet graduated.
And it says, "We're not sure Mr. Bliss whether
this feather fell off a bird or just
out of someone's hat but it reminds us
that the birds of spring will soon be back
on campus at Grand Valley."
It was a hit.
I can tell ya.
Do you want to borrow that Rhonda?
Now you'll see my name down there
and my colleague, Bob Dowd.
We had refused to sign it.
You can see that that didn't last very long.
We still got to sign it.
We didn't live that one down.
It was along about that time
that we started having TGIFs.
We called them first Fridays.
Maybe I shouldn't tell but it's a great story.
We hired a long about that time a guy in HR,
not Scott, who had a law degree
and sometimes we liked to pick on him
because sometimes he would get
under your skin.
So he was part of our first Friday meeting.
It was always held at the Shawmut.
He drove a car that's about the size of one
of these buses that GRATA runs out here.
Well, one time we decided to get him
and we bought numbers that go on a boat.
We glued them to the side of his car.
Those were the fun things that we did
in that year, besides the feather letter.
I remember that because Bob Dowd
and I were the ones
that affixed the numbers to his car.
He doesn't know it.
He still works here today.
I think he knows now that I did it.
Semesters, Common Numbers,
Common Grading-Fall 1980:
We went to common numbers and common grading.
We got rid of many of our grades.
We ended up with A through F, the credit
and the no credit and we went to semesters.
All of this other stuff that we did was
when were in quarter systems
so you did it again and again and again.
The semester system allowed a little
more break.
Quarters to Semesters:
Here was the how you figured it all.
Again, at this time,
we didn't have a whole lot
of computing power rather it would add
up stuff but then you'd have to add
to all the student's records.
Credit Hour Giveaway: Then we converted
and we sent everybody a note.
And this was the great GV credit
hour giveaway.
But, the rule was when you did the math
and it was a fraction you rounded it up.
So there are people out there that graduated
with fewer than 120 if you really added them.
John Klein was probably one.
That figures, right John?
A new Fieldhouse: Long about then,
we got a new Fieldhouse.
And I point this out for Andrew's purposes,
you see that arrow right way over there,
that's where our water tower used to be.
Andrew has kept moving it closer
and closer to campus.
It's amazing how that works.
Can it be bleachers, at last!
These are bleachers.
Everybody was pretty excited
to get a Fieldhouse
because we had been sending our classes here
and there, down in Allendale
and everywhere else to have phys ed
and the ski hill.
A Return to College - Fall 1983:
Along comes fall
of '83 A Grand Rapids Campus Begins:
And here we are going downtown.
We're going to be a big college now.
Registration on-line, sort of:
And the heath kit.
Everybody, two decades the heath kits.
This is a Casey Bosman frugal
to GV no budgets.
We bought these heath kits.
They put them together.
We used these things.
This puppy is so bruised here from the number
of times that it was put in a truck with 9
of them on top to go over to the Fieldhouse
or somewhere to go to registration.
So everybody would come up
and we'd punch it in.
It was really great stuff then.
That was like really looking like computer.
Drop the C-Add the U!
November 1987: Another frugal thing
that we did.
We changed our name a lot.
We were a college, we were colleges,
we were college, we were a university.
So every time we did that we had to fix stuff
so fortunately we had a few diplomas we had a
few diplomas on hand when we went from a C
to a U. Economic Name Change:
We didn't have the money
to buy more diploma covers
but we did have enough money to buy stickers.
Remember these Mary?
We glued these on diplomas-some glued
like this, like that.
There weren't any totally upside
down ones though.
Seidman House Lobby:
Seidman House where Admissions,
Records and Financial Aid lived for a while.
Strapped for space: Again, space...cozy.
Snug as a Bug in Seidman: Seidman House -
Records Office: Ask him about the ramp
to records: This guy,
if you look in our archives you can find maybe
10 or 15 of these.
He used to routinely go on a little trip
around campus as a handicapped student.
Probably one of the most hysterical ones
and only one time did he do it.
We had a very steep ramp that went
down to the basement of Seidman
where the Records office was.
Don came careening down that ramp only
to be stopped by the cement wall
at the end of it.
Kwack! He couldn't open the door.
Once he got the door open he had it braced
with his feet and he rolled out backwards.
And then in maybe it wasn't his most polite
voice, he asked for assistance to get back.
But very soon there was some work down on
that ramp so that people could actually get
to that stupid Records office.
The Records office was down there
and was flooded 3 times by the way.
The first time it was flooded,
the maintenance guy was tired
of picking leaves out the drain at the base
of the ramp so he put a screen over the drain
so just the water could run
through so then the leaves laid on the screen
and became an awful lot like a plug and filled
up the Seidman House.
That was the lowest point on campus.
So when it would rain it would all run
down the sidewalk, right down the ramp
and into Records.
We did that three times.
We were once flooded in LHH that was upstairs
but that was by the skylights not
by the water coming from below,
it came from above.
Registration goes Touch*Tone:
We jumped into technology
and got telephone registration--
895-5010 you guys remember it don't ya?
So what we did was we took a whole bunch
of telephones over to the Fieldhouse
because you'd go
to the Fieldhouse to register.
You wouldn't use your phone from home.
Goodness no.
So we brought a bunch of phones over.
I can remember this one time
when there were a group of guys
and I don't know if it was these guys
in the picture but they were,
I don't mean to denegrade or anything,
but they were athletes and they were going
to test the first usage of touch tone.
And at the time, like we do now,
if classes are closed or you needed something,
there was always a paper permit.
So, I was in charge of watching the phones
that day, and here were five of these guys
who each had a paper permit to get
into a class and they had the phone here
and they're holding their permit and trying
to figure out what happens with the paper.
It's why touch tone didn't work very well
because we had so many permits
that you couldn't ram into the telephone.
No, it's not a Church!
Then we built a building not a church.
How we love our arts: We got deep in the arts.
Building STU: I was working on a building.
Wishing for a Clock Tower:
One of the big things of the later years.
We've got the clock, looking for a tower:
We wanted a clock tower.
We got the numbers.
The tower came.
Our Brand New Home: Three in One:
We then had this big building.
We're getting closer to the end
of what I've got to say as we're building
up to today's world.
Here comes Holland: Holland.
Summer-Orientation/Construction:
Here's another orientation.
Notice orientation is the same today
as it is then, we do construction
in the middle of orientation.
2,345,600 Documents Scanned:
One big thing that we did
and that I'm pretty proud of,
is that we have every one of our records,
available on a desktop in the Records Office.
Most universities don't have that,
but we committed to doing that.
We had to scan better than 2,000,000 documents
to make that happen and we did it in a year,
scanned and indexed them and all
of the transcripts.
Paperless: And then we shredded stuff
and there were our empty files.
Always Room for Enrollment Pools:
We had enrollment games,
some of us entered them some of us didn't.
But that was when we started
gaining enrollment.
I would run this pool
and people would enter it.
Whoever had the worst guess had to pay.
This year Butcher got to pay
and he made us all sign something
so we wouldn't all taunt him.
More systems...
and Ain't it Grand:
The 90s and 2000s were spent doing that,
making systems to make us ourselves work
in today's world in a fair easier world
to work in with automation rather
than lots of paper.
Blizzard 1978 or 2011?
Now is it the blizzard of '78 or 2011?
I can tell you on the blizzard of 2011,
the first time in my entire career I did not
get to campus on a day
that it was closed for weather.
First time!
So, I don't know
if that's cuz I'm now way too old or just
because Ferrysburg can't plow their streets.
Always an Adventure!
So, I end it with it's always been
an adventure.
This was me hosting the Gong Show
in another day.
End of story.
Thank you.