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My father of wanted me to go SMU and stay at home as my brothers
had done, and I really wanted to go away from home
and I had a neighbor who lived up the street who had gone to East Texas and I had visited
there and I liked the idea of a small campus,
and so that's where I went in 1962 and stayed
for a long time and I really got a great education there.
I needed to find a job, and that's in the mid-sixty's when the community colleges were
growing in texas,
and I got a job Tarrant County Junior College the first year it opened as
Director of Student Activities,
and I went there and really found my passion about, you know, the community
colleges are America's contribution to higher education, are all about access
and opportunity.
And it was a great experience for me and so I really decided that's where I
wanted to be.
I went to segregated
public schools in Dallas
and when I went to Commerce,
as a freshman and sophomore, it didn't integrate
until 1964.
So I was never in a class
with a person of color
in my life and as a graduate assistant.
I went in to teach a course that was part of the general education
curriculum,
called Personality Foundations,
and all the sudden here I am in this classroom with
24 students, nine of whom were these young african american football
players
and that was my first experience of having that kind of interaction
and it was a great experience for me as I began to understand about, you
know,
about working with people whose
backgrounds are different. And that's also the great thing about being with community
colleges because
our student body here is very, very diverse, and
you know, I've learned about all the differences about people but I've also
learned there are so many more similarities,
and so all of my community work often is involved
with working with groups. I'm very involved with the NAACP. I'm also on
the the board of the Hispanic Police Society. I'm on the board of the Holocaust
Museum and Study Center,
and very interested in holocaust education and really of tolerance and
peace.
When I was in graduate school in Commerce,
Carl Rogers, this great educational psychologist, was that kind of a guru of
all the graduate students in the program, and he said we're part of everything that
with which we come in contact,
and I have absolutely believe that and so growing up with all these experiences
and being in public colleges with students
who are so diverse
in age, background, ethnicity, race, *** orientation,
you know, it's made me really appreciate all that that's what makes this job so
exciting.
Because I get the experience of being here working with students who are very
diverse
and then being in a community that's very diverse and being involved in that
community.