Folks and Fables...
Howard W. Odum One of Nation’s Foremost Sociologists
Howard W. Odum joined the School of Education faculty in 1913 as an associate professor of Education Sociology and Rural Education. Born in Bethlehem, Ga., he received a bachelor of arts degree from Emory College in 1904, a master’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 1906 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1910.
Odum had been a teacher in several schools prior to 1910 when he became a researcher with the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research. He had written two books on the condition of blacks in American society. He brought his profound concern for blacks into the School of Education and heightened Dean Woofter’s concern.
By 1916, Odum had developed his position as professor of Educational Psychology and Rural Education into the Department of Sociology in the College of Education. In 1918 and 1919, Odum served as Superintendent of the Summer School.
After leaving UGA, Odum became even more well known and received a number of additional degrees, several of which were honorary. He became one of the country’s foremost sociologists with such books as Southern Regions of the United States, An American Epoch, The Way of the South, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, and Wings on My Feet. The latter two books were works of fiction based on his sociological work. From these books, the terms “Black Ulysses” became a part of the language, and George Gershwin used “Rainbow Round My Shoulders” as the title of a song he wrote shortly after the book appeared.
And if the name sounds familiar… it should. Howard W. Odum was the father of Eugene Odum, the University of Georgia emeritus professor and internationally recognized ecologist and namesake of UGA’s School of Ecology.
COE Led Way for Women’s Admission into UGA
In 1911, the Board of Trustees authorized the university to grant master’s degrees to those who could earn the degree through the Summer School. One graduate level course, Philosophy of Education, was made available in 1911 for the implementation of the master’s degree. “Three sessions of the Summer School with intervening home work will be counted as a substitute for the year’s attendance necessary for the master of arts degree.” This move opened the way for women to obtain a degree from UGA.
Clifford Gray Lewis, in her history of women’s physical education at the university, reports that 1911 also saw the beginning of women’s admission to extension work through the College of Agriculture. This work was directed by Miss Mary Creswell.
“Resourceful women students developed yet another subterfuge to gain an education on the Athens campus. With the cooperation of some of the university professoriate, they began to receive private instruction, carried on behind locked doors. Transfer of credits was accomplished by the issuance of certificates by individual professors attesting to the accomplishments of their students. These documents received recognition at several institutions throughout the nation. For example, Mary E. Creswell, a graduate of the State Normal School, studied bacteriology, surreptitiously at the university and then transferred credit to the University of Chicago," wrote Lewis.
“The first degree was given a woman by the university in 1892, when, by special action of the Board of Trustees, an honorary degree was conferred upon Miss Julia Flisch of Augusta. Mary D. Lyndon received her master’s degree in 1914. She was the first woman to receive an earned degree from the University of Georgia."
When the Board of Trustees finally in 1918 passed a resolution admitting women to the junior and senior classes of the Peabody School of Education the vote was 12 to 11. Two years later, the university itself was opened to women.
Soule Developed Physical Education for Women
Mary Ella Lunday Soule, a legendary figure in the College, led the development of the department of Health and Physical Education for Women in 1925 and created UGA’s first major in that field. After a distinguished 35-year career as department head, she retired in 1960.
William Heard Kilpatrick. What Might Have Been?
It is only intriguing speculation now, but an exchange of letters in May 1937 show William Heard Kilpatrick, the prolific senior chair of the philosophy of education at the Teachers College at Columbia University from 1918-1938 was offered the position of Dean of Education at UGA, but declined the offer.
Kilpatrick essentially saw himself as a student of John Dewey. Dewey, in turn, is said to have written to John MacVannel, Kilpatrick’s major professor: “He’s the best I ever had.” Most major educational philosophers and historians say that Kilpatrick made immense contributions to American educational thought.
Kilpatrick saw as the major error in American education the attempt to teach separate subject matter with content determined in advance by the teachers. Kilpatrick’s essential thesis was spelled out in an article entitled “The Project Method,” published in Teachers College Record in 1918. It was elaborated for the rest of his career, but never better than his 1925 book, Foundations of Method.
Kilpatrick proposed that since American life is in a constantly accelerating process of change the school should teach a method of thinking through problem solving. He advocated a curriculum composed of wholehearted purposeful activity centered in problems, purposes and plans identified by the student, not the teacher.
“Schools would have to teach methods of investigating and confirming truth rather than the truth itself, or, as the slogan developed, they would have to teach children how to think, not what to think.”
In 1937, the vast majority of Georgia’s teachers were teaching “fixed-in-advance” separate subject matter content in just the way Kilpatrick abhorred. Kilpatrick was an education radical, but he was a native Georgian and was well respected. Had he become Dean he might have led Georgia education down a very different path than the one it took under Walter Cocking.
COE Faculty Work Off Campus Proves to be Alarming
When Education Dean O.C. Aderhold decided to use resources of the College to help local school systems throughout the state in 1946-47, it was not accomplished without incident.
One group of professors had gone to work with a local school system. Staying in a small hotel in the central part of the state, they checked into the only hotel, which was more than a little primitive for the time. One of the first features the group noted was that there were men’s and women’s bathing facilities on each floor, but not in the individual rooms.
Each room was equipped, however, with an individual fire escape. One end of a rope, knotted at regular intervals, was attached to a heavy piece of furniture near the window. Two of the women professors were sharing a room. They examined the rope and agreed that they took a dim view of shinnying down that rope from a second floor hotel room window in case of fire.
The two women went looking for a more acceptable route in case of fire. They pushed open a door to what they thought might be a porch with a set of steps to the ground. They found themselves in a room occupied by a gentleman clad only in a tub of bath water. The two gracious but nonplussed women backed hurriedly out into the corridor murmuring their apologies and explaining, “We were just looking for the fire escape.” They hurried on down the hall only to look back and see the bather, clad now in a towel, running down the hall. In their hurry to leave, the ladies neglected to tell the poor man that their search for the fire escape was a precautionary move, not an emergency.
The Distinguished Portrait of General Mills
In 1948, very few grants came to the College, but one of its benefactors repeatedly was General Mills, Inc. Most gifts to the university today are widely publicized and well documented. But in earlier days, things were more casual. At one end of Peabody Hall was a portrait of a Civil War officer. The picture was in bad shape, but there he stood in full regalia wearing a saber. Since the portrait had been given to the university inn the days before careful records were kept of such gifts, the identity of this hero was unknown. A couple of wags in the College decided that this unknown officer ought to have a name, so they dubbed him General Mills.
As time went on, the condition of the portrait became a disgrace to his uniform. One night General Mills disappeared. His departure is almost as great a mystery as his original identity.
Aderhold as UGA President
O.C. Aderhold was inaugurated as President of the University of Georgia in 1951. He had many goals as President. He wanted to increase enrollment but knew that progress in the teaching, research and service missions of the university would be the critical factor whether enrollments would climb. He knew that progress was dependent on faculty salaries, and he that very clear in his speeches and writings.
One of Aderhold’s goals was to upgrade the university’s image and quality by having a greater percentage of faculty members with doctorates. Within the first five years of his administration he had brought the number holding doctorates to 240, an increase of nearly 50 percent.
Although he is given much credit for the enormous building program that was carried out during his administration, Aderhold was personally more pleased with his accomplishment in upgrading the faculty members who were in place and attracting new, talented faculty members to the university.
“I have a strong belief that people become a large part of what they envision,” he said in later years. “People may say brick and mortar doesn’t make an institution. I say that’s true, but you can’t have an institution without brick and mortar.”
Aderhold knew he could not attract first-rate faculty members without first-rate laboratories and other facilities. One of the first major financial objectives he strove for was the funding of the Science Center on Ag Hill. His second one was for a multi-million dollar athletic-agricultural center, known today as Stegeman Coliseum.
Aderhold and his assistant, Joe Williams, were also instrumental in bringing the U.S. Navy Supply School to Athens in 1952 after the former Normal School/Georgia State Teachers College/College of Education/Co-ordinate Campus was abandoned.
Bess Aderhold – A Fine First Lady
President Aderhold gave much credit on the success of his administration to his wife, Bess, who played a crucial role in meeting and serving as hostess to the thousands of people to whom she represented the university.
While Mrs. Aderhold did not go with her husband very often on his many business trips, President Aderhold loved to tell about the time when she did go with on a trip to New Orleans. He took her to one of that city’s most famous restaurants for dinner. Mrs. Aderhold held a lengthy discussion with the waiter on the composition of Caesar salad. Aderhold was to report to his friends and colleagues, “Bess is the only person I know who will go to Antoine’s and tell them how to cook.”
Renovation of Peabody. You Call This Improvement?
During remodeling of the College of Education’s main building, Peabody Hall in 1951, a women’s restroom was added in the basement, next to the boiler room. Among the new installations was a complete sprinkler system. (The 1951 sprinkler system eventually saved the building when fire broke out on April 24, 1986.) However, the old boiler was not replaced in the 1951 renovation and the heat or fumes from the old boiler would, from time to time, set off the sprinkler in the women’s restroom. After several incidents, the women began to take a dim view of the “improvements” in Peabody Hall.
Peabody’s Peculiar Intercom System
In the early 1950s, there were only two telephones and two secretaries in Peabody Hall. The secretaries had to leave their desks and go downstairs to get someone if a call came for one of the faculty members ensconced in one of the basement offices. The decorum of the College did not include having the secretaries yelling down the stairwell for the professors. One of the secretaries, who had more ingenuity than dignity, discovered she could throw a shoe down to the basement to attract attention. Whoever heard the shoe would come to the foot of the stairs to learn who was to be summoned to the phone. The one called to the phone would then return the shoe. A permanent shoe was set aside for this purpose, and this peculiar intercom system was kept in place for months.
Professor Ritchie’s Roll-Top Desks
Professor Horace Ricthie, who was a UGA faculty member for almost 40 years (1915-52), had been around long enough to know how to acquire things in the university setting. Whereas others in the College had one small, metal, beat-up desk each, Ritchie had several handsome oak roll-top desks. He never seemed to be able to catch up with his work. So when the paperwork overwhelmed him at one of his desks, he just rolled down the top and moved to another one and started on the more current demands.
Integration of Industrial Arts in Teacher Education
In 1955, it was reported that all education majors were required to take at least one course in industrial arts. They learned paper construction, weaving, soap carving, block printing, metal work, finger painting, etc. They also made paper mache animals, book ends and wood puzzles for small children. The special courses for education majors stressed the integration of industrial arts activities with the children’s other subject matter areas such as social studies, language arts, home economics and others.
Dean and Mrs. Dotson’s Dog, Mimi
The Dean and Mrs. Dotson’s dog, Mimi, was apparently an irascible little animal with everyone except the Dotson. The Dean was forever asking the College’s leaders to drop by his house so that they might work there on the College’s various problems. Dean and Mrs. Dotson were fine hosts in all things except where Mimi was concerned. The disagreeable little dog would growl, bark and generally terrorize the visiting faculty members. The Dotsons, like so many other dog owners, were relatively oblivious to Mimi’s mendacity, knowing she would not really harm anyone. The Dean would also bring Mimi with him when he returned to the office at nights or on weekends. When he did so, Mimi barked and gnarled constantly whenever one of the faculty members came near.
One evening Mimi accosted faculty members Doyne Smith and Ira Aaron in the hallway of the College. Knowing they were out of earshot of the Dean, the pair discussed the menace and decided she had been spoiled rotten and would benefit from some discipline. Smith suggested the two of them whip Mimi. The rationale was that even if a good whipping failed to improve her disposition, at least it might modify her approach to the two of them. Thus, two eminent educators set off down the hall in pursuit of one disagreeable little dog. The resourceful Mimi eluded them and remained impenitent.
On another occasion when Aaron met Mimi in the hall accompanied by Mrs. Dotson, the dog barked somewhat less than usual. Aaron noted the improvement and thought he would reinforce the improved behavior. He reached out to pet Mimi and try to make friends with her. She threw up. Aaron was horrified; Mrs. Dotson was chagrined and hastened to explain that Mimi had been seek. Aaron claims the episode had no long-term effects, but his friends report to this day he has never had a pet, unless you count one red geranium.
Short Straw for a Long Ride with the Dean
One of the major reasons for the growth and development of the College in the late 1950s was that its faculty were continually on the roads of the state, doing workshops, making speeches and teaching off-campus courses. There was no question the College considered its campus to be statewide.
Dean Dotson not only did not hesitate to send faculty members to the far corners of the state, but he went himself.
Now while Dotson was a respected educator and scholar, his driving skills left something to be desired. And since travel funds were very limited, whenever members of the College went off campus, all who were going went in one car. Whenever Dean Dotson was to be in the group, any number of volunteers could be counted upon to offer to take their cars and drive.
Dean Dotson got a new Buick and was exceedingly proud of his fine new car. Everyone dreaded the next off-campus meeting requiring members of the faculty and the dean, for they all knew he would insist on driving. Doyne Smith and one other faculty member drew the short straw. The proud and confident Buick owner and his two nervous passengers started out well before daylight; they had a long way to travel and the meeting started early. Smith’s anxiety level increased his need for a cigarette, but he had no match. Smith started searching for the cigarette lighter among the fancy gadgets on the dash of the fine new Buick. The dean asked Smith what he was going; Smith told him. The ever-considerate dean stopped giving full attention to this driving and joined the search for the cigarette lighter. In the process of pushing one button after another, the dean pushed in the headlight switch, plunging the road ahead into total darkness and subsequently plunging the car into a ditch.
Smith says that at the moment of the accident his immediate concern was not for his terrified colleague or his imperious leader. His thoughts were not even on his own survival; his immediate concerns were for the well-being of the fine new Buick.
Alumna Ofira Navon: First Lady of Israel
In 1960, Ofira Erez earned her master’s degree in educational psychology, studying under the direction of Joseph Bledsoe, professor and Assistant director of Research. She went on to further work in psychology at Columbia University. For several years she worked with crippled children and deaf children. In 1963, she married Yitzhak Navon.
Ofira Erez Navon was unable to return to visit the university until the winter of 1983. At that the the Mayor of Athens, Lauren Coile, proclaimed Ofira Erez Navon Day; the University President Fred Davison presented her with a print by Lamar Dodd; and secret service agents swarmed all over Athens because she by then the wife of the President of Israel.
Mrs. Navon indicated she had long wanted to visit her alma mater. She had spoken to President Ronald Reagan, had lunch with the wife of Secretary of State George Schulz earlier that week, but that Athens was the “highlight” of her U.S. visit, she said. “The university has had a strong impact on my emotional, professional and intellectual development.”
During her Athens trip, Mrs. Navon insisted on visiting her former teacher, Dr. Bledsoe. For security reasons, no public announcements had been made about her trip to Athens. The Aderhold inhabitants were mystified at the sudden arrival of black limousines and a cadre of stern looking men. Graduate students reported that suspicious looking men went into empty classrooms and checked to see if closet doors were locked. The security agents became suspicious of the graduate students who were looking suspiciously only at them. Mrs. Navon’s visit was over before it became widely known in the College that she was here.
Mary Ella Soule: First Director of Physical Ed for Women
Mary Ella Soule had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, when she became head of the Physical Education for Women Department. She developed a sound department with a major in Health and Physical Education for Women.
She was known as an educator, pioneer, gentlewoman, crusader and iconoclast that led the department for 35 years from 1925-60. She was succeeded by Clifford Gray Lewis.
Dean John Dotson’s Legacy
College of Education student Joan Radford Biles’ account of meeting Dean John Dotson explains more about the man and his administration than any vita or “Who’s Who.”
“I had come to the University of Georgia to attend Summer School in the summer of 1954. Registration at that time was in Stegeman Hall – and a traumatic experience for a small town girl whose first of college life had been at Georgia State College for Women (GSCW) or as we fondly called those sacred halls, “Georgia’s Secluded Corner for Wallflowers.
“I had adventurously moved into Myers Hall – tripped down a small incline and turned my ankle – adorned with a big ace bandage from the infirmary I set out, check in hand, to summer registration. I thought that I would zip in and zap out! The lines, the mazes of registration signs, and the confusion was programmed right unto my psyche. Two hours in the early morning Georgia sun wilted my crimolines and my spirit. Finally, I arrived at the door of Stegeman! ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘The rest will be a breeze.’ A breeze indeed – one hour later I had managed to get into all the wrong lines, and the right ones had closed out the classes. Aching down to my shoes I knocked at the venerable gates of the Dean of Education in Peabody Hall. This, too, was packed with lost students. Finally all was quiet. I was the last foundling. The door to hopefulness opened, and a smiling visage peered at me over a cluttered desk.
“The Dean said, ‘Well, who are you?’ Amid tears I said, ‘I am Joan Radford – and thank you for caring who I am.’ He said, ‘Come in Joan. Where are you from?’ I replied, ‘I’m from Camak, Georgia, and I’m on my way back there.’
“’Sounds like the world of Joan is not happy today,’ he said. ‘My world and the University’s world don’t seem to be coming together,’ I replied.
“He said, ‘Well, Joan, let’s see what we can do to brighten your world. We don’t want to lose you.’
“Dean Dotson opened a large drawer in his desk, looked at my tear-stained schedule, made a phone call or two and within moments I was official!
“’Keep in touch,’ he said. And keep in touch I did. I transferred to the University School of Education after that happy summer and completed my degree in Elementary Education. In August 1957, Summer grads filed out of the Fine Arts Auditorium by their Dean to receive their diplomas. I remember blue eyes, a wink, a warm hand clasp and a wish—‘May all continue to go well in the world of Joan—keep in touch—I’m glad you came our way.’
“Since that time the University of Georgia has been a personal and special to me. I have since received a master’s and this year completed my 26th year teaching in Georgia schools. Through the years, whenever I pass old Peabody Hall I remember and smile and say, ‘Thank you—Dear Dean Dotson—all has indeed gone well in the world of Joan—I’m glad you came my way. I’ll continue to ‘Keep in Touch’.”
Joan Radford Biles
April 27, 1985
The Pain of Parking
One of the most aggravating problems for professors was in the late 1960s was the shortage of parking on north campus. Virtually all spaces were assigned and professors were charged for an assigned space.
Since classroom space was also at a premium on north campus, a lot of education professors found themselves having to teaching classes in Conner Hall, Poultry and Livestock, and the Forestry Building among others. Upon returning to Baldwin later in the day, professors generally could count on their reserved parking space being taken.
One day Professors Lutian Wootten and George Newsome arrived back at Baldwin, and both their spaces were taken. They got out of their cars and stormed into the building. They agreed that Wootten would call the campus police, and Newsome would go and complain again to the Dean. The Dean listened patiently to Newsome and said he would raise the issue once again with the central administration but Newsome should not expect anything significant to result.
Wootten got more immediate results. The campus police came promptly and left two tickets, one on Newsome’s car and one on Wootten’s.
Dean and Mrs. Dotson’s Dog, Mimi Ofira Navon: First Lady of Israel |
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