Oral History Project - Retired Faculty
Dr. Ira E. Aaron
Professor Emeritus
Department of Reading Education
(1948-85)
Interviewer: Lara Pacifici
Date: 17 October, 2007
Q: How did you come to work at the College of Education at the University of Georgia?
A: When I returned from World War II, I came to the University to get a degree in Educational Administration. I already had a degree in journalism from the University. Somebody must have been impressed with my use of language and writing because I got a call in December in 1947 from Dr. Aderhold, dean of the College at that time, to see if I wanted to interview for a position in the Bureau of Educational Studies and Field Services, which would include editing Bureau publications. I was a teaching principal at a small rural school in Jenkins County at that time. I came to the University for the interview, and I was employed. My editing alone lasted three days. They had overflow sections in Educational Psychology. Dr. Aderhold called from registration, “Will you teach two sections of Educational Psychology?” And I said, “Yes sir.” So I ended up teaching and working in the Bureau. After a year and a half, I went off to Minnesota to work on a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. My support was a General Educational Board Fellowship, plus the GI Bill.
While I was at Minnesota, Dr. Aderhold became the President (of the University). I was there (Minnesota) for two years and it happened at the end of the first year I was there; 1950, I believe it was.
Q: Do you have any specific memories of him?
A: I did a little bit of legwork for him. He and Joe Williams, who later became dean were pushing a Bureau project. The Minimum Foundation Program for Georgia Schools. Joe’s dissertation was on that topic. And so I got involved in doing some of the legwork. I remember one time when he had to make a speech to a civic group in Atlanta, he asked me to go along. I asked, “Do you want me to drive?” He said, “No, I’ll drive and you take notes,” and so he had me look at the publication, The Minimum Foundation, and outline speaking notes, which he stuck in his shirt pocket. In Atlanta I went my way, and he went to the meeting. When we came back together, he said, “You know, let’s see if I remember, the points you outlined. I left those notes in the shirt pocket when I changed shirts.”
Q: Did he remember?
A: Oh, yeah. He had a great memory. I did a little bit of work, but not much, for him.
Q: And when you started, what department did you work in?
A: I came to be a part of the Bureau of Educational Studies and Field Services, but I promptly began teaching Educational Psychology, which at that time I didn’t have much of a background in, but I learned a tremendous amount. Later, I got a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota.
Q: And what role did you play in the development of the reading program or department?
A: When I came back from Minnesota, I found I had been made chair or whatever you call it, of the Bureau of Educational Studies and Field Services. I didn’t get to run the Bureau because the dean was calling most of the shots. Joe Williams, who was in the President’s office, was on my staff, that kind of thing. The dean and I had a get-together one morning – and I said, “Okay, let me start a Reading program.” Gradually, we started the clinic and from that undergraduate courses began to develop. Only one Reading course at that time was in the books. I had one assistant that first year. Finally, after about six years, there were three of us that began to develop the program. I headed the clinic for the first seven years. We tested 500+ children during that time and sent reports back to their schools.
Q: In what year did the program or department become official?
A: I don’t remember. That may be in the history that Bob Jerrolds did. We didn’t really offer a master’s until we had five faculty members, I believe. Hazel Simpson became the second Reading faculty member. She got her doctorate here. The third one was Byron Callaway, who had a doctorate from Missouri; he’d been in elementary education and then left. He later taught at Auburn. Byron came back to the University and took over the clinic. Then we added a couple of more faculty and we began offering a master’s degree. The program developed until we had as many as 13 faculty positions.
Q: In 1971, the College of Education moved into Aderhold Hall. Do you remember that transition?
A: Yes, and I remember the one before that. Peabody to Baldwin Hall. I remember when the transition was made. I made a trip to Europe, and when I came back, they had moved me. I was thinking Paul Torrance was in my office, but it was at the other end of the floor. Ed Psych was on one end and Reading on the other.
Q: Was it a big upgrade?
A: Yes. Much more space and we needed it. I think I was the 27th faculty member of the College when I came in, and the College’s faculty grew to a few hundred. We had to have more space. And we had more space for Reading. We built space there in Aderhold. It’s essentially where they are now.
Q: In thinking back on your career, which colleagues did you work most closely with?
A: Well, in the department, Byron Callaway, Hazel Simpson and I worked constantly together. We were the three originals. We did a lot of working out in the field with Georgia teachers… workshops and the like. They were the ones, I guess …over a period of time that I worked with most closely. And then later, Sylvia Hutchinson; she was a one-time associate dean, and she was also a doctoral student of mine. In fact, since retirement, she and I had about a… 15- to 20-year research study on children’s books. We have talked about them on about five continents, I think. No one’s invited us to Antarctica yet
Q: Thinking back over your career, what were the things that you enjoyed most?
A: I guess I enjoyed most of it. Contact with the students. We began to draw, once we started a doctoral program, some really high-powered students because we had one of the very few reading programs in the country, and I guess, at that time, probably the largest. And a real fine group of people to work with. Our graduates soon were scattered over the country in a number of institutions. Several took positions in Canada.
Q: What courses did you teach in the reading program?
A: Almost all of them. Except I didn’t teach adult reading, Jim Dinnan did that. I didn’t teach linguistics in reading because we had a linguist on the faculty for that. I did teach a research course in reading regularly. Secondary reading I didn’t teach as much because we had some specialists who taught that. Mostly my teaching was of elementary reading. I’m thinking of numbers, 401, 402 and so on. In the later years, I guess I taught mostly graduate students. I retired in ’85.
Q: But you’ve been involved in the school since, right?
A: Involved, but I never had an office there and it was deliberate. I was too close to the program, and I didn’t want to look over the shoulders of the people who were running it. That’s one of the reasons I got involved in the research study on children’s books from Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Canada, as well as the United States.
Q: What advice would you have for new faculty coming into the College of Education?
A: Get to know the University as quickly as possible. A lot that you get in a college is accomplished through who you know and your connections.
Q: Thinking back on your own career, were there any special connections that really helped you along the way?
A: Ah, yes… the fact that I knew and had worked with Dr. Aderhold didn’t do me any harm. And Joe Williams, who later became dean and who had been Dr. Aderhold’s assistant for a time until we got him into the deanship. Joe and I had offices in the same area, and I knew him quite well.
Q: What were some of the biggest changes that you saw from the beginning of your career to the end, or presently?
A: Well, the initial focus was on our relationship with teachers in the state and building that up. That’s the way that the clinic helped us in reading. We had kids that were in the clinic for free. We’d send back a report. Soon, we began to run workshops in the schools for teachers. That moved into regional and national connections. And I got involved early in the International Reading Association.
Later, I became a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. I served as president of both of those organizations at different times. That was an expansion, and when I served on the board of the International Reading Association, I was invited out all over the country to give presentations. From ‘81 through ‘84, I was an officer and was president in ’83-84. I have no idea how many presentations I made. I would be gone almost every weekend for a conference. I imagine I made presentations in most of the states. I probably missed four or five states and some were in Canada. I also had a connection with a publishing company as a co-author of basal series of readers. It is a good possibility that I may have helped prepare the materials that your parents used [to learn to read].
Scott Foresman… You’ve heard of Dick, Jane, Spot and Puff.
Q: Yeah
A: I’ve been accused of killing them [laugh] because while I was working on them, I was on the last set of the series; and then we moved into a new series.
Q: That’s interesting.
A: That allowed me to get a lot of contacts.
Q: When… the Reading program or department merged with language arts, were you were instrumental in certain aspects of that?
A: No, stayed out of that one completely. When I retired I tried to keep out. I gave some financial support, but…didn’t try to tell them what to do.
Q: Speaking of financial support, there’s an endowment… is that right? Where students get travel monies, and…
A: That’s one in the College of Education, not just for Reading Education. I was using some of the extra income from Scott Foresman in helping to take care of some Reading Department needs. When I retired, I set up an endowment from which the Reading Department later got as much as $14,000 a year. The corpus is about $200,000. They get just the earnings; they can’t touch the corpus. It’s the interest from it.
And I’ve been involved in others, too. There’s one that Sylvia Hutchinson set up in my name.
Q: Oh, maybe that’s what I’ve heard of.
A: That’s the one… the Ira Aaron International Study. I only put in $25,000 of that, and I think she did, too. But a lady just recently left in her will $200,000 to go in there. I had roomed with her nephew when we were juniors. Her family’s relation with Sylvia likely was the reason for this action. It was greatly appreciated.
And there’s another one, a third one that I set up, that I’m still contributing to. I think I put in about $85,000 and it’ll build up to $90,000 this year. That is for the whole College. I can’t think of the name exactly, they changed it. It was Quality of Teaching; they wanted my name on it. The one in Reading does not have my name on it.
And a fourth one. If you go into the curriculum library, You’ll see a big plaque up there with my name on it (laughs).
Q: (laughs) You’ve got to be proud.
A: No… I gave them 391 books.
Q: Oh, wow.
A: All the Caldecott and Newberry American Library Association winners from their beginning, and the Australian, New Zealand, Great Britain and Canada awards from 1980 to the present. Then I gave them money to keep them up. [laughs].
Q: And what do you hope the direction is for the College of Education in the future?
A: Hopefully, it will continue having state, national and international emphases for faculty members’ involvement, not only in research and journals but something that benefits Georgia schools. They’ve been doing this. You’re almost forced to get involved at national and international levels or else you don’t get promoted as faculty members [laughs].
They need to offer things that are practical for Georgia teachers, and other teachers. The programs, the graduate programs are strong… those should continue. I don’t know that they need any improvement, just continuation.
Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to add about your career at the school of education?
A: Well, I pretty much had support along the way from the University. To give you an example, back in the days of institutes, which helped to build the program, we had three institutes in the same year. The federal government funded a year-long institute for teachers in reading, and a summer institute for secondary teachers. I didn’t write that one. One was in Japan for American teachers in the area, that was an 8-week course in the summer, and all of those were overlapping. I only spent three days with the Japanese one. It was directed by Larry Hoffman. Those things helped to build the… prominence of the department. Earlier, when the national Right to Read program came along, we tapped into it immediately in the ‘70s. The government didn’t put in much money, but we got a lot of publicity. I headed the Southeastern area Right-to-Read program, which the first year extended almost all the way to California [laughs], before they added a section out west.
We just sort of got pushed into it because we were known in the area. We got pretty good publicity. We could get those grantsfunded because we had University support. If we hadn’t had the support of the University in handling the financial strings that were attached and things like that, we couldn’t have done it. So we may have gotten the credit, but a lot of people were involved.
Q: You feel real loyalty to the University of Georgia and the College of Education
A: Oh yeah!
Q: Do you think that there’s something unique about either the University of Georgia or the College of Education that really ties you here, or just the history you have?
A: Well, I had three opportunities to go back to the University of Minnesota on the faculty. I finally wrote the dean I was neurotically attached to the University of Georgia (laughs).
From the beginning I was just happy being here And we got good support. I never felt lacking. Not only within the College … I served on promotion committees university-wide, and on the administrative council made up of three faculty members and all the deans and the President … Knowing Dr. Aderhold helped, I’m sure. In fact, I was on the Administrative Council at the time of integration,
Q: Wow
A: I know some things behind the scenes that have never hit the newspapers.
Q: I can imagine
A: The situation wasn’t nearly as bad as it was pictured.
Dr. Ira E. Aaron
Ph.D., Reading Education
University of Minnesota
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