Elizabeth Uhlig:  This is an oral history interview with Dale Parnell on September 24, 2003, at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.  The interviewer is Elizabeth Uhlig.

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Elizabeth Uhlig:  I’d like to start by asking you how you became involved in the community college movement.  I understand you have a background as an electrician, years ago, and then in education at Springfield.

Dale Parnell:  I apprenticed in that trade, but never really followed it very much.  My father was an electrician and in those days you did what your dad did.  But, I started really thinking about the community college idea and reading about it when I was principal at Springfield High School. 

And as we were driving down today, I was thinking a lot about some of the unsung heroes in helping to start Lane.  One of the people I immediately thought of was Bill Cox who was the director of the Eugene Vocational-TechnicalSchool.  And I kept trying to get some of our Springfield High School students into Eugene Voc-Tech.  They didn’t have room.  And after a while, talking with Bill, I said, how can we expand what you are doing in order to – because it was just the Eugene school district.  And he said, well, we can always make it county-wide institution.  At that time we were thinking about taking the EugeneVocational-Technical School and going county-wide with it.  Broadening the program some.  But the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, why don’t we convert it to a community college.  And this was just in the early days of Oregon’s considering community colleges, of starting community colleges.  But Bill thought that was a great idea.

And shortly after that I was appointed the county school superintendent.  And one of the reasons I took that job – I wasn’t really ready to leave the high school principalship, I really enjoyed high school kids.  But I thought that will put me into position where I can do something about converting Eugene Tech to a county-wide institution and converting it to a community college.  And we couldn’t have done that – if Bill Cox really would have objected to that idea, probably wouldn’t have happened.  So we needed his support right off the bat. 

But back to my high school principalship. I saw so many kids that would go to the University of Oregon and after one semester would be back at the high school, saying, why, I couldn’t make it, that wasn’t my cup of tea, and what do I do with the rest of my life.  And I thought there needs to be some kind of post-secondary institution that will help kids.  I wrote a book in 1984 called “The Neglected Majority” and that whole great group of students that are not likely to earn a baccalaureate degree, although some might. Even the 2000 census indicates that 26% of the adult population in the country hold a baccalaureate degree or more. That means 74% do not.  And we’ve never in the history of the country until the community college movement began to blossom paid much attention to that 74%. And even though in some communities it might be higher than that, but even, let’s say, it were 30% that held baccalaureate degrees, that would still mean 70% do not.  Well, what’s for them?  Don’t they need a better education than they’re getting in a post-secondary opportunity?  Some might go on to get a baccalaureate degree if they were encouraged.   But an awful lot of them needed technical education of one kind or another. 

And, it was just so apparent as a high school principal that there was just that whole great group of students there that we weren’t caring about.  It seems like even today we give so much emphasis to the college prep curriculum in high schools and university bound students. It seems like so much of the emphasis is upon going to the university.  And I don’t knock that; we need that course leaders in our country. But there’s that whole other great group of people out there that need a post-secondary opportunity of one kind or another. 

So that was my early thinking on it and Bill Cox agreed with it.  And when I became county school superintendent, immediately, oh, within a year or so, approached the superintendents in the various school districts in the county with the idea of converting the EugeneVocational-Technical School to a community college, to a county-wide community college.  And that was the initial discussion.

EU: What year was that?  About when were the first overtures…

DP: We were working on that in 1961 – 1962 – 1963, right in through there.  We actually brought it to a vote in ’64, 1964.  But as I thought about this, there were so many people that nobody pays much attention to, that this college would not have been started without their support.

Millard Pond who was the Superintendent of Schools for the EugeneSchool District.  If he would really have objected to this, we would have had a much more difficult time. 

Or the Eugene School Board, if they would have objected to going county-wide.  The Eugene Tech.

Bert Dotson, of course.  He was loaned to us, to the superintendent’s group by Walt Commons. Walt Commons was the Superintendent of the Springfield School District at the time.  And as we were discussing this, we said, well, we can’t do it without some legs - somebody who was going to a little of the salesmanship and put things together for us.  We can’t bring it to a vote without doing it right.  He said, well, I’ll loan Bert Dotson.  Bert was on the staff, I’ve forgotten what the position was, on the staff at Springfield School District.  So, Walt Commons was an unsung hero.  He believed in it so much he was willing to loan Bert Dotson to the effort.  Bert, of course, worked hard at trying to help people be informed about it and set up the election, and so forth. 

But as I think about that, I think that we probably couldn’t have started Lane without the local school superintendents being very supportive of the idea.  And putting their shoulders to the wheel. They even put up money.  I think, in order to support Bert and his work.  I think, it was something like each school district put up a nickel or dime per student to start a little fund.   So we had a little fund to help support that early work before there was any kind of a tax base or vote or anything.

EU: What about support from the university?

DP: Oh, that’s another group.  Arthur Flemming was terrifically supportive.  He was the president of the University of Oregon at the time.  I know I had sat down and talked with Arthur.  He had some knowledge of the community college.  And his wife, in fact, had taught in a community college before coming to Oregon. By the way, she was one of the first hires at Lane.  She was terrific.  She taught American government.  Great teacher.  But both Arthur and his wife were terrific supporters.  Again, if they had opposed it, we would probably have had a lot more difficulty. 

But people like Dick Williams, who was the development officer at the university and later became a Board member here – very supportive.  At the time, I think, in the early days, he was the administrator for the hospital.  I think it was Sacred Heart then.  Is it still Sacred Heart?

EU: It’s still Sacred Heart.

DP: And he was very supportive.  And that’s how we got the nursing – the associate degree in nursing started – converted their diploma program into an ADN program here at Lane.  But there’s just a whole cast of characters out there that as I said, wow, we probably couldn’t have started this place without the superintendents, without Arthur Flemming, without Walt Commons, without Millard Pond, without the people in the background.

EU: What happened in LaneCounty – was that similar to what was happening elsewhere in Oregon as other community colleges were being formed?

DP: Yes.  It was part of the background.   I had talked with then our governor Mark Hatfield - in those early days he didn’t know much about community colleges - and tried to enlist his support for establishing community colleges.  And he at first was kind of leary of the idea, well, mainly because of budget - finance problems.  Well, how would we pay for this?  And on the idea of a “neglected majority,” he finally came around.  And they authorized a position in the State Department of Education – I’m trying to remember the fellow’s name - Bob Hattan was his name. He came from Michigan – a community college he had started earlier. And so there was somebody at the state level who was putting some emphasis on the community college.  That was his full-time job – to help start the community colleges of Oregon.

And Leon Minear was the State Superintendent at the time and he gave it his full support.  So without Mark Hatfield’s help, with the Legislature.  And, of course, Tom McCall was totally supportive of Lane. He named me to be the State School Superintendent and we were still developing community colleges at that time.  And he was totally supportive.  So you needed that state level leadership as well as the local leadership.

EU: Umm.  How did you define your vision for the community college?  What did you think was your mission then?  You talked about reaching out to these…

DP: Well, it hasn’t changed any over the years.  It’s the same mission today as, and I see the need as profound today as I saw it then. And, again, growing out of my high school principalship and teaching in high school.  I wanted to make sure that we gave students an opportunity to do something in post-secondary education and there were really were few opportunities before the community college came along.  Umm, I wanted to have a different philosophy from the university, not that one that is bad or one is good, but that they’re different.  The mission of the community college is so different from the mission of the university.  People don’t tend to understand that.  We don’t - in the community college I didn’t want to test people to keep them out.  I wanted to test people to get them in. That’s a 180 degrees different than the university.  If you go – you find the ivy league colleges and a lot of the universities will brag on how many people they turned down for admission to that institution, particulary the ivy league colleges – we had 4,000 people apply and only accepted a thousand.  That kind of thing. 

Well, I wanted to have an institution where we tested people, but tested them so they got into a success experience.  And I still think that’s a big issue in community colleges.  To make sure people aren’t in over their head all of a sudden – but get them into – that’s why developmental education is so important part of community colleges.  To make sure that people are ready to take that next step whatever that next academic step may be.  But that’s why testing is important for placement purposes, to make sure they are placed appropriately, so they can experience success.  So many students go to the university and flunk out.  And I taught at the university – I started the Community College Leadership Program at Oregon State University - and I’ve even heard some professors say, look on your right, and look on your left, and fifty percent of you are gonna be gone by the end of the term.  I’m going to make it so tough on you that you’re gonna be gone.  Well, I’m 180 degrees from that philosophy.  I think our job as university professors is to help people succeed, not to help them fail. And I wanted to have the kind of institution, the community college, that would help people succeed, give them an opportunity. 

I read a recent article where our president, George Bush, gave a commencement talk at Yale University, and he was starting his talk by saying congratulations to those of you that are graduating with high honors, and he named several of them.  But he said to those “C” students, I want you to know that you, too, can become president of the United States.  And I’m now writing another book, starting to gather material for, “What happened to the “C” student?”  There are so many students that wander around in what I call the academic pucker brush, that they haven’t figured it out, they haven’t figured out what they want to do in life.  And the community college is just a great place to sort that out and give them a chance to succeed in something.  I’ve had lots and lots of testimonials about how the community college has helped individuals move into the economic main stream of American life.

So we started in what I called the sales pitch to get people to vote in favor of the converting the Eugene Tech to an area-wide community college.  We called it the “within reach” theme.  To be within reach geographically.  We wanted - in the early days, I don’t know if Lane still does this – we gave, if they lived more than 25 miles or 30 miles we gave them a discount on their tuition – the mileage incentive.  But we wanted to be within reach geographically, we wanted to be within reach financially.  That’s why low tuition has always been a hallmark of my belief about community colleges. Keep the tuition as low as we can keep it in order so that it stays within reach of most of the people.  I don’t want to insinuate that we are all things to all people.  I don’t think the community college can ever do that.  But we can be a lot of things for a lot of people if we keep it within reach. Within reach financially. 

Within reach psychologically.  We don’t talk much about that.  What does it mean to be a number rather than a personalized name when you walk into a classroom?  I wanted the community college to be as friendly a place as we could possibly make it. And be a caring kind of institution. So that students when they came here, regardless of their ethnic background, regardless of their gender, regardless of their status in life, would feel like this institution really cared about them.  And that means caring at the Business Office window, caring at the Personnel Office window, caring in the classroom.  Be a caring kind of institution.  And that’s what I mean by being psychologically within reach.  We don’t pay enough attention to that in education generally, but particularly in higher education. 

And I wanted to be within reach academically.  Not that we lower the standards - didn’t want the standards to be lowered - but to have programs that meet the needs of people of all levels. That’s why vocational-technical education has always been so important to me.  Who in the world is going to keep our trains tracking, and our water running, and all of the fundamentals of American life if we don’t have trained people. And it’s becoming more complicated all the time.  Well, that’s the great role, one of the roles for the community college. Well, of course, helping people get started and transfer to the university is another great role. 

That’s what I mean about being within reach academically - having programs that meet the needs of a whole host of people who come to us.  Believe me, if there’s one bit of diversity in this country it’s in the community college.  We find probably more diversity in the community college than in any part of education.  Because we get people of all walks of life and all ethnic backgrounds, and so forth. That’s the “within reach” philosophy in the early days, and I still think that’s a solid philosophy

EU: When I look at the records of the college, one phrase that comes out is the “comprehensive college.”  Was that controversial when you established it?

DP: Oh, yes.  Particularly while we were trying to translate ourselves from Eugene Tech to a community college.  A lot of people didn’t understand that.  I’ll never forget when we hired Ed Ragozzino to head up our performing arts program.  And I came under a great deal of criticism for that.  And I remember people saying why do we need performing arts program at a vocational-technical school.  It upset me so much that I got on the roster to give a speech to the Eugene Rotary Club, which is a big influential Rotary Club.  I said, let me make sure I understand this – the arts are to be only reserved for a certain segment of our population?  Is that what you’re telling me?  Aren’t the arts good for somebody that’s an auto technician, or an airframe and power plant technician, or a welder?  Shouldn’t they be involved in the arts?  And Ed and I agreed that one of the first – he was great for civic light opera – one of the first leads should be somebody from the vocational-technical programs in the college.  And he did that, by the way.  He worked hard at doing that.  But, we have some funny notions about that.  And that was one of the funny notions – that you don’t need a performing arts program where you emphasize vocational-technical education.

Developmental education was another one where there was a terrific amount of misunderstanding.  Because when people come and if they can’t read well enough or fast enough in order to be successful, then it’s our job in the community college to help them do that, improve their reading.  Or if their study habits aren’t very good, it’s our job to help them get better study habits.  If they aren’t very good at writing, that’s our job to help them develop better writing skills.  And that’s what developmental education is all about – is to help them develop those skills.  We do some funny things in education, we quit teaching the formal part of reading, I don’t know, in the seventh or eighth grade and we never work on it again.  I’d like to read faster and better than I do. And speed reading ought to be a required course for anybody in developmental education. 

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about that; in those early days that was tough sell about comprehensiveness.  That’s what I mean by comprehensive.  To be comprehensive you meet not all the needs of all the people, but a lot of the needs of a lot of the people in all their diversity.

EU: Talking about diversity.  At the college now we talk about the core values and I think diversity is still considered…  There [pointing to a poster on the wall] we have a list – learning, diversity, innovation, integrity, accessibility.  Then those have been revised recently.  In addition to diversity, what were some of the core values that guided you?

DP: That “within reach” philosophy would be, I would call it a core value.  The idea of being, of having a caring environment – establishing a caring environment.  That’s a very core value in an institution.  Having an academic program that is broad and wide as well as deep is another core value.  And as I look at your core values [listed on the poster] the first one I see is “learning” and that’s so important.  Teaching and learning and meeting the needs of students that have a diverse learning style. Terrific challenge.  That’s not easy.  And I’m the first one to admit it’s not easy to try to meet the needs of terrific learning styles that come into every classroom.  In many ways the community college is like a high school in that sense.  High schools have a terrific diversity and trying to meet the needs of that diversity in a classroom, in one classroom is tough.  But that’s one of the core values of a community college is trying to do that, and to do that in a way that’s really never been done before.

EU: In May now, we’re currently undergoing another accreditation cycle, and we’re going through a self study, and one of the things that we’re examining now is the idea of shared governance. And I wonder if you could talk about that.  Was that one of the...?

DP: When we started Lane we started with shared governance almost out of desperation because we were trying to get up and running so fast.  The first year – we started on July 1st of 1965 – and that fall we had something like seventeen – eighteen hundred students right off the bat.  We were holding classes in an old elementary school out in the Bethel School District, in the old Georgia-Pacific building in Springfield, all over the place.  And trying to keep that all running we needed to make sure that everybody pitched in and helped.  And so we had shared governance from day one.  Because we couldn’t run this place, we couldn’t have gotten it done. Anybody who thinks that one person or two persons or a small group are going to start a community college is crazy. We had to have broad and wide participation in almost all of the events of the college.  Primarily because we were scattered all over and we were trying to do something that really hadn’t been done before. 

So there’s an early history of shared governance, more out of desperation than any intelligence on my part.  We just knew we had to do that in order to get things done.  But it caught on, and I enjoyed it so much.  I enjoyed shared governance, and I enjoyed it so much that we expanded that and formed a council, an all-college council, and had everybody involved in it.  One of the interesting, fun stories in the planning of the campus.  We had a custodian with no arms, with just stubs for arms.  And to show you part of shared governance I put him on the architectural committee to work with the architects.  I said, you’re to be a consultant to the architects, cause we want Lane to be equipped – this was in the days when we didn’t know what we were doing about serving the handicapped.  I said, we want you to make this the most accessible institution around.  So your job is to work with the architects and make sure that every particle of that campus is accessible to people who are disabled in one way or another.  And he did a terrific job of doing that.  That’s an example of using the talent that we had here, that was available to us at the time. That’s how the facilities were made so handicapped accessible.

EU: Were students part of shared governance?

DP: Oh, yes.  We would have the Student Council over at our house.  And that was in the early days, when, Bev [Mrs. Parnell] you remember the times we sat down with them and chose the name of the “Titans” and whether we had a newspaper, and what  activity we were going to be involved in.  In starting the institution, the EugeneVocational-Tech School didn’t have much of that.  And so we formed a Student Council right off the bat and got people involved.  A lot of student involvement in giving input in  planning the campus.

EU: You mentioned some of the important people that were involved with you in establishing the college.  What were some of the other significant factors that led to the success of the school?

DP: I think the media was very supportive in our early days.  I remember Al Curry who was the associate editor of the Register/Guard was just so supportive of trying to start a community college and convert Eugene Tech. He would editorialize on that and he would come to meetings, and he was just so supportive.  If he had been negative and written negative editorials about it, it would have been much more difficult.  TV stations.  I can’t remember the names of the people, but we had terrific support from people that were so interested in it all the way – again positive kind of things, not negative. It distresses me so much in politics today that we have so much negative stuff, it makes it very difficult to get anything done.  But in those days, in Lane County we had a unique kind of cooperation.  The superintendents cooperating with each other, which was unusual – you don’t find that in a lot of places.  The news media cooperating with us in a way – that doesn’t mean we were patsies.  They would question and we had to overcome.  For example, why do we need a performing arts program in a community college.  That had to be answered clearly.  And so there were a lot tough questions that we had to overcome, but, boy, without the support of the media we wouldn’t have made it.  Without the support of the school superintendents of LaneCounty we wouldn’t have made it.  And then, I don’t know if it’s still going today, it was called the Metropolitan Club.  There was a Lane County Metropolitan Club, Metro Club we called it.  Sort of like the Portland City Club.

EU: Well, there’s a Eugene City Club.

DP: There was, at that time, it was really county-wide or it involved just Eugene or Springfield, I’m not sure which.  But it was very active.  Reverend Wes Nicholson who was pastor of the First Congregational Church was very active in that.  And Al Curry was active.  And various other people.  When I start naming names I know I’m going to miss some very important people.  But they appointed a committee and there was a lawyer that was the head of that study group, “Does Lane County Need a Community College?”  And they came out with a very positive recommendation that “Yes, we do.”  And we used that a lot in calling for the election to get the first Board elected and to get the people to vote ‘yes’ on establishing the district.  I can’t remember – I don’t think we would duplicate it today, but it was something like an 80% ‘yes’ vote, which I don’t think today you’d come close today . With the negative atmosphere we’re in so much of community life.

EU: After the vote, I think it was in October of 1964 that established the college and then you worked to get the college established.  What were some, a few of the biggest challenges that you faced here in getting the college actually up and running those first years?

DP: Well, I was the county school superintendent and the early elected Board had to choose a president.  Somebody had to put legs to it.  Bert Dotson was doing his level best to serve them in any way he could.  But going through that process was some kind of trauma.  And I think much to a lot of peoples’ surprise I was selected as the first president even though I’d never had experience as a president of a college – I had administrative experience.  But that early Board - I give them a lot of credit, because none of them had had experience with a community college.  I know they consulted some with Arthur Flemming, and Arthur knew quite a bit about community colleges.  Even just naming…; even getting this land.  Will Gonyea gave the land.  Again, almost buying a pig in a poke.  A lot of these people didn’t know much about a community college and yet here we had people giving land to build the campus on.  We had people, like the early Board, they met long hours. 

In fact, tomorrow we’re going to the Coast and we’re going to be staying with Doc Al Brauer who was one of the early Board members.  I wish you could interview him, because he was such a powerful figure in the start.  Bert Dotson would fly, take the college plane and fly over and pick him up at Florence and about midnight fly him back.  And we had long Board meetings in those days.  But I really admire that early Board for putting the shoulder to the wheel and being able to develop, make the policies for the early part of the history of Lane, acceptable and wise.  I can remember Al Brauer saying time and again in discussions in planning the campus, “We’re not thinking big enough, we’re just not thinking big enough.” Well, how many Board members do you get that say – usually you’re thinking too big.  But in his case, and this is true with the other Board members, they wanted to be big thinkers.  In fact we visited probably twenty-five different community colleges.  Took a group of people - Jerry Rasmussen was one that was with us.  Board members visited colleges and said, “What do we want this college to be like in terms of its facility and its programs, and so forth.”  We picked ideas from everywhere in order to develop the early plans for Lane.  But I give that early Board a lot of credit – that first Board.  They certainly put in the time – long Board meetings.

EU: What was your vision for the physical plant?  You said you did visit other community colleges.

DP:  We visited a lot of colleges - twenty-five or thirty different colleges.  Mostly here in the West, but California - we concentrated a lot in California.  We found one college that seemed to be what we wanted to be more like than any others, and that was the Coast Community College down in Costa Mesa, California. It had been around for five or six years before we came along.  And they’d done a lot of good things in planning their campus, designing their program - they were very comprehensive in their program.  And so I think probably those visitations helped our Board as much as anything, helped all of us as much as anything to pick good ideas and we got ideas from a lot of colleges, but if there was one college I think we tried to copy it was Coast Community College in Costa Mesa, California – Orange Coast, I think, I’m pretty sure it’s still called Orange Coast. That helped us immensely, to make that visitation.  Now a lot of Boards wouldn’t want to spend that kind of money to take – we had, probably, I guess close to twenty-five of us, there were students in the party, Board members, faculty members, that were all a part of those visitation teams. And then when we got back we all got together, and we put our ideas together on what we wanted to do.  So there was no one single mind that put this campus together – it was a compilation of all those ideas.

EU: Were you here then when this campus was first dedicated?  I mean you worked so hard to get it established, and then …

DP: No.  Tom McCall appointed me the State School Superintendent and we were still in the building stage for other community colleges and community colleges reported to the State Superintendent at that time.  So I never got to this campus.  My office was at Eugene Vocational-TechnicalSchool over on Monroe Avenue. But, Bob Hamill was my assistant and he was named acting president and he did a lot of the work of moving into the campus.  I helped as much as I could before I left.  But the campus had been built, was established, and then I moved to Salem for that new position.  And Bob Hamill came.  And then,,, I can’t remember his name.  The Board picked another fellow that only lasted a year.

EU: Pickering?

DP: Pickering.  And he had… I’m not just sure of the problem – he had all kinds of problems.  He was the one that was involved in the dedication of the campus.  I know I was here with Tom McCall.  Governor Tom McCall was such a great friend of mine and was so enthused about community colleges and supported them.   And he was one of the…, and there was a fellow from Arizona that was here that also helped dedicate the campus, I can’t remember who that was.  But Tom McCall gave the dedication speech.

EU: So, before you moved to Salem….  When you look back on your time here at Lane, what do you think was your greatest accomplishment or accomplishments?

DP: Well, I think getting the philosophy of the community college well-established in people’s mind is probably my greatest accomplishment.  That “within reach” philosophy.  Trying to keep the institution within reach in all those various dimensions.  And we still need – I worry a lot about community colleges.  For ten years I was president of the American Association of Community Colleges in WashingtonD.C. representing twelve-hundred community colleges like Lane.  And I even today worry a lot about the loss of the mission a bit.  To meet people that feel that down at the visceral level of their bodies.  Because everything in education works against us. 

I was in a school superintendent’s office in a large city and he had banners from Yale and Brown and Harvard all around his office.  And I said, “Where’s the banner from your local community college?” And he looked at me and smiled and said, “Well, you know what we mean, we’re trying to promote excellence here.” You see, in his mind, he only had one definition of excellence and that was Brown and Harvard and Yale and the Ivy Leagues.  And I said, “You don’t think we that need excellence in the …” “Yah, yah, we do, but it’s different.”  And so here was the leader of a large urban school district that didn’t have a clear vision about what a community college was all about.  And so I’ve been preaching over the years that community colleges need to preach excellence.  We need excellence in the auto shop, we need excellence in the air frame and power plant shop, we need excellence…  Every time I haul my body on an airplane I pray a little prayer.  Dear Lord, I just pray that the technician who prepared this craft for flight believes in excellence.  I don’t want him to make any mistakes.  I don’t want the nurses putting the wrong stuff in my veins. So we’ve got to start talking more about excellence in all lines of human endeavor, rather in just some of the lines of human endeavor.  And so far, in education we seem to judge excellence only based on how many go to the university.  I want excellence there, too.  But I want excellence in all aspects of the institution.  So establishing that basic philosophical base is, I think, was my greatest contribution to Lane.  So I think Lane’s stayed pretty true to that over the years.  I know Mary Spilde has done a good job, even during tough budget times, and they are tough.

EU: When you went to Salem, you became the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Oregon. How long were you in that position?

DP: Six years.  I stayed through most of the Tom McCall era when he was governor. And that’s when we were able to fully establish Linn-Benton Community College, Mt. Hood Community College, actually Portland Community College was well along by then. And we were able to finish the job of establishing the rest of the community colleges.  And establishing the funding base.  One of the things we were able to get established in those days so that campuses could be built was if a local area passed a bond issue the state would pick up 50% of the cost.  Even though they couldn’t do that in one biennium, they would put it on the books as something owed to the community colleges.  That really helped to establish the building of campuses all across the state.  I was able to do that as State School Superintendent in working with the Legislature and legislative leaders.  Who ever heard of saying they owed money to build campuses and ten years later still owed some of that money, to match the dollars that the bond issue raised.  In Lane we passed a ten-million dollar bond issue and the state had to match that.  But it was matched not in one biennium, but later on each biennium they would chunk away a little of it.  You had to be pretty creative in order to do the financing.  But that was part of my job as a leader of education in the state. 

And also I wanted to make sure that we had a good relationship between the high schools and the community colleges and the university.  Trying to bring .. make sure our connections were good and solid. Another unsung hero was Miles Romney who was the Vice-Chancellor for Higher Education, Roy Llewellyn and Miles Romney, but particularly Miles Romney.  In those days in order to hire somebody to teach college transfer courses we had to get his approval.  But he was very generous in his approvals.  So he was another unsung hero.

EU: And what was his position?

DP: He was Vice-Chancellor for Higher Education, second in command of the State Board of Higher Education.  But a wonderful person.  He understood what we were up against in trying to find faculty for community colleges.  We wanted to make sure we had a standard there.  And so we asked him as we hired these people, can we run these names by you, and their credentials, and get your opinion on them.  And it was actually as the State Board of Education, we actually passed a regulation that we couldn’t hire a college-transfer instructor without approval of Miles Romney’s office.  But it could have been - that was a lot of faith – could have been a terrible road block, but it wasn’t.  He was very good and understood the community college, and wanted to support the community college, and did a good job, along with the Chancellor Roy Llewellyn, was very supportive. 

So you had to have the Governor, and you had to have legislative leader support, you had to have the higher education support.  There were a lot of people that you had to work on.  Because Oregon didn’t have a history of community colleges.  There was Central Oregon Community College, in the early days, but they always had the idea of wanting to be a four-year college.  So they never had quite the same vision as we had here at Lane. 

EU: With your skills in working with all these various groups, did you ever consider a career in politics?  Maybe…

DP: Well, I considered it.  And Tom McCall was very disappointed in me when I left. He wanted me to be his heir apparent as governor of this state.  The closer I got to that the less I liked that.  The more I thought I better get back to my first love.  My first love has always been the community college.  I left and became the chancellor of the San Diego Community College System.  Left that position in the state.  But it was a tough decision at the time because I had a very popular governor pushing me, and I had to think long and hard.  You have to finally say to yourself, what do you really love to do and where’s your heart.  My heart wasn’t there.  It would have been fun for a while. I would have been a good governor for three or four days and that would have been about  it.

EU: So you moved on to California?

DP: I moved to Chancellor of the San Diego Community College System.  They had been a part of the school district, and I was first chancellor where they split off from the school district and we had to pretty well establish a new system – with the San Diego CityCollege and Mesa College and Miramar College and a lot of adult centers, and so forth.  But they were a good comprehensive system.  In a lot of ways I’d been a community college builder.  I rebuilt San DiegoCity College and finished the job of building the San Joaquin Delta College – a beautiful campus up in Stockton, California.  And that gave me a lot of joy to do that.

EU: I think I’ll stop here and turn the tape over.

                                                                                                                        45:00

DP:  Sure.

EU: I’d like to ask you about your ten years when you were president of the American Association of Community Colleges. You moved to Washington, DC?

DP: Yes, we did, and had a great run there. I really enjoyed that.  That was one of the best jobs I ever had, because I could become an unapologetic advocate for the community college on a nationwide basis.  And I had one goal in going there. You have to remember when you are leader of any organization you have to hold up the evaluation of your leadership against the times in which you were in.  I moved to Washington, DC about the same time Ronald Reagan moved to Washington DC.  And if you remember they were trying to eliminate the Department of Education and the Secretary of Education.  They were trying to cut back on any role of federal government in education of any kind. In fact, Bill Bennett, in submitting his budget, abolished the Perkins Act, any funding for vocational education. So they were tough political times. But it was fun for me.  I really enjoyed trying to make sure people knew about the role of the community college, the ‘within reach’ philosophy of the community college. 

And spent a lot of my time there trying to improve the connections that community colleges had on the state and national basis - connections with the employer community, for example.  If you’re familiar with Washington, DC, there are something like 3,000 different associations representing everything under the sun.  There were a lot of associations representing the employer community - National Association of Manufacturers, the Alliance for Business, and so forth.  Well, I wanted to make sure they knew and understood the role of the community college and the potential of the community college could be in helping them with whatever they were doing in the employer community in trying to get a higher level of employee, better educated and more skillful, and so forth. 

So, we tried to improve the connection with the employer community; we tried to improve the connection with Congress; we tried to improve the connections with the other associations, and the K-12 associations of various kinds. At that time, when I first went there, we were still a pretty embryonic organization in 1981. And I was there in the decade of ‘81 to ’91. 

It’s kind of interesting.  So much of the national media, like New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and so forth didn’t have much knowledge about the community college.  Most of the writers and people employed were from Ivy League colleges.  And trying to listen to a cowboy from out in Oregon, in that case I was from California, talk about community colleges was tough. Trying to get their ear was difficult. While we were there I got the USA Today editor to agree to establish an all-American community college listing. They had an all-American for universities and all-American for professors, but nothing for community colleges. 

So, Phi Theta Kappa, which is a national honors group for community college - which, by the way, is one of the first clubs I helped start here at Lane - an honors group.  And I still believe strongly in that organization.  They have taken over the USA Today (I don’t think I have the name quite right) all-American scholars [All-USA Academic Team for Community Colleges][ http://www.ptk.org/schol/aaat/announce.htm ].  I know Lane has participated in it every year.  And they are trying to get the community colleges in each state to have a state-level all-American scholars – and have a reception in the governor’s office, and so forth.  But USA Today picked that up and the editor became a true believer and so it’s still going on today with their pictures of the student.  You get a terrific bit of information about the diversity of the community college.  When you look at that, I think they honor twenty – and, all ages, all ethnic diversity. It’s really an interesting group - it’s the kind of group you wouldn’t normally find in an all-American university scholarship program.

That was my major goal while I was there, was trying to improve our connections. I worked hard, in fact, to develop – try to improve our publications so we had a little better historical record of what we were doing.  We had a good time. I think we improved the knowledge that people had.

While I was there I started a program called the Tech-Prep associate degree program. And this was kind of interesting. I had written a book called “The Neglected Majority,” and I went over to the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Bill Flordy ?? from Michigan who knew a little bit about community colleges.  And I said Ill give you this book if you’ll read it.  I don’t want you to pass it to your staff member, I want you to read it. He called me a few days later and said, I want to do that.  If you’ll write that bill, why we’ll make that Tech-Prep program part of the Perkins Act. But you’ll have to get somebody over on the Senate side to agree because you’ll have to have both Houses.  So I went to Mark Hatfield