Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Phil Pfost
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Phil Pfost
Today is December 16, 2005. I’m Lou Bowers and I’m interviewing Dr. Phil Pfost, a retired faculty member from the College of Education, formerly of the Department of Elementary Education. I’m pleased that you came in this morning to share with us some of your memories of your years at USF.
LB: Before getting to USF, however, I wonder if you would tell us a bit about your personal and professional background in Louisiana and elsewhere before you came to USF.
PP: I was born and raised in Louisiana. I’ve moved around the state, living in several places. My father was a Methodist minister. I came out of the Navy in 1950. After I attended college for one year, the chair of the education department at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA got me to come to his office and two and a half hours later I came out majoring in elementary education. I walked in there thinking I was going to be a social science and mathematics teacher. In 1952, two other young men and I graduated as the only elementary education graduates in the state of Louisiana. They had to go to Korea. I had already served, so I didn’t. I was a teacher in Bastrop in north Louisiana for five years. By luck, I became a very young elementary school principal and married a young teacher. Four years later, we put everything we owned into a U-Haul trailer and went up to George Peabody College in Nashville where I pursued a doctorate degree in education.
LB: How did it come to be that you heard about USF and were attracted to come here and eventually accept the position in the College of Education?
PP: I first heard of USF through a faculty member on a recruiting trip to Peabody, believe it or not. They showed up at Peabody in the placement office, and I went over and sat down, talked with him, and later got an invitation to come down. That year I made a decision to stay at Peabody after I graduated to participate in a research project. A year later, I came down. I probably came to the University at that time because of the influence of a faculty member I had met.
LB: She was here at USF?
PP: She was at USF. Martha Lou Austin was a Helen Robinson graduate of the University of Chicago. I liked Martha Lou. I thought Martha Lou and I shared the same values about teaching children to read, so I made a decision to come down to South Florida. One of the things that impressed me was that in teacher education we were trying to tell students answers to questions and they didn’t know what the questions were. The fact they had an undergraduate program here that tried to involve some participation in the schools in the early part of their education was one of the things that really impressed me at that time. Still does, by the way.
LB: Now, coming from Peabody, what kind contrast did you find upon arriving here?
PP: Peabody was an old, well-developed campus adjourning Vanderbilt University. The Peabody student body was very small. South Florida was a sprawling campus with more sand than anything with about 250 faculty members and from 10,000-12,000 students.
LB: I’m wondering if I came the same year you did. We had the Physical Education building just opening, but was the College of Education building ready?
PP: No, we moved into that building in the middle of the year that you and I came. That’s right. You and I were part of the 27 who came that year.
LB: So you were temporarily housed somewhere else before that?
PP: I was over in the Chemistry building.
LB: The department you came to was just formulating, growing, with your area being reading education, but I see that you were listed initially in the Elementary Education Program.
PP: Yes, well actually, you remember Jean Battle, the first dean of the College, really didn’t like “departments.” He thought “departments” put up artificial structures so we were called “program areas.” I was in a program area called “reading education” and we were separate from childhood education. I believe that reading education, language arts, and early childhood all came together in the mid–‘70s. I don’t remember the exact year, but the College became about 10 departments at that time, but up until that time we had been “program areas.”
LB: I noticed in the faculty directory that your second year here you were listed as coordinator of the reading program.
PP: That’s right. That was that reading area, and those positions eventually became chairmen of the departments, but it was called “coordinator” at that time.
LB: The College had for many years a reading program where young students would come to get assistance if they had reading problems?
PP: Yes, we ran a little reading clinic. We had a very fine master’s program in reading and part of the program was a clinical aspect and to carry out that aspect we brought children on campus and did diagnosis and remediation with our graduate students doing the work. We ran a reading clinic. Really, its main purpose was for the education of our master’s students.
LB: I don’t think the students coming in for the program even paid for the service.
PP: No, there was no pay. No pay whatsoever. That was a free service. It was a community service and outreach program.
LB: Looking at your department over the years, reading would certainly be one of the strengths. What other areas come to mind that stand out?
PP: Well, in that program we had an early childhood program that was really growing in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, so we had a number of new faculty members who came in that area, and we had a pretty prominent program. The other part of the program was language arts and children’s literature. It was probably unusual to have reading separated out from elementary education. I was rather uncomfortable in that regard. I saw myself as an elementary educator with a strong emphasis in reading, and I was very comfortable when they merged into one department. Some people were less comfortable with that, but for me it was natural, because my beginning had been in elementary education.