Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Phil Pfost
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Phil Pfost
LB: Now it wasn’t too long before I can remember serving as a chair with you on the Chairs’ Council of the College of Education.
PP: That’s right.
LB: And you did that for a number of years, didn’t you?
PP: Yes, I did. I chaired that program for many years.
LB: I need your guidance as to how the teacher education centers developed. We always had faculty going out to the schools and so forth, but I found in my research that you headed up a teacher education center program. That was just a year or so before teacher education centers in Florida were funded by the legislature.
PP: There was a concept of teacher education centers. I’m not positive when it started, but it was in the mid to late ‘70s. The College had worked rather diligently to be involved in public schools, and we had a 15 county service area in which we would invite their people to come in, and we would meet and we’d go out and work with them. You’re right. I believe it was 1980 that the state legislature made the decision to make this a formal arrangement, and what they did was they took $5 per student out into the counties, and it was dedicated to staff development. The counties could decide where they wanted to spend it, but it had to be put within an institution of higher education. I thought we were very fortunate because we already had a history of working with those counties, and as a result of that, the University of South Florida, predominately the College of Education, got the largest amount of funding from the school districts in the state. We had over a half million dollars worth of staff development funds placed with us each year for over a decade.
In 1980, I was appointed to direct that program. We had faculty members that served on teacher education center councils in every one of our 15 counties. We delivered staff development services with 100-120 faculty members in the College of Education who participated in this program plus 15-20 faculty members in other colleges. For example, over in the College of Behavioral Sciences the speech people went out. We had a number of people in art and music that went out. We had some others in different areas, but overall there were probably 130 faculty members from the University of South Florida that delivered staff development activities and worked with counties for more than a decade. It was really a bonus for both the counties and the College. Like all things, it ended because of a political decision in 1991. One of the nice things during that period was these teacher education center councils, which by law had to have a majority of teachers, had some say as to how these funds were expended. I thought that was a positive arrangement.
LB: I remember a quote up here that was in a newspaper that at some point the College of Education Teacher Education Center activities were greater than all the other state universities, University of Florida, and Florida State University.
PP: I don’t know whether if it was quite that much, but it was always more than any other university. Well, we were awarded the most dollars. Therefore, we delivered the most services.
LB: But they can also spend it anywhere.
PP: Sure, they could spend the money anywhere. They could spend it with private universities. They could even go out of state. At first there was a question about that if some of them went out of state, but few did. We served Pinellas, Hillsborough, Polk, Pasco, Manatee, and Sarasota counties primarily. On the other hand, there was the greater Miami-Dade area, and we did some work down there. We also did some work in Monroe County down in Key West. I remember some faculty members went to Key West and worked down there at times. Predominately we worked in our 15 county areas, but if you had requests from outside the 15-county area, and the faculty member talked with the people and they were willing to go deliver the service, we were quite willing to do that.
LB: I know it was well accepted by the faculty because it felt we were already doing a lot of this for free.
PP: That’s right.
LB: Now we were not only getting paid for it, but we get our travel expenses paid, so it was a win-win situation.
PP: It really was a win-win situation for a long time. I thought the relationships between the University of South Florida, the College of Education, and the counties were probably exemplary at that time.
LB: About the College of Education within the University. First, what were some of the challenges that you thought the department level or for the College in general in terms of our welfare?
PP: Well, I guess a college of education is very seldom seen as a major priority in a university. It’s necessary. It is always a good for productivity for the university, at times excellent productivity. I remember one summer, I think it was the summer of 1972, when the Vice President of Academic Affairs called up the Dean’s Office and said, “You know, we’ve really been suffering in summer enrollment, can you help us out?” They gave us some extra funds. I happened to be working in the Dean’s Office that year. They gave us some extra funds, and we went over to Polk County and with the help of their director of staff development, set up 25 graduate courses for teachers working on their master’s degrees in Auburndale and Winter Haven. We literally bailed the University out. Now, I’m not saying that we were not treated fairly, but I do remember that there were a number of times, particularly in graduate education in the formative years of this University, when the College of Education bailed the University out in its graduate enrollment. They were thankful for that. I’m not trying to say that we were discriminated against, but I think anyone who looks at histories of universities will find that colleges of education are in some ways tolerated. I thought we had an excellent college. We had an excellent national reputation, and I think the University appreciated that.