Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. James Barnard
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. James Barnard
LB: I’m thinking it was the fact that as special education was really getting started, as you described it in the Southeastern Materials Center and in other projects, that the teachers in the surrounding countries were greatly influenced by what was going on at USF.
JB: I think the programs were, yes, I think that was true. They were impacted greatly by people here of course. We have people here who didn’t come through USF that have been very influential like Jack Lamb. I believe he received his doctorate from Syracuse University. I don’t think he came through USF so I we have to admit of other influences, but it certainly is true that USF has had a tremendous impact on teachers and the families they impact not only in Hillsborough County but in the state of Florida. I would like to know what the percentage of the people in the local schools who have been trained at USF would be. it must be over 40 percent I would bet. So that’s great. And of course I see people now ask me, “Dr. Barnard, how are you doing?” And though I don’ t remember their names, I remember many times where they sat in class and sometimes even the contributions they made in our discussions.
LB: That, you know Jim, is a great thing to be able to say.
JB: Yes, that you’ve been in a place, an environment, where you’ve nurtured so many of these people who are doing the good work and they remember. It’s great to hop from university to university, I’m sure. But you don’t have the same kind of continuity.
LB: What are some of the things that stand out to you about the College of Education in relationship to the rest of the University?
JB: I wish I were more involved today because I would like to compare today to what it was like. It was difficult because educational research was seen as much less rigorous that research done say in biology. The comparability of our comparison groups was always suspect and, quite frankly, right so. People tended to be disturbed by that, but I think that has changed some both because of the importance of the content being researched in education, but also because educators have come up with some rather nice research designs. Also, perhaps one of the things that drew this skepticism was our outstanding success in funding. Now I know medicine has probably outdone us more recent years, but they may be the only department or only college that has outdone us in terms of funding at least up to the point of when I was here. LB: We were even ahead of the College of Engineering for many years.
JB: Right, very interesting. I think we became much more professional and I think we took ourselves more seriously. I don’t think we are seen in the same way, it’s much more of a much more diverse much larger group of people who are contributing. I think that has to happen if you have a real impact type of college and I think that has happened. All the deans I think were fine I don’t think we ever made a bad choice, some of them maybe contributed more that others. Certainly, Bill Katzenmeyer, who was here for 16 years, contributed much. He did a lot for the College without a doubt, and he was professional about it and held high standards and that that was great. I think those are some of the major things along with the impressive numbers of students. I would bet the student teacher ratio has changed. In the olden days it might have been 15 to 1, but I’m sure now it is not 15 to 1 in undergraduate education anywhere at the University. So that’s a big difference.
LB: Technology came near the end of our careers. How did it impact you in the last ten years or so in your research and teaching?
JB: One manifestation of this tremendous change was in distance education. I think that was a tremendous difference. I have to tell you I was never as involved in that as I wanted to be. I knew very little about it, and I suppose, didn’t have the wit to figure it out on my own. I grew up in a world where we would have courses and classes all over the area within the agreement that we’ve had with other universities in the university system. That kept us kind of contained or we would have been everywhere otherwise. I think that’s been a tremendous thing and I know in the Department of Psychological and Social Foundations we had several people who are really into distance learning and they would always try to get me more involved. I appreciated that.
At the time it was hard to imagine having a major program like the School Psychology Program and having the electronic capability of reaching people that I am not sitting with in the same room. I suppose the really big change has been in our ability to handle information, both on a magnitude of the amount, but also in they actually types of data analysis possible. What you can do now in terms of searches and what you have at you fingertips for me is amazing because as somebody growing up in a certain period I would think well it’s always been this way, but it really hadn’t. In the old days I can remember having IBM cards with which to conduct a library search and feeling, after I had looked through 1,000 cards, thinking boy I’ve really done something and it might take you an hour to do it. Of course, that’s long gone. Fortunately I am able to utilize new technologies even in my daily life, but I have noticed that not only are things different now, but the rate of change for tomorrow has increased by a large magnitude.