Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Jean Battle
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Jean Battle
LB: You brought in Dr. Harold Benjamin, author of the “Saber-Tooth Curriculum,” as a speaker. Was that an all-university event?
JB: The thing that we talked about all of the time in the beginning was an all-university approach. As the faculty grew, it was difficult to continue the all-university approach. The presentation by Dr. Benjamin, however, was an all-university lecture. Early on, all lectures involved the entire university so that there would be enough faculty members in attendance. LB: Some people have said that the USF St. Petersburg Campus came about because of your relationship with Nelson Poynter of the St. Petersburg Times. Will you talk about this?
JB: The St. Petersburg Times was more in favor of the University of South Florida being established than was the Tampa Daily Times, because St. Petersburg wanted the university to be located there. The St. Petersburg Times said that the people in St. Petersburg were more cultured than the people in Tampa so they should have the university. Sam Gibbons said, “Well, if we are more ignorant than you, then we need it more than you.” But Hillsborough County was overwhelmingly Democratic and so was the state legislature. Pinellas was Republican, so there was no doubt that Hillsborough was going to get the university.
Later, however, Nelson Poynter, who owned the St. Petersburg Times, was after me to have extension courses from the College of Education taught in St. Petersburg. College of Education courses were the first to be offered in St. Petersburg. Nelson Poynter would print any article I would write, so to that extent, I guess we were friends. However, I cannot say that I am responsible for the USF St. Petersburg Regional Campus.
LB: In 1968, the College of Education recalled 400 student teachers out of the Hillsborough County School District during the Florida K-12 teacher walkout. Was that a very difficult decision?
JB: President Allen did not want me to get involved in the teacher walkout, so I didn’t. Harris Dean who had moved from the College to become USF’s Dean of Academic Affairs thought it best to bring our students back on campus for seminars to prepare them for when they would return to the schools.
LB: I understand that you had a grant in 1965 from the Ford Foundation to plan the first College of Education Building. Can you tell about that?
JB: The architects for new university buildings were decided in Tallahassee, but we were the only ones to get the architect that we wanted to work with for our College of Education Building. The grant we received from the Ford Foundation was for the educational planning aspects of the building. We tried to make the building student friendly with wide hallways and seats for students to congregate between classes. Dr. Allen didn’t like the rounded shape of the Kiva room, and other criticized it saying it would become a storage closet. A kiva was a center of a dwelling and a place of worship for the Indian community in the western part of the United States which Bob Shannon had seen on a visit. The College of Business Building was a square-designed building which was being built at the same time as the College of Education Building. They ran over budget and funds were taken from our building, but we still ended up with the best building on campus.
LB: You appointed Charles Manker and Bob Shannon as the first assistant deans in the College of Education. How did that come about?
JB: The College of Liberal Arts at that time had four associate deans. We were the largest college in the university and didn’t have one assistant dean. There were some people in the College of Education who thought we should have assistant deans, so I told President Allen that we needed some assistant deans and we got them. I appointed Dr. Manker as Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs. Dr. Shannon was beating me over the head because I wasn’t left-wing enough, and I finally appointed him as Assistant Dean for Elementary Programs. I wasn’t very much interested in having associate deans so I named them as assistant deans. They wanted to be associate deans, but I made them assistant deans.
LB: Wasn’t it Bob Shannon who headed up the Experimental Program within the Elementary Program, with the elementary students having early and continuous internships in the schools?
JB: Yes he did and that became the model for future elementary education programs in the College. Shannon was not very popular with the central administration, and Manker was very popular. They wanted Manker’s salary to be higher than Shannon’s. He doesn’t know it until this day, but I said I can’t give Manker a raise unless he and Shannon are even. I said undergraduate education ought to be equal to graduate education. We were always having some type of fight, but it was most interesting. There was always something going on.
LB: Now because we were so large and produced so many student credit hours, did that work in our favor with the president and the administration? Sixty-two percent of the first graduating class was from the College of Education.