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- Dr. Louis Bowers
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Louis Bowers
LB: It’s a full plate, the teaching and the grants along with the administration. The administrators normally at that time were teaching one class. I had the kinesiology specialty, and I was the only qualified person to teach the kinesiology. I was telling someone recently that in my entire career of forty years of higher education, I taught classes every morning of the week at eight o’clock. They said, “Well that wasn’t too smart. Who is making that schedule?” I was usually the one who made the schedule. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to ask somebody else to do that if I wasn’t willing to be the one there at eight o’ clock. I had to be there anyway as chair.
AH: Except for the students. You were asking the students to be there.
LB: Exactly.
AH: I saw an old cartoon that said, “Mr. Spain,” I’m referring to Frank Spain, “no matter what I do I always get an eight o’clock class.” Maybe yours was one of them. During your time as chair, you became a full professor then?
LB: Yes. I became a full professor in 1971. During the time I was chair I applied my credentials for teaching, research, and service at that time and reached full professor. I thought that was the end of promotion-type things. I remember I used to say one of the good things about being a full professor is that you don’t have to prepare all of those materials for promotion and so forth. Then they created a higher rank of distinguished university professor. I applied for that and was quite fortunate that I was able to receive that rare honor. Just a small number of the University’s faculty members receive that.
AH: You were given tenure then, with your full professorship, or did that come later?
LB: Actually, tenure came with the promotion to associate professor. At that point you go from assistant to associate and get the tenure along with it.
AH: Before we leave the early 1970s, let’s talk about the late 1960s or early to mid-1970s as kind of a unique time for American history. What was the student body like? Obviously there were social reverberations going on around the country. The way students looked was changing and the way students acted was changing. Of course, not all of the students, but some. What were your observations? You came in 1967. Through those early times do you remember anything interesting or strange going on around campus at that time or in your classes or events around campus?
LB: Not so much in my classes, my students I found to be fairly non-political. They were interested more in doing well in our program and perhaps making good grades so they would not be drafted. It’s strange that you should mention that. Maybe my second year here I was appointed to a student-faculty committee that approves student organizations. A group came before us called Students for a Democratic Society. At first glance, I said, well, we’re a democratic society. These students are for a democratic society. There were other faculty members there that had been here for a while, or maybe more knowledgeable than me, who were concerned about the group. Whenever we’d ask them a question, they gave all the right answers you wanted to hear. When it came time to vote whether they should approved or not, I voted yes. I couldn’t see, from what I knew, anything wrong with them. They were Students for a Democratic Society. In the paper the next day there was a quote by the president that pointed out that he was against recognizing the group and that I voted for the group. It turned out that right or wrong, they subsequently provided many challenges for the administration on campus. Here I was on my first committee, a new university for me, and I made the headlines for voting for the Students for a Democratic Society. It all eventually blew over.