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- Dr. Margaret Crickenberger
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Margaret Crickenberger
LB: I am Dr. Lou Bowers, and I am interviewing Dr. Margaret Crickenberger, Professor Emeritus of the Professional Physical Education Department in the College of Education. Margaret, will you share with us some of your educational and professional experience before you came to USF?
MC: After I graduated from Mary Washington College in Virginia, I went to teach at the Southern Seminary for Girls in the southern part of Virginia. Then, I went to LSU on a two-year graduate assistantship where I taught and earned my master’s degree in physical education. I was hired at Purdue University to teach for a year. Then I went on to the University of Florida for 10 years.
Dr. Gillman Hetrz, head of the Physical Education Department at USF, invited me to visit USF. I came for a visit and accepted a position in the USF Physical Education Department in 1962. The campus was wild in those days, with no streets on campus and very few buildings. Our offices were in the Chemistry, Administration, and Biology buildings. I had a joint appointment in Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and in the required Physical Education Department. We worked real hard in those days developing courses and programs, working even on Saturday and Sundays.
I was lucky to be able to rent a garage apartment on Fletcher Avenue, near the campus, from a couple who traveled with the carnival. There were not many people living near the University so it was quiet, which was a good thing with so much work to do. Dean Jean Battle was marvelous. He was such an inspiration and a unique, far-sighted dean.
Dean Battle earned his doctorate in curriculum and instruction just as I did. The assistant dean, Bob Shannon, also had his doctorate in curriculum and instruction so the emphasis was not only the subject matter, but also focused on the student as a learner. We had a president with a degree from Yale and a former dean of students from Cornell. Harris Dean, who has had also studied at Cornell where there was a strong liberal arts emphasis for the first two years, was in our College and later became our Vice President of Academic Affairs. These were the some of the reasons USF had a strong liberal arts program for students during their first two years.
I was teaching curriculum and instruction in the College of Education when I first came to USF. I also taught in the Physical Education Teacher Preparation Program.
Dean Battle was wonderful, as he gave the faculty a chance to plan our new College of Education building. We met on Friday afternoons at a local motel and decided what we wanted in the building. The Kiva, which Bob Shannon had seen somewhere out west, was a unique round room which influenced the design of each of the three floors. The hallways were purposefully wide with seats against the wall for students to gather and interact. The classrooms other than the Kiva on the third floor were intentionally small, but with folding chalkboard walls, which could be enlarged if more space were needed.
When I taught curriculum and instruction in those rooms, I would have my students write the goals of their curriculum on the chalkboard and defend them to the rest of the class. Dean Battle had arranged for students majoring in teaching art, music, and physical education to take my curriculum and instruction course together. He realized that each of the disciplines involved movement, time, force and flow and this could be compatibly integrated.