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- Dr. Bill Katzenmeyer
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Bill Katzenmeyer
BK: Exactly. Meanwhile, there had been this gentleman named David Anchin who had, a year or two before, appeared in my door one day, maybe 5 years before. He was a man maybe about 5’5” tall. I looked up from my desk and he said, “I’m David Anchin and I’m here to help you.” I said, “Well come in. I need all the help I can get.” So he said, “What can I do?” He said, “I’m an immigrant. My family members are immigrants from Russia. I went to CCNY and it gave me an opportunity. I went into accounting and I did pretty well.” I said, “Well, one of the things you can do right now is I want to get some feedback from our students. We want to know what they view as good in their program here in the College of Education and what they didn’t think was so good.” We made up a contest where we invited our students to write a brief essay on what was good and what needed improvement in the College. He funded prizes for the three best essays and helped with some other small financial needs.
Then one day, within a week or two after the disappointment about the Southwest Florida Center for the Advancement of Teaching, I got a call from Vicky Mitchell, the Associate Director of Development for the University, informing me that David Anchin had passed away and that the Anchin family might possibly be interested in doing something in education and asked me if I had any ideas? I didn’t have any ideas. I had a full-blown proposal ready for funding. So we did a little search and replace on our word processor in place of the Southwest Florida Center, we put in the David C. Anchin Center. We worked with the family, and they said they liked it. Then they decided they wanted to do it, and subsequently, gave about $1 million so we had the funds to create the David C. Anchin Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
LB: Now that provided the building some other endowments?
BK: Yes. There’s an endowment that brings in not very much, maybe from $80,000 – $100,000 a year. But at the same time our good friend John Long was in the legislature. I went to John and said “John, we’re getting this money from the Anchin family, and we need some money to go with it.” He had called me earlier and said “Bill, it’s really fun up here. He had just been named speaker designate of the House. John asked me what I wanted. I said, well, I would like a new building, and I’d like this center, but that is another story. I’ll try to finish this one first. But, anyhow, we did get funding for the operation of the David C. Anchin Center for the Advancement of Teaching, a new building for the College, with a beautiful annex for the Anchin Center. It was a wonderful place for me after the time that I was the dean. But about the building, can I tell that story too?
LB: The College? Certainly. The College of Education building that was my next question.
BK: We had long ago outgrown the existing facility and needed a new building. After discussion with the Administrative Council, we announced at a faculty meeting that we were putting in the paperwork for a new building. We weren’t alone. We were pleased, but not overjoyed, when we were told we had made the priority list and were 32nd on the priority list for the University System. I think by now they’re probably down to 30th, we were 32nd, so we wouldn’t have a building yet. But when John Long had said, “What do you want?” I said, “Well you know we’re 32nd on the priority list for having a building.” He said they had asked him what his “must-have list” was. He said he didn’t know what it was so he asked. They said it’s the things that you “must have” before anybody else gets what they want. So about three days later I get an irritated call from Bert Hartley. Remember him from the child care on-campus school fame? He said, “What have you done now?” I said, “What do you mean, ‘what have I done now’?” He said, “Well, you were 32nd on the priority list for a new building, and you’re now second.” I said, “Well, you know I don’t have the power or resources to do that. How do you suppose it happened?” That was how our new building came to be built when it was built.
LB: You were able to renovate the old College of Education building and build the new building.
BK: About $24 million dollars worth of work that was done. I think the faculty had done so many good things for the state that they more than deserved to have that new building. It is wonderful to have the new building and a great booster of faculty and student morale.
LB: For the first time we had everyone in the same building because…
BK: Everyone in the same building, well, except Physical Education.
LB: Yes, we had our little kingdom on the other side. You had mentioned Carolyn Lavely earlier and that I noticed in the records when The Institute for Instructional Research and Practice was established, actually before The Institute for At-Risk Children and Infants…
BK: …and their Families.
LB: That came about through the legislature, I think, as a designated area with its own funding.
BK: Yes. That was Carolyn Lavely’s work, as you probably know until recently at least, Carolyn had brought in more money to the University of South Florida through grants and contracts than any faculty member in the University, including medicine, engineering, and all other colleges. She was also, as you know, a special educator and she really believed these things were important. She was in a position to influence the legislature to have them funded. She just told me what she was doing and I said, “Go, girl”. She was successful long term because her connections in Tallahassee made her visible, and her skills as a leader and administrator earned her a reputation as a person who could take a difficult job and get it done in a high quality way. Carolyn deserves an important part of the credit for most of the good things that happened for the College in the past three decades.
LB: I’m surprised to learn over 100 people are employed in the Institute.
BK: Yes. The Institute is large because they do all the testing for the state of Florida in several areas. It’s a major operation.
LB: They design the test, administer it, and keep records of who pass and so forth.