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- Dr. James Paul
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. James Paul
LB: There have been some projects in the Special Education Department, or that seemed to have grown out of the Special Education Department, such as the migrant education program, which is not truly special education. Did that originate when you were chair, I think that was the case?
JP: No.
LB: Was it ongoing?
JP: It was here when I came.
LB: Okay.
JP: The HEP project, to help migrant kids get their GED, was here supported by a rather large federal grant. Ann Cranston-Gingras, who got her doctorate here, became the director of that program shortly after I came, and she’s done a wonderful job. She also has obtained funding for minority students in the University. This new program is for children from migrant families to get support when they begin college. It’s a very positive and important project.
LB: What about the Institute for At-Risk Children and Their Families, Carolyn Lavely’s project. Did it start out in the Department of Special Education and change into its own institute identity?
JP: Well, Carolyn at one time, as you know, was the department chair of Special Education here.
LB: Yes.
JP: Actually, Carolyn and I overlapped at Syracuse University. My last year there as a doctoral student was her first year. She then went to Ohio State University, I believe, for a time and then came here. She chaired the Special Education Department, and then she went to Tallahassee to be a staff person for the Speaker of the House for several years. When she came back she was able to get funding for the At-Risk Institute. The Institute was not really in the Special Education Department. It was, I believe, administratively in the Dean’s Office, accountable to Dean Bill Katzenmeyer, who by the way, in my opinion, really wrote the book on leadership and the deanship for a college of education. I have great respect for him. The positive things that we were able to accomplish in the Special Education Department, quite frankly, are attributable to him and the kind of support he provided at that time.
The connection between the Institute and the Special Education Department was because Carolyn is a special educator who was a part of the faculty until she retired. The At-Risk Institute and the testing institute that she developed and directed produced a lot of revenue here. I think she probably brought more money into the University than anyone else at that time.
LB: You were able to take a sabbatical to Stanford University for a year. How was that experience?
JP: It was wonderful. It was truly wonderful. I’ve have three sabbaticals in my career. One was a year I spent at Harvard after serving as an interim dean of education at UNC Chapel Hill. This is kind of a personal aside. I really didn’t want to be the interim dean in the College. I was in the dentist’s chair in Chapel Hill and the Chancellor’s Office called and got me out of the dentist’s chair and said, “The Chancellor wants to see you.” I said, “I’ve got to wait until they finish filling this tooth.” I went over, and he told me the dean, for whom I had a lot of respect, had just resigned. This was late August, and the Chancellor said he wanted me to assume the responsibilities as the interim dean immediately. I said, “There are a lot of people who can do that much better than I can, and it’s not something I really want to do.” For some reason he really wanted me to do it, so he said if you will do it, I will give you a year sabbatical to go wherever you want to go. Well, there is no sabbatical program in the higher education system in North Carolina, at least there wasn’t then. It was one of those awkward situations. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I agreed, and the following year I went to Harvard. I’ve always been interested in philosophy, so I went to Harvard to continue my study of philosophy, psychology, and religion. When I had an opportunity here for a year’s leave of absence, I wanted to continue the same work I had done, so I did it at Stanford. It was truly a wonderful year. Maria and I had a great time. California is a good place to visit. One of the things we decided to do is learn about wine, California wines. I say we visited 60 vineyards, and she says more, but we did learn a lot about California wines. But my work at the University, the people, the academic community at Stanford, is rich and welcoming. I developed some relationships there with some folks I cherish. Nell Noddings, Dennis Phillips, and Elliot Eisner, were people I worked with most closely.
LB: Let us look now beyond the department to the College, and its role in the University, and what it means for local school systems and to the state. What are some of the things that you think perhaps stand out in the Special Education Department that you would remember as significant?
JP: I think the thing that probably will be recognized and remembered most is the work to which we’ve been committed addressing issues of diversity. Brenda Townsend came to us as a young, beginning professor from the University of Kansas. She has just done an incredible job in pursuing this work and getting funding for it. Her first project was to recruit and train a cohort of African American men. One of the big problems in urban special education is there are so many African American boys in the programs, but so few African American men teaching. I honestly believe there is no one in the country who has attempted to address this more directly and did so more successfully than Brenda. This is one of the problems we knew about from the ‘60s and perhaps before, but no one did anything about it. When she came here, she was committed to do something about it, and her first project was to get funding to recruit African American young men into an undergraduate program and graduate them with a degree in special education. She graduated several cohorts of African American men. When people said she couldn’t do it, she did it. Then she developed a graduate program for under-represented minorities in the teaching ranks in urban settings. This was not only for African American men, but for other minorities. She developed, implemented, and got funding for the master’s level program and then a doctoral program, project LASER. We have graduated several minorities from our program and have several enrolled at this time. This reflects a core value in the program. Brenda changed our department. She changed the color of our department, and she has had a huge impact on the College. As you know, there wasn’t much of a minority presence in the College. In fact, when I came in ’89, I believe it’s the case that Dr. Pride was the only African American on the faculty.