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- Dr. Dick Puglisi
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Dick Puglisi
DP: Not a chance. Again, from the perspective of a very naive 17-year-old kid, I really did not know what to expect and didn’t really look beyond my courses and my schedule. I was focused on just trying to make sure that I was successful. My father had passed away when I was 13, and there was some insurance money that really helped pay for my education. When my brother joined me at USF a couple of years later, we focused on making sure we did what we had to do to be successful. I never thought as a student about where I was going. I was just trying to take advantage of the opportunity that I had.
LB: You graduated with a degree in education?
DP: No, actually my degree was in political science. I had a wonderful faculty member at the time that has since passed on. Dr. Fred Horrigan was the department chair and taught all the classes in the early years. Dr. Horrigan was a wonderful guy. He was a wonderful mentor as well as an outstanding teacher. My classmates in political science included Lee Moffit, Jim Woodruff, and John Grant. Of course, Lee went on to be very successful as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Jim, I believe, served as governmental liaison for Tampa Electric for many years. And John was a very successful Florida State Senator. When I graduated in 1964, I really did not know what to do with my degree. I loved the subject matter, so I thought that teaching might be a good way to stay involved with the content. I came back to USF for an additional year to get my internship and my social studies certification in the College of Education.
LB: You were teaching in the Hillsborough County public schools. How did you make your way back to the faculty? How did that come about?
DP: Again it was good fortune and great timing. I was teaching high school at the time. Actually, I was in my third year of teaching and absolutely loving it. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching high school. I taught seniors, and at the time several of my colleagues at the high school were in the social science education master’s program at USF. One of the courses I took was in political science. It was a directed readings course with a professor by the name of Dr. Roger Nichols. I’ll never forget my first meeting with him. When I arranged to meet with him, he wanted to meet at 8 a.m. on the morning of January 1. I thought this was a little bit unusual. Who is up at 8 a.m. on January 1 after New Year’s Eve? I came out here as a dutiful student at 8 a.m. and of course he didn’t show up until about 10 a.m. But I waited for him, and I worked with him in his program, and we had a wonderful relationship.
Roger was a very unique individual. He was a consummate political person. Not only did he teach the subject, he was expert in the application of political theory and behavior in the real-life setting. One day out of the blue he said to me, “Would you be willing to come out and speak to the interns who are currently teaching social studies?” I thought that the request was awfully strange that a political science professor was interested in having me come out and talk to interns. What I didn’t realize was Dr. Nichols was going to transfer from political science in the College of Arts and Sciences to the College of Education and eventually be the chair of the Department of Secondary Social Studies. At the time we had about 12 members in that department just in social studies, and after that seminar he said to me, “How would you like to come to USF on a one year leave of absence?” At the time I was actually thinking about administration in the school district. My principal at the time was Frank Scaglione. He told me that I would have to have my master’s degree before I could be interviewed for an administrative position. Since I wasn’t going to have my master’s until August of ‘69, I decided to accept Dr. Nichols’ offer to come to USF on the one year leave of absence.
My plan was to return to the school district at the end of the year with my master’s degree and resume my plan to seek an administrative position. Well, after a few months, Dr. Nichols said that he was interested in having me stay beyond the one year; look into pursuing a doctorate; and staying on the faculty in the College. I decided that I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in the College and never looked back. That was 37 years ago, and I have been here ever since.