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- Dr. Dick Puglisi
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Dick Puglisi
LB: Now where did you do your doctorate?
DP: I attended Georgia State University in Atlanta. It was a great program. In fact, I accelerated the process so quickly I ended up being the first graduate of the Social Science Education doctoral program. They were following the traditional process of completing their course work and then moving on to the dissertation phase. I, on the other hand, had to move quickly, so I completed the course work along with the dissertation. I had some great people at Georgia State who supported me, and I met my timeline in August of 1973. I received my doctorate and returned to USF.
LB: Now there are a number of accomplishments we can talk about, going back to you being one of the first who were involved in the teacher corps project.
DP: Oh, yes. That was a fun time.
LB: Was that a federally funded program?
DP: Yes. It was a federal grant that my good friend and your good friend, John Bullock, was able to obtain and invited me to be a member of the team. The team consisted of Jim Barnhard, Ed Uprichard, and Don Neville. We were members of the College of Education faculty at the time. Dr. Joyce Swarzman was hired as part of the team. I guess for two years we basically devoted our energy to working with the faculty at Mitchell Elementary School in Hillsborough County. It was a great experience. I had a fun time with the colleagues and working with the faculty. We had a good time.
LB: Then there was the National Resource Center for Middle Schools. How did that go about?
DP: That was again an interesting situation. At the time, there was this dynamic superintendent by the name of Jim Fox in Sarasota, and Jim Fox was really a mover and a shaker in middle grade education at the national level. He had been involved with the National Resource Center for Middle Grade Education when it was in Indianapolis, and as I recall, when it had national funding. Well, the national federal funding expired, and the center was closing down in Indianapolis. Jim Fox approached Bill Katzenmeyer, who was our dean, and if you can recall, Bill was very entrepreneurial. Jim said to Bill, “I want to work with our legislature to move the national resource center to Florida. Would you be interested in having it headquartered in the College of Education?” And Bill, of course, always keen on taking advantage of an opportunity said, “Absolutely!”
The next thing I knew, Bill was in my office explaining to me he had this conversation with Jim Fox and would I be interested, in addition to my responsibility working at the time with the Center for Economic Education, would I serve as acting director for the National Resource Center for Middle Grades? Unlike most centers that were established at that time, the Middle Grades center was to be totally entrepreneurial in generating its funding. After a couple of years of state funding, the funding would stop, and the legislation would allow the resource center to charge for products and services and basically earn its own way. He felt that because of my work at the Economic Education Center, I would have certain attributes that I could apply here.
The smartest thing I ever did was when I said to Bill Katzenmeyer, “I’ll be glad to do this, but I’d like to recruit this person that I’ve been working with in the Sarasota school district by the name of Dr. Sandra Schurr. I’d like her to come in as my associate director,” and Bill said, “Let’s get on the phone and call Jim.” He sat down in my chair in the office, called Jim Fox, and Jim Fox said he would arrange it. We would give Sandy a year’s leave of absence, and we’ll have her come to the University and work with me. Well, again that was the smartest thing I ever did because Sandra not only stayed for the year, she stayed for four or five years on a leave of absence, and then of course, eventually became one of our tenured faculty members. She just is one of the most productive people I know, and she became a nationally known figure in middle grades education. She was instrumental in developing a middle grades resource center that not only is national but is international in its scope. I stayed on in that acting role for about 5 years. It didn’t make any more sense to continue because at the same time we were building a facility for the Center for Economic Education, and I was very involved in that project. Bill and I talked, and Sandra became the director of the Middle Grades Center. So that’s how the Middle Grades Center was born and just flourished.