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205 11 WEATHERING CHANGES 1984–1995 On 1 June 1984 J. Herman Blake became president of Tougaloo, stepping down as provost of Oakes College to do so. It is easy to see why the search committee found him attractive. He was a scholar in his own right, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in sociology (Campbell 269). In 1978 Change had named him one of America’s emerging leaders in higher education, and he had served on the national task force that produced the 1984 report Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of Higher Education (Dreyfuss 13). He was also Tougaloo’s first president to have no ties whatsoever to the American Missionary Association or its affiliates (Campbell 269). A closer look at his previous position explains even more clearly why Blake seemed tailor-made for Tougaloo. He had played a crucial role in shaping the mission of Oakes, which was created in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, when it was suggested that the University of California at Santa Cruz establish a black college. Blake, Santa Cruz’s only black faculty member at the time, proposed an ethnic studies college instead. With faculty approval he and a colleague set about planning Oakes, building in a strong natural sciences component to give graduates expanded professional options, an aggressive program to recruit talented minority faculty, a larger-than-usual counseling staff, and a panoply of support services to help first-generation students adjust to college. In offering Blake the presidency, the Tougaloo trustees hoped to tap into Oakes’s sterling reputation as well as its “unique blend of compassion and innovative academic programs” (Dreyfuss 13). Monro too had high hopes for the new president. In a letter to Ken Autrey, who had left Tougaloo to earn a doctorate in composition at the University of This person sometimes stays in the background but brings others into the marvelous light. —Eaglet Staff, 1988 JOHN U. MONRO 206 South Carolina, Monro described Blake as “an energetic intelligent guy with just the background of training and experience we need here now” and compared him favorably to Owens: “New York and California instead of deep south hangin’ moss Mississippi; Berkeley and Santa Cruz instead of Tougaloo, Miles, and Fisk; good solid academic experience and attitude instead of business office” (22 Sept. 1984). He expected Blake to “turn the place around,” and he could hardly wait. NEW PROGRAMS AND NEW DUTIES Although he regretted the impending demise of the Basic Studies Department, which had not been extended a second time, Monro was an early convert to Blake’s proposal for its replacement: an interdisciplinary first-year course along the lines of an Oakes program called “Values and Change.” Underlying the course was the belief that students became engaged in learning when they could see that it was connected to their lives (Monro, “Literacy” 14), a point that Monro had repeatedly made at Miles and that had emerged from the 1984 national task force report. In February Blake created a task force to plan the course, assuring the fiscally skittish faculty that he would find a way to pay for it (Blake, memo, 8 Feb. 1985, TCA). Monro agreed to participate, and during a brainstorming session he came up with the title “Invitation to Learning,” which stuck. He was unable to teach it during its first iteration, but he attended the plenary lectures and took copious notes, and he especially liked the concept of a “floating seminar” of faculty members united by their commitment to the freshman curriculum and operating outside departmental boundaries (Monro, “Literacy” 15). Despite Monro’s enthusiasm for the direction the college was taking, his demanding job was beginning to take a toll. During the fall semester he was teaching eighty students, more than twice the normal number in Developmental English. Because of the overload, he asked to be replaced as Writing Center director, but by late September he was still holding down the fort, and the tutors who might have assisted him were being loaned to another faculty member with an overload. After receiving a reduced course load for the following year, he confessed that he was relieved, especially because he feared that his loss of stamina and dwindling “patience with non-performers” had been taking a toll on his students (letter to Autrey, 7 June 1985). The students, however, continued to admire and respect him and once again voted him Teacher of the Year. [3.142.197.212] Project...

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