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Rod Berg philosophy was if we are
going to have a community college in DuPage County,
no, we are not going to strip the high schools and grade
schools of their faculty.
I don't basically want that because basically, that's
our farm system.
They will be feeding students into us.
And so now, we can't rob them of their faculty.
Here again, Rod stressed teaching.
He wanted people from around the country and from various areas.
They had hundreds and hundreds of teachers coming in
to interview for positions at the college.
I can recall seeing the teachers come into Nicor building
to be interviewed and they would have lines of people
and then they would have chairs for them to sit down.
And the vice president of program,
and I don't recall his name right now,
was just exhausted because he would start interviewing
at 8:00 in the morning.
He might not finish till 8:00 at night
and just trying to find the best teachers for the college.
And, of course, the minimum was a master's degree, as I recall.
And a lot of us laughed about that.
They thought for a two-year college,
why would you need a master's degree?
But it proved to be correct.
They were really good teachers that were brought in.
When this opportunity came along and I saw the Community College
Act had been passed, I thought, hey,
get in on the ground floor.
I was only in my 30s.
I thought, let's get in on the ground floor.
Illinois looks like it'd be a good place to raise a family.
We had six children, so we wanted
to stabilize a little bit.
And so we took a chance and came out here.
But most of the people that came here
were like that, kind of adventuresome,
looking for new ground, and wanted
to be able to start on their own in their own program.
I was looking to move out of the high school zone
into the college zone.
I had a master's degree.
So that helped me get here.
But I heard College DuPage was really a good place
and they were looking all over the nation for teachers,
for professors.
And that was an interesting search, I thought.
A lot of the original people were high school teachers,
but they were really great teachers.
And then as time goes on, then the board
started looking at they wanted people with PhDs.
Well, some PhDs are really great teachers and some are not.
That's just the reality.
What you're looking for, I don't care what your background is,
can you relate to students?
Do you know your stuff?
Can you present it in a reasonable way?
I came to the college, and let me tell you,
that first week walking into classrooms with no teaching
experience and not being all that much older than students
and younger than some of them, yeah,
I worked really, really hard that first couple of years,
so hard.
Trying to stay ahead.
Trying to not only be so familiar with my content
but also learn about pedagogy and teaching
and getting to know the college.
Those first few years when all those new faculty came in,
it was just so exciting.
They were talking about things they'd done in their classes
and what worked but didn't work.
And I just loved that.
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