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PEOPLE'S COLLEGES NEVADA COMMUNITY COLLEGES THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS by CHARLES GREENHAW TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. ............................................................................. i PROLOGUE ................................................................................................ 1 PaulLaxalt ............................................................................................ 13 HughCollett ......................................................................................... 16 Helen Harris .......................................................................................... 20 P. Michael Marfisi ................................................................................ 23 Paul Sawyer ..........................................................................................26 Norman Glaser ...................................................................................... 31 Burnell Larson ...................................................................................... 37 Bill Wunderlich ..................................................................................... 40 Frederick Anderson............................................................................... 43 SOLILOQUY I ............................................................................................ 46 SueBallew ........................................................................................ 50 DelnaDay ......................................................................................... 54 RussLundgren .................................................................................. 58 Pepper Sturm, Jr ............................................................................... 60 Amy Emerson .................................................................................. 63 Paul Shelley Hanna .......................................................................... 68 William J. Berg ................................................................................ 72 Richard Culver ................................................................................. 78 FredFogo .......................................................................................... 82 DickMunson ..................................................................................... 85 Floyd Lamb ...................................................................................... 88 Fred Gibson ...................................................................................... 91 JohnRosich ....................................................................................... 92 Val Garner ........................................................................................ 97 David Hoggard, Jr .......................................................................... 102 Larry Tomlinson ............................................................................ 105 C.J. Caviglia ................................................................................... 109 Archie Pozzi ................................................................................... 112 Jerry Nielsen .................................................................................. 115 Jack Davis ...................................................................................... 119 Donal (Mike) O'Callaghan ............................................................. 125 Marcia Bandera .............................................................................. 129 Pat Miltenberger ................................................................................ 134 SOLILOQUY II ........................................................................................142 Joe Ayarbe...................................................................................... 148 Charles Donnelly ............................................................................ 152 JimEardley ..................................................................................... 161 Robert Gorrell ................................................................................ 167 Neil Humphrey ..................................................................................169 SOLILOQUY III .......................................................................................175 FaunDixon...................................................................................... 179 Don Carlson ................................................................................... 185 Bus Sharmann ................................................................................ 190 James Conkey ................................................................................ 196 Betsy Sturm .................................................................................... 200 JoAnne Dain ................................................................................... 203 JoeDoser ............................................................................................208 SOLILOQUY IV .......................................................................................212 LeonLucchesi ................................................................................. 217 Judith Eaton ................................................................................... 220 Herman van Betten ......................................................................... 223 June Whitley .................................................................................. 229 CandaceKant .................................................................................. 231 AlanBalboni ................................................................................... 235 Bob Rose ........................................................................................ 242 Muriel Breland ............................................................................... 246 Ron Sparks ..................................................................................... 249 Jill Derby ...........................................................................................253 REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST ..................................................... 260 EPILOGUE, by Cliff Ferry TIMELINE AS REVISED AND REFORMATTED BY CLF, 4/6/00 Acknowledgments This is a story of the founding of Nevada's community colleges. It is told by people who had a hand in the opening and building, each life a part of the mosaic. There is a common set of characters--regents, advisors, governors, legislators, chancellors, presidents, deans, faculty, staff members, and students. What happened to any one of the participants was of great consequence to the others. Their resources and destinies were so closely intertwined that each was woven into the fabric of the whole. "People's Colleges" is the name Charles Donnelly, the first and only president of the Community College Division, University of Nevada System, often used when talking about the institutions. He envisioned them as embodiments of Jefferson's belief that Americans should "establish the law for educating the common people." They should also be guided by Ortega y Gasset's idea that colleges should teach only "what can be learned . ..." The book is a series of mini-autobiographies with the colleges, in their formative period, being the common thread. My intention is to allow some of the founders, within the ambiance of their world, to tell their stories about how Nevada community colleges came to be the way they are. The book is more concerned with the way people felt about decisions and events than with statistics or chronology. Readers who want sequence and chronology may read the historical timeline that has been included in the appendix. The book, then, is not a formal history. It is a collection of recollections and perceptions. Oral history, like life in general, churns with contradictory personal perceptions. Oral history is a disputatious art in which different persons perceive the same event or action in amazingly different ways. Part of the reason is that persons in the different rungs in the hierarchy of the educational system will each take credit for an accomplishment or spread blame above or below, when in fact all may have contributed to an achievement or failure. The book implies three parts: (1) the political background, (2) the era of the Community College Division, and (3) the aftermath of conflict and partial resolution. But there is much going forward and backward in the personal narratives and no "deus ex-machina," for resolutions of conflict are merely temporary. When these oral histories are read together, a panorama can be discerned--the sweeping rise of Nevada's community colleges in less than a person's working lifetime. The story has gaps beyond those one normally expects in oral history. Some faculty members declined to participate. Others, being bold in their interview, were less so when they saw their i printed transcript. They either withdrew or revised their comments so severely that nothing remained but cotton candy. Evidently some faculty feared their comments might be used against them. Clark County Community College (CCCC), as I knew it, only recently became Community College of Southern Nevada (CCSN), Elko Community College (once Nevada Community College) is Northern Nevada Community College (NNCC). Western Nevada Community College (WNCC) retains its original name, although Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) arose from WNCC. From l969 to l977 there