Oral history interview with Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly, 2017

Brittany: My name is Britney Hedrick and today is Friday, March 31, 2017. I am in Parrish Library with Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly, Emeritus Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies, to conduct an oral history for the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection.

Brittany: Thank you Dr. Roskelly for participating in this project and sharing your experiences with me. I'd like to start the interview by asking you about your childhood. Could you tell me when and where you were born?

Hephzibah R.: That's funny to go back that far. I was born in Dayton, Ohio, which makes me a buckeye, in December 1947 but my family was from the south and always I think the whole time when I was a child and growing up, and I grew up in Kentucky, my family from New Orleans and from Northern Florida believed that we were in exile from the south. So we went home all the time and so I say this 00:01:00because this is one of the great appeals for coming to UNCG, I know we're going to get to that.

Brittany: Okay. Well, tell me a little bit about your family and your home life.

Hephzibah R.: My father, he grew up as a farmer and his family was tenant farmers and that had a lot to do with his belief in education. I was the oldest of three girls. He believed that we would be educated, we would go to college, there was never a question. My father didn't have enough money to go to college. He went for a year and a half and then he ran out of money.

Hephzibah R.: In those days when he went there weren't a lot of loan programs or 00:02:00the kinds of support that college students have now. And so he couldn't finish. My mother who was a student at Newcomb in New Orleans, when he was unable to finish she stopped too and they married.

Hephzibah R.: So his belief in education was really important to me and to my sisters when we were growing up because he really thought that women should be educated. And as the oldest of three, you know, I always have fights with my two younger sisters about who had it the hardest, but certainly I was the lead in going on to college and staying with that.

Brittany: Well where did you go to high school?

Hephzibah R.: My father was transferred and he worked for TWA in Louisville, Kentucky and so I grew up there. And so I went to college in Kentucky at Murray 00:03:00and then I went to graduate school at the University of Louisville. So my whole educational background was in Kentucky.

Hephzibah R.: I went to a big high school, I was in a special program, we were kind of guinea pigs for what became advanced placement I guess, sort of. And so there were a lot of demands placed on us and I say these things because I think this is important to know, why does a person end up in education?

Hephzibah R.: Why does this person end up being a teacher? And I think that for me, all along the way there was this kind of support given for what can happen to you if you take education seriously.

Brittany: Okay. What were your favorite subjects? What did you enjoy the most?

Hephzibah R.: I saw this question, and I was thinking about what were my favorite subjects. I loved humanities because I had a great teacher who loved to play music when we walked in the room and think about how Beethoven related to the kinds of drawings she would put up on the board.

Hephzibah R.: That was like a very wonderful class. And of course, not surprisingly I loved my English class, and I loved history. I was a poor math student. So poor that I thought well maybe that's going to even keep me out of college because I'm such a bad student, but I did all right.

Hephzibah R.: But probably my favorite class was my drama class and another thing I would think looking back is that, that background in drama, I also majored in drama in college was an important part of my teaching career. I think 00:05:00I figured out how to teach because I had been on stage.

Brittany: So I just want to get a good timeline in my head here, so you graduated from high school in?

Hephzibah R.: 1965 and from college in 1969. And I taught in high school after I graduated from college, and I will tell you one little story about my first year of teaching high school. I graduated, I was young and so I walked into the classroom, I was 21 and I was teaching a class of seniors and in those days they had a class called Vocational English and it really as I have told people after that, it was really for kids who kind of forgot to drop out at age 16, they just stayed on you know.

Hephzibah R.: So they weren't really very motivated. But they wanted me to teach 00:06:00them something like the friendly versus the business letter. They wanted me to teach something about the seven basic sentence patterns or something. I mean these were kids who didn't really want to know anything.

Hephzibah R.: One day I remember, I was kind of getting excited about the seven basic sentence patterns, so I'm talking about it, I have my chalk in my hand, it's early in the semester, so it's like in September, it's really hot, there's no air conditioning. The windows are open, its like a factory it looks like.

Hephzibah R.: All the windows are open and I'm talking to my students and of course you know they're just sitting there blah and I take my chalk and I'm like gesturing with my hand and I take the chalk and I sort of make this big gesture and I throw my chalk out the window.

Hephzibah R.: So the chalk is going in this arch over the students and I mean in my mind it's like slow motion and the students were all following the chalk. 00:07:00Well up to that point I had been so severe with them. You know those were the days when you had long hippy hair.

Hephzibah R.: I mean I wore my hair in a bun every day. I wore brown, I mean I was really trying to be serious and when I did that, it was just like this break and I said to them, "Okay y'all, I just have to admit, I'm the kind of teacher who's going to get excited and throw chalk out the window, so there we are."

Hephzibah R.: And somehow that was just this moment of realization that when you get in front of a classroom, whatever you are as a person, it's just your personality, you've got to be that because if you don't, they're going to know it. The only way to have any kind of relationship with your students is for you to find this authenticity within yourself.

Hephzibah R.: That's a long story but it kind of says what I believe about what 00:08:00it is to be a teacher and I was very grateful that I learned that lesson really fast in my career and I've always told my students, my graduate students who have taught freshman comp or high school teachers, I've always kind of told a variation of that story to encourage them to find that place that's you to teach. So anyway.

Brittany: Okay so what do you... Well I guess I'll just ask, how did you find out about UNCG? And when did you start working here?

Hephzibah R.: When I was a graduate student at U of L... I think I was, wait a minute, no I finished being a graduate student at U of L, I first went and taught at UMass in Boston. I had never lived outside of the south.

Hephzibah R.: I loved every moment, but I was so far away from my family and it was such a long commute. I don't know if you know that about that part of the world, but I lived in Plymouth and commuted to Boston and it was a tough commute, and I had little children by that point, and it was hard.

Hephzibah R.: So I kind of wanted to get back closer to my family, my mom and my two sisters and I wanted my kids to be closer to them. So one day I was at this advanced placement reading. This is the place where you go and read essays that students take in order to get college credit, and I happened to be sitting next to a guy named Walter Beale who was the Chair of the D'

New Speaker: Department of English at UNCG.

Hephzibah R.: We just started talking, and I said something about how, you know I really loved my work, but I really kind of wanted to get back closer to the south somewhere, and he said, "Well we've got a job coming up next year." And I said, "Oh." Well it turned out Greensboro was also the place where my brother-in-law had taken a job several years before at Moses Cone, he was a hospital administrator.

Hephzibah R.: So I just started thinking, we came and visited here to see my brother-in-law and then we just kind of drove around, and I was very taken with the history of this campus. And from my beginning of my work as a graduate 00:11:00student, I'd been interested in women's issues. And the fact that this was a very early women's college, and the kind of holding on to that history was very appealing to me.

Hephzibah R.: So, that's how it happened. That year I was offered a job other places, but it was the combination of family being here, and the fact that there was a Ph.D. program with a specialization in my area, composition and rhetoric, that made me feel like I could make a good contribution here. So I stayed.

Hephzibah R.: I never expected, I really didn't think I would stay for the 27 years I stayed here. I always thought, well okay, be here for a while and then 00:12:00maybe you'll find a place where it'll be closer to home, or it'll be a new challenge, or a place where my husband will find better work.

Hephzibah R.: Greensboro was not a very, at that point and this was 1989 when I came, it was not a very open town in terms of lots of job opportunities, and my husband had a hard time. So, I mean eventually it was okay, but I think all of that made me feel like I won't stay here forever. But I did, and there were enough challenges and certainly a wonderful community of colleagues that influenced me I guess to stay.

Brittany: And you've definitely mentioned this but just to I guess elaborate a 00:13:00little more, what were your areas of focus and teaching, practice, and scholarship?

Hephzibah R.: As I always tell people who ask this question, I start out by saying I teach reading and writing. And I think that's the most important thing we teach. And I'm very serious about that. When I teach any class it's a class in reading, how do you read and how do you write?

Hephzibah R.: So its much more important than to say I teach American lit, which I do. A special focus on the 19th century and a special focus on Emerson and the women of that time. But my main area of endeavor has been composition and rhetoric. Teaching the theory of how and why people write and the theories about 00:14:00how people persuade how they communicate, how they miscommunicate.

Hephzibah R.: These seem to me areas that are, if anything, more important today than they were in 1989 when I came here. I tell high school teachers whom I work with now that there's never been a more important time to teach rhetoric. How and why people are able to persuade others.

Hephzibah R.: The role of logic, the need for reason, the ability to mediate difference. And so when I teach anything, for me it's always about what is a student going to be able to do herself with what she's learning and as you see, 00:15:00I make long winded answers to simple questions, but reading and writing has never seemed to me to be a simple task.

Brittany: Okay. Let's see, what about colleagues in your department? Who made an impression on you?

Hephzibah R.: Oh my. There were just some really wonderful giants when I came. It was a very male department, I must say right away. Denise Baker who will retire this year, was there when I came and she was not only a wonderful scholar in medieval literature but a wonderful support to younger women coming into the department and we needed that.

Hephzibah R.: But beyond that, there were some wonderful characters who I 00:16:00admired very much. My colleague Bill Tucker who was a Shakespearean scholar, Jean Bouckert who was also a Shakespearean scholar and one of these sort of curmudgeonly wonderful women who had really lived through a time when women were not regarded very well despite the fact that this was a woman's college.

Hephzibah R.: She would take me aside, we were over in the McIver building and one day she took me aside after she decided I was okay and she took me into her office. Sort of pulled me in and she said, "Now Hepsy, I'm going to tell you about how the old boy's network works."

Hephzibah R.: And she proceeded to tell me all about the administration, all about how politics worked. But these were, I have to say, there's another guy 00:17:00Don Darnell who taught American lit who was a funny guy from Texas and I loved him.

Hephzibah R.: Jim Evans who retired a couple years ago was just this kind soul, teacher helper to us all I think. Bob Stephens who was an American lit teacher and was ready to retire when I came, was kind of somebody we all looked up to with his courtly, beautiful manner and his teaching style.

Hephzibah R.: What I would say when I came though is that most of the teachers who were there, and I think this has lasted through generations of faculty. In 00:18:00the English department there is a tradition of no matter how important and how meaningful scholarship is to teachers, many of these faculty members are teachers first.

Hephzibah R.: And when you walk into their classroom you see a kind of engagement that I believe is fairly rare in higher education in general because most people in higher education have not been trained as teachers still, even now. Unless they've gone through programs where there was intensive teacher preparation in a graduate program.

Hephzibah R.: Certainly when I came along, most people had never been taught anything about the craft of teaching and yet in the English department there was this way in which teaching was supported, enhanced and given credit and I said I 00:19:00didn't expect to stay here all these years but I would say maybe that's one reason I did.

Hephzibah R.: I was an old high school teacher, I taught high school for four years before I went back to graduate school. And even when I went to graduate school I thought I would always go back and teach high school again. I loved it.

Hephzibah R.: That experience though was rare. Even now if you went around campus and you asked people how many of you have taught high school before you taught college it wouldn't be a very big percentage. Perhaps not even in the School of Ed.

Hephzibah R.: So it gave me a different kind of feeling about what I needed to do with students primarily. And yet what I found in the English department was this just devotion to what students were going to be able to do. So almost 00:20:00everybody was just ... Either they were a shining light or a wonderful character.

Hephzibah R.: Oh could I say one more person? Let me just say that I loved being around Fred Chapel and he had a great devotion to his students, but he was such a smart and interesting man who believed so much in the ideals of what a college education ought to be that he kind of held us.

Hephzibah R.: I mean there were lots of disagreements sometimes among us all but he held us to kind of that belief that there was real value for students in a classroom and that we didn't want administrative trivia to keep us from 00:21:00remembering that. And so I'll always remember him for making us all remember that standard.

Brittany: Well how has your department changed over the time that you've been here?

Hephzibah R.: Well when I came, rhetoric and composition, people would say what is that? Now that's changed, people know what that is now. And it became an area of focus. It was one of the areas that the department itself decided to make one of its primary areas of focus for graduate education in English which was a very smart move because that was where jobs were, it remains that now.

Hephzibah R.: We have changed in that we have learned how to use the variety of 00:22:00theories that abound now about how people learn but also about cultural difference and about the way that those differences impact literacy and literature and that's eventuated in different courses and different areas of specialization. All to the good.

Hephzibah R.: We've hired people who have that and I'm talking about things like post-colonialism or gender issues, African American study. We have had dissertations now on African American rhetoric's and in a variety of post-colonial subjects.

Hephzibah R.: I think that the problem with that kind of move is that it can 00:23:00threaten to splinter a department if there are too many small areas of ... They can become fiefdoms where they don't talk to one another.

Hephzibah R.: And I say this because I think that's the truth with any department, that that can... When you begin to specialize to that degree there can be that kind of problem. And yet in our department I would say by and large we have been able to cross those borders, do kind of inter-related work and see our work as connected rather than competing or to desperate to be able to talk to one another.

Hephzibah R.: There is no one who would say "What is post-colonialism?" Whether they're in medieval literature or rhetoric. There is no one who would say, "What's the importance of having Native American study?" So that's really changed. The department is, as a group, much smarter now than it was, than I 00:24:00was, when I came. So we've been good about keeping learning among ourselves as important.

Brittany: And you also teach in another department too, the Women and Gender Studies, so what is that like? Teaching in two different departments?

Hephzibah R.: Oh yeah, well that was always, I give so much credit to the department chairs. Walter BealE, Jim Evans, Denise, all whom I've mentioned to you and those who followed who were so good about giving space to faculty members who wanted to teach in cross curricular programs but with special emphasis on Women's and Gender Studies.

Hephzibah R.: So they made it possible for us to do it. Beyond that, Women's and Gender Studies, called Women's Studies alone when I came, which just shows you another change and a kind of learning that's happened over these years.

Hephzibah R.: That I think beyond just being allowed to teach courses in that program, having that as a home in a department where there were few women and not very many courses at that point that dealt at all with gender or with women's issues particularly.

Hephzibah R.: We had a course in women's writing, I developed a course in gender and writing. I mean I developed a course in women's rhetoric, I developed a course in feminist theory in the English department but to go to a Women's Studies department and be able to teach those intro courses and have your department support you is amazing. And it was also a home.

Hephzibah R.: It was a place where you didn't have, and that was true for faculty members in the sciences, historians, it was true for all of us and mostly in the college at that point, although we certainly had people from other places, who saw this program as a place to share ideas and to get support.

Hephzibah R.: Where in your department, because there wasn't such a strong focus at that point, you might not have had it. So Women's and Gender Studies has been incredibly important to this university and I think it is finally being recognized for what it has been for the last 30 years.

Brittany: About the type of students you've had in both departments?

Hephzibah R.: My husband tells me when I say, "I have the best students this semester." Well he tells me this but also the administrative assistance in the 00:27:00department, I'll say this, "Hepsy, how has is it this semester?" I'll say, "I have great students." And they'll say, "You say that every semester."

Hephzibah R.: The truth is, I have had my great good fortune is to have had these wonderful graduate students but delightful undergraduate students. I have been so lucky to teach the very newest members of the university community. Freshman comp, intro lit students and the most sophisticated ones who are going out to take my job.

Hephzibah R.: It's been such a lucky thing because one of the things I've seen 00:28:00is that in some ways a beginning graduate student and a beginning undergraduate student are almost exactly alike. They're both scared, they both need help in saying, "You can do this, come on and here's the kind of stuff we're going to do."

Hephzibah R.: It's a very similar position that you're in as a teacher. I could go on and tell you how many students I have now. I haven't been retired since the summer, all these undergraduate students, that you only have one semester. With graduate students you get to know and love them because you have them over and over again.

Hephzibah R.: You work with them on their book intensely. So you know a lot about those students. They stay your friends. You're always their helper. My students from 20 years ago I see at conferences, I hear from. But an 00:29:00undergraduate student is a different matter. You have them for one course, if they're not a major, oftentimes I taught students who weren't majors.

Hephzibah R.: But a lot of them, since I retired have gotten back in touch with me to just tell me what they're doing, see how I'm doing. Its been terrific and I guess I would say one of the things I'm most happy about is how many students of color I have had in these undergraduate classes who have gone on to do just wonderful work and gotten great jobs, gone on to graduate school.

Hephzibah R.: It's been, and this is not me so much, as its been UNCG having created a climate where these students feel supported and welcomed and happy. And I've been proud to be a part of that.

Brittany: How have you served beyond UNCG in professional organizations or in the community?

Hephzibah R.: Anybody who's in this job, you always do stuff like... you always do a lot of service and of course I've been in my professional organizations and served in a lot of capacities there. I do a lot of the kinds of things that people who've been around for a long time do professionally.

Hephzibah R.: Writing for people who are seeking tenure or promotion. Being a reviewer for various journals and so on. But in this community, which I think is the most important thing for, what would I say, philosophically, it's the most important thing to be involved in the community to make a statement to the 00:31:00community that the university is a part of the community.

Hephzibah R.: I served on the North Carolina Humanities Council for about 10 years and that organization brings together business people and academics to talk about the role of the humanities and set up programming, bring people in, establish awards support writers, I had a great time doing that.

Hephzibah R.: I have done community book reads for many years, both here on campus, often with the library and in the community with kind of half way sponsored, or not half way, sponsored by the Division of Continual Learning. Giving book talks, I've done movies, I have worked with the public library to do programming.

Hephzibah R.: I have done research with the archives at UNCG and with Bennett College, and one of my happiest moments was young women who had done research in the archives at UNCG and young women doing research in the archives at Bennett came together on several occasions to do a whole day's worth of presentations and it was just, the last was at Pfeiffer Chapel at Bennett where Martin Luther King spoke and I remember saying to them how proud I thought he would be to there to listen to these young women, black and white, who were talking about their connections and the way in which we could go forward together and work.

Hephzibah R.: Those kind of community efforts, you know, they take time but 00:33:00they're so rewarding and I feel like they repay whatever investment you give to them. My department has always been, I think enormously generous in the time that they've given, so I was just part of what I feel like a lot of people in that department were doing.

Brittany: Well what were your proudest accomplishments while UNCG?

Hephzibah R.: That one of the young women, I was given a grant ... I'm trying to think if this was part of my professorship from Women's and Gender Studies and I believe it was. And I was given a grant to support these young women's research and to see what they did.

Hephzibah R.: And then there was kind of a spinoff from that because after they 00:34:00did all this work, we continued to work focusing on the activism of women surrounding the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro and so right at that point, the 50th anniversary of that march ... Okay that would have been 2010 and so we were doing all this work and we got to talk to two of the women who were participants, who were part of the sit-ins and I did and two of my students.

Hephzibah R.: Oh, we had all kinds of programming that for UNCG. I was very proud of that and very proud that my students had the sudden realization of the 00:35:00very noble history of this institution. The work that these young women had done. The bravery and it wasn't just these, I mean if you go back in the archives, what you find, it makes you very proud of the school you go to.

Hephzibah R.: And it makes you feel like you've got something to live up to. That's true with the teachers who were here too 80 years ago. I mean it was quite an amazing place. So I guess that would be ... I'm proud of all the people who I helped write dissertations, who are out now in the world, changing the world. I'm very proud that I was able to be part of their journey and they're doing terrific work. So I guess that's it.

Brittany: Were there any social or academic events that stand out in your mind? And I mean that could I guess be in general with students or maybe the faculty. Any faculty events?

Hephzibah R.: Well I can tell you, I think there were two events that I thought were just incredible and they were both speakers who came to campus. One was Bell Hooks who is an African American feminist.

Hephzibah R.: I admired her so much and had read a lot of her and I got to spend the day with her. And first thing she said, take her to lunch and we were having lunch and she says, "Now, I think I saw as were driving to lunch, I think I saw 00:37:00a TJ Maxx."

Hephzibah R.: And I said, "Yeah, there's one right..." she said, "Well I think we may need to make a quick little stop over there." She goes to TJ Maxx and she gets these random things like pretty vases, a bra and -

Brittany: Well we would be friends.

Hephzibah R.: Yeah.

Brittany: That's what I do.

Hephzibah R.: And it felt, oh it was just this great little moment and so I just, I loved that. And then she gave this speech that night and the hall was filled and up in the front there's all these people who were my students.

Hephzibah R.: A lot of African American students who were there, who I had said, you know, "Come listen to this woman." And it was just this ... I don't know, 00:38:00just a kind of incandescent moment for me where I guess the personal and the academic kind of came together in such a nice way. The other woman whose name is escaping me at the moment, wait a minute.

Hephzibah R.: Mary Daly who was also a very strong and, well controversial feminist. She taught at Boston College, a Jesuit school and she was a nun and incredibly scholarly. She was teaching at one point a women's studies course and she did not allow men to enter the class.

Hephzibah R.: And she said, "I did teach men along with women in this class, but when I had men in the course the women would not respond honestly or 00:39:00authentically or completely or at all because of all of these cultural issues we know about with men and women."

Hephzibah R.: So she said, "I'll teach another course and it can be men and women, or it can be all men if you want, but I'm going to teach this course." Well they fired her. And so, there was all this stuff that came out. She wrote these incredibly, wonderfully, crazy books like where she made up a whole dictionary.

Hephzibah R.: It was called the Wickedary with all these male oriented words, she turned them in to female words. She had a bunch of books like that. Well she came to visit, and so we have breakfast and it's like a whole long table. Gosh where is it, it's here, it's in the Alumni House.

Brittany: Probably below us.

Hephzibah R.: Probably. Thought it might... Well I don't know, it was. Anyway we're sitting at this table and I'm directly across from her and I say, "I don't know if I'm really doing the things I should be doing here." And she looks at me just with this intense look and she said, "Hepsy, just dare more."

Hephzibah R.: Then before she leaves she gives me one of her books and I open it up and it says "Just dare more." And I thought oh my goodness, well I guess I better start.

Hephzibah R.: So anyway, I would say those are the two really... And you see they're both like these personal moments. But there've been a lot of fun and 00:41:00interesting speeches by people who've come and visited.

Hephzibah R.: There have been all kinds of performances, I mean I'm not even getting into the entertainment part of the wonderful things we got to see at Ayock and I remember long ago seeing the music school do, and it was small, not in Ayock, a performance of La Boheme and I remember sitting, I was way in the front.

Hephzibah R.: I mean I'm weeping the whole time. And I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, these people are so great and they're watching me weep because here I am right here." But so anyway, there just was a lot of wonderful campus life, and I think that has built over the years too.

Hephzibah R.: When I first came, there were small things. People would go to lunch together. I just think as we have gotten bigger it becomes more of a challenge but still, there's a lot of community kinds of events still.

Brittany: What about interactions with the various chancellors? Chancellor Moran, Sullivan, Brady, impressions of them and even our new chancellor, Franklin Gilliam?

Hephzibah R.: I didn't really get to know Chancellor Moran very well at all. I knew Pat Sullivan well. She insisted on knowing the faculty well. She was one of 00:43:00a kind and she never saw me but that she didn't say I initiated an all freshman read program.

Hephzibah R.: It's disappeared now for a variety of reasons but it was really fun when we started. I started with... we didn't have any money I didn't even bring anybody in because I didn't have any money to do it. But Chancellor Sullivan when she came on board she began to give some resources to it and I never saw her on campus that she didn't say, "What are we reading next? What are you reading now?" She was an avid reader.

Hephzibah R.: She was a biologist I believe but she loved novels and so she had a very personal touch and I admired her. Linda Brady I did know. She had a troubled administration time here. I think she suffered some because Pat 00:44:00Sullivan was so connected and so in touch with students and faculty that it was difficult for her to find her footing.

Hephzibah R.: But I had conversations with her and I taught in the Residential College and she came and taught and she and I had a very nice conversation about teaching. Chancellor Gilliam, I didn't get to meet. I was here when he first came, but I have followed his career so far with great admiration and he's faced 00:45:00a lot of challenges and I think he has done it with quite a bit of grace. So the future looks bright I would say.

Brittany: Well tell me about how working at UNCG has impacted and affected your life and what does UNCG mean to you?

Hephzibah R.: You're going to be an academic. So the thing is that being an academic means that when you involve yourself in the life of a university, it is your life. It is part of your life, and a big part. And there's just anyone who tells you that this is a job is not an academic. I mean it's not because you 00:46:00take the work home, of course you do.

Hephzibah R.: It's because your involved in people's educational lives. You affect them. What other job could you possibly have where you get after a semester, people writing you and saying things like, "I never thought I could write before. You changed the way I think about X." My last semester I had this fella in my ... it was a class on rhetoric.

Hephzibah R.: My last semester they said, "Hepsy you can teach whatever. Just teach a special topics class, go ahead teach whatever you want." Well I taught, my course was called, I made it up, Rhetoric That Changed the World. And we did 10 pieces. A painting, a piece of music, a speech, a novel, I mean da, da, da, 00:47:00da, da.

Hephzibah R.: A piece of sculpture, we did Maya Lin, the Vietnam memorial, a movie. So we read Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I had this guy, this big kind of handsome wrestler kind of guy who didn't take the class because he wanted it. He took the class because he needed one more speaking intensive class.

Hephzibah R.: I would talk to him about words, vocabulary, well this is a graduate school word. And he told his group one day, "You know, I'm not taking this class because I want to go to graduate school or know this vocabulary. I'm taking it just to get a C." So all the stuff we read and he is kind of like pushing against it.

Hephzibah R.: Read Uncle Tom's Cabin, 19th century, very melodramatic but 00:48:00arguably one of the most important books in American literature because of its rhetoric, because of its persuasion. So he reads the book, he has to a presentation, he was grumbling, it's long.

Hephzibah R.: He writes me this email and he says, "Dear Hepsy, you know I complained about this book but it has changed my life. I'm from eastern North Carolina. I am never going to look at my town and the people in it in the same way because I see all these relationships between black and white."

Hephzibah R.: I thought, "Well this is why this is a life and not a job." So, 00:49:00that's what it's meant to me. A teacher never needs to look very far to see if you like it, if your good at it, how has this changed me? What has it meant? You just look at the lives of the people you've taught.

Hephzibah R.: The work of the people you've taught. These little moments. In addition, I was really lucky that I very early on started working in the archives and got to know this university deeply because of reading letters from the mothers of students who were in the Normal School in 1892. Hearing about 00:50:00Harriett Elliott who was the Dean of Students during World War II and served in FDR's cabinet.

Hephzibah R.: A stunning person. So, you know all of that I think goes to say, it was a meaningful, very meaningful time. And I hope everybody, I mean I hope everybody who's an academic, wherever they are, my wish is that they feel that kind of fullness because that makes you a better teacher if you do.

Brittany: Well we're doing these interviews as part of the 125th anniversary of the University which is an excellent opportunity for reflection, but it also 00:51:00helps us to think about where we are heading in the future. So what do you think the future is for UNCG and where do you see UNCG going as an institution in the next 25 to 50 years?

Hephzibah R.: Gosh I have no idea. What I hope is that we don't think that we need to mount every as an online piece. I don't have anything against online instruction but I worry that there's a loss of all the kinds of things I've been talking about.

Hephzibah R.: Community involvement, relation between community and university. Understanding of the differences and the wonderful varieties of experience that get represented in the students who are here on campus. I don't think that those things are easily translatable to electronic formats.

Hephzibah R.: A lot is but I worry that this push, which is basically at heart in my cynical view, a push from an economic rather than an educational perspective. I worry that, that might get too dominant. That being said, I think there's an increasing sense of pride in the students and in their skills and abilities that I've seen get bigger and bigger in my time here.

Hephzibah R.: There is a recognition of the professionalism and dedication of the faculty that I think has grown in very needed ways in the last few years. I expect those kinds of things to continue and I think mostly, if you look at 00:53:00really wonderful institutions across this country what you see are institutions that recognize, validate, and promote their past.

Hephzibah R.: And use their past as a kind of drawing card to move into the future. You've heard me say several times in this interview, what kind of past we have. I honestly feel that's the way to take us into the next 25 years. That tradition of brave excellence among the students and among the teachers.

Hephzibah R.: And I think that, that's the role of the history department and the English department and all other departments to work together to have that kind of understanding of the role of UNCG in this state and in women's 00:54:00education. So that's it.

Brittany: Well I don't think I have anymore formal questions for you but did you have anything you'd like to add about your time here at UNCG or any other experiences you would like to mention?

Hephzibah R.: Brittany I have talked a lot.

Brittany: Anything you forgot to mention though?

Hephzibah R.: Huh?

Brittany: Anything you forgot.

Hephzibah R.: No, I just went on and on with you.

Brittany: Or anything I didn't ask you that maybe you wanted me to?

Hephzibah R.: I don't think so. I mean, you know anybody who's been here for this long, you can go on. There's a million stories. There's bunches of stuff to say. To me it'll be really interesting to see what others say because what you 00:55:00will finish with it seems to me is going to be such an interesting patchwork but it's going to give you a larger picture too.

Hephzibah R.: How we've seen from our little angles of the university, how we've seen students and the connection. I'm very optimistic about this university. It should never, ever get rid of Foust building. It should never get rid of this beautiful building.

Hephzibah R.: It should never get rid of the quad. That sort of history should be absolutely glorified and that's my only, you see how you can hear this. I'm a little afraid of the push that might say these things are not relevant. But that's it. I didn't mean to end with a downer.

Brittany: Your fine.

Hephzibah R.: No. You know if you, when you go back, you and your team go back, if there are things that you think are holes I'm happy to send you an email or whatever and say, "Oh yeah well here's what happened." Or whatever. So you know. You can get in touch.

Brittany: Okay. Well thank you so much.

Hephzibah R.: You're welcome.

Brittany: It was great.

Hephzibah R.: It was great fun.

Brittany: Yeah. I'm going to hit the stop.