Oral History Transcript - Betty Kissler - November 18, 1991
Interview with Betty Kissler
Interviewer: Mary A. Allen
Transcriber: Mary A. Allen
Date of Interview: November 18, 1991
Location: Dr. Kissler’s Office, Taylor-Murphy Building
Ms. Mary A. Allen: This is November 18, 1991, and we are in Dr. Kissler's office in the Taylor/Murphy Building. This is a project I'm doing on the history of the History Department. As chair, you probably have some valuable insights into the particulars, and you've been here long enough that you could make some comparisons regarding the history department today and how it was when you first came. I understand you have been here since 1958. My information comes from the catalogs and so naturally they may be off a year or two especially when we get to the eighties and then we are two years at a time so I'm missing people a year here or there. Could you tell me about the History Department when you first came?
Dr. Betty Kissler: It wasn't the History Department; it was the Social Science Department with Geography, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, and History. Five fields, Dr. Taylor was the chair of the department at that time, of all those social science fields.
Ms. Allen: How many history professors were there?
Dr. Kissler: Let’s see. Dr. Pool, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Craddock, myself. There had been a young woman who preceded me who worked with student teachers. I was hired to work with student teachers as well as teach history. She had been here one year and done that, but she didn’t stay. I was hired to replace her. Dr. Swinney, Dr. Hahn. Those were the history people I believe.
Ms. Allen: Where were history classes taught?
Dr. Kissler: They were taught in a building that no longer exists, Lueders [Hall]. It’s where the Chemistry building is today. It was also the Home Economics building. History had the second floor; economics had the first floor. Then we moved to Flowers, after Flowers was renovated. They added a wing to Flowers, the wing on this side from the stairway when you go into the entrance to Flowers. This wing was new at that time. Built in [19]59 or [19]60, it was finished, and we moved over there. The library was in that building, in Flowers, at that time.
Ms. Allen: There is a plaque; I think that says that was the library.
Dr. Kissler: That’s right. It was on the first floor, the basement floor, if you went in on this side, it was that floor and the mezzanine floor that was the library. Second floor is where the history or social science department was. I don’t remember how long we were there, then we moved to Evans. I’ve really forgotten the move to Evans, what the date was.
Ms. Allen: Then moved over her (Taylor-Murphy) about 1982?
Dr. Kissler: I think that’s about right. No, I think we moved over here later than that. Because I stepped down from the chairmanship, I think in 1988 or [19]89. Well then, we had been here, we were gone one year to West Campus. And we were here one year under the old, before it was renovated. So that was the year. It was three years before that that we moved over here. That would have been about 1985 then. So we moved out of Evans when they were going to renovate Evans.
Ms. Allen: Looks like history has kind of been moved around from pillar to post for the last –
Dr. Kissler: Well, thirty-four years. I don’t know that that’s so unusual, four places in thirty-five years.
Ms. Allen: Have you seen any changes in the curriculum?
[5:00]
Dr. Kissler: Yes, there have been some changes. We are offering certainly more. The courses were really very traditional kinds of courses. We had the United States survey course, we had the western civilization survey, and European history with the early modern. And of course, we still have those German history, French renaissance, and reformation. We've kept those. We had ancient history as well and medieval. Texas History was two semesters at the time and then advanced American at the time. There were social/intellectual. That was the two-semester course. There was the two semester foreign affairs – or diplomatic history it’s called. There was the Old and New South, the Civil War, and then there was the Progressive Era and I've forgotten what the titles of the courses were, but it was the era from WWI to WWII because that was about as far as anyone went at that point in the early 1950s, because the war had just ended and the Korean War was just being fought. So World War II was about as far as we went in contemporary history. The ethnic histories, the new histories on immigration, the environmental history, history of science, the other kinds of histories were not even considered at the time. That's been a fairly recent innovation in history, recent I say within the last twenty years have I seen that come in – women's history.
Ms. Allen: Do they seem to be popular courses?
Dr. Kissler: They are quite popular. I think they are really being accepted more and more in history departments. There has been quite a shift from the political history to more the social history, the ethnic thing. Very specific kinds of history, looking at the history of the United States or the world in a little different terms.
Ms. Allen: I noticed in the late 1940s or early 1950s there was a course offered for a few years called the War Aims and back in the twenties they had a course for just a year or so on economics of the Progressives.
Dr. Kissler: There was an economic course as well. I didn't mention it, but we did have an economic history course.
Ms. Allen: Now we have things like Black History, Women’s History –
Dr. Kissler: Environmental history – we did have some Oriental History. Dr. Hahn taught that. Then we didn’t have it for a long time. When Dr. Hahn retired, we didn’t replace him because our enrollment for history had dropped off so much. History majors had dropped off in the late 1960s and 1970s. People went to other disciplines. The university expanded to business, criminal justice. There were a lot of new programs. We had a business department, but it expanded to be a business school and offered lots more things. The business program we had was primarily to teach teachers to teach business. You know, typing and shorthand.
[10:00]
Ms. Allen: For instance, economics was taught under the social sciences division, where now it is strictly into business.
Dr. Kissler: It moved into business because they wanted it over there. They had the students to fill the courses and so all economics is taught over there whereas it was taught in the social science department. But after that split that one went to the school of business.
Ms. Allen: Do you see any other major changes in the last twenty years or so in the History Department, either curriculum or focus perhaps.
Dr. Kissler: There certainly has been a tremendous change simply because of the requirements for tenure and promotion in research emphasis. The publishing and writing of articles, the giving of papers, participating in the discipline in a very different way. I mean being an active scholar is one of the things that certainly has changed. Because prior to the last twenty years, when that change occurred, most of the professors did some writing, but there wasn't any pressure to do a great deal of publishing or writing. And so it was done on a if they think they'll like it, they have an article they would try to get it published. Some of them tried to get their thesis or dissertations published and did. But there wasn't pressure put on people to do that. Now, that's very much a part of the job, the pressure to publish or you won't be promoted, you're not going to get tenure if you don't do that.
Ms. Allen: The new professors or teachers, for a long time it looks like it was an acceptable practice, that's the way they did it, was to hire people with masters that perhaps were working toward their PhDs and that's how they worked up the ladder. Where it seems like in the last ten to fifteen years, it has strictly been to hire people with PhD.
Dr. Kissler: When we started hiring tenure track, and that’s been about seven to eight years ago that we started seriously at tenure track. There was a period in there of about ten years where we did not hire any tenure track people. We hired strictly temporary faculty who came in and taught for three to six years for us.
Ms. Allen: Was that due to uncertainty in the demand?
Dr. Kissler: Because we didn’t have enough advanced students. All we needed were the beginning teachers. And to have tenure track faculty and not any courses for them to teach except 1310 and 20 or 2310 and 20 is not very advantageous to their career opportunities. If they can't teach an advanced course or can't move into an advanced course that's kind of a dead end. Whereas a person with a master’s degree or an ABD working toward their doctorate, that is all they want to do until they finish their degree so we hired generally, people who were working on their PhDs, ABDs, and it gave them time to work on their degrees while they did what was fairly simple teaching, and it gave them experience teaching also, so that's what we chose to do and we didn't have the number of students that were majoring in history so we could fill those advanced classes.
Now as our enrollment began to grow again then we have also a few retirements. We knew it was time we needed to start looking at some tenure track positions. Of course, one of the things we were all about the same age because when I came and a few of the faculty were here, had been here a little bit longer and they were maybe five years older than I was or something of that type, we were all approximately the same ages the department throughout. Then when we didn't grow, we didn't add anyone so now that people are retiring it was time to begin to bring in some people. We were recognizing that we wouldn't have anyone to replace anyone if didn't have some people in and get them tenured before the bulk of our faculty retired. By the end of the century, we could have almost a completely new faculty because there are several people I think that will retire before the year 2000, including myself.
Ms. Allen: The department has been amazingly stable.
Dr. Kissler: That's right this has been a very stable faculty. At any rate when we decided to hire tenure track people, then it became necessary for us, because of university changes in policy that these young people have to face university policy of within six years getting a book published even to get tenure. That is seven years if they don't bring in any teaching experience. If they bring in teaching experience, if they've taught a year or two then it reduces the number of years that they have. They have approximately six years to complete that, to get the book published. So that's why we now start looking at people with PhDs so they can get right to the revision of their manuscripts so they can get it published within the six years that they have. It takes about that long if you're just a new PhD, to get it revised and get it submitted.
Ms. Allen: I made the mistake of asking Dr. Bynum a year or so ago, "How's your book coming?" "Don't ask!"
Dr. Kissler: Well, it just has taken her from the time it was accepted, it’s taken another year to even get the revisions in and now it’s at the press and will come out in March, I think. But she was working on the index of that this fall so you can see how long since it was accepted. Well over a year ago. You have that kind of a problem so you do have to have time to do it. We allow the six years and that's fairly standard throughout the United States. In fact accepted tenure policy by most universities is that you must tenure the person after seven years, they must have tenure or you either remove them or you grant them tenure de facto and you don't won't to do that because you want to be sure your faculty is well qualified, not only can they research and publish, they can teach well so you have that period to look at your faculty to determine that. That's exactly what the history department is trying to do.
Ms. Allen: Do you see that there has been a change in focus perhaps toward the students, away from education and no longer does SWT exist basically because it was a teacher’s school?
Dr. Kissler: Yes, there has been very much a change in that because when I first came of course, that was what most of our history people did. They went into teacher education; they were going to be history teachers. I was hired to supervise student teachers and to establish the program. The year before I came the university decided that all secondary student teachers should be supervised by their academic departments. That's a different policy; it’s not the traditional policy. Even while we were doing this, the traditional policy is for all student teachers to be supervised by the education department. This school, for whatever reason, and I'm not sure what all those reasons were because it was done before I came, felt the disciplines, the academic department should do the supervision. There was a young woman here who did that for one year before I came. I had some of that expertise because of my opportunity at UT, I'd had a year's experience, I'd had some public school experience but I also had some experience working with student teachers at the University of Texas, about a year and a half. I had met Dr. Taylor through Dr. Webb and when Dr. Taylor learned of my background in supervising student teachers he thought and asked me if I would be willing to come over here to put that program into place. And it was something I enjoyed, I enjoyed supervising student teachers and so it paid well, it was a nice full-time job. I was just about through with my course work at the University of Texas so I thought that gives me time to prepare for my exams and I could work on this program. It grew from about twelve to fourteen students when I first came to the highest I guess we ever had was around seventy or eighty students a semester and there were three of us working – no four of us – actually working for a time with student teachers.
[20:00]
Ms. Allen: And you did this as well as teach?
Dr. Kissler: Yes. But we usually taught one class or no more that two. There were semesters when I didn't teach any. All I did was supervise. I had twenty student teachers and I traveled throughout central Texas because you went from San Antonio, Austin and south. Ultimately to Victoria and there were schools in between.
Ms. Allen: Is that still done like that now?
Dr. Kissler: They still go to San Antonio and Austin. They go to Lockhart and Luling. Dr. Sherow has been doing it. I don’t think he will after this semester. Susan Harris is doing it for us. At any rate, it was a program that started and so the emphasis was definitely on training teachers, and the curriculum was set before I came. You had to take half American, half non-American simply when that was what you were going to teach when you get out in the public schools. You were going to teach American and World history. Most of the time you had to take Texas history class. At that time, when I started supervising, there was Texas taught at the senior high school. Texas history was one of the advanced electives.
Ms. Allen: I had Texas history. It wasn't an elective; it was a have-to my senior year, one half year of civics and a half year of Texas.
Dr. Kissler: That was one way it was done. Some put it in with Texas history, and they'd teach a sociology class, advanced problems class or something.
Ms. Allen: Now, I think, the last Texas history children have now is junior high.
Dr. Kissler: Yes, seventh grade. I don't know of any high schools that teach it any more at that level. That all has changed. I think, I don't really recall when the changes occurred, probably about the time students started coming back to history. There was a real move out of teacher education. People went to business, criminal justice, health professions as these new programs began to start. There was more money certainly to be made. You couldn't make any money in teaching, not much at any rate. Later there was a move back and our enrollment now, we have almost two hundred majors, and it had dropped to below a hundred at one point and we had been six hundred so you can see how we have ebbed and flowed. When we were at the peak, we had six hundred when we had seventy and eighty student teachers. Well, as it has come back now, students are not looking at teaching. They're getting, they like history, they study history and they're looking at other job opportunities. Some of the professions going into legal programs, getting master’s degrees. There are a few of them that want to teach at the university or junior college, and there will be a few that won't go the certification route, that will just decide they're not going to do that. They will eventually maybe work on a PhD, but I think what was about half of our students just get a BA degree with the idea that they'll see what they can find out there in government work, businesses hire BA graduates, liberal arts graduates. You can do lots of things if you can read, write, and think. And that's exactly what history can train you to do, if you study history. The skills we try to develop in our students, research skills as they do research papers. If they do those as they should, they can certainly come away with the reading, writing, and thinking skills, analytical skills.
Ms. Allen: Have the requirements for research papers been enhanced over time?
[25:00]
Dr. Kissler: I don't know that they have been enhanced; I think they are probably fairly stable. I think we probably have shortened them. It seems to me students aren't writing thirty to forty page papers, they may be. I don't require that. I think I can get my students to write a pretty good paper and doing original research by limiting it to about fifteen pages, or approximately that. They can cover their topics in that amount, I don't need a thirty-page paper or I don't think I have to have that. I think that's been true of others, they've shortened. But we require that they do, I think there has been some lessening of – for instance this young man has all his footnotes at the bottom of the page. I think there are many professors that allow end notes. There have been some changes in that. The other thing that I see happening is the writing changes. There was a time when grammar was – I think grammar is still important, but the styles or rules of grammar have changed. The uses of commas, the split infinitives. At one time, they just popped out on a page to me, and I really question whether I should question them anymore because I'm not sure that is such a serious error as it once was. I think I'm perhaps a little antiquated sometimes in my own writing because it is much more formal than perhaps the students do today. Simply, there has been a change in attitude.
Ms. Allen: Don't you think they are requiring much less writing at the public school level?
Dr. Kissler: Oh yes. Although that is changing too because they know the students have to write and so I think you're going to see more writing as we go along. Students learning vocabulary. I think they are beginning to see that that has been a failure on the part of the public schools. I think they are beginning to try to change that, do more writing, get smaller classes so teachers can do that.
Ms. Allen: Have you seen changes in the abilities of the students?
Dr. Kissler: They are much less. Students don't write anywhere near as well, they can't spell as well, they don't communicate as well, they don't know the language. They don’t know many of the things I took for granted. Background information. One of the main areas is religion, students don’t [know] the difference between Catholic, Protestant. They just don't have the concepts that they used to get with their families and because of the breakdown in the family and some of the traditional values of our society, I think those are things that they just have lost which I think in many ways is too bad. It’s very difficult to assume that students know what you are talking about. I found that a few years ago when talking about the Puritan movement in the United States when the first colonists came. Students didn't understand what I was talking about when I talked about the Reformation and what was happening in Europe and why Protestants were coming and why they were being persecuted. This was all blank. Even though they had probably had some of it in high school, world history, it just didn't register with them. It had no meaning for them, so it was a concept they didn't understand at all and they are other concepts.
[30:00]
Ms. Allen: I don't think my own children have as good an education coming out of high school as I did. And I've wondered about it.
Dr. Kissler: I will say the same thing. I don't think our professors have the same kind of education as the old timers. I don't mean myself, but I think my education was better than some of these younger people that are coming in. Simply because of the background, things I had to read, things I had to do, they don't have to. But of course, there is so much more information.
Ms. Allen: Because of the bureaucracy or haste?
Dr. Kissler: Maybe partially haste, to try to get these people through.
PHONE INTERRUPTION
Ms. Allen: While you were chairman of the department, and that was 1980 to ‘89, when you became chair, did you have any specific goals?
Dr. Kissler: Basically, to continue as we had be doing, I suppose, as much as anything. I had never sought the chairmanship. I had really never thought of becoming chairman of the department. It wasn't one of the things I particularly wanted to do. But once I was invited to do it, I decided, why not. I'll give it a try. Dr. Swinney had been chair for I think twelve or thirteen years, and I thought everything had gone smoothly. I saw no reason to change anything. The department has always moved together to reach consensus. That has been one of the main things that we do and have for years. We reached consensus on decisions, then we may disagree pretty strongly in our senior staff meetings, but once the majority has finally made a decision, everyone agrees with it and goes along. We don't back off, and we work for that decision. We may not completely agree with it but it that's what the majority wants, we have gone along with it. That has worked very well, because it has given us a great deal of strength. The department has been able to fight off many attempts to try and force other people in as chairs, outside chairs. When I stepped down, I advised the administration at the time that the department had already made a decision because I had told the department before I told them that I was resigning the chairmanship and they had already basically made a decision on who they wanted to replace me. The administration absolutely would not accept that. Said that we needed to have a nationwide search and go out and we didn't ever have that, because they finally realized that the way the rules read that we could not hire anyone. If they forced someone on us, we could not give support to that individual if we chose to do it. And there was no way it was going to work if they did that. It would not work well for the department.
Ms. Allen: Did they explain their purpose?
[35:00]
Dr. Kissler: They thought that all departments should have the opportunity and all faculty should have the opportunity to look at other people, not be so ingrained, and to some degree I respect the administration that wants to do that. I think that makes good sense at times. But for a department like the history department that had as many full professors as we had, there was no way that we were going to hire as assistant professor to come in as chair. He would be hired as an associate, at least, or full professor with twenty to twenty-five years’ experience for any of us to even accept him or her as an equal. We didn't need another full professor. We certainly didn't need another full professor at that time in Latin American history or in US history in certain areas, and there isn't any way you can go out and hire one and select the field that you need. It didn't make sense for us. Now for some departments, I know it does at times, but because we were able to stick together, because we were determined we weren't going to bough to that type of pressure, we won, and we got the person we wanted, and Dr. Wilson moved in and it was a smooth transition to carry on the affairs of our school. I think that as I've said, that was basically what Dr. Swinney had done, it’s what Dr. Taylor had done. We have all kind of come through although there have been a couple of other chairmen just in the interim, well there was Dr. Henderson of the Social Sciences, then when we divided Dr. Hahn became chair of the history department. That only lasted – he didn't like it and didn’t stay very long, and then Dr. Swinney came in. As I say that worked very well. The chair doesn’t have a great deal of power because you don’t have control over the budget. There’s probably about twenty-thousand dollars, well I don’t know what it is today, but probably about twenty thousand that the chair can play with. There is about ten to twelve thousand that’s in maintenance and operation that buys the paper, pencils. and that kind of material we need to operate the department. There is about four to five thousand dollars in travel that’s divided up among a few faculty members. Then there is, I don’t remember how much in student wages that says those young people that are in the office. It doesn’t pay for the graduate students, that’s a different line item. That is the only money you have to play with, you can move that around, but you can’t change salaries. There’s very little you can do. Salaries are fairly prescribed, whatever, entry and experience level then you come in at a certain point.
Ms. Allen: I was going to ask you what you felt the department’s strongest attributes ism but from what I am hearing you say it’s the ability to come to a consensus, to work together.
Dr. Kissler: I really think it is, I think it has been one of its strongest points. I think we have a group of leaders. I think our senior faculty have all been leaders in the community, academic or university community. Four of us, well three of us that are still here served on the faculty senate. I think there are four or five of us that have served on the advisory committee, that’s an elected body for the faculty grievances. I think there have been a number of people like Dr. Brown, Dr. Dunn, Dr. Bynum, last year she did for one semester or one year but served as directors of various programs. Dr. Dunn and Dr. Brown certainly are the most prominent of those in the International Relations and Honors. The History Department has always had a number of faculty members that have operated throughout the university in various roles, serving on important committees, doing important research kinds of things. I know one of the first important committees I served on was the Report on Title VII, when the federal government demanded that all salaries be equitable and that you look at salaries to be sure you were paying everyone on an equitable basis, looking at discrimination. I happened to chair that committee and there were a number of other people from the university around. It was the first time that we did that kind of extensive study, and the university gave us full support to do it, but again history department people were and that has been the case, there has been some real leaders within the history department.
Ms. Allen: Not only campus wide, the history department seems to its share of people such as yourself that have been active in local matters too.
Dr. Kissler: In political matters, Dr. Liddle serves as precinct chairman, county precinct chairman for the Democratic Party. Both Dr. Pool and Dr. Craddock were on city council before me, so they were active. We also have people that have been very active in statewide, like Dr. Margerison is statewide president of TFA.
Ms. Allen: I think yourself and Dr. Swinney and some of the others were active in the faculty organizations.
Dr. Kissler: Yes. We have. I have served as state president of TACT and AAUP. I served on the national AAUP council several years ago. I've been very active in education in recent years at the state level with teacher preparation, serving on the commission of standards. That's true, we have been active people and involved in many things. Dr. Swinney is on the advisory committee for the coordinating board on formulas, and I have served on one of those study committees also.
Ms. Allen: I've not studied the other departments but the few questions I've asked, I don't think the percentage of their involvement in as many areas are as great as in the history department. Do you think that is a fair assessment?
[40:00]
Dr. Kissler: I think that's probably a fair evaluation. I think that's probably right. I think that probably comes about because most of our – we didn't grow for a while and most of our faculty had their degrees. The stability was there, and so they became interested in other things. They didn't have to publish or not anymore. They had been promoted and other things became important to them, and they could look to other things. If they had had to continue to publish to be promoted or get pay raises and do those kind of things, that wasn't required of them, so they did the service kinds of things. And service in various different areas.
Ms. Allen: You worked for Dr. Webb. Would you reflect on that?
Dr. Kissler: Not for very long. When I came to the University of Texas, I wanted to study with Dr. Webb. I was going to study Latin American History but I decided I also needed to draw from one of the great historians. I just could not take some classes with him. I wanted to take his two undergraduate classes. At that time, they allowed graduate students to do that as part of their program so I took his Great Plains and his Great Frontier undergraduate. But when I took his Great Plains course, that was my first semester, I also registered for his graduate class. That graduate class was fun, and I really enjoyed it. It was during that period [that] he had a graduate student that was grading for him who finished her degree and her dissertation and left in mid-semester, so he needed someone to grade. I had taken one exam at that point, and she had graded it, and apparently he had asked her who she thought, which graduate student in class, might be suitable to finish grading, and I was apparently recommended. I was flattered, surprised that I would be invited to grade for him. Anyway, I did grade for him for the remainder of that semester. I finished my graduate course with him, and I made As with him in his classes. I would have stayed with him to grade the next semester, except that's when I had the opportunity to move over to the education department to work with student teachers. It paid a whole lot more, and I decided that I needed the money to do that. Also, I thought it was going to be an interesting experience. So, I only worked with him not quite a semester. I did take his class the next semester. I knew him from then on, we were friends, and he was always very friendly. I would stop by and say hi to him. He was a delightful person to know.
Ms. Allen: I've noticed in going over the educational background of the faculty over the years that at one time everyone here almost exclusively was UT.
Dr. Kissler: That's right. There was a time when we had to stop hiring UT. Because they wanted us to diversify, and it was difficult to get anyone because there weren't that many historians and jobs were available in other places so UT people could go anywhere. As a small school without a PhD program, we were relatively small and primarily teacher training at the time, people did not want to come here. There wasn't that kind of opportunity, and that was understandable. The only people who wanted to come liked Texas and didn't want to leave the Austin area. That was part of it, that wasn't the only reason people came but it certainly was an attractive feature for some of the people we hired. Then when we were told and we had to, we finally started looking. Our temporary faculty when we weren't hiring any tenure tract practically all of them came from out of state. We didn't hire any UT people for a long time. We began to hire people from other schools and other parts of the country and today our faculty is very diverse as to the tenured faculty.
Ms. Allen: That's what makes the cooperation even more remarkable and significant.
Dr. Kissler: Because Dr. Brown, Dr. Margerison are among the first of those young people that we brought in but that was in the late 1960s or early [1970s] that they began to come in they were the first that became tenured that came from out of state. Dr. Dunn, Dr. Wilson. They all came about the same time in that wave of young people that came in. Then the next wave, the ones that are coming up now for tenure: Dr. Bynum, Dr. Andrews, Dr. Gomalok, Dr. Sherow. They are all out of state; no, Dr. Gomalak is from UT. Dr. Bourgeois, he's from England, got his degree from Cambridge. They are from all over the place.
Ms. Allen: Care to make any predictions about which ones will be here twenty years from now? On my chart you can see these stair steps. I'm tempted to ask, which ones of these will carry on.
Dr. Kissler: I would say probably, three-fourths of them. I would guess it would be about that.
Ms. Allen: Now you were chair. There was an article in the San Antonio paper by an associate professor at UTSA decrying the fact she is the only female tenured in the history department, and that's it’s a very tough world there. If you looked at it statistically, the minorities would be very underrepresented here in this department. You having been chair, I hesitate to say that there is any prejudice involved.
Dr. Kissler: I think for the most part the department has been very willing to hire minorities. I don't think there is really a bias against them or prejudice against them.
Ms. Allen: It’s more availability?
[45:00]
Dr. Kissler: That's right. We had a black woman here. Did you know Leah Shopkow? She was a rising star; at least I think she will be. And being Black and a woman she could write her own ticket. And she went to the University of Indiana for at least ten thousand more than we were paying her here and she is only teaching six hours. She was teaching twelve here. There was no way we could keep her. We couldn't come up with the money, the university wasn't willing to buy her, and that would have put her so out of line with the rest of us in comparison. And that's not always good to do that to your department unless you're under to gun to do that. We've hired Frank de la Teja who is a Cuban, a Hispanic. Of course, we have Vicki [Bynum] as tenure track woman. We are hiring two tenure track people now and we're hoping that one of them will be a woman, and we're sort of hoping the other is Latin American history, and we can get a minority in that field. Not that you have to be Hispanic to teach Latin American history, but you might find interest there. Although you find just about as many Anglos in there as you do Hispanics as far as that goes. We're sort of hoping we can because that would be nice to have that kind of diversity.
Ms. Allen: Does the department have a committee that makes recommendations?
Dr. Kissler: Yes. That's what that was. Vicki and I and Ken Margerison are on the committee, and she was going to take them home. [Dr. Bynum had just stepped in the office and taken a large box of folders from Dr. Kissler's desk.] She will go through them tomorrow as she doesn't come to school on Tuesdays, and she wanted to work on them over tonight and tomorrow. I have just gone through them, and yes we will be making recommendations to the department. I don't know whether it will be before Christmas, maybe after. We'll begin to make some cuts and begin to reduce it to two to three for each of the jobs and bring them in to be interviewed. On that business of hiring Blacks, Hispanics, women, I really think the department has tried to do that and will continue to try to do that. I have never felt that I was being discriminated against. I know my salary has been the same as other colleagues in the department with the same years of service until very recently. Some merit pays went in and I don't know how that is reflected. We're basically on the same level.
Ms. Allen: Along those same lines, with the Thomas hearings [Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for Supreme Court with allegations of sexual harassment by university professor Anita Hill were making headlines daily] in mind, have you had any such problems? Have you had in your career any problem with sexual harassment?
[50:00]
Dr. Kissler: Yes. When I was a graduate student, working on a master's degree one of the elderly professors who was my graduate advisor, I had my master's there and I taught there one year, I didn't have any problem as his student. It was when I was a young instructor. I always walked by his office when I went to class and I always stopped to say hello to him, and one day I walked into his office, and he got up and came, and he put his arms around me and attempted to kiss me and I was so incensed and repulsed, not as much by him as by what he represented and what he was doing. He was a man old enough to be my father, and he was also a man I had great respect for and to have him to do that I was so hurt by what he did and disappointed. He didn't hurt me, and the next day I was having difficulty walking by or going down I decided that I would ignore this and would not make this an issue between us. He was standing at the door. He said, "I want to apologize. I was very much out of line". I said, “why don't we just forget it". And we did and went on with that. I don't know if that was really sexual harassment or not. I suppose it was that he felt he could do that. There was one time here that one of the faculty members made some overtures. They weren't returned, didn't pursue it. There have been times I think the overtures were made. That's not what I was interested in, so I think that's why I wasn't bothered any more than that. Comments, yes, but I don't pay much attention to comments. I don't take offense when they call me girl or now 'little woman'. Yes, I don't like it but.
Ms. Allen: Any other particular incidents? Now this sexual harassment thing would not have had any impact on the department but the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill thing, did it cause great discussion in the department or changes in this department?
Dr. Kissler: It was. People were watching it on TV and there were students that were interested and faculty that went home and watched it Friday afternoon and Anita was on that afternoon, and he went on later that evening, I guess people watched it. I heard them comment about it. There was some comment about it.
Ms. Allen: I suppose if there weren't any problems with sexual remarks or whatever here then it would not have. I heard that in one other department where that type of thing was commonplace, that it has made a significant impact. It has come to a halt because of the hearings.
Dr. Kissler: When I was chair, we had some complaints about sexual harassments, some of the faculty and when I was acting dean of liberal arts, and there were some comments and complaints that came through the office on sexual harassment. I was always very willing to try to follow up on these. The problem we had at that time was getting women who would be willing to go to court or to stand up and face the individual. They were frightened and concerned about their grades, what kind of reprisals, would they graduate. They really were not sure the system would work for them. I can remember sitting in my office one day and a young man walked in just furious. My secretary said he insists on seeing you. He was coming in because one of the male professors had made overtures to his sister. He had graduated and no longer a student here, but his sister was. He said some action needs to be taken. Even as dean I cannot take any action without corroborating evidence. Your evidence is completely hearsay. Your sister has to come in and make the statement and if it’s a flagrant as you are telling me there are other girls out there that that is happening to. They have to come forward. If I have two to three girls that will do that, we'll go all the way and he'll be fired if what you are telling me is true. I couldn't get them to come in. That's where a lot of the problem arose. Now I think Anita Hill has opened, I think that has changed, I know that's changed. We're seeing a change in lots of areas of incest, child abuse; more women are more willing to speak up. Sexual harassment is certainly one of those areas.
[55:00]
Ms. Allen: In terms of incidents that might have had an impact on the department, the McCrocklin incident for example. Do you think that affected the history department?
I understand that it was very divisive.
Dr. Kissler: There were two men in our department, one in history and one in economics that had been friends for years that their friendship didn't break completely, but after a time it was very fragile. They almost didn't speak to each other, didn't talk to each other. After it was all over, and things calmed down, that was somewhat repaired. There were examples of that. It was a very divisive time and in the history of our university. Those of us who felt he had indeed cheated on his dissertation and felt we had the evidence were terribly frustrated because we couldn't get the administration to look at it. I personally took it to one of the vice-presidents. There were only two and I took it to one of them and they both came in. I said won't you just look at this and they said no. That's very frustrating to have people in power positions, and they refuse to even look at the evidence.
Ms. Allen: As a student, we are expected to be held accountable for our work and to find out something like that took place is very disappointing. What are shooting at if the person at the top has cheated?
Dr. Kissler: He was forced to resign without tearing the university even farther apart by other factors and ultimately the University of Texas did take away his degree. They did investigate, but it took years for that investigation to go on. The thing that was really sad about it, the man that supervised his thesis was a government professor that I had worked with, and he was as good a scholar and anyone at UT and had a fine reputation, and it nearly destroyed him. This document was taken out of the military archives and only because a military man knew about it is the only reason he got caught. It was classified information for a long time. But he said it was his own. But there was no way for that professor to know. It was really very sad because that professor's reputation was really colored by not having questioned more. I don't know all the details about how he presented it to his professor, but anyway it certainly – it was a vendetta, there were people who so much opposed him as president, a group of faculty members here and the politics. It was a personal vendetta and they had to find something and then they were just notorious at getting rid of him. And rightly so, he should have been removed but some of their tactics were less that professional, I think.
[60:00]
Ms. Allen: What about the Viet Nam era? Did that have an impact, either in curriculum or –
Dr. Kissler: Well, certainly more recently. We've put the Viet Nam War in classes now. It’s become much more significant now than what it was when it was going on in that respect. Probably one of the things that I remember about Viet Nam is the number of students that stayed in school so they wouldn't be drafted, and the Korean War did the same thing. They were in school because they didn't want to be drafted. They would come, I can remember students corning in saying "if I fail, I'll be drafted and I'll have to go to Viet Nam". You know they would put the onus on me. I would not accept that. I only give the grade that is earned. I don't make any promises that you'll get an A when you walk in, I don't bargain that way. I would tell them "Don't you give me that. It's not my fault you're not passing".
Ms. Allen: The age of the students. I understand that right after WWII and Korea there was a good percentage of older students corning to school and then that wasn't a factor in the 1970s. But seems to be more prominent now. Do you think?
Dr. Kissler: Yes, I think there has been an ebb and flow in the age of students. One of the things that has happened, I suppose that's primarily the 1980s, the older student was welcomed back to school, in fact encouraged to come, not only veterans but the older student with a second career or the career change women who needed to for financial reasons and some cases to come back to work. There were more and more of these older people that started coming back to school and right now I understand our age average here is now twenty-six or twenty-seven which is really high. Our freshman class of just high school students is relatively small of eighteen- to nineteen-year-old students.
Ms. Allen: Someone told me that forty percent were considered older than average, not the traditional eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds.
Dr. Kissler: We no longer have that traditional student as the majority. That was the case when I came, that they were the majority. When I came in '58 many of the veterans were already past. Many of them were already in school and on their way to graduate and so most of the students I had in my freshman courses were just out of school.
Ms. Allen: What about your graduate courses? Do you find a good many young people? Or older people coming back to school?
Dr. Kissler: It’s a combination. I haven't taught very many graduate courses because I didn't do that until recently. I didn't have time when I was supervising student teachers, didn't have time when I was chairman, and it wasn't a big thing with me. There were so few graduate students for a time that I didn't need a graduate class to satisfy my ego of whatever is necessary as is the case for some professors. They want to teach a graduate class every year at least one or two. Graduate students or the ones that I have taught have probably been averaging around twenty-five to twenty-six years old. I had a couple of them that were in their forties, but I think most are younger people.
[65:00]
Ms. Allen: Do you have any good stories you'd like to share with me?
Dr. Kissler: I'm not sure that I do. I know you asked if I would think of some but.
Ms. Allen: Could you reflect some on Retta Murphy.
Dr. Kissler: Oh, I have some good stories about her. She retired the year before I came and I never did teach with her. I always was kind of sorry that I really didn't have that opportunity because I think she must have been a marvelous person. I did know her. I did get acquainted with her, and she gave me some of her books on Latin American history because her field was Latin American history. But she taught in Lueders up there where we did when I first started. The story went around that one day they were doing some jack hammering out on the mall in front of Old Main and the windows were open and it was hot. None of those buildings were air conditioned. And of course, they were making noise and so she said to her class, wait a minute and she went down stairs and said “you stop that” to the young man “I'm teaching a class” and he did. She went back upstairs and taught her class. She was that kind of a woman. She was a bit crazy. She smoked a little corn cob pipe. She didn't do that on campus but she did have a little corn cob pipe, kind of a miniature one she smoked. But she could really get to the heart of the matter. She could zero right in on what was going on and had a marvelous sense of humor.
Ms. Allen: Ms. FitzPatrick relates in an interview that has been transcribed, that Jimmy Taylor liked to hire women because he always said he got twice as much work out of them.
Dr. Kissler: That was his comment. It really was. He made that comment. He wasn't afraid of women, that was certainly one of the things. We didn't threaten him, and so he hired them. He hired Dr. Craddock, me, Mrs. Fitzpatrick and the three of us were the three women in this department for a long time. Dr. Taylor was never threatened by us as women. But I think was true of many of the other men. We didn't offer any threat to them. We were colleagues, and I don't think many of them saw us as a threat. He was a very interesting man, Dr. Taylor. A chauvinist to some degree in the way he – and many of these men are in the way they feel they should treat a woman; opening doors, etc. That's fine, I like those courtesies but there were things they didn't think women should do, and that we should fix the coffee in the morning. Those are the kinds of things. We've had to break that down but it wasn't in any sense at all that they wouldn't make coffee because I can remember kidding people into making coffee. Why should I make the coffee, why should I be the secretary, and we had to break some of those things down, but you can do that without it becoming an international incident.
Ms. Allen: What administrator would you think had been the best friend to the history department?
Dr. Kissler: I think Dr. Houston was when he was Dean of Liberal Arts. I think Dr. Houston was a good friend. I think Dr. Norris was as Vice-president for Academic Affairs and not all my colleagues would agree with that but I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Norris when I was acting dean and I think he had a blind spot with liberal arts, they weren't anywhere as good as science, take that as a given, and then he recognized the importance of liberal arts, and I think he supported the history department. I didn't work long enough with Dr. Gravitt to have a feel for him because I left the chairmanship shortly after he became dean. I would say one who did not like liberal arts and did not like the history department was Dr. Bardo who was dean of liberal arts after I was. He was one who didn't like us at all. At least that's my perspective. There was no love lost on our part toward him either. We didn't like him, we didn't think he handled things well and he didn't like us, I think primarily because he could not manipulate us.
[70:00]
Ms. Allen: Does a change in presidents cause a ripple over here?
Dr. Kissler: Not much. Lee Smith probably was one that caused a good bit of stir because he changed things, and he involved the faculty in writing all these policy statements and serving on all these tasks force which produced all this paper, and nothing was accomplished. You could never get an answer; they were always in meetings, there was always something. You could never get an answer if you needed one. Can I transfer this money to here; there wasn't anyone who could tell you that. As I was chair part of the time, there was no one who would take the responsibility, and his attempt to try to modernize and bring in a new system of administration just simply did not work, ultimately it didn't work but it caused all kinds of heartache and frustration of the part of other administrators and department heads. I used to come in and say, well, we've got to do something, so let’s put something down. And one of them was the five-year plan. We had to put together a five-year plan, it had to be done a certain way, and I said I can't do this by myself, and we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, it some of you will help me do some parts of it. The faculty got together, and in a week we had something together and I turned it in and I never did hear another word, and I knew we weren't going to hear anything about it. That's why I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. Other departments spent weeks on it and got the same results as I did. So it was that kind of thing that could be so frustrating, but normally presidents are too far from us. Only if they want to make some major changes like Smith did.
Ms. Allen: Is there anything else you'd like to add for posterity?
Dr. Kissler: I can't think of anything. I think you've covered it pretty well.
Ms. Allen: I'd like to be able to ask follow up questions if possible. Thank you very much.
Dr. Kissler: I'd be delighted and maybe I'll think of something else too. You're very welcome.
---End of Interview---