Campus Expansion and Sabbatical Plans (Part 19)
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The first freshman class was admitted to UM-Dearborn in the fall of 1971, twelve years after the establishment of the campus in 1959 as a junior and senior (or “upper-division”) college. It signaled radical changes In the campus, from a new general education curriculum, to new faculty to teach the new courses, to provision of new physical facilities to house the expanded class offerings. There had to be expanded and new administrative structures, too, and, as I commented before, that opened fresh opportunities for me.
My place in the Division of Literature, Science, and the Arts was made official by my being designated as Administrative Assistant to the Chairman of LS&A. I had heavy responsibility in revising the Campus Catalogue to include descriptions of the new courses and general education requirements being instituted. I also continued to be the coordinator of student advising and handler of academic petitions from students requesting recognition of transfer courses or an exception to the academic rules.
I was still working under Dennis Papazian, and that occasioned some tensions as I tried to follow his directions, but also to deal straightforwardly and honestly with those with whom my work brought me into contact. I remember one time when Dennis asked me to put together some statistics and to present them to the Division Executive Committee. The purpose was to further some objective of Dennis’s in the allocation of resources. Some of the Discipline Chairs smelled the hidden agenda, and I had to share the attack that accused both of us with playing fast and loose with the data. Nevertheless, I generally got along with people and managed to stay fairly free of political maneuvering.
It was during this period that the term of the Humanities Discipline Chair, Sidney Warschausky, ended and the Discipline had to select a new Chair. The two declared candidates were both close friends, Myron Simon, who had helped Laquita and me get a place to live when we first came, and Larry Berkove. Again, I was naïve in not realizing that Myron was very emotionally invested in winning the position, and I made my decision based on Larry’s campaigning harder than Myron. In reality, Myron felt that his services were undervalued, and he was so crushed at not winning that within a year he accepted another position at one of the University of California campuses. I regret to this day not voting for Myron.
I was scheduled to take my first sabbatical leave in the academic year 1972-73, and I was persuaded, primarily by my colleague in English, Larry Berkove, to take the entire year at half pay, rather than only one term at full pay. Moreover, Laquita and I decided to make it a really special adventure by spending the year in England, where I would do research and we would travel. That was a life-transforming experience for the whole family, and toward the end of it came a call that also changed the course of my academic career. While we were planning for this sabbatical, the campus was engaged in revising its Bylaws, resulting in the creation of a new administrative structure, with more conventional academic units and sub-units. The Divisions of Liberal Arts, Engineering, and Business Administration were to become Colleges, each headed by a Dean, with Departments, each headed by a Chairperson. This new structure was to begin with the fall term of 1973, and these changes set the stage for a dramatic transatlantic call from the Chancellor of UM-Dearborn, Pat Goodall, inviting me to serve as Acting Dean of LS&A when I returned from my sabbatical. More of this development, and of our year abroad in the next chapter.
Before I end this chapter, I need to describe another big change that took place during this period in our church life. Dr. Joseph Jones decided somewhere around 1967-68 to accept an offer to become Dean of Michigan Christian College, located in the town of Rochester, MI about 40 miles north of Detroit. This move left the pulpit of the Northwest Church of Christ vacant, and it coincided with the return from Finland of a missionary supported by the congregation, Eddie Dunn. Eddie was asked to become the congregation’s preaching minister, and he accepted. Laquita and I had already become friends with Eddie and his wife Carole through meeting with them when they were on furlough and through Laquita’s correspondence with them. The relationship deepened when he became the preacher. Only six weeks after he assumed the position, he testified that he had had a special experience of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, resulting in his being empowered “speak in tongues,” which is one of the New Testament’s gifts of the Spirit. The elders of the church and some members of the church found this disturbing and unacceptable, and Eddie was asked to resign. He did so, but this abrupt change left him without any means of support. We felt his dismissal was unjustified and unfeeling, but the position of Churches of Christ at that time was that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased with the death of the last Apostle, and that any claim that they were still possible was false doctrine. Several other people in the congregation wanted to know more about Eddie’s experience, and a group of us began meeting each week in private homes. When the elders found out about these meetings, they accused the group of trying to foment division in the church. The result of their opposition was to cause the group to cease going to services at the church and to identify as a “house church.” I resigned my position as a deacon, and thus our ties with the Northwest Church of Christ were severed. We visited around to find a new congregation to identify with, but at the time we went on sabbatical, we had not made a decision on where to settle.
Consequently, when we left for our sabbatical year in England, we were no longer identified with the church fellowship in which we had grown up, and the way was opened for us to make a connection with the church we attended in England, St. Luke’s Anglican Church, a conservative congregation that supplied us with friends and experiences that helped us redefine ourselves as Christians.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.
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