Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Linda Stevenson Watkins
Title
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Linda Stevenson Watkins
Description
Date
November 11, 2016
Duration
34:23 minutes
Transcription
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Final Transcript: Linda Stevenson Watkins, November 11, 2016
Donation record #_Watkins.L.11112016.1.
Transcribed Jade Smallwood 7/13/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha R. Robinson 9/15/2018
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Linda Stevenson Watkins as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on November 11, 2016, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Mrs. Watkins, do I have your permission to begin this recording?
LSW: You do have my permission to begin this recording.
MRR: Well, thank you. Can you tell us about how you came to join the Miami University Middletown campus family?
LSW: Okay, I worked as a college counselor in Michigan. This is long before the internet but a friend told me that there was a job opening, posting at the Middletown campus and they needed a counselor. So I was the first counselor on this campus. That was in about ‘77.
MRR: When you arrived at campus, what kinds of needs did you see that our students had for counseling?
LSW: When I first came to campus, it was summer time so people were coming making inquiries about classes. And I helped them select some classes. So you could say I was an academic counselor at that time. Then it came to the fall and everybody was supposed to register on the very same day. A little bit of chaos, I’d say. Not intentional, of course. But then, when June came aboard, we evolved into more of summertime orientation registration for classes, so, that’s how it began. I was given an office shared with Lynn Darbyshire and I was there as the counselor. You can imagine that putting a name on the door doesn’t necessarily bring people in. So, I think the beauty of working on this campus is that I had a lot of freedom of movement and/or freedom to initiate programs or activities—an example being MUMs Tots. When I kept seeing a stream of women coming through who needed to get their lives together and their economic stability, it was important to them, and they had little children on top of that. Anybody can imagine the responsibility of juggling all of that, so, there was a space to we used and with a kitchen behind the library there, Verity. We looked at that, we obtained some money to get some cots because kids need to take little naps. And we did some trade-offs, you know, mom’s sign up for certain hours in exchange for having their children watched. You could say it was maybe like a babysitting co-op, if you will. Then eventually we got a person to take on the responsibilities of that endeavor. And then the State at that point in time started to identify and certify or license daycare centers, they weren’t really preschool, daycare centers. Our director of that, Colleen Wainwright, she took care of meeting all of those requirements. And that’s how it started, and survived and did well. It was really salvation to many women coming back to school.
MRR: Some of our students who have given us stories credit this program, not only with the ability to attend class, but also to make friends. What did you observe about that?
LSW: Oh, mutual support, of course. It’s just a pretty hard endeavor to go to school, take care of your kids, study. They made friends with each other and, because I spent a little bit of time there too, I became also the go-to person, if you will. You know, I think there’s a picture in the archives of me with my little daughter at one point, not that I used it that year. I had to stay home with her but I stopped in to see how things were going. There is a picture in the archives of me with my little daughter Sarah, who eventually came here to school for a semester before she went over to Oxford. On the long term you could say we had some family history here. Talk about family, I think there were very tight and warm relationships under Dr. Bennett, he really made sure that people felt welcome, there were cooperative dinners, you know, throughout the year. And we were all on the same page and I think that was really important. It was nice to feel supported and have somebody believe in your experiences and what you can do and the potential that you could bring to campus. That was nice.
MRR: The 1970s were a transformative time in the country. We also had the idea of feminism rolling through campus and KAOS has a quite a few articles about it.
LSW: Slowly though, I came from Michigan and so where I would hear a stronger tone about feminism there. I came down here and that was not exactly, what should we say? I guess maybe I, I worked with women offenders before coming down here and then before that I was at Michigan State getting a degree, was in a doctoral program. So when I came down here people didn’t embrace that. Maybe it’s because it was a big city. Armco and the auxiliary companies were here very much providing jobs for men. And women were thus the stay-at-home moms of course. When women realized, “You know, this marriage isn’t perfect” or “I have to be able to provide for myself,” or “I’ve never explored my own talents,” which many women came back age thirty-five or forty or fifty and said. “I want to be a nurse.” Wow, that was really good for them, you know. It was really very much an open door for them to explore their talents.
MRR: So this feminism was not about going out and marching, not here?
LSW: Oh, no, it wasn’t militant. No, no, no.
MRR: You’ve spoken about the students who are coming back at different ages. I understand that there’s another organization to help that group have friendships. It was called Rusty Nails.
LSW: Yeah, we had a group of older students called Rusty Nails.
MRR: Do you know where the name came from?
LSW: You know, since aging I don’t remember. Rusty Nails, let's see, why did we call it Rusty Nails? Sharp as a tack, you know, that’s the flip side of it. “We’re sharp as a tack. We’re not rusty nails.” Again, that was a way to get people of like-age and aspirations together.
MRR: What kind of things did they do?
LSW: I don’t think we, we had maybe some carry-in lunches. As far as doing things on the outside of the university, not much that I can recollect. But as far as other ways that I helped students see outside their immediate situation is, I started service-learning. So we went down to the Dream House, I guess you might say, the lady who lived in south part of town and had aspirations of feeding people. So I would take students down there. There were some churches that helped too. I took my own kids and I took students from here. And we all worked on Habitat projects too. Eventually, that turned into a one-hour class of service-learning. So I was glad to have done that. I think that’s an important part of one’s education, value-driven, if you will. I think that’s important to be part of the community and contribute. I took students to Michigan. That was an experience for me and an experience for them too, you know. You drive the van, you learn a lot about each other in the van. And you sleep in the pews of the local church and you work on a completely different geography then what you’re used to, in the winter time is what I’m trying to tell you. I think the questions that students asked about who we were helping and for what reason and how far this would benefit and if we weren’t being too invasive, I think questions were important. It was good to have a mobile classroom, if you will. So, that was good.
MRR: When did this begin? What decade did you start the service-learning?
LSW: Eighties. Maybe late ‘80s.
MRR: We still do that, so thank you very much. What was it like to share an office with Lynn Darbyshire?
LSW: Oh, he had one on one side and I had the other. When June came aboard they made a pod for us downstairs on the lower level so that we could be multiservices to students so everything from placement, Kim Ernsting. June taking on the responsibilities, organizing academic advising. Me, with personal counseling, career counseling too.
MRR: With the counseling services, how did students pay for that time?
LSW: They don’t pay. It’s free.
MRR: Is there a limit to how many sessions they can have?
LSW: No. That made it unusual.
MRR: Was it transformative for some students? Without naming names or specifics, could you see the difference that you were making?
LSW: I would never call myself a hero or anything like that. In a community college setting I think that you’re lynchpin for helping people find other resources or match-ups, you know, friendships oftentimes or through student organizations, trips, you know, or MUM Tots, Rusty Nails, that you’re making the connection for people and many, many times, I’ve spent calling on the phone to find out where to get “x” and I can tell you a really good example of “x” because I was also in charge of Disability Services. A woman came here and in order for her to stay all day, she’s a wheelchair user, she had to make some changes. And to have a privacy to make those changes was pretty important. So to find equipment for her to use that privacy on campus I made some phone calls and got some equipment. So I was really happy to do that for her. And she finished her degree!
MRR: Did that kind of service become more formalized over the years, working with Disability Services?
LSW: I don’t know how you could answer that question.
MRR: When you started offering disability services, you were our first counselor. And now we have an office suite that’s set up for Counseling and Disability Services. Did you participate in that transition from a desk to a suite of offices, how the program grew?
LSW: I had one desk. One desk and multi-hats. But it was at a point when universities were recognizing that they had students with disabilities or students with limitations that could do so much better, for example if they had a Kurzweil reader or they had something that would enlarge print. Now we don’t think anything of it because we have the computer that takes care of some of that. For our students that maybe have ADHD or they need more time on a test because they have MS or something in that order, my office was the space where they could take a test. Many times students were offered a private space, quiet space, because they needed more time to take a test. How difficult is that? They take it in an hour and a half then instead of the fifty minutes in class.
MRR: So you speak about creating spaces for students who may have ADHD. How did you work with faculty to make those arrangements?
LSW: You just go up to their office and say, “You know, I have a student that will need fill in the blank or will need to sit in the front row because, as you know, students come in and they plant themselves for the semester and that looks like their chair.” Well, if a student needed to be up in the front so that they could read lips, we want to make sure that they know they have a space there. It’s easy to work here. I don’t think it’s like a bigger university where the message has to be sent way across campus and you don’t know what the classroom looks like. Easily taken care of here.
MRR: One of the things that has been said about you is you really helped us to accommodate a diverse group of students. Are there different groups of students who were served here that you’d like to talk about in terms of population characteristics? Did you work with veterans?
LSW: International students.
MRR: Tell us about this.
LSW: I was a Peace Corps volunteer in another life, okay? I have a sensibility of global aspects, maybe. What’s it like to cross the threshold into another culture? So there were students from other countries here. I’m going to be hard pressed to remember. I don’t want to say names. But some of the countries, Myanmar/Burma was one. So to reach out a little bit more for those students. Let me think of another. Palestine. I would ask them to bring their flags or tell me the country and I would buy a flag, which I did. So I started putting them in the commons there. I don’t know if they’re still there or not.
MRR: We have dozens of flags now. Thank you.
LSW: Alright, well I started that project then. You know, it gives people a sense of places, that they’re welcome here, that they’re recognized. That’s important.
MRR: Another thing I’d like to know about, did some of the older students, were they nervous about being in a classroom? Some of them when they first came?
LSW: Well, I’m married to one of those older students. Talks about veterans. When I first came here, I came with everything I owned, a horse, a trailer, all my personal belongings including my mattress and my red truck. So, my goal was to find a barn and I needed a saddle rack. Luckily, there were classes taught in the evening, so I could stay after and I made a saddle rack. Well then, my husband who is a veteran, he had been in submarine service, came into that class periodically because he was studying to be an industrial arts teacher. You see, a lot of my roots are here. Was he nervous about coming back to school? He loved it. He loved talking to all these young kids. Is his English and spelling great? No. Does he read tons? A lot. That’s what you do in a submarine, I think, when you finish joking, and being serious, too, and being quiet. But you read a lot. He’s always very nervous about his spelling. Now we have spell checkers but back then there was a certain intimidation about the classroom that I think older students might have felt, veterans, too. Anyway, the end of my story is that’s how my husband and I got together.
MRR: One of the other issues that we need to talk about is the concept of changing people’s perspectives. How do you do that?
LSW: Changing their perspectives? Isn’t that what counseling’s all about, too, in many ways, you know? Seeing the picture as the glass is half full instead of half empty? Taking them downtown, even if it’s Middletown, to work on a Habitat project? To work at Luella Thompson’s Dream House and feed the multitudes and see that there is greater community here? Hopefully that’s how you get people pried out of their small world.
MRR: So, what happened to the horse?
LSW: The horse died and I had another one. We moved to the farm. I taught my kids how to ride and I just spent one, whole lovely afternoon riding five miles at Caesar's Creek yesterday.
MRR: Marvelous. Where did you serve in the Peace Corps?
LSW: Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.
MRR: So you speak French?
LSW: Si, oui.
MRR: Did you ever use that to help students understand that a foreign language would be useful someday? And did that conversation ever come up with some students?
LSW: That’s a hard one. That’s a harder one. Some of them had to take it for their Bachelor’s degree. Sometimes I went into Mark Plageman’s class. And he recreated his class so there would be one class of practice, so I volunteered and went in there once a week to speak French. Yeah, I had good relations with students. There was a faculty member here that came and taught international music so when he needed to be absent, I went in and had some fun with the students. A little balafon, you know. That was fun.
MRR: So, it sounds like working here was never about being in one function.
LSW: No it was not, for me, it was not one function and it wasn’t sitting behind a desk because you cannot be a counselor sitting behind a desk, in my opinion, in a community such as this. Maybe you can at Sinclair where people take numbers but I find it much more effective to be out with individuals or allow the serendipity to happen, I guess you might say.
MRR: Are there any programs from your time of counseling that you hope we are continuing to do and will continue to do for the next fifty years?
LSW: Well, it probably has more to do with service learning than anything. Again, that students recognize that there’s a value, and it’s not just my value, but the value of giving to your community. After I left, I did ten years of work with American Red Cross, going to fires. But I went to seven national disasters as the counselor, the counseling supervisor, and that gives you different perspective, too. So I think, we’re all in this together, right? I think that if students left here with more community views, and I’m sure they do, that’s what education does, travel does. It opens the doors. Is it Mark Twain that said you can’t remain prejudice after traveling? I think it was something like that.
MRR: So you started here in 1977. Have you seen a change in what our students needs are over the years in terms of career development or economic awareness?
LSW: When I first came to campus, I learned about Middletown and the embracing arms of Armco and the lucrative hourly salary there, for even a student could get a job in the mailroom at eight dollars an hour when at the time I think minimum wage must have been four or five dollars an hour. So, it was always this promise that you could graduate from high school, do well at Armco, hope to be a crane operator and make very good money, and provide for your family. When I had students in my classroom, I think they were often teetering on is it something to go to Armco or I get my education? I can distinctly remember one girl having a mailroom job part-time at eight dollars an hour. But I would try to take it further than that. If you made eight dollars an hour, nine dollars an hour, you would make about $18,000 a year. Have we come that far? Not really. And of course, those jobs at Armco are more tenuous. They’ve been cut back. The auxiliary companies have been cut back, too. I think that maybe tells you why many students are going toward the Allied Health Services because they know there is a job that’s a really good paying job after that. People ask me, I really like history though or I really like communications. And you have to be a little more creative and be willing to move. I was certainly willing to move down for a job. I think for our population here in Middletown, family is very important. Those connections with family are pretty important. So the idea of moving to Columbus for a job where you work in a museum, for example, would be really hard to imagine, really hard to make that transition. Do I think that’s changed? I’m not sure that kind of attitudinal change has been made. When I first came here, we had a lot of people that came up from Kentucky and they found jobs at General Motors, Armco and they did very well. They also went back on the weekends, if you don’t know that. They would talk about how tight the bridge was and how much traffic there was at the bridge. So, you have a population that migrated up here for jobs. They’re passing on that value to their children about go get a college education and here’s Middletown campus sitting right in the middle of it all. An opportunity. Those groups of students, between the 70s and 80s, I think they maybe came to school still weighing, “Do I have to stay in school? Should I stay in school? If I get a degree, will I need to move?” And I think those were all big questions. How will I fare in Oxford which is a little bit different kind of profile over there. That’s my commentary on career development and staying in school. But I would take it right down to some basics about if you made your eight dollars an hour, if you made your eighteen thousand dollars a year though you’re living at mom’s house right now how far is that going to take you? Let’s expand your earning potential by going to school. And then we’d break it right down. How much do you need to pay for an apartment, to pay off a car payment? How many times are you going to get your hair cut? Now it’s how many times are you going to get your nails painted, too? What if you need a new tire on your car? I had hoped to put some of those realities in there. A book I told you about, Nickel and Dimed, was one of the reality testers and I had students report on that. I think there’s some good books out there about economics, and even more now in 2016, about making sure you’re saving some of that orange money, right?
MRR: So, as I’m listening to the story of your time here, what I find is a person who helps students make the connections between classes and life and getting their life ready before getting to class. Would you say that might be what you worked on here?
LSW: Well, I would hope so. Yes. And many people had their students whether they’re 18 or 25, had their foot in both venues-- university, aspirations--and then the realities of paying mom back for her loan on their car. It wasn’t cushy. It wasn’t preppy. Students had to face the reality. They did.
MRR: What is it like then on graduation day? Did you ever attend graduations or students told you what it meant to be graduating?
LSW: Well, graduation day, at the time that I was here, was all in Oxford. So did I celebrate with students? Yes, sometimes. Took them out for lunch or we had them over at my house for dinner. Especially, I can remember international students because it was a big deal. Or had an event up at Verity because a student from West Africa was graduating and I made them, I can’t even think of what it’s called, the banner that goes around your graduation.
MRR: Uh regalia? Or the hood?
LSW: A hood! In the colors of their flag. I made a couple of those too because I think it was important. I felt like their family here. They didn’t, again we didn’t have the internet then. So it was pretty important to celebrate that.
MRR: Is there anything else you’d like to put into the record for future scholars reading this interview or watching this interview? What else do you want people to remember about the first 50 years of MUM?
LSW: Well, it was transformational for supporting women coming back to school, women in the workplace and giving people a chance to succeed in spite of their disabilities and truly I try to be a good learner but the technology of the Kurzweiler and finding interpreters for someone who is hearing disabled. There’s a difference between an interpreter and someone who can do it literally. So, I think many of those things have been solved or resolved, making it easier for students. Am I right?
MRR: Yes.
LSW: Thank you. That’s education coming along.
MRR: Do I have your permission to discontinue the recording?
LSW: You have my permission to discontinue the recording.
MRR: Thank you.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
Allied Health Services
American Red Cross
Armco Steel Company
Balafon
Bennett, Eugene
Burma
Caesar Creek State Park, Ohio
Children
Counseling and Disability Services
Darbyshire, Lynn
Darbyshire, Lynn
Disability
Dream House (Louella Thompson Dream Center, 834 Yankee Road)
Ernsting, Kim
Feminism
Fening, June
General Motors
Graduation
Habitat for Humanity
International Students
KAOS
Kentucky
Kerzweil reader
Marriage
Michigan State University
Michigan, state of
MUMs Tots child care
Myanmar
Non-traditional students
Offenders, women
Oxford
Palestine
Peace Corps
Plageman
Plageman, Mark
Rusty Nails
Service-learning
Stevenson, Sarah
Student organizations
Thompson, Luella
Togo
Verity Lodge
Veterans
Wainwright, Colleen
West Africa
Wheelchair
Final Transcript: Linda Stevenson Watkins, November 11, 2016
Donation record #_Watkins.L.11112016.1.
Transcribed Jade Smallwood 7/13/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha R. Robinson 9/15/2018
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Linda Stevenson Watkins as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on November 11, 2016, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Mrs. Watkins, do I have your permission to begin this recording?
LSW: You do have my permission to begin this recording.
MRR: Well, thank you. Can you tell us about how you came to join the Miami University Middletown campus family?
LSW: Okay, I worked as a college counselor in Michigan. This is long before the internet but a friend told me that there was a job opening, posting at the Middletown campus and they needed a counselor. So I was the first counselor on this campus. That was in about ‘77.
MRR: When you arrived at campus, what kinds of needs did you see that our students had for counseling?
LSW: When I first came to campus, it was summer time so people were coming making inquiries about classes. And I helped them select some classes. So you could say I was an academic counselor at that time. Then it came to the fall and everybody was supposed to register on the very same day. A little bit of chaos, I’d say. Not intentional, of course. But then, when June came aboard, we evolved into more of summertime orientation registration for classes, so, that’s how it began. I was given an office shared with Lynn Darbyshire and I was there as the counselor. You can imagine that putting a name on the door doesn’t necessarily bring people in. So, I think the beauty of working on this campus is that I had a lot of freedom of movement and/or freedom to initiate programs or activities—an example being MUMs Tots. When I kept seeing a stream of women coming through who needed to get their lives together and their economic stability, it was important to them, and they had little children on top of that. Anybody can imagine the responsibility of juggling all of that, so, there was a space to we used and with a kitchen behind the library there, Verity. We looked at that, we obtained some money to get some cots because kids need to take little naps. And we did some trade-offs, you know, mom’s sign up for certain hours in exchange for having their children watched. You could say it was maybe like a babysitting co-op, if you will. Then eventually we got a person to take on the responsibilities of that endeavor. And then the State at that point in time started to identify and certify or license daycare centers, they weren’t really preschool, daycare centers. Our director of that, Colleen Wainwright, she took care of meeting all of those requirements. And that’s how it started, and survived and did well. It was really salvation to many women coming back to school.
MRR: Some of our students who have given us stories credit this program, not only with the ability to attend class, but also to make friends. What did you observe about that?
LSW: Oh, mutual support, of course. It’s just a pretty hard endeavor to go to school, take care of your kids, study. They made friends with each other and, because I spent a little bit of time there too, I became also the go-to person, if you will. You know, I think there’s a picture in the archives of me with my little daughter at one point, not that I used it that year. I had to stay home with her but I stopped in to see how things were going. There is a picture in the archives of me with my little daughter Sarah, who eventually came here to school for a semester before she went over to Oxford. On the long term you could say we had some family history here. Talk about family, I think there were very tight and warm relationships under Dr. Bennett, he really made sure that people felt welcome, there were cooperative dinners, you know, throughout the year. And we were all on the same page and I think that was really important. It was nice to feel supported and have somebody believe in your experiences and what you can do and the potential that you could bring to campus. That was nice.
MRR: The 1970s were a transformative time in the country. We also had the idea of feminism rolling through campus and KAOS has a quite a few articles about it.
LSW: Slowly though, I came from Michigan and so where I would hear a stronger tone about feminism there. I came down here and that was not exactly, what should we say? I guess maybe I, I worked with women offenders before coming down here and then before that I was at Michigan State getting a degree, was in a doctoral program. So when I came down here people didn’t embrace that. Maybe it’s because it was a big city. Armco and the auxiliary companies were here very much providing jobs for men. And women were thus the stay-at-home moms of course. When women realized, “You know, this marriage isn’t perfect” or “I have to be able to provide for myself,” or “I’ve never explored my own talents,” which many women came back age thirty-five or forty or fifty and said. “I want to be a nurse.” Wow, that was really good for them, you know. It was really very much an open door for them to explore their talents.
MRR: So this feminism was not about going out and marching, not here?
LSW: Oh, no, it wasn’t militant. No, no, no.
MRR: You’ve spoken about the students who are coming back at different ages. I understand that there’s another organization to help that group have friendships. It was called Rusty Nails.
LSW: Yeah, we had a group of older students called Rusty Nails.
MRR: Do you know where the name came from?
LSW: You know, since aging I don’t remember. Rusty Nails, let's see, why did we call it Rusty Nails? Sharp as a tack, you know, that’s the flip side of it. “We’re sharp as a tack. We’re not rusty nails.” Again, that was a way to get people of like-age and aspirations together.
MRR: What kind of things did they do?
LSW: I don’t think we, we had maybe some carry-in lunches. As far as doing things on the outside of the university, not much that I can recollect. But as far as other ways that I helped students see outside their immediate situation is, I started service-learning. So we went down to the Dream House, I guess you might say, the lady who lived in south part of town and had aspirations of feeding people. So I would take students down there. There were some churches that helped too. I took my own kids and I took students from here. And we all worked on Habitat projects too. Eventually, that turned into a one-hour class of service-learning. So I was glad to have done that. I think that’s an important part of one’s education, value-driven, if you will. I think that’s important to be part of the community and contribute. I took students to Michigan. That was an experience for me and an experience for them too, you know. You drive the van, you learn a lot about each other in the van. And you sleep in the pews of the local church and you work on a completely different geography then what you’re used to, in the winter time is what I’m trying to tell you. I think the questions that students asked about who we were helping and for what reason and how far this would benefit and if we weren’t being too invasive, I think questions were important. It was good to have a mobile classroom, if you will. So, that was good.
MRR: When did this begin? What decade did you start the service-learning?
LSW: Eighties. Maybe late ‘80s.
MRR: We still do that, so thank you very much. What was it like to share an office with Lynn Darbyshire?
LSW: Oh, he had one on one side and I had the other. When June came aboard they made a pod for us downstairs on the lower level so that we could be multiservices to students so everything from placement, Kim Ernsting. June taking on the responsibilities, organizing academic advising. Me, with personal counseling, career counseling too.
MRR: With the counseling services, how did students pay for that time?
LSW: They don’t pay. It’s free.
MRR: Is there a limit to how many sessions they can have?
LSW: No. That made it unusual.
MRR: Was it transformative for some students? Without naming names or specifics, could you see the difference that you were making?
LSW: I would never call myself a hero or anything like that. In a community college setting I think that you’re lynchpin for helping people find other resources or match-ups, you know, friendships oftentimes or through student organizations, trips, you know, or MUM Tots, Rusty Nails, that you’re making the connection for people and many, many times, I’ve spent calling on the phone to find out where to get “x” and I can tell you a really good example of “x” because I was also in charge of Disability Services. A woman came here and in order for her to stay all day, she’s a wheelchair user, she had to make some changes. And to have a privacy to make those changes was pretty important. So to find equipment for her to use that privacy on campus I made some phone calls and got some equipment. So I was really happy to do that for her. And she finished her degree!
MRR: Did that kind of service become more formalized over the years, working with Disability Services?
LSW: I don’t know how you could answer that question.
MRR: When you started offering disability services, you were our first counselor. And now we have an office suite that’s set up for Counseling and Disability Services. Did you participate in that transition from a desk to a suite of offices, how the program grew?
LSW: I had one desk. One desk and multi-hats. But it was at a point when universities were recognizing that they had students with disabilities or students with limitations that could do so much better, for example if they had a Kurzweil reader or they had something that would enlarge print. Now we don’t think anything of it because we have the computer that takes care of some of that. For our students that maybe have ADHD or they need more time on a test because they have MS or something in that order, my office was the space where they could take a test. Many times students were offered a private space, quiet space, because they needed more time to take a test. How difficult is that? They take it in an hour and a half then instead of the fifty minutes in class.
MRR: So you speak about creating spaces for students who may have ADHD. How did you work with faculty to make those arrangements?
LSW: You just go up to their office and say, “You know, I have a student that will need fill in the blank or will need to sit in the front row because, as you know, students come in and they plant themselves for the semester and that looks like their chair.” Well, if a student needed to be up in the front so that they could read lips, we want to make sure that they know they have a space there. It’s easy to work here. I don’t think it’s like a bigger university where the message has to be sent way across campus and you don’t know what the classroom looks like. Easily taken care of here.
MRR: One of the things that has been said about you is you really helped us to accommodate a diverse group of students. Are there different groups of students who were served here that you’d like to talk about in terms of population characteristics? Did you work with veterans?
LSW: International students.
MRR: Tell us about this.
LSW: I was a Peace Corps volunteer in another life, okay? I have a sensibility of global aspects, maybe. What’s it like to cross the threshold into another culture? So there were students from other countries here. I’m going to be hard pressed to remember. I don’t want to say names. But some of the countries, Myanmar/Burma was one. So to reach out a little bit more for those students. Let me think of another. Palestine. I would ask them to bring their flags or tell me the country and I would buy a flag, which I did. So I started putting them in the commons there. I don’t know if they’re still there or not.
MRR: We have dozens of flags now. Thank you.
LSW: Alright, well I started that project then. You know, it gives people a sense of places, that they’re welcome here, that they’re recognized. That’s important.
MRR: Another thing I’d like to know about, did some of the older students, were they nervous about being in a classroom? Some of them when they first came?
LSW: Well, I’m married to one of those older students. Talks about veterans. When I first came here, I came with everything I owned, a horse, a trailer, all my personal belongings including my mattress and my red truck. So, my goal was to find a barn and I needed a saddle rack. Luckily, there were classes taught in the evening, so I could stay after and I made a saddle rack. Well then, my husband who is a veteran, he had been in submarine service, came into that class periodically because he was studying to be an industrial arts teacher. You see, a lot of my roots are here. Was he nervous about coming back to school? He loved it. He loved talking to all these young kids. Is his English and spelling great? No. Does he read tons? A lot. That’s what you do in a submarine, I think, when you finish joking, and being serious, too, and being quiet. But you read a lot. He’s always very nervous about his spelling. Now we have spell checkers but back then there was a certain intimidation about the classroom that I think older students might have felt, veterans, too. Anyway, the end of my story is that’s how my husband and I got together.
MRR: One of the other issues that we need to talk about is the concept of changing people’s perspectives. How do you do that?
LSW: Changing their perspectives? Isn’t that what counseling’s all about, too, in many ways, you know? Seeing the picture as the glass is half full instead of half empty? Taking them downtown, even if it’s Middletown, to work on a Habitat project? To work at Luella Thompson’s Dream House and feed the multitudes and see that there is greater community here? Hopefully that’s how you get people pried out of their small world.
MRR: So, what happened to the horse?
LSW: The horse died and I had another one. We moved to the farm. I taught my kids how to ride and I just spent one, whole lovely afternoon riding five miles at Caesar's Creek yesterday.
MRR: Marvelous. Where did you serve in the Peace Corps?
LSW: Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.
MRR: So you speak French?
LSW: Si, oui.
MRR: Did you ever use that to help students understand that a foreign language would be useful someday? And did that conversation ever come up with some students?
LSW: That’s a hard one. That’s a harder one. Some of them had to take it for their Bachelor’s degree. Sometimes I went into Mark Plageman’s class. And he recreated his class so there would be one class of practice, so I volunteered and went in there once a week to speak French. Yeah, I had good relations with students. There was a faculty member here that came and taught international music so when he needed to be absent, I went in and had some fun with the students. A little balafon, you know. That was fun.
MRR: So, it sounds like working here was never about being in one function.
LSW: No it was not, for me, it was not one function and it wasn’t sitting behind a desk because you cannot be a counselor sitting behind a desk, in my opinion, in a community such as this. Maybe you can at Sinclair where people take numbers but I find it much more effective to be out with individuals or allow the serendipity to happen, I guess you might say.
MRR: Are there any programs from your time of counseling that you hope we are continuing to do and will continue to do for the next fifty years?
LSW: Well, it probably has more to do with service learning than anything. Again, that students recognize that there’s a value, and it’s not just my value, but the value of giving to your community. After I left, I did ten years of work with American Red Cross, going to fires. But I went to seven national disasters as the counselor, the counseling supervisor, and that gives you different perspective, too. So I think, we’re all in this together, right? I think that if students left here with more community views, and I’m sure they do, that’s what education does, travel does. It opens the doors. Is it Mark Twain that said you can’t remain prejudice after traveling? I think it was something like that.
MRR: So you started here in 1977. Have you seen a change in what our students needs are over the years in terms of career development or economic awareness?
LSW: When I first came to campus, I learned about Middletown and the embracing arms of Armco and the lucrative hourly salary there, for even a student could get a job in the mailroom at eight dollars an hour when at the time I think minimum wage must have been four or five dollars an hour. So, it was always this promise that you could graduate from high school, do well at Armco, hope to be a crane operator and make very good money, and provide for your family. When I had students in my classroom, I think they were often teetering on is it something to go to Armco or I get my education? I can distinctly remember one girl having a mailroom job part-time at eight dollars an hour. But I would try to take it further than that. If you made eight dollars an hour, nine dollars an hour, you would make about $18,000 a year. Have we come that far? Not really. And of course, those jobs at Armco are more tenuous. They’ve been cut back. The auxiliary companies have been cut back, too. I think that maybe tells you why many students are going toward the Allied Health Services because they know there is a job that’s a really good paying job after that. People ask me, I really like history though or I really like communications. And you have to be a little more creative and be willing to move. I was certainly willing to move down for a job. I think for our population here in Middletown, family is very important. Those connections with family are pretty important. So the idea of moving to Columbus for a job where you work in a museum, for example, would be really hard to imagine, really hard to make that transition. Do I think that’s changed? I’m not sure that kind of attitudinal change has been made. When I first came here, we had a lot of people that came up from Kentucky and they found jobs at General Motors, Armco and they did very well. They also went back on the weekends, if you don’t know that. They would talk about how tight the bridge was and how much traffic there was at the bridge. So, you have a population that migrated up here for jobs. They’re passing on that value to their children about go get a college education and here’s Middletown campus sitting right in the middle of it all. An opportunity. Those groups of students, between the 70s and 80s, I think they maybe came to school still weighing, “Do I have to stay in school? Should I stay in school? If I get a degree, will I need to move?” And I think those were all big questions. How will I fare in Oxford which is a little bit different kind of profile over there. That’s my commentary on career development and staying in school. But I would take it right down to some basics about if you made your eight dollars an hour, if you made your eighteen thousand dollars a year though you’re living at mom’s house right now how far is that going to take you? Let’s expand your earning potential by going to school. And then we’d break it right down. How much do you need to pay for an apartment, to pay off a car payment? How many times are you going to get your hair cut? Now it’s how many times are you going to get your nails painted, too? What if you need a new tire on your car? I had hoped to put some of those realities in there. A book I told you about, Nickel and Dimed, was one of the reality testers and I had students report on that. I think there’s some good books out there about economics, and even more now in 2016, about making sure you’re saving some of that orange money, right?
MRR: So, as I’m listening to the story of your time here, what I find is a person who helps students make the connections between classes and life and getting their life ready before getting to class. Would you say that might be what you worked on here?
LSW: Well, I would hope so. Yes. And many people had their students whether they’re 18 or 25, had their foot in both venues-- university, aspirations--and then the realities of paying mom back for her loan on their car. It wasn’t cushy. It wasn’t preppy. Students had to face the reality. They did.
MRR: What is it like then on graduation day? Did you ever attend graduations or students told you what it meant to be graduating?
LSW: Well, graduation day, at the time that I was here, was all in Oxford. So did I celebrate with students? Yes, sometimes. Took them out for lunch or we had them over at my house for dinner. Especially, I can remember international students because it was a big deal. Or had an event up at Verity because a student from West Africa was graduating and I made them, I can’t even think of what it’s called, the banner that goes around your graduation.
MRR: Uh regalia? Or the hood?
LSW: A hood! In the colors of their flag. I made a couple of those too because I think it was important. I felt like their family here. They didn’t, again we didn’t have the internet then. So it was pretty important to celebrate that.
MRR: Is there anything else you’d like to put into the record for future scholars reading this interview or watching this interview? What else do you want people to remember about the first 50 years of MUM?
LSW: Well, it was transformational for supporting women coming back to school, women in the workplace and giving people a chance to succeed in spite of their disabilities and truly I try to be a good learner but the technology of the Kurzweiler and finding interpreters for someone who is hearing disabled. There’s a difference between an interpreter and someone who can do it literally. So, I think many of those things have been solved or resolved, making it easier for students. Am I right?
MRR: Yes.
LSW: Thank you. That’s education coming along.
MRR: Do I have your permission to discontinue the recording?
LSW: You have my permission to discontinue the recording.
MRR: Thank you.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
Allied Health Services
American Red Cross
Armco Steel Company
Balafon
Bennett, Eugene
Burma
Caesar Creek State Park, Ohio
Children
Counseling and Disability Services
Darbyshire, Lynn
Darbyshire, Lynn
Disability
Dream House (Louella Thompson Dream Center, 834 Yankee Road)
Ernsting, Kim
Feminism
Fening, June
General Motors
Graduation
Habitat for Humanity
International Students
KAOS
Kentucky
Kerzweil reader
Marriage
Michigan State University
Michigan, state of
MUMs Tots child care
Myanmar
Non-traditional students
Offenders, women
Oxford
Palestine
Peace Corps
Plageman
Plageman, Mark
Rusty Nails
Service-learning
Stevenson, Sarah
Student organizations
Thompson, Luella
Togo
Verity Lodge
Veterans
Wainwright, Colleen
West Africa
Wheelchair
Interviewer
Marsha Robinson
Interviewee
Linda Stevenson Watkins
Location
Gardner Harvey Library, Miami University Middletown
Collection
Citation
“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Linda Stevenson Watkins,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed May 3, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/1071.