Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio
Title
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio
Description
Date
April 10, 2017
Duration
49:39
Transcription
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Transcript: Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio, April 10, 2017
Donation records #_Delisio.D.4102017.1 and Petrone.M.4102017.1__
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 07/31/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson on 11/12/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Marty Petrone and with Diane Delisio 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 April 10, 2017, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Ms. Petrone and Ms. Delisio, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
MP: Yes.
MRR: Yes.
MRR: Thank you. So can you tell us how you came to be connected to Miami University Middletown?
MP: Do you want me to start?
DD: Yes, I do.
MP: I worked, I think it was in, I think it was 1978. I was on the Oxford campus and there was a woman who was working here at the time and there were some serious problems with her ability to get along with people here. And she was a little confused about her teaching schedule she thought that TR meant that she only had to meet her classes on Thursdays and so that’s all she did. In fact, when I took the job at one point I pulled a desk drawer out and there were old course evaluations that she hid in there that were really, really bad. I don’t know why she didn’t destroy them but anyway they were in there. And we kind of laughed about that. But anyway, so there was a problem and I was asked to go to the Middletown campus and kind of clean up the mess. It was supposed to be temporary and I ended up staying like thirty-two years. So, it wasn’t all that temporary. So, that’s where I started. And I was at the time I was an instructor in the Department of Communication, which no longer exists.
MRR: We’ve had stories that communication classes have really transformed many of our Middletown students. Can you speak to some changes that you saw among some of your students?
MP: I think that thing You know, it’s hard at the time. I think a lot of the communications classes are very interactive, particularly a public speaking class. You saw a lot of changes over the course. Where I saw the biggest changes were students that would come to Middletown campus. They didn’t know what they wanted to do. They were very confused. They just thought they had to go to college and then they dropped out. And then maybe three of four years later, they’d come back and they were different people at that point in time. So I don’t know so much as it was the courses that did it as the fact that they needed to mature and have some focus. So in their minds it was the class. I think probably it was more than that, a lot more than that.
MRR: Well, I don’t want to get too far without brining Diane into the story. Diane, can you tell us how you came to be associated with the Middletown campus?
DD: Sure. Let me go back to when I was in college. I always thought I would be a teacher but I went to graduate school. And I did some student teaching and I’m like, “Well, I’m not teaching high school.” So, I worked in industry for about seven years and was looking for something different and I saw a job opening up here. And this was actually in 1983 and I came and applied and I did not get the job that year. The next year another position opened up and the department chair, of Systems Analysis was the department at the time, called me and said, “We have another position. We want you to take it.” And I said, “well, I got to come down and interview you.” So I did and I felt it was the right change for me at that point in my life. So I started here in August of 1984. And I’d been working in the IT industry. When I came here it was a little bit of a step back because we were still, we had in industry, we had personal computers, desktops. You know it was the start of that era. And we came here and students had to key punch their card, send them to Oxford, wait for, you know hours or overnight of the turnaround to see that, “Oh my gosh I made one mistake I have to resubmit it.” And that went on for a while. So, eventually after a few years, probably after Cathy Bishop-Clark came here (She had got hired in 1989.) and….
MP: You hired her.
DD: I hired her and I was her original supervisor. And Cathy contends that she had no boss. I asked her just a few weeks ago, “Does she have boss now? Is the provost her boss?” And she concedes, yes but I was never really her boss. [laughter] But anyway, the students then, we had a lot of students at first because that was the big personal computer boom and everybody thought, “Oh my God, I’m going to learn how to use computers. I’m going to get these great jobs.” And, then they found out what was involved because it was really crude. I mean you had to have crude operating systems. Your programming languages were very cryptic. They weren’t wordy. There were no graphical interfaces. It was all line-by-line entry. And so after a while students decided, “Whoa, this is not for me.” And after a few years, we actually lost quite a few students. We didn’t have the big bubble of students that we had. And we had to figure out, you know what direction do we want to go. And when I started, we were actually connected with the Engineering Technology Group. So Dave Young was my original supervisor and he retired after a couple years. And then Rob Speckert became my supervisor and Rob was here a long time in Hamilton and Middletown. He was awesome. And then I actually got tenure in ’89 and shortly after that they asked me to be the coordinator for the computing group, whatever it was called then, because Engineering Technology really had to focus on their own areas. So I did that.
MP: When did it become CIT?
DD: I’m getting there.
MP: Ok.
DD: And…
MP: Hurry up, we don’t have all day. [laughter]
DD: I’m sorry. So, through the nineties, you know we experienced a lot of enrollment challenges. And we could only teach those courses that were offered in Oxford in the Systems Analysis department the first two years. We could not create any of our own courses. And we increasingly felt like we were not serving our students by just offering those courses because those courses were going in a more theoretical direction and we wanted our courses to be more applied to help students get jobs. And so the chair of Systems Analysis, and he was actually the dean at that time, Dave Hadadd worked with us, worked with the department and we created Computer and Information Technology. And we became a department in 2001 and I became the first chair of that department. I was lucky enough to be chosen and I was in that position for, until I went to Oxford.
MRR: So, legend has it that you were a singularly different kind of person to be female in a male dominated world, is what I’ve heard.
MP: Excuse me?
MRR: That’s what I’ve heard. I’ve heard that your department, as an industry, IT was a male-dominated field. And yet you come in as a, you’re becoming chair of the department. What did you do to earn that kind of respect?
DD: Well..
MP: There weren’t any men.
DD: There were some but they weren’t leaders. The men were really not leaders. None of the men really wanted to take a leadership position and I was comfortable taking a leadership position. We had a lot of women in our department. It was unusual. We had one woman, Laurie Werner, t the Hamilton campus and then in ’89 we hired Cathy Bishop-Clark. Then we hired Liz Howard in the early nineties and then Jill Corrigan [sic] at the Hamilton campus so we had more women than we had men in our department. It was really kind of unusual. So it was not unusual a woman took a leadership role.
MRR: Ok. Well, that fits with the story of faculty at the Middletown campus from the beginning. There was always a diverse faculty here. Did you see that over your time working with the faculty here?
MP: Well, at one point I was Coordinator of English, Humanities and Fine Arts and it was an incredibly diverse population. I mean it was amazing. I think there were, I had over sixty faculty members in nineteen different departments and the makeup of that group was across the board probably one of the most diverse. So yeah, it definitely was.
DD: I think it was diverse also in experience.
MP: Yeah, I agree.
DD: You did not have all traditional academics. You had people that had some work experience, some different world experience and it made for not only diverse faculty, one you could really learn from. I mean the thing that I want people to remember are the times that we as faculty members would meet with each other and, you know, talk about our students and talk about teaching. We did that regularly, all the time and…
MP: And not in a formal way.
DD: Not in a, yeah…
MP: And it was like we would, if we had an issue we would maybe go to the faculty lounge for lunch and say “This is happening. I’m not sure how to approach it, what do you think?” And we had the input from people from all different departments. So I think one of the, I don’t know what you would call it, like one of the benefits of being at a regional campus is the fact that you have people in different departments, in offices across from you. You learn from each other and you can collaborate together. And it’s interesting that, you know, in the work I’m doing now one of the things that’s the big push is to have interdisciplinary courses dealing with big issues in the world like sustainability and immigration, that kind of a thing. And of the places at Miami where that could happen most readily is the Regional campus because people are talking to each other and they’re engaging across those divisions.
MRR: So, tell me some more about these relationships among the faculty. Was it just focused on the students?
DD: Oh no.
MP: No, no. There were, I mean we had friendships…
DD: We made lifelong friends.
MP: Yeah, lifelong friends almost like a surrogate family I think. When Diane started, Diane is from Youngstown, Ohio. I’m from Cleveland and we both have an Italian heritage, she a little bit more than me but not much and…
DD: Twice. [laughter]
MP: No, I have my ancestry DNA .com
DD: Oh, that’s right. I forgot.
MP: I’m sixty-five percent. Anyway, and so we immediately just hit it off and became friends. We had a lot in common. We knew that part of the country. There were a lot of things that we didn’t have to explain to each other. And I think the other thing, at least I was thinking about this, one of the things. I came from a working class background from a very diverse part of Cleveland. So when I was first a student on the Oxford campus as an undergraduate, I thought I had no idea where I was and I couldn’t stand it. It was so different from anything I had experienced before. I think it was a form of culture shock. When I came here, it felt comfortable because it was what I understood. It reminded me. I mean there was ethnicity. There was diversity. There were people who, you know maybe they weren’t all the best students in the world but…
DD: They worked hard.
MP: Worked hard. For the most part they worked hard. They were trying, You know they didn’t have everything kind of handed to them and it just, I just like the atmosphere, a lot.
MRR: So, you mentioned being from Northeast Ohio that’s the Rust Belt now but this is a steel town also. What does education mean in a steel town?
DD: Well, what I think it means is that parents have worked in steel industries, in difficult jobs and factories and they want more for their children than that. And that’s why this campus here in the first place. And so, many people sent their children here so they can get an education and get a better job and make a better salary than they did. And that was right, you know, where we came from so that was familiar to us. But as Marty had said, students often struggled. They came just because their parents wanted them to come at first. But there were so many that I would see come back a couple of years later. One of my best students I remember he did that. He left and I thought, “Oh God, this is so awful that he left.” Two years later he was back. He worked in the factory, he worked in industry. It was not for him. He realized what he was giving up and he was back. He finished what he could here, he went to Oxford, got a bachelor’s degree, got great jobs. You know I was in touch with him for many years after he left here. But it just changed his life once he was ready for it. You have to be ready for it.
MP: But there’s also another thing, too. A lot of them had challenges even though their parents pushed them to go to college. Then they had challenges with their parents as they learned things and their values were different from their parents. They would confront things at home that were very uncomfortable, you know their parents “You’re a college kid now and you think you know everything.” And it was very hurtful to them and so they…,There was a lot of counseling I think sometimes that I think, at least I had to do. Well, I taught communications so people were always in my office and I was constantly trying to talk them through how to approach their parents and to understand where their parents were coming from. And it wasn’t that their parents weren’t proud of them but they were a little bit threatened by them and they were afraid they were losing them. So there were a lot of challenges that way. And we also had, I mean I’m going to tell you a story that maybe I shouldn’t but we had had instances where women would come back to college. We even had a case where a man came to the campus with a gun and pulled it on Gene Bennett in his office because his wife changed and, you know and she wasn’t coming home making dinner the way she…
DD: After she got an education.
MP: After she got an education and he came in with a gun and had it out and said “You’ve changed my wife and I can’t.” So, you know there were other things behind the scenes going on. too.
DD: Yup.
MRR: Those questions still happen on campus?
MP: Oh sure.
MRR: How expensive education can be and it’s not just about the money. It’s about the relationships. What would you offer to students in return or what words of wisdom would you offer to a student on how to deal with that expensive cost of education?
DD: That’s a tough one. How to explain the cost of education because I’ve always felt it was worth it. Just intrinsically, I’ve always felt that it was worth it so it’s hard for me to articulate. I mean my parents remember them ever thinking otherwise and I would go to college and I wanted to go to college, I wanted to learn, I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do in life and I thought that was worth it. Now, you can go to a college that you’re so much in debt that it’s not worth it but that’s not this place. And that’s why to me this place is even more worth it.
MP: There’s another side to that though. I’m actually counseling a student who is a Hamilton student. It’s a long story how he ends up with me in Oxford. But he basically wants to study abroad but his family doesn’t want him to have any debt because they’ve heard about kids having two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to try to overcome when they graduate. And now he’s trying to work really hard so that he can’t have any debt. And yet he wants to study abroad but he doesn’t think he can. And, you know so there’s, it’s really hard. I mean there has to be a middle ground. The big thing is I don’t think students should be coming to college without having time to think about what it is they want. So the Regional campuses are, you know, at least an alternative to maybe take a class or two and then get a sense of whether or not that’s the direction they want to go in. And it’s much less expensive but you know but expense is an issue and I don’t think there’s any solution to that.
DD: No easy answer.
MP: Yeah.
MRR: Many of our students here are first generation students but some are also place bound from external responsibilities. Can you speak to what some of those responsibilities might be that are different at the Regional campuses rather than at the Oxford campus?
MP: Oh, sure.
DD: Sure, they have to take care of their families, both their children and their parents, and so they’re place bound. I can remember the, I guess I would call them the battles with the Oxford campus when we…Long ago we wanted to offer bachelor degree programs here because the bachelor degree programs in Oxford, students could relocate and go there. But they couldn’t meet the demands of the time of the day or they’re going to work on project with other students and those students are traditional aged students, “Ah, let’s get together at eleven o’clock, you know over in Armstrong Student Center.” They couldn’t do that because they had their children and their parents and their husbands and their wives. So the place bound nature of these students, they’re just rooted here and they want to stay here. And they want to be able to get a good, quality education, which Miami offers, here. They don’t want to have to go to Sinclair or drive to Oxford. They want to be able to do it here, be able to run home if they have to and that kind of thing.
MP: Well, I would say Oxford is not a particularly welcoming place for our Regional campus students…
DD: No.
MP: in many ways. I mean, it’s interesting because there’s going to be an Inclusion Symposium in Oxford on October 13th and I’m on that planning committee. And one of the things we’re going to do is have a focus group with Regional campus students to get their take on it. But just from my own experience, students who transfer who are like traditional age and they move there, they are at a somewhat social disadvantage cause they have to move into an apartment. They haven’t had that residence hall experience. They haven’t made those friends. Most of them can’t afford or are interested in fraternities and sororities, so how do they make friendships if they’re actually transferring physically there? Ok, so there’s that. But then as Diane said, there is no mentality at all about the fact that there are students commuting to that campus. I mean they may have a commuter lounge but there’s no, nothing surrounding the fact that these people are having to drive at least probably half an hour from Hamilton if not forty five minutes, find a parking place, get the bus to get to the campus, take the class, then go home after their classes. Their classes may not be scheduled in a way that makes it convenient for them. And then as she said, they have these group projects where the Oxford students can, you know walk down the street to the library where someone else has to make another trip back. So it’s not at all receptive to that. And I think until this recent Regional resurrection of our, I don’t know if it’s a resurrection because there used to be Bachelor’s degrees offered on the Regionals, but they were, you know like I think like education and those kinds of things.
DD: Yeah, that was done under the radar.
MP: And under the radar you could do it.
DD: And Sociology.
MP: Yeah, but now I think it’s good for the students here that they can get their degrees here, particularly the BIS degree. I think that’s a fabulous degree.
MRR: Ok. What do you love about the BIS degree?
MP: Well, first of all it’s innovative. Second of all, these students are empowered to come up with their own course of study. And I know when they initially, the one that I had had who were BIS students was interesting when they first started, how they would, because I would get them in communication classes, they’re like I don’t know what I’m doing…
MP: And by the second class they’re like “This is what I’m doing and here’s what I’m studying and I can’t wait to do this project and I’m going to do this.” And it was just so exciting to see them empowered and also just so excited and passionate about what they were studying. And of course, it’s interdisciplinary and that’s cutting edge now. And I don’t know. I just think it’s a wonderful degree for these students.
DD: I was on the committee that made that. Yeah.
MP: I think I was too. I can hardly remember.
DD: No, you weren’t.
MP: I was on the Center for Teaching. I was one of the ones that helped get that started. Center for Teaching [and Learning]
MRR: CTL?
MP: Yeah.
MRR: Can you tell us about the early days?
MP: I can barely remember, honestly. I was, that’s when I was Coordinator of English Humanities and Fine Arts and I had so
many fires I was putting out on a daily basis. I think the funniest thing about administration was when I took that job. You know, I’d have a list of ten things I would do like at first. And I’d go into work and I’d still have those ten things. And I did at least ten things during the day. And then I had ten more for the next day. And I was like there’s something wrong with this picture.
DD: That’s normal.
MP: I mean it, and so there were, you know, there were constant things to deal with. But I remember it was let’s see,
Ellenmarie Wahlrab …
DD: Jeff Sommers.
MP: Jeff Sommers, me. I was the coordinator kind of behind it and then that was it. I remember Ellenmarie, wasn’t Mike Hieber, too? I can’t remember.
DD: Yeah, he could’ve been. Yeah
MP: And, you know it was just an idea. And we just got it moving and I think it’s an excellent entity on this campus. They do some really good things.
MRR: I’d like to talk about a couple of events. So, many people talk about the Finkelman Auditorium and events that they went to, speakers they remember or performances. Could be Aerosmith?
DD: Too early.
MRR: Do you have stories about that?
DD: No, no.
MP: I, you know that was too early for me but I do remember when I first came they said that when the Finkelman first opened, one of the first, if not the first concerts was Aerosmith and the place was trashed. And I mean like seats were torn and the rumor was that someone rode in on a motorcycle or out on a motorcycle. I don’t know. But it was an interesting story and I don’t know if it’s true but that was the folklore that I was told. The only other, I remember, was it James Brady’s wife [Sarah] coming.
DD: The protest, yeah.
MP: And there was a protest and it was…
DD: So scary.
MP: It was awful. I remember it because she was trying to get gun legislation passed. And she came to speak and there were people already outside. And then when they had the first several rows and when she started to speak they stood up and turned their back to her. And she ultimately left the stage. She couldn’t complete.
DD: Yeah, it was very awful.
MP: And a man had a heart attack.
DD: Oh, yeah.
MP: Remember?
DD: Yeah.
MP: Yeah. So, I remember that. I mean I don’t remember…
DD: I remember a whole lot about that one.
MP: I don’t…
DD: I went to other ones but I just don’t remember.
MP: I did too. I mean like the Chinese Circus. I remember that. But I mean I don’t know. All I remember when I went to that
one is that’s the one that they go in the spinning, you know
DD: Plates?
MP: The plates and they spin and I was like “That’s my life. I could do that. I could work for the Chinese show.”
DD: You could juggle, too, probably.
MRR: Before we started, you mentioned a couple of colleagues, Mary/Marian Cottrell and Liz Howard. What would you like to enter into the record about them?
DD: Well, Mary/Marian Cottrell is still a very good friend of ours was the, I guess you would call her the….
MP: The epitome of class.
DD: The executive of, well I was giving her her title. The Executive Assistant to the Executive Director, the Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director and she always exuded a total calm. She was in command. She gave me one of my greatest administrative tools to send her an email that said “This is a gentle reminder” and you knew darn well it wasn’t gentle. You missed a deadline or something.
MP: I never got any. [laughter]
DD: So, oh. I apparently did. I use it now to send gentle reminders. And she just did not let anything really get to her and things could because, my God, you’re working for the Executive Director and that’s really, you know. That’s the dean’s position, same thing. That’s what it was called. And she just handled it all and she was great. When she was gone, wow it was a big deal to replace her. She just did so much. Also, I’d like to talk about, I’ll talk about Liz in a minute, Miriam Pyles who taught English. Miriam Pyles was just, I don’t know. Well, she passed away several years ago and I just still miss her.
MP: Me too.
DD: She just kind of took me under her wing. Because when I came here, I knew no one. I did not know what I was doing. I was scared out of my mind the first semester. And, you know we just hit it off and we would always sit in the faculty lounge and talk about things. And then I was like integrated into her family. They, her husband would, you know, talk about me being the sister to, you know to the kids, to all the boys and stuff. And she taught English and she was, I don’t know how would you describe her, she was just so focused. She just loved teaching English. She loved the students. She loved to help them with their writing. She was just a wonderful teacher, wonderful person.
MP: Yes, she was, definitely.
DD: Yeah.
MP: She was the coordinator before I was and so she was technically my boss at some point. But I mean, you know when we talk about these relationships, it’s not like that here. I mean it may be now but we were here it was not like that. I mean…
DD: You were colleagues.
MP: You were colleagues and you were friends and you always knew that if there was something going on in your life and you needed help, that they were there for you. And it was, it really was unique I think…
DD: Yeah.
MP: I mean, it’s not like that everywhere so.
DD: No.
MP: I forgot what I was going to say. Marian Cottrell also helped people out. She very subtly would let people know things when they were maybe being told things that weren’t exactly true. And she would say “Well, maybe you want to check this” or whatever and she was very subtle. She never was indiscrete. But she also knew what was fair and what wasn’t fair and would intercede very gentle to make sure things were right.
MRR: Liz Howard?
MP: Oh, Lizzy.
DD: So, did we talk about Liz yet?
MP: No.
MRR: No.
DD: No. We did before we started.
MRR: I’m curious, thank you.
DD: Oh, Liz as I said she started working here because she had worked in industry, felt like it wasn’t for her, went to graduate school, got a master’s and tried to get a PhD but really disliked the program where she went. And was just looking around. “What am I going to do? What kind of job am I going to get?” And she contacted the Systems Analysis Department in Oxford because that’s where she got her masters and they said “Well, we don’t have any positions but they do have a position at the Regional campuses. Here, contact Diane Delisio.” You know, so I met with her. In those days it was really pretty informal.
MP: It was.
DD: You know, you met with someone, they had their credentials, you needed to fill this position. Because my recollection is we had searched and really didn’t find anybody acceptable. And here was Liz. “Ok, good we’ll hire you.” So we hired her and she had had no teaching experience but she was a natural. She was just a wonderful, wonderful teacher and she loved it. She really found her calling. She connected with the students. She did innovative things in the classroom.
MP: She also won just about every teaching award.
DD: Teaching award, yeah, yup.
MP: I mean, in fact there’s kind of a funny story.
DD: Oh.
MP: She was in Oxford accepting one of the awards and I can’t remember if that was…
DD: I know which one it was. It was the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the time, Outstanding Teacher Award.
MP: And…
DD: At Marcum Center. I can visualize it right now.
MP: And she was having trouble with her legs, tell me if I’m wrong on this
DD: No, you’re right.
MP: And as she was walking up to get the award.
DD: She was standing up there…
MP: Ok.
DD: As they’re talking about her, she’s standing like against the wall and she’s slowly sinking down because her legs are going numb from and she sank right to the floor and her husband, who’s a big guy like “Dave! Dave! Dave, you got to go help her.” But he didn’t want to interrupt because I’m not sure the speaker knew that she was sinking down to the floor, remember?
MP: And then the provost and I guess the Dean.
DD: The Dean, yeah.
MP: They were freaking out…
DD: Yeah.
MP: Because…
DD: Yeah.
MP: They didn’t what had happened…
DD: Right.
MP: And she was cool about it, I mean she got back up and said “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” And she said, and then
she found out she had to say something.
DD: Yeah, right. That’s right.
MP: And then she said, “Well, I don’t know what I could do to top what I just did.” So..
DD: Yeah, she was…
MP: But that was, that tells you what her personality…
DD: She was always very funny, yeah.
MP: And I have a history with her because she actually took over my office which turned out to be across from the office that I assumed. And when she first started she was not so sure about, she was used to writing these really succinct reports and in academia you really need to embellish things. And she’d bring things over to me and I’d said “Uh uh, that’s not going to cut it” so I remember the first thing I said to her was “Write it like you’re writing a letter to me.” And after that she took off and she could do everything by herself. But over the course of time she got curious about communication and the intercultural communication that I taught. And I was much less curious about computers. But anyway, over the course of time she would talk to me about it and at one point she decided she wanted to create a course in the CIT Department called Strategic, Global and Strategic Issues in IT or Strategic and Global Issues in IT. And together we coordinated it so that it would have a component where students in IT don’t normally do communication. And we wanted to. A lot of the research shows that although there’s students who are graduating, not just in CIT but in other fields, technically, you know, efficient and able to do what they’re doing but they’re not very good at getting along with people or communicating in groups and that kind of thing. So we created this course and we co-taught it. And it’s considered a cutting edge course across a lot of different places. In fact, I just got an email from someone who wants to copy it and I forwarded it to Donna Evans who’s now teaching the course.
DD: Yeah, it’s still being taught.
MP: Yeah. But it was partially me and almost all her. So.
DD: Yeah. She was awesome. You know, I would really be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out that I met my husband here.
MP: Yeah, that’s true.
DD: You know, he would be really hurt if I didn’t mentioned that.
MP: And I met her husband here, too.
DD: He was a returning older student. He was not in my classes. I got to get that on the record right now and he always said, “Oh my God, I would never take a class from you.” Because he thinks I would be too hard, which I could be. But he was, as I said, a returning student. He worked in the mailroom when we had a mailroom. I don’t know if we still have a mailroom, ok. Olamae Pearson, have you heard about her? She passed away recently.
MP: Yeah, she was fantastic.
DD: She ran the mailroom and she helped so many students, returning students. She was like an informal advisor that just told them the ins and outs of how to get through because you know a lot of returning students they didn’t have a clue how to navigate the culture of the university. And Olamae really, really helped them out and my husband worked with her for a couple years before he got his degree and went on to do social work.
MP: And we all enjoyed watching this budding romance evolve.
DD: Oh, stop you did not.
MP: Oh, we did. It was really fun to watch. She, I remember saying “You know, Ronnie and I are seeing each other.” I was like “Yeah, really?” Like we didn’t notice. Like it’s so obvious.
DD: Oh, stop.
MP: He’s hanging around your office constantly.
DD: Oh he was, yeah, yeah.
MRR: From the beginning there was a system or a tradition of creating a social life among faculty. There were holiday dinners, progressive dinners. Did any of that continue during your time period here?
DD: Oh gosh yes.
MRR: Can you tell us about that tradition?
DD: Ok, I have, remember Miriam and Carl’s story?
MP: Go ahead and then I’ll talk about the Thanksgiving dinner.
DD: My, well first of all I’d like to mention we had Christmas parties every year that were off campus. So sometime they would be, you know like they were downtown Middletown one time, one time at a country club. They were often when Mike Governanti was the Executive Director at his house. They were fun.
MP: I know.
DD: They were so fun.
MP: I was just thinking about some of them. You’re just making me laugh.
DD: They were just really fun…
MP: Yeah.
DD: To have those parties. Real early on when I was here we went to a winery, I’m pretty sure it was a winery.
MP: Oh, I remember that.
DD: Yeah.
MP: I remember that.
DD: I think Gene Bennett was still the Executive Director and he puts on the invitation casual dress and so Miriam Pyles’ husband comes in a casual dress to this event. Now, that is a strong woman that would let her husband do that because I don’t think I would have let my husband do that. He just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He really…
MRR: Not a kilt, it was a dress?
DD: No, no it was a dress. It was a shift, you know, it was a regular dress.
MP: No, it was a dress. He basically came in drag.
DD: Yeah and he was really proud of that. He would continue to talk about that for years.
MP: I had one, an embarrassing experience at that. We were seated with this couple and my husband and I had just gone to some event or whatever I can’t remember at someone’s house. And they had a very unusual lamp that had oil that would leak, come down, ok and then it had this gilded person inside it there, whatever it was and it was a very kind of elegant house..
DD: The tacky lamp?
MP: Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, so we were seated there and he starts going on, we were seated with some people from a different department than I normally know. And he starts going on and on on how tacky this lamp is and I’m noticing as he’s describing it these other people and I’m like kicking him under the table because it’s obvious they have one.
DD: No way.
MP: It was so embarrassing so I remember that. You know, you remember those kinds of things. Well, I was going to talk about the Thanksgiving. There’s a tradition of a Thanksgiving dinner on this campus and the way it started was there was a man who taught in, was he in, was Jim Strubb [sic] in BTE?
DD: BTE, yeah.
MP: Ok, BTE, he taught in BTE and he had heart disease.
DD: Which is now Commerce anyway.
MP: OH, it’s Commerce now?
DD: Yeah.
MP: Ok. And he was a real lovable man and, you know he was, he was…
DD: He was really a kind soul.
MP: A real kind soul and we saw him, you know, getting sick and whatever. But anyway, right before Thanksgiving he passed away. And as a tribute to him, we decided we were going to have a like a tree planting for him and then we were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. And so we invites his wife and family and I arranged for this tree planting thing and then what I did was, I was like we can’t cook Thanksgiving dinner here so I went to Marsh’s and there’s these lovely women that work at Marsh’s, at least then. And I said “Here’s what we want to do” and Marsh’s used to have these Thanksgiving dinners you could buy as a package and I said “Would you be able to make these for this amount of people?” And they said sure. So we, everybody helped. I mean there were, I remember, like Dave Ballard was cutting the turkey and other people were getting everything set up and we had it in, it was like 115 or 116 in…
DD: Yeah, right.
MP: Johnston Hall and everybody came and it was just a really nice experience. And after that there was so much positive feedback that they decided to continue it and I believe the administrators decided to take it over and I think it continue today, doesn’t it?
MRR: Yes.
DD: Oh, good. I’m glad it continues.
MP: Yeah. Yeah.
MRR: Yeah.
MP: At that time people brought, we had people bringing desserts and I think now you’re not allowed to do that. I don’t know what the circumstances are but it was nice to have that.
MRR: What made you stay at MUM?
DD: Well, tenure is a big deal.
MRR: Ok.
DD: But I stayed because it was always interesting. There was always something new. You’re always learning. The job never stayed the same.
MP: Yeah.
DD: The students never stayed the same. You always had new challenges. New faculty would come on, you know you’d be mentoring new faculty. It was, and our jobs, you know we’re here a lot but it’s not like you’re stuck here eight-to-five. Like I am now at my job in Oxford. But if you have to leave, you know and rearrange something you could leave and rearrange something if you had to go to the doctors. I mean it was just, it was that aspect and also the creative aspect. So you’re class isn’t working out quite right. What can I do to improve it? What creative thing can I do in my class to connect to my students? Who can I talk to on campus that can help me figure out, you know, why this isn’t working? What might work better? And to be able to be creative and to really, you know construct something. I mean you have the bare bones of a course. You know what the basic topics are but how are you going to deliver that? You get to decide that. So that’s what kept me here.
MP: Well, I think similar reasons kept me here but I also had children and the flexibility of being able to be in their lives and also, you know have a career. I think I see a difference. For example, I have a daughter who has two daughters and she, you know her job is, you know eight to five maybe longer, you know year round. You get certain number of days of vacation and just having flexibility with to be with my children that was probably the primary reason. The second reason was learning. And although I worked here I also had a number of different roles on the Oxford campus. And I was always happiest when I had something both places. It balanced me out because I need that kind of variety and challenge in my life in order to feel comfortable and, you know learning and stuff so same as her. Whatever she says I say.
DD: I know.
MP: You can drop that out.
DD: No, leave it in. I always want to say that you just reminded me that not only did we have relationships with each other we had relationships with their children. I don’t have children but her children I’ve known since they were like Lauren had to be like eight.
MP: Yeah.
DD: Eight or nine and seeing them grow up and, you know I’m pretty close to them. Jeff Sommers, who left here and went to West Chester University and just came back for, he got to talk a couple weeks ago, I remember his sons. We were talking about this when he was here. His sons would they would have a day off school or they’d be sick they had sleeping bags in the offices and yeah they would just stay there and you’d see them, you know walking around and for some reason we interacted. And, you know now they’re successful. Ben’s a doctor, yeah. Sam’s a professor. And they still remembered me and that was, you know just kind of nice that, you know they would do that and…
MP: Well, I remember my older daughter had mono when she was twelve and Diane lived in Middletown at the time, I don’t know if you remember this, and I said “I need to do something with her” and she said “Well, bring her over and while you’re teaching the class she can stay on the couch and watch TV” and so she was at her house. We had to disinfection afterwards. No, I’m just kidding. And, you know, so it was that kind of relationship and, but it’s, you know it’s beyond, there’s a circle of friends that are all like that.
DD: Yeah.
MP: I mean it’s…
DD: Right.
MP: There’s a whole group of us and some have passed away but, you know there’s just deep feelings that are there for the
colleagues. And I think, in fact that’s one of the reasons why we stayed
DD: Yeah. Yes. Yup.
DD: I got to mention the faculty lounge in Johnston Hall. It, that was my lifeline when I first came here because I did not know what I was doing. I really did not and…
MP: It showed, too.
DD: Oh, stop it. And you could go in the faculty lounge and, you know talk to someone and you know, just you would just make connections, feel better. But it’s not like that anymore. I don’t think faculty do that as much. I just think we I don’t know if we had more free time or what it was.
MP: There was a requirement when I was here that you had to have x number of office hours…
DD: Right.
MP: And you had to be on campus a certain number of days. That apparently no longer exists.
DD: No.
MP: I mean there are times when I came to the campus if I go upstairs to Johnston Hall there isn’t soul there.
DD: Every door’s closed.
MP: Every door’s closed. There isn’t anyone there and I realize some of that may have to do with so many courses that are being offered online and that…
DD: Just different demands,
MP: And I things have changed.
DD: Yeah.
MP: But there’s something lost there…
DD: Yes.
MP: ... because you don’t have, it’s interesting I felt like the lounge in Johnston Hall was one of the most intellectual places
I’ve been.
DD: Yeah, most definitely. One more thing about the lounge. When we first started, there was still smoking on campus. It was the smokiest place you can imagine.
MP: Absolutely.
DD: At least three, Phil, David and Marian. Who else? Did anybody else smoke?
MP: I think…
DD: It was just smoky.
MP: I think Donna Clarrion.
DD: Oh yeah, Donna Clarrion. Yeah, so smoky.
MRR: So we have about two minutes left. Any thoughts that you want to make sure that our future faculty member looking at this video picks out that you said “this is what we have to continue for this to still be MUM”?
DD: You have to continue the connections with the students and the connections with each other. Don’t take that for granted. I work in Oxford in a place where I don’t connect with that many people throughout the day and I really miss it. It’s really a deficit in my professional life.
MP I don’t know. I think they are continuing it. I mean, I just, I still stay in touch and I think it’s part of the culture here. I would find it really unlikely that it wouldn’t continue. There seems to be, I mean there seems to be, you know there’s always going to be some people that aren’t engaged but there seems to be a core people, a core of people here that are still doing the same thing. They really care about their students. They really want to relate to each other. I get emails all the time because I’m on the listserv of really creative things that they’re doing. So I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
Aerosmith rock band
Armstrong Student Center
Ballard, David
Bennett, Eugene
BIS degree
Bishop-Clark, Cathy
Brady, James
Brady, Sarah
BTE (Business Technology and Engineering)
Children
Christmas Party
CIT (Computer and Information Technology
Hadadd, David
Clarrion, Donna
Cleveland Ohio
Commerce Department
Communication Department
Communication Major
Corrigan, Jill
Cottrell, Mary/Marian/Miriam
CTL (Center for Teaching and Learning)
Diversity
English, Humanities and Fine Arts Coordinatorship
Evans, Donna
Factory
Faculty Lounge
Family
Finkelman Auditorium
Governanti, Michael
Gun legislation
Hamilton, Ohio
Hieber, Mike
Husband
Inclusion Symposium
IT (Information Technology)
Mailroom
Marsh’s grocery store
Nontraditional students
Oxford campus
Parent
Pearson, Olamae
Place bound
Pyles, Miriam
Sommers, Jeff
Speckert, Rob
Systems Analysis
Thanksgiving dinner
Wahlrab, Ellenmarie
Werner, Laurie
Wife
Women as leaders
Young, David
Youngstown, Ohio
Transcript: Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio, April 10, 2017
Donation records #_Delisio.D.4102017.1 and Petrone.M.4102017.1__
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 07/31/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson on 11/12/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
MRR: My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Marty Petrone and with Diane Delisio 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 April 10, 2017, at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Ms. Petrone and Ms. Delisio, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
MP: Yes.
MRR: Yes.
MRR: Thank you. So can you tell us how you came to be connected to Miami University Middletown?
MP: Do you want me to start?
DD: Yes, I do.
MP: I worked, I think it was in, I think it was 1978. I was on the Oxford campus and there was a woman who was working here at the time and there were some serious problems with her ability to get along with people here. And she was a little confused about her teaching schedule she thought that TR meant that she only had to meet her classes on Thursdays and so that’s all she did. In fact, when I took the job at one point I pulled a desk drawer out and there were old course evaluations that she hid in there that were really, really bad. I don’t know why she didn’t destroy them but anyway they were in there. And we kind of laughed about that. But anyway, so there was a problem and I was asked to go to the Middletown campus and kind of clean up the mess. It was supposed to be temporary and I ended up staying like thirty-two years. So, it wasn’t all that temporary. So, that’s where I started. And I was at the time I was an instructor in the Department of Communication, which no longer exists.
MRR: We’ve had stories that communication classes have really transformed many of our Middletown students. Can you speak to some changes that you saw among some of your students?
MP: I think that thing You know, it’s hard at the time. I think a lot of the communications classes are very interactive, particularly a public speaking class. You saw a lot of changes over the course. Where I saw the biggest changes were students that would come to Middletown campus. They didn’t know what they wanted to do. They were very confused. They just thought they had to go to college and then they dropped out. And then maybe three of four years later, they’d come back and they were different people at that point in time. So I don’t know so much as it was the courses that did it as the fact that they needed to mature and have some focus. So in their minds it was the class. I think probably it was more than that, a lot more than that.
MRR: Well, I don’t want to get too far without brining Diane into the story. Diane, can you tell us how you came to be associated with the Middletown campus?
DD: Sure. Let me go back to when I was in college. I always thought I would be a teacher but I went to graduate school. And I did some student teaching and I’m like, “Well, I’m not teaching high school.” So, I worked in industry for about seven years and was looking for something different and I saw a job opening up here. And this was actually in 1983 and I came and applied and I did not get the job that year. The next year another position opened up and the department chair, of Systems Analysis was the department at the time, called me and said, “We have another position. We want you to take it.” And I said, “well, I got to come down and interview you.” So I did and I felt it was the right change for me at that point in my life. So I started here in August of 1984. And I’d been working in the IT industry. When I came here it was a little bit of a step back because we were still, we had in industry, we had personal computers, desktops. You know it was the start of that era. And we came here and students had to key punch their card, send them to Oxford, wait for, you know hours or overnight of the turnaround to see that, “Oh my gosh I made one mistake I have to resubmit it.” And that went on for a while. So, eventually after a few years, probably after Cathy Bishop-Clark came here (She had got hired in 1989.) and….
MP: You hired her.
DD: I hired her and I was her original supervisor. And Cathy contends that she had no boss. I asked her just a few weeks ago, “Does she have boss now? Is the provost her boss?” And she concedes, yes but I was never really her boss. [laughter] But anyway, the students then, we had a lot of students at first because that was the big personal computer boom and everybody thought, “Oh my God, I’m going to learn how to use computers. I’m going to get these great jobs.” And, then they found out what was involved because it was really crude. I mean you had to have crude operating systems. Your programming languages were very cryptic. They weren’t wordy. There were no graphical interfaces. It was all line-by-line entry. And so after a while students decided, “Whoa, this is not for me.” And after a few years, we actually lost quite a few students. We didn’t have the big bubble of students that we had. And we had to figure out, you know what direction do we want to go. And when I started, we were actually connected with the Engineering Technology Group. So Dave Young was my original supervisor and he retired after a couple years. And then Rob Speckert became my supervisor and Rob was here a long time in Hamilton and Middletown. He was awesome. And then I actually got tenure in ’89 and shortly after that they asked me to be the coordinator for the computing group, whatever it was called then, because Engineering Technology really had to focus on their own areas. So I did that.
MP: When did it become CIT?
DD: I’m getting there.
MP: Ok.
DD: And…
MP: Hurry up, we don’t have all day. [laughter]
DD: I’m sorry. So, through the nineties, you know we experienced a lot of enrollment challenges. And we could only teach those courses that were offered in Oxford in the Systems Analysis department the first two years. We could not create any of our own courses. And we increasingly felt like we were not serving our students by just offering those courses because those courses were going in a more theoretical direction and we wanted our courses to be more applied to help students get jobs. And so the chair of Systems Analysis, and he was actually the dean at that time, Dave Hadadd worked with us, worked with the department and we created Computer and Information Technology. And we became a department in 2001 and I became the first chair of that department. I was lucky enough to be chosen and I was in that position for, until I went to Oxford.
MRR: So, legend has it that you were a singularly different kind of person to be female in a male dominated world, is what I’ve heard.
MP: Excuse me?
MRR: That’s what I’ve heard. I’ve heard that your department, as an industry, IT was a male-dominated field. And yet you come in as a, you’re becoming chair of the department. What did you do to earn that kind of respect?
DD: Well..
MP: There weren’t any men.
DD: There were some but they weren’t leaders. The men were really not leaders. None of the men really wanted to take a leadership position and I was comfortable taking a leadership position. We had a lot of women in our department. It was unusual. We had one woman, Laurie Werner, t the Hamilton campus and then in ’89 we hired Cathy Bishop-Clark. Then we hired Liz Howard in the early nineties and then Jill Corrigan [sic] at the Hamilton campus so we had more women than we had men in our department. It was really kind of unusual. So it was not unusual a woman took a leadership role.
MRR: Ok. Well, that fits with the story of faculty at the Middletown campus from the beginning. There was always a diverse faculty here. Did you see that over your time working with the faculty here?
MP: Well, at one point I was Coordinator of English, Humanities and Fine Arts and it was an incredibly diverse population. I mean it was amazing. I think there were, I had over sixty faculty members in nineteen different departments and the makeup of that group was across the board probably one of the most diverse. So yeah, it definitely was.
DD: I think it was diverse also in experience.
MP: Yeah, I agree.
DD: You did not have all traditional academics. You had people that had some work experience, some different world experience and it made for not only diverse faculty, one you could really learn from. I mean the thing that I want people to remember are the times that we as faculty members would meet with each other and, you know, talk about our students and talk about teaching. We did that regularly, all the time and…
MP: And not in a formal way.
DD: Not in a, yeah…
MP: And it was like we would, if we had an issue we would maybe go to the faculty lounge for lunch and say “This is happening. I’m not sure how to approach it, what do you think?” And we had the input from people from all different departments. So I think one of the, I don’t know what you would call it, like one of the benefits of being at a regional campus is the fact that you have people in different departments, in offices across from you. You learn from each other and you can collaborate together. And it’s interesting that, you know, in the work I’m doing now one of the things that’s the big push is to have interdisciplinary courses dealing with big issues in the world like sustainability and immigration, that kind of a thing. And of the places at Miami where that could happen most readily is the Regional campus because people are talking to each other and they’re engaging across those divisions.
MRR: So, tell me some more about these relationships among the faculty. Was it just focused on the students?
DD: Oh no.
MP: No, no. There were, I mean we had friendships…
DD: We made lifelong friends.
MP: Yeah, lifelong friends almost like a surrogate family I think. When Diane started, Diane is from Youngstown, Ohio. I’m from Cleveland and we both have an Italian heritage, she a little bit more than me but not much and…
DD: Twice. [laughter]
MP: No, I have my ancestry DNA .com
DD: Oh, that’s right. I forgot.
MP: I’m sixty-five percent. Anyway, and so we immediately just hit it off and became friends. We had a lot in common. We knew that part of the country. There were a lot of things that we didn’t have to explain to each other. And I think the other thing, at least I was thinking about this, one of the things. I came from a working class background from a very diverse part of Cleveland. So when I was first a student on the Oxford campus as an undergraduate, I thought I had no idea where I was and I couldn’t stand it. It was so different from anything I had experienced before. I think it was a form of culture shock. When I came here, it felt comfortable because it was what I understood. It reminded me. I mean there was ethnicity. There was diversity. There were people who, you know maybe they weren’t all the best students in the world but…
DD: They worked hard.
MP: Worked hard. For the most part they worked hard. They were trying, You know they didn’t have everything kind of handed to them and it just, I just like the atmosphere, a lot.
MRR: So, you mentioned being from Northeast Ohio that’s the Rust Belt now but this is a steel town also. What does education mean in a steel town?
DD: Well, what I think it means is that parents have worked in steel industries, in difficult jobs and factories and they want more for their children than that. And that’s why this campus here in the first place. And so, many people sent their children here so they can get an education and get a better job and make a better salary than they did. And that was right, you know, where we came from so that was familiar to us. But as Marty had said, students often struggled. They came just because their parents wanted them to come at first. But there were so many that I would see come back a couple of years later. One of my best students I remember he did that. He left and I thought, “Oh God, this is so awful that he left.” Two years later he was back. He worked in the factory, he worked in industry. It was not for him. He realized what he was giving up and he was back. He finished what he could here, he went to Oxford, got a bachelor’s degree, got great jobs. You know I was in touch with him for many years after he left here. But it just changed his life once he was ready for it. You have to be ready for it.
MP: But there’s also another thing, too. A lot of them had challenges even though their parents pushed them to go to college. Then they had challenges with their parents as they learned things and their values were different from their parents. They would confront things at home that were very uncomfortable, you know their parents “You’re a college kid now and you think you know everything.” And it was very hurtful to them and so they…,There was a lot of counseling I think sometimes that I think, at least I had to do. Well, I taught communications so people were always in my office and I was constantly trying to talk them through how to approach their parents and to understand where their parents were coming from. And it wasn’t that their parents weren’t proud of them but they were a little bit threatened by them and they were afraid they were losing them. So there were a lot of challenges that way. And we also had, I mean I’m going to tell you a story that maybe I shouldn’t but we had had instances where women would come back to college. We even had a case where a man came to the campus with a gun and pulled it on Gene Bennett in his office because his wife changed and, you know and she wasn’t coming home making dinner the way she…
DD: After she got an education.
MP: After she got an education and he came in with a gun and had it out and said “You’ve changed my wife and I can’t.” So, you know there were other things behind the scenes going on. too.
DD: Yup.
MRR: Those questions still happen on campus?
MP: Oh sure.
MRR: How expensive education can be and it’s not just about the money. It’s about the relationships. What would you offer to students in return or what words of wisdom would you offer to a student on how to deal with that expensive cost of education?
DD: That’s a tough one. How to explain the cost of education because I’ve always felt it was worth it. Just intrinsically, I’ve always felt that it was worth it so it’s hard for me to articulate. I mean my parents remember them ever thinking otherwise and I would go to college and I wanted to go to college, I wanted to learn, I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do in life and I thought that was worth it. Now, you can go to a college that you’re so much in debt that it’s not worth it but that’s not this place. And that’s why to me this place is even more worth it.
MP: There’s another side to that though. I’m actually counseling a student who is a Hamilton student. It’s a long story how he ends up with me in Oxford. But he basically wants to study abroad but his family doesn’t want him to have any debt because they’ve heard about kids having two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to try to overcome when they graduate. And now he’s trying to work really hard so that he can’t have any debt. And yet he wants to study abroad but he doesn’t think he can. And, you know so there’s, it’s really hard. I mean there has to be a middle ground. The big thing is I don’t think students should be coming to college without having time to think about what it is they want. So the Regional campuses are, you know, at least an alternative to maybe take a class or two and then get a sense of whether or not that’s the direction they want to go in. And it’s much less expensive but you know but expense is an issue and I don’t think there’s any solution to that.
DD: No easy answer.
MP: Yeah.
MRR: Many of our students here are first generation students but some are also place bound from external responsibilities. Can you speak to what some of those responsibilities might be that are different at the Regional campuses rather than at the Oxford campus?
MP: Oh, sure.
DD: Sure, they have to take care of their families, both their children and their parents, and so they’re place bound. I can remember the, I guess I would call them the battles with the Oxford campus when we…Long ago we wanted to offer bachelor degree programs here because the bachelor degree programs in Oxford, students could relocate and go there. But they couldn’t meet the demands of the time of the day or they’re going to work on project with other students and those students are traditional aged students, “Ah, let’s get together at eleven o’clock, you know over in Armstrong Student Center.” They couldn’t do that because they had their children and their parents and their husbands and their wives. So the place bound nature of these students, they’re just rooted here and they want to stay here. And they want to be able to get a good, quality education, which Miami offers, here. They don’t want to have to go to Sinclair or drive to Oxford. They want to be able to do it here, be able to run home if they have to and that kind of thing.
MP: Well, I would say Oxford is not a particularly welcoming place for our Regional campus students…
DD: No.
MP: in many ways. I mean, it’s interesting because there’s going to be an Inclusion Symposium in Oxford on October 13th and I’m on that planning committee. And one of the things we’re going to do is have a focus group with Regional campus students to get their take on it. But just from my own experience, students who transfer who are like traditional age and they move there, they are at a somewhat social disadvantage cause they have to move into an apartment. They haven’t had that residence hall experience. They haven’t made those friends. Most of them can’t afford or are interested in fraternities and sororities, so how do they make friendships if they’re actually transferring physically there? Ok, so there’s that. But then as Diane said, there is no mentality at all about the fact that there are students commuting to that campus. I mean they may have a commuter lounge but there’s no, nothing surrounding the fact that these people are having to drive at least probably half an hour from Hamilton if not forty five minutes, find a parking place, get the bus to get to the campus, take the class, then go home after their classes. Their classes may not be scheduled in a way that makes it convenient for them. And then as she said, they have these group projects where the Oxford students can, you know walk down the street to the library where someone else has to make another trip back. So it’s not at all receptive to that. And I think until this recent Regional resurrection of our, I don’t know if it’s a resurrection because there used to be Bachelor’s degrees offered on the Regionals, but they were, you know like I think like education and those kinds of things.
DD: Yeah, that was done under the radar.
MP: And under the radar you could do it.
DD: And Sociology.
MP: Yeah, but now I think it’s good for the students here that they can get their degrees here, particularly the BIS degree. I think that’s a fabulous degree.
MRR: Ok. What do you love about the BIS degree?
MP: Well, first of all it’s innovative. Second of all, these students are empowered to come up with their own course of study. And I know when they initially, the one that I had had who were BIS students was interesting when they first started, how they would, because I would get them in communication classes, they’re like I don’t know what I’m doing…
MP: And by the second class they’re like “This is what I’m doing and here’s what I’m studying and I can’t wait to do this project and I’m going to do this.” And it was just so exciting to see them empowered and also just so excited and passionate about what they were studying. And of course, it’s interdisciplinary and that’s cutting edge now. And I don’t know. I just think it’s a wonderful degree for these students.
DD: I was on the committee that made that. Yeah.
MP: I think I was too. I can hardly remember.
DD: No, you weren’t.
MP: I was on the Center for Teaching. I was one of the ones that helped get that started. Center for Teaching [and Learning]
MRR: CTL?
MP: Yeah.
MRR: Can you tell us about the early days?
MP: I can barely remember, honestly. I was, that’s when I was Coordinator of English Humanities and Fine Arts and I had so
many fires I was putting out on a daily basis. I think the funniest thing about administration was when I took that job. You know, I’d have a list of ten things I would do like at first. And I’d go into work and I’d still have those ten things. And I did at least ten things during the day. And then I had ten more for the next day. And I was like there’s something wrong with this picture.
DD: That’s normal.
MP: I mean it, and so there were, you know, there were constant things to deal with. But I remember it was let’s see,
Ellenmarie Wahlrab …
DD: Jeff Sommers.
MP: Jeff Sommers, me. I was the coordinator kind of behind it and then that was it. I remember Ellenmarie, wasn’t Mike Hieber, too? I can’t remember.
DD: Yeah, he could’ve been. Yeah
MP: And, you know it was just an idea. And we just got it moving and I think it’s an excellent entity on this campus. They do some really good things.
MRR: I’d like to talk about a couple of events. So, many people talk about the Finkelman Auditorium and events that they went to, speakers they remember or performances. Could be Aerosmith?
DD: Too early.
MRR: Do you have stories about that?
DD: No, no.
MP: I, you know that was too early for me but I do remember when I first came they said that when the Finkelman first opened, one of the first, if not the first concerts was Aerosmith and the place was trashed. And I mean like seats were torn and the rumor was that someone rode in on a motorcycle or out on a motorcycle. I don’t know. But it was an interesting story and I don’t know if it’s true but that was the folklore that I was told. The only other, I remember, was it James Brady’s wife [Sarah] coming.
DD: The protest, yeah.
MP: And there was a protest and it was…
DD: So scary.
MP: It was awful. I remember it because she was trying to get gun legislation passed. And she came to speak and there were people already outside. And then when they had the first several rows and when she started to speak they stood up and turned their back to her. And she ultimately left the stage. She couldn’t complete.
DD: Yeah, it was very awful.
MP: And a man had a heart attack.
DD: Oh, yeah.
MP: Remember?
DD: Yeah.
MP: Yeah. So, I remember that. I mean I don’t remember…
DD: I remember a whole lot about that one.
MP: I don’t…
DD: I went to other ones but I just don’t remember.
MP: I did too. I mean like the Chinese Circus. I remember that. But I mean I don’t know. All I remember when I went to that
one is that’s the one that they go in the spinning, you know
DD: Plates?
MP: The plates and they spin and I was like “That’s my life. I could do that. I could work for the Chinese show.”
DD: You could juggle, too, probably.
MRR: Before we started, you mentioned a couple of colleagues, Mary/Marian Cottrell and Liz Howard. What would you like to enter into the record about them?
DD: Well, Mary/Marian Cottrell is still a very good friend of ours was the, I guess you would call her the….
MP: The epitome of class.
DD: The executive of, well I was giving her her title. The Executive Assistant to the Executive Director, the Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director and she always exuded a total calm. She was in command. She gave me one of my greatest administrative tools to send her an email that said “This is a gentle reminder” and you knew darn well it wasn’t gentle. You missed a deadline or something.
MP: I never got any. [laughter]
DD: So, oh. I apparently did. I use it now to send gentle reminders. And she just did not let anything really get to her and things could because, my God, you’re working for the Executive Director and that’s really, you know. That’s the dean’s position, same thing. That’s what it was called. And she just handled it all and she was great. When she was gone, wow it was a big deal to replace her. She just did so much. Also, I’d like to talk about, I’ll talk about Liz in a minute, Miriam Pyles who taught English. Miriam Pyles was just, I don’t know. Well, she passed away several years ago and I just still miss her.
MP: Me too.
DD: She just kind of took me under her wing. Because when I came here, I knew no one. I did not know what I was doing. I was scared out of my mind the first semester. And, you know we just hit it off and we would always sit in the faculty lounge and talk about things. And then I was like integrated into her family. They, her husband would, you know, talk about me being the sister to, you know to the kids, to all the boys and stuff. And she taught English and she was, I don’t know how would you describe her, she was just so focused. She just loved teaching English. She loved the students. She loved to help them with their writing. She was just a wonderful teacher, wonderful person.
MP: Yes, she was, definitely.
DD: Yeah.
MP: She was the coordinator before I was and so she was technically my boss at some point. But I mean, you know when we talk about these relationships, it’s not like that here. I mean it may be now but we were here it was not like that. I mean…
DD: You were colleagues.
MP: You were colleagues and you were friends and you always knew that if there was something going on in your life and you needed help, that they were there for you. And it was, it really was unique I think…
DD: Yeah.
MP: I mean, it’s not like that everywhere so.
DD: No.
MP: I forgot what I was going to say. Marian Cottrell also helped people out. She very subtly would let people know things when they were maybe being told things that weren’t exactly true. And she would say “Well, maybe you want to check this” or whatever and she was very subtle. She never was indiscrete. But she also knew what was fair and what wasn’t fair and would intercede very gentle to make sure things were right.
MRR: Liz Howard?
MP: Oh, Lizzy.
DD: So, did we talk about Liz yet?
MP: No.
MRR: No.
DD: No. We did before we started.
MRR: I’m curious, thank you.
DD: Oh, Liz as I said she started working here because she had worked in industry, felt like it wasn’t for her, went to graduate school, got a master’s and tried to get a PhD but really disliked the program where she went. And was just looking around. “What am I going to do? What kind of job am I going to get?” And she contacted the Systems Analysis Department in Oxford because that’s where she got her masters and they said “Well, we don’t have any positions but they do have a position at the Regional campuses. Here, contact Diane Delisio.” You know, so I met with her. In those days it was really pretty informal.
MP: It was.
DD: You know, you met with someone, they had their credentials, you needed to fill this position. Because my recollection is we had searched and really didn’t find anybody acceptable. And here was Liz. “Ok, good we’ll hire you.” So we hired her and she had had no teaching experience but she was a natural. She was just a wonderful, wonderful teacher and she loved it. She really found her calling. She connected with the students. She did innovative things in the classroom.
MP: She also won just about every teaching award.
DD: Teaching award, yeah, yup.
MP: I mean, in fact there’s kind of a funny story.
DD: Oh.
MP: She was in Oxford accepting one of the awards and I can’t remember if that was…
DD: I know which one it was. It was the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the time, Outstanding Teacher Award.
MP: And…
DD: At Marcum Center. I can visualize it right now.
MP: And she was having trouble with her legs, tell me if I’m wrong on this
DD: No, you’re right.
MP: And as she was walking up to get the award.
DD: She was standing up there…
MP: Ok.
DD: As they’re talking about her, she’s standing like against the wall and she’s slowly sinking down because her legs are going numb from and she sank right to the floor and her husband, who’s a big guy like “Dave! Dave! Dave, you got to go help her.” But he didn’t want to interrupt because I’m not sure the speaker knew that she was sinking down to the floor, remember?
MP: And then the provost and I guess the Dean.
DD: The Dean, yeah.
MP: They were freaking out…
DD: Yeah.
MP: Because…
DD: Yeah.
MP: They didn’t what had happened…
DD: Right.
MP: And she was cool about it, I mean she got back up and said “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” And she said, and then
she found out she had to say something.
DD: Yeah, right. That’s right.
MP: And then she said, “Well, I don’t know what I could do to top what I just did.” So..
DD: Yeah, she was…
MP: But that was, that tells you what her personality…
DD: She was always very funny, yeah.
MP: And I have a history with her because she actually took over my office which turned out to be across from the office that I assumed. And when she first started she was not so sure about, she was used to writing these really succinct reports and in academia you really need to embellish things. And she’d bring things over to me and I’d said “Uh uh, that’s not going to cut it” so I remember the first thing I said to her was “Write it like you’re writing a letter to me.” And after that she took off and she could do everything by herself. But over the course of time she got curious about communication and the intercultural communication that I taught. And I was much less curious about computers. But anyway, over the course of time she would talk to me about it and at one point she decided she wanted to create a course in the CIT Department called Strategic, Global and Strategic Issues in IT or Strategic and Global Issues in IT. And together we coordinated it so that it would have a component where students in IT don’t normally do communication. And we wanted to. A lot of the research shows that although there’s students who are graduating, not just in CIT but in other fields, technically, you know, efficient and able to do what they’re doing but they’re not very good at getting along with people or communicating in groups and that kind of thing. So we created this course and we co-taught it. And it’s considered a cutting edge course across a lot of different places. In fact, I just got an email from someone who wants to copy it and I forwarded it to Donna Evans who’s now teaching the course.
DD: Yeah, it’s still being taught.
MP: Yeah. But it was partially me and almost all her. So.
DD: Yeah. She was awesome. You know, I would really be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out that I met my husband here.
MP: Yeah, that’s true.
DD: You know, he would be really hurt if I didn’t mentioned that.
MP: And I met her husband here, too.
DD: He was a returning older student. He was not in my classes. I got to get that on the record right now and he always said, “Oh my God, I would never take a class from you.” Because he thinks I would be too hard, which I could be. But he was, as I said, a returning student. He worked in the mailroom when we had a mailroom. I don’t know if we still have a mailroom, ok. Olamae Pearson, have you heard about her? She passed away recently.
MP: Yeah, she was fantastic.
DD: She ran the mailroom and she helped so many students, returning students. She was like an informal advisor that just told them the ins and outs of how to get through because you know a lot of returning students they didn’t have a clue how to navigate the culture of the university. And Olamae really, really helped them out and my husband worked with her for a couple years before he got his degree and went on to do social work.
MP: And we all enjoyed watching this budding romance evolve.
DD: Oh, stop you did not.
MP: Oh, we did. It was really fun to watch. She, I remember saying “You know, Ronnie and I are seeing each other.” I was like “Yeah, really?” Like we didn’t notice. Like it’s so obvious.
DD: Oh, stop.
MP: He’s hanging around your office constantly.
DD: Oh he was, yeah, yeah.
MRR: From the beginning there was a system or a tradition of creating a social life among faculty. There were holiday dinners, progressive dinners. Did any of that continue during your time period here?
DD: Oh gosh yes.
MRR: Can you tell us about that tradition?
DD: Ok, I have, remember Miriam and Carl’s story?
MP: Go ahead and then I’ll talk about the Thanksgiving dinner.
DD: My, well first of all I’d like to mention we had Christmas parties every year that were off campus. So sometime they would be, you know like they were downtown Middletown one time, one time at a country club. They were often when Mike Governanti was the Executive Director at his house. They were fun.
MP: I know.
DD: They were so fun.
MP: I was just thinking about some of them. You’re just making me laugh.
DD: They were just really fun…
MP: Yeah.
DD: To have those parties. Real early on when I was here we went to a winery, I’m pretty sure it was a winery.
MP: Oh, I remember that.
DD: Yeah.
MP: I remember that.
DD: I think Gene Bennett was still the Executive Director and he puts on the invitation casual dress and so Miriam Pyles’ husband comes in a casual dress to this event. Now, that is a strong woman that would let her husband do that because I don’t think I would have let my husband do that. He just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He really…
MRR: Not a kilt, it was a dress?
DD: No, no it was a dress. It was a shift, you know, it was a regular dress.
MP: No, it was a dress. He basically came in drag.
DD: Yeah and he was really proud of that. He would continue to talk about that for years.
MP: I had one, an embarrassing experience at that. We were seated with this couple and my husband and I had just gone to some event or whatever I can’t remember at someone’s house. And they had a very unusual lamp that had oil that would leak, come down, ok and then it had this gilded person inside it there, whatever it was and it was a very kind of elegant house..
DD: The tacky lamp?
MP: Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, so we were seated there and he starts going on, we were seated with some people from a different department than I normally know. And he starts going on and on on how tacky this lamp is and I’m noticing as he’s describing it these other people and I’m like kicking him under the table because it’s obvious they have one.
DD: No way.
MP: It was so embarrassing so I remember that. You know, you remember those kinds of things. Well, I was going to talk about the Thanksgiving. There’s a tradition of a Thanksgiving dinner on this campus and the way it started was there was a man who taught in, was he in, was Jim Strubb [sic] in BTE?
DD: BTE, yeah.
MP: Ok, BTE, he taught in BTE and he had heart disease.
DD: Which is now Commerce anyway.
MP: OH, it’s Commerce now?
DD: Yeah.
MP: Ok. And he was a real lovable man and, you know he was, he was…
DD: He was really a kind soul.
MP: A real kind soul and we saw him, you know, getting sick and whatever. But anyway, right before Thanksgiving he passed away. And as a tribute to him, we decided we were going to have a like a tree planting for him and then we were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. And so we invites his wife and family and I arranged for this tree planting thing and then what I did was, I was like we can’t cook Thanksgiving dinner here so I went to Marsh’s and there’s these lovely women that work at Marsh’s, at least then. And I said “Here’s what we want to do” and Marsh’s used to have these Thanksgiving dinners you could buy as a package and I said “Would you be able to make these for this amount of people?” And they said sure. So we, everybody helped. I mean there were, I remember, like Dave Ballard was cutting the turkey and other people were getting everything set up and we had it in, it was like 115 or 116 in…
DD: Yeah, right.
MP: Johnston Hall and everybody came and it was just a really nice experience. And after that there was so much positive feedback that they decided to continue it and I believe the administrators decided to take it over and I think it continue today, doesn’t it?
MRR: Yes.
DD: Oh, good. I’m glad it continues.
MP: Yeah. Yeah.
MRR: Yeah.
MP: At that time people brought, we had people bringing desserts and I think now you’re not allowed to do that. I don’t know what the circumstances are but it was nice to have that.
MRR: What made you stay at MUM?
DD: Well, tenure is a big deal.
MRR: Ok.
DD: But I stayed because it was always interesting. There was always something new. You’re always learning. The job never stayed the same.
MP: Yeah.
DD: The students never stayed the same. You always had new challenges. New faculty would come on, you know you’d be mentoring new faculty. It was, and our jobs, you know we’re here a lot but it’s not like you’re stuck here eight-to-five. Like I am now at my job in Oxford. But if you have to leave, you know and rearrange something you could leave and rearrange something if you had to go to the doctors. I mean it was just, it was that aspect and also the creative aspect. So you’re class isn’t working out quite right. What can I do to improve it? What creative thing can I do in my class to connect to my students? Who can I talk to on campus that can help me figure out, you know, why this isn’t working? What might work better? And to be able to be creative and to really, you know construct something. I mean you have the bare bones of a course. You know what the basic topics are but how are you going to deliver that? You get to decide that. So that’s what kept me here.
MP: Well, I think similar reasons kept me here but I also had children and the flexibility of being able to be in their lives and also, you know have a career. I think I see a difference. For example, I have a daughter who has two daughters and she, you know her job is, you know eight to five maybe longer, you know year round. You get certain number of days of vacation and just having flexibility with to be with my children that was probably the primary reason. The second reason was learning. And although I worked here I also had a number of different roles on the Oxford campus. And I was always happiest when I had something both places. It balanced me out because I need that kind of variety and challenge in my life in order to feel comfortable and, you know learning and stuff so same as her. Whatever she says I say.
DD: I know.
MP: You can drop that out.
DD: No, leave it in. I always want to say that you just reminded me that not only did we have relationships with each other we had relationships with their children. I don’t have children but her children I’ve known since they were like Lauren had to be like eight.
MP: Yeah.
DD: Eight or nine and seeing them grow up and, you know I’m pretty close to them. Jeff Sommers, who left here and went to West Chester University and just came back for, he got to talk a couple weeks ago, I remember his sons. We were talking about this when he was here. His sons would they would have a day off school or they’d be sick they had sleeping bags in the offices and yeah they would just stay there and you’d see them, you know walking around and for some reason we interacted. And, you know now they’re successful. Ben’s a doctor, yeah. Sam’s a professor. And they still remembered me and that was, you know just kind of nice that, you know they would do that and…
MP: Well, I remember my older daughter had mono when she was twelve and Diane lived in Middletown at the time, I don’t know if you remember this, and I said “I need to do something with her” and she said “Well, bring her over and while you’re teaching the class she can stay on the couch and watch TV” and so she was at her house. We had to disinfection afterwards. No, I’m just kidding. And, you know, so it was that kind of relationship and, but it’s, you know it’s beyond, there’s a circle of friends that are all like that.
DD: Yeah.
MP: I mean it’s…
DD: Right.
MP: There’s a whole group of us and some have passed away but, you know there’s just deep feelings that are there for the
colleagues. And I think, in fact that’s one of the reasons why we stayed
DD: Yeah. Yes. Yup.
DD: I got to mention the faculty lounge in Johnston Hall. It, that was my lifeline when I first came here because I did not know what I was doing. I really did not and…
MP: It showed, too.
DD: Oh, stop it. And you could go in the faculty lounge and, you know talk to someone and you know, just you would just make connections, feel better. But it’s not like that anymore. I don’t think faculty do that as much. I just think we I don’t know if we had more free time or what it was.
MP: There was a requirement when I was here that you had to have x number of office hours…
DD: Right.
MP: And you had to be on campus a certain number of days. That apparently no longer exists.
DD: No.
MP: I mean there are times when I came to the campus if I go upstairs to Johnston Hall there isn’t soul there.
DD: Every door’s closed.
MP: Every door’s closed. There isn’t anyone there and I realize some of that may have to do with so many courses that are being offered online and that…
DD: Just different demands,
MP: And I things have changed.
DD: Yeah.
MP: But there’s something lost there…
DD: Yes.
MP: ... because you don’t have, it’s interesting I felt like the lounge in Johnston Hall was one of the most intellectual places
I’ve been.
DD: Yeah, most definitely. One more thing about the lounge. When we first started, there was still smoking on campus. It was the smokiest place you can imagine.
MP: Absolutely.
DD: At least three, Phil, David and Marian. Who else? Did anybody else smoke?
MP: I think…
DD: It was just smoky.
MP: I think Donna Clarrion.
DD: Oh yeah, Donna Clarrion. Yeah, so smoky.
MRR: So we have about two minutes left. Any thoughts that you want to make sure that our future faculty member looking at this video picks out that you said “this is what we have to continue for this to still be MUM”?
DD: You have to continue the connections with the students and the connections with each other. Don’t take that for granted. I work in Oxford in a place where I don’t connect with that many people throughout the day and I really miss it. It’s really a deficit in my professional life.
MP I don’t know. I think they are continuing it. I mean, I just, I still stay in touch and I think it’s part of the culture here. I would find it really unlikely that it wouldn’t continue. There seems to be, I mean there seems to be, you know there’s always going to be some people that aren’t engaged but there seems to be a core people, a core of people here that are still doing the same thing. They really care about their students. They really want to relate to each other. I get emails all the time because I’m on the listserv of really creative things that they’re doing. So I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing.
Indexing terms for the finding aid:
Aerosmith rock band
Armstrong Student Center
Ballard, David
Bennett, Eugene
BIS degree
Bishop-Clark, Cathy
Brady, James
Brady, Sarah
BTE (Business Technology and Engineering)
Children
Christmas Party
CIT (Computer and Information Technology
Hadadd, David
Clarrion, Donna
Cleveland Ohio
Commerce Department
Communication Department
Communication Major
Corrigan, Jill
Cottrell, Mary/Marian/Miriam
CTL (Center for Teaching and Learning)
Diversity
English, Humanities and Fine Arts Coordinatorship
Evans, Donna
Factory
Faculty Lounge
Family
Finkelman Auditorium
Governanti, Michael
Gun legislation
Hamilton, Ohio
Hieber, Mike
Husband
Inclusion Symposium
IT (Information Technology)
Mailroom
Marsh’s grocery store
Nontraditional students
Oxford campus
Parent
Pearson, Olamae
Place bound
Pyles, Miriam
Sommers, Jeff
Speckert, Rob
Systems Analysis
Thanksgiving dinner
Wahlrab, Ellenmarie
Werner, Laurie
Wife
Women as leaders
Young, David
Youngstown, Ohio
Interviewer
Marsha Robinson
Interviewee
Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio
Location
Gardner Harvey Library, Miami University Middletown
Collection
Citation
“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Marty Petrone and Diane Delisio,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed April 26, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/1073.