People have asked me questions that have to do with the history of the college. I always try to answer as best I can, but my memory is not as good as it used to be. And so, before it fades out completely, I decided to write about some college developments that I can still remember and that would interest the current generation of faculty and staff and administrators. Hopefully, if I am mistaken about some historical details, there will be some old-timers who will correct me and get the record straight.
The Parker Award
The Parker Award is named after Dr. William “Bill” Parker who has probably been the most important faculty leader in our history. He took charge of some very critical developments at the college.
The first was getting the college to become independent of the Glendale K-12 district. Community colleges in California were initially started as part of their K-12 districts. Most of them soon became independent and got their own Board of Trustees. Glendale was the last one to do so. Bill is the one who led the drive to convince the public to vote for the separation of the college from the K-12. That took place in 1980 and I remember that just before that we were all asked to make phone calls to local citizens in favor of a yes vote for the independence of the college.
The other major accomplishment of Bill was the start of the Guild. Others could tell you more about this, but it was certainly a major development
The Parker Award was started by Deborah Ludford who was the president of the Senate at the time. The request for the creation of the award came from two sides: first from a group of faculty who wanted to recognize Bill and his work, and also by request from the Distinguished Faculty Award (DFA) Committee.
The Distinguished Faculty Award (DFA)
The DFA had been created a few years before by myself when I was Senate President. The idea came from Hollywood, who recognizes its best people, and it seemed like a good idea to do the same with our own stars. There were some objections at the time that we shouldn’t try to compare teachers because we all have different approaches, so how can we compare a great lecturer to a great lab professor or one who teaches English and one who works with athletes. To resolve that objection, we decided that the DFA was not like an Oscar to the best teacher of the year, but that it would simply recognize a teacher who had distinguished himself or herself in his or her work with students. We also decided that a person could get the DFA only once in a lifetime.
We have recognized since then a whole variety of great teachers, some great lecturers like Leonard R. DeGrassi, whose knowledge of the arts was astounding, or some great science teachers like Larry Byrd who was capable of explaining complicated concepts and theories so that students could understand them and work with them and solve problems.
But shortly after we began awarding the DFA, one of the candidates that was most strongly recommended by one of the members of the DFA committee was Jeanne Cunningham who was best known at my college for her work on behalf of women. So, we felt in the committee that Jeanne should be recognized for that work more than her classwork and we passed the word to the Senate President who was already hearing from supporters of Parker. So that's how the Parker award was started and Bill got it first and Jeanne got it shortly thereafter. It was also decided at the time that, just like for the DFA, a faculty member could get the Parker only once in a lifetime, and also that no one could get both the DFA and the Parker. The pictures of the DFA recipients can be seen on the wall of the Administration Building and so is the list of the Parker Award recipients.
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