WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 16 2020 - The Move to South Dakota

 WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 16 2020

The Move to South Dakota 

I’m working my way through some of my teaching experiences.  

I’ve mentioned an old story about a man who retired after 40 years with the company.  Since he hadn’t gotten promoted in those 40 years, others weren’t sure if he had only one year of experience - repeated forty times; or forty years of experience.  To me, every move was a learning experience - and I still am learning today.

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I was doing well at Mount Hood Community College.  I really had done a good job of teaching but part of my growth was in being a systems administrator for the HP3000 Minicomputer.  I learned a form of systems operations that gave me skills to teach “Job Control Language (JCL)” at Dakota State!!!

My father had a mild heart attack; my wife’s family was in Minnesota - and being in Oregon was a long way away from family (with two children under six). This time, getting an academic job had changed.  I perused the classified ads in the Journal of Higher Education - which was the place to find an academic job.  I needed to be careful.  Some academic jobs required a doctorate - which I didn’t have, but by this point, I had four years of teaching computing on the college level.  One job that jumped out at me was a college in South Dakota.  It was to teach computing courses.  

My wife said that it had to be within fifty miles of Minnesota (and it was about 40 miles from the Minnesota/South Dakota border). But what sold it as a place to apply, as I looked at the map to find where this was I looked a little about the community and saw the towns of “Bruce White” - in a line!!  Was this a God-thing again?

(Aside, I guess I need to find another location now that I have changed my name and gender!!!)

I flew in for an interview in the middle of July.  (I was still down to teach at Mount Hood Community College - and had just finished taking an HP 3000 course in San Francisco (and I felt guilty for taking a course and then leaving campus).  

I want to talk about the flight from Portland to Sioux Falls. I’ve heard flights like this called the “milk run”. We flew to Rapid City, then to Pierre, and then to Sioux Falls.  It must have been one of the last flights that allowed smoking.  As we left Pierre there were only about 12 people on the flight so we sat closer.  Several were smoking.  (Yes, I’m glad there isn’t smoking on flights.) 

I interviewed with Ernie Teagarden, the Department Chair of BIPA - Business, Industry, and Public Administration.  Over lunch, after the interview, Ernie told me of a requirement that South Dakota had at that time.  If they offered me the job and I declined, they would NOT pay for my interview trip; but if they offered me the job and if I accepted they WOULD pay for the interview trip.  (Not that it was all that expensive - airfare from Portland to Sioux Falls, a couple of nights lodging.) 

Well, they did offer me the job - and I accepted - although it meant a decrease in pay.  I was at the lowest rung in academic positions - an instructor and making $18,000 a year.  (I looked at reduced lunch programs for our children and we were about $500 too high to get reduced lunches!!).  But, the cost-of-living in Madison South Dakota was less than Portland Oregon, so it came out okay.  

Teagarden also added - kind of small talk - that the governor of South Dakota was talking about making this campus into a technology campus.  I thought that would be neat (and interesting), but Dr. Teagarden made it sound like it was only idle talk!!!

So - boom - we were back in the Midwest again - within 50 miles of the Minnesota border.  We rented a house on Lake Herman (next to another professor - Louis Pape).  When there was a freak snowstorm in October that closed roads and schools, my wife decided that we had to move into town.  

But, our house in Minnesota hadn’t sold - how could we buy another house?  We put some pressure on the listing real estate agent, and sold it at a slight loss - but we got enough money back to make a down payment on a house ½ block from Dakota State College’s campus, two blocks from the elementary school that our children went to.  

(Aside - personal.  I have viewed myself as being a midwesterner.  I grew up in Iowa, went to college in Minnesota, taught high school in West Grant Wisconsin (just across the Mississippi from Iowa); and in Keokuk Iowa, taught at Winona State in Minnesota again, and then was somewhat out of my element being in Oregon and in a city (Portland).  Now, I was back in my element - with “my kind of people” - midwesterners!!)

So, to my new environment.  I had the southwest corner office in the basement of the administrative building (Heston Hall) - but it had lots of windows and light - and it was a block-and-one-half from the house we bought in town.  We had a little indecisiveness on finding a church for us but finally settled on the biggest Baptist Church in the community.  After Methodist, Presbyterian, Independent Pentecostal/Charismatic, and structured 4-Square Churches in Oregon, it seemed like a good place for us and especially for Steve and Becky.  

I was at Dakota State University for eighteen fantastic years!!  I had amazing colleagues, great students, wonderful friends, and together we built a fantastic university.  At times, we did things that couldn’t be done, but we didn’t know that - and did them anyway!!!  When I left in 2000, the University was strong and flourishing.  I am happy to have an endowed scholarship at DSU!!!

And, I was thirty-five, and ready to launch into my third collegiate teaching position after four years and two other jobs.  I was ready to settle down.  

TOMORROW - The “AMAZING” ride!!!

AND - LOVE WINS - and it did win at Dakota State University!!!

HUGS!!!

Karen