Bob Parsons, who has taught at Saddleback College from the beginning (in 1968), was interviewed by LINDSEY BAGUIO:He's the guy who has talked for thousands of hours:
…
Q: What was the atmosphere on campus 40 years ago?
A: It was really right wing and there was a dress code.... People who wanted to register had to cut their hair. During the time, there was a lot of student unrest at ... Berkley and Santa Barbara; this board (in 1968) was determined that they wouldn't put up with it. It was a different place. What loosened it up were the veterans who came back from Vietnam. A lot of them were older than the average student....
Q: What was it like having those veterans on campus?
A: When someone looked them in the eye and told them they had to get a haircut, they said, "Oh yeah?" It was a different attitude. A lot of them went along with it; we became their school. ... The college used to play the "Star Spangled Banner" in the morning. Some UC Irvine students came over in a bus and wanted to put a stop to it. And the vets came and threw them out and told them to go back to UCI. It was a different place, and started by people who were very conservative....
Q: How are the students today different from back then?
A: Everyone walks around with a cell phone...and you have to make them turn it off in class. They're just generally more relaxed than they used to be. I don't think they've quit studying. They are working really hard....
Q: What do you think has been the biggest change on campus?
A: It's gotten big. Traffic is a nightmare....
Q: How has the way you teach class changed?
A: ...I taught slide rule and now that's completely extinct. I had a budget of $1,500 one year for student supplies. I took it all and bought an HP calculator. That's the biggest change from a slide rule to a hand calculator.....
Q: How have you seen the field of physics change?
A: It's fun to keep up now ... --for example, energy is a big conversation, but my subject matter was worked out in 1865 by James Maxwell and Newton's Laws of Motion haven't changed. I do talk about relativity and the Large Hadron Collider.
It's a frontier but you've got to be a PhD to be doing that. It's not the perpetual novelty that keeps me going – it's the students.
GOLLY!
Old Town Tustin on television:
Huell Howser's "California's Gold" show on Old Town Tustin airs on KCET at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Howser visited Old Town in July for a trip around the Historic District, starting at the Tustin Area Historical Museum, stopping by the Tustin Blacksmith Shop and the Wooden Indian, and ending at the Beach Pit BBQ.
