(by Edward Zeusgany, copyright 2000, all rights reserved)

The School of Education building at the University of Massachusetts, Furcolo Hall, is positioned a considerable distance from the rest of the campus. It is almost as though the University wished that it did not have such a School. The excuse for its location is the Mark's Meadow Elementary School, physically attached at the rear. Owned and operated by the Town of Amherst, School Department, it has a supposed laboratory relationship with the School of Education. Unfortunately very little research of any significance is done there.

The Dean's office is closest to the street entrance and used by those who arrive by bus or by foot. The beautifully paneled interior contrasts sharply with the rest of a building that looks more like a high school than a college. However, most of the rooms that were designed as classrooms have been converted into offices. Classes are held in other buildings around the campus, suggesting that the central functions of the School are something other than teaching.

The Dean's window provides a view of a small flagstone courtyard and garden, surrounded by a low brick wall. She can see the purple and white crocuses in full bloom, behind them the unopened buds of daffodils and the fat green leaves and promises of tulips. She is glad for spring and is thinking about her own garden, in the warm sun, as it will be a month from now. These pleasant thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of the Associate Dean, who, she notes, did not knock before entering her office.

She is a new dean, in office for less than a full year. The Associate Dean was a candidate for the position. She is the first woman and the fourth person to be called to serve. The first dean was competent and dull in his administration. The second was a fanatic, who led the School to some prominence, but also brought financial and academic scandal, along with a large dose of liberal hypocrisy. The third, her predecessor, seemingly interested primarily in his own prestige, traveled often and left decisions to others. The institution went into decline.

She knew that she was selected because no prominent academic had applied and because the Provost wanted someone from the outside, a dean who could act independently to bring the School out of its doldrums. The Associate Dean was a kind man, who was willing to do or say, in a warm and friendly manner, whatever was required of him by the faculty or his superiors, even when that meant reversing his positions. He accommodated himself to whomever held the power in a given situation. This, combined with his persona, made him well liked by nearly everyone. He was a good facilitator, not a leader.

The purpose of his meeting with the Dean was to discuss the recommendation of the search committee for a replacement for Prof. Heston, who had elected to take an early retirement.

"Good morning, Gerald." She smiled brightly, and rising from her desk, crossed over to him, took his hand warmly and directed him to the conversation area, furnished with leather covered, arm chairs of a type meant to achieve a degree of informality and, at the same time, remind the visitor of the Dean's status.

"I just now saw Prof. Heston in the hall," Gerald said, "making one of his rare appearances. It's too bad, he was an outstanding teacher."

"I can understand his being bitter about not being promoted to full professor, but he didn't get his work published," the dean commented, "not enough of it anyway. Why do you suppose that was? Some people have offered the opinion that he took a simple idea and tried to make too much of it, that his work is over elaborated and tedious."

"He maintains that his writings posed a challenge to current thinking in his field, and therefore, resistance to his ideas. He believes that his colleagues have rejected them without having made an effort to understand. Of course, that subject is not in my area, so I really can't judge."

The Dean had read the promotion file. The outside reviewers had ducked an evaluation of the content of Prof. Heston's contributions, basing their negative recommendations on the fact that little of it had been published. Gerald avoided the substance of the work by stating, that it was not in his area of expertise. Some of the other professors would just shrug and say that they did not understand it, implying that Prof. Heston was incomprehensible. That allowed them to be negative without having to be specific. But he was considered by students to be an excellent teacher, and he heavily used his own work in his courses. If he were impossible to understand, one would not expect his student to produce such consistently positive evaluations. She wondered if his colleagues had read his material. However, since he was about to retire, there was no point in her becoming enmeshed in a lost cause that had been settled by her predecessor.

The University was not the first college in town. In 1820, when farm land was purchased on which to establish Amherst College, for the education of indigent boys, the old farm house was kept to serve as the residence for the first President of the College. Later, it was used as a residence for faculty; then as a classroom building, when space became short. For thirty years it was a dormitory, then a storage building. Around the time of the nation's centennial in 1876, people became interested in preserving old structures. The farm house was repaired and converted into office space for faculty. About fifty years later, beautifully restored, it became the admissions office.

The reception area has a waiting room situated in the old "keep room" or kitchen, dominated by a huge fireplace with shuttered bee hive oven. The furnishings are mixed, new chairs, decorated with the Amherst College Seal, alternate with period benches. The floor is covered with gray, wall to wall carpeting, but the office of the Dean of Admissions has an oriental rug over the wide pine board flooring.

The mail has just been delivered by one of the College’s large white trucks; and Miss Gramm, a junior admissions officer, has the task of skimming each letter and directing it to the appropriate person in the office. Once piece of correspondence captures her attention, and she brings it immediately into the office of Taylor Davis, the Dean.

“Parmly Anson Billings is going to matriculate this fall,” she announces.

“Saints be praised,” comes the response of Dean Davis. “I was wondering if we would ever see him here, even though he is the fourth generation in an unbroken line since Anson Frederick Billings, and clearly the most unusual of the group.”

“Yes, it is unexpected, that a family known principally for being rich would produce a genuine intellectual prodigy. But why did he wait two years to come?”

“Parmly wrote that he felt, that at fourteen, he was too young and inexperienced to benefit from Amherst. So he has spent the time in Europe doing independent study.”

“Yes, but why didn’t he enter, really?”

“I have heard that there may have been a family conflict. Parmly insisted on financial independence and his parents would not approve. Parmly refused to enroll and they decided that it would be fruitless to push it. The continent, on an allowance and the supervision of his parents’ friends, was the compromise. A few months ago, Anson Parmly Billings, the boys’ grandfather, died and left a huge trust fund, the lion’s share of the estate, to Parmly. Parmly’s uncle is the trustee. The old man, uncle and nephew had an understanding: Parmly could do as he pleased with the income, so long as he didn’t get into trouble. The uncle is something of a rake, and wont view much, sort of serious illness or jail, as ‘trouble.’”

Miss Gramm thought that Parmly may well have been right not to come for the reasons he had given. Although there was no doubt about his ability to do the work—he had gone though Phillips Academy in a year and a half—and even then was doing some college level work; the average age of the entering freshman class was eighteen. There was a group of students, mostly from public high schools, who had done an extra year at a prep school in order to qualify. Many of these older students were socially advanced. She could not imagine them including a fourteen year old boy in their activities.

More than this, she wondered why Parmly was going to Amherst at all, when the curricular resources of Harvard, Yale or Stanford would be so much more appropriate for him. Of course, Amherst was part of the five college compact, that would allow Parmly to take graduate courses at Smith, Mount Holyoke, and the University, but this was a small town environment and Parmly was used to the cities of Europe. It might be, she thought, that the youth had more of a feeling for family tradition, than his strained relationship with his parents would seem to indicate.