Former MSSU faculty, staff recall stories from classroom

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Gwen and Duane Hunt hold a photo of the Barn Theater, all of which remains today is the silo.

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August 18, 2012

Former MSSU faculty, staff recall stories from classroom

By Emily Younker eyounker@joplinglobe.com The Joplin Globe Sat Aug 18, 2012, 10:33 PM CDT

Fresh out of the doctoral program at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Bud Morgan arrived at Missouri Southern State University in 1971.

At the time the school was making its transition from a two-year to a four-year institution. Morgan applied to several bigger universities but someone suggested to him that he would likely start out teaching upper-level classes if he took a job at MSSU because it was expanding both its offerings and faculty.

“It was my department head in Colorado who told me that if I took the position there (at MSSU), I’d be on the ground floor of a brand-new enterprise, and that was really attractive to me,” he said. “Having that opportunity as a professor that I would not have had at a major university, when I look back on it, I see that it was absolutely the right decision. A lot of us young guys came in and had the unique opportunity to build a senior English program.”

Morgan is one of three former MSSU employees — with a combined 100 years experience — who recently sat down with the Globe to provide a glimpse into the school from an educator’s perspective.

‘It has been my life’

Over the years, Morgan tinkered with and tailored his program from the third floor of Hearnes Hall, taking pride in creating courses about 20th Century fiction, black American literature and seminars about William Faulkner and American novels.

He also created a program for the English department that gives cash awards to students who excel academically.

“I remember ... being really impressed with the caliber of students that we had here,” he said. “They were very, very bright, by and large. Some of the brightest people I’ve ever known, I met here.”

After three decades at MSSU (he retired in 2001), Morgan still remembers the handful of students who left the biggest impression on him. There was the 38-year-old married woman, a mother of three, who was the school’s first nontraditional student accepted into the honors program in the 1980s. There was the woman who came back to school after becoming a mother to two children and “knocked the top off” the entrance exam. And there was the 18-year-old from Galena, Kan., who “had no idea how bright she was” and left MSSU with a 4.0 grade point average, eventually opening a counseling practice.

Teaching wasn’t always easy, and Morgan said at times he was frustrated with MSSU administration, but at the end of the day Morgan remembers the young lives he was able to reach through his English classes.

“I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything on Earth,” he said. “It has been my life, and I don’t know what else I might have done at any point in my life, and it’s because of students.”

A sea of cars

When asked to describe his career at MSSU, retired professor Duane Hunt laughs.

“I was there 37 years, so it must have been pretty good,” he said.

Hunt arrived at what was then Joplin Junior College in 1963, spending one year in the English department before moving to the theater department a year later. He still remembers the first day of classes held in 1968 at the present campus, standing in front of Hearnes Hall with Leon Billingsly, the president at the time, as the campus’ one parking lot and nearby Newman Road filled with vehicles bringing students to school.

“Everybody’s mouth was kind of hanging open,” he said, acknowledging that it was a good problem for the school to face. “It was an absolute sea of cars, and I can remember Dr. Billingsly saying, ‘Oh my god, where are we going to put them?’”

Over the years, Hunt was involved in the transformation of the theater department. When the department was given an old dairy barn to use for performances, he said he poured his “blood, sweat and tears” into turning it into a theater. Years later, he took part in the conception of the Taylor Performing Arts Center. And in the early 1970s, he helped bring theatrical productions to Joplin-area schoolchildren two or three times each year. By the time he retired in 2000, he had directed about 67 plays and been involved in nearly 150.

Hunt had particularly high praise not just for his colleagues, but for everyone who was employed by the school.

Employees of the maintenance department, for example, would sometimes dig through their stockpiles for props to loan to the theater group for its shows. They even found a telephone pole for one show and cut it down so it would fit with the set, he said.

“Outside our department there were still people who cared about what you were doing, as we cared about what they were doing as well,” he said.

Great to promote

Gwen Hunt, his wife, was also a longtime MSSU staff member. She began teaching English part time in 1966 and later served 23 years as the public information director before retiring in 1999.

She said the school’s move to its Newman Road campus from its downtown Joplin campus in the 1960s was an “exciting” period.

“I just remember how excited everyone was and how excited the campus was in those first years,” she said. “As the campus got bigger and bigger and more spread out and departments tended to get more isolated — to keep working to keep ideas coordinated, that was a challenge.”

Although she eventually shifted out of the classroom, she said she enjoyed her position in the public relations department, working with the media and developing promotional materials.

“I loved doing it because I had a great product to promote,” she said.

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Former MSSU faculty, staff recall stories from classroom

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