This was Graduation Day at Mercer County Community College
out on the Quad. Many Burg folks had a day like this here.
June. Nice weather, Commencement Speakers.
For fellow Mercer students back in the day: Remember microwave
pizza? Remember when the student center was 2 levels and had its
own in house radio station? Remember the piano rooms in the AV
building? Remember that long walk back to the car in the parking
lot on very cold days? Remember the computers in the library?
There was no internet then it was just floppy disks.
Remember Obscam in the testing center? Instant results:)
Some professors I remember: Mr Chorba, Mr Schwartz, Mr Reynolds,
Mr Collier, Ms Silver, Dr Zucker, Mr Otten, Jodi Fessler for Bio-Labs,
and many others:)
My favorite schools will always be Junior #4 and MCCC:)
6 comments:
Mister Otten was a great guy and teacher. First I thought he was wacky but his way of taking a novel apart to reveal the hidden nature or characters to make social or political statements was amazing. Before that "Lit" was just boredom.
Sadly, Art Forman (Soc/Anbthro), passed on a few months ago. I believe that these were some of the "bedrock" teachers that formed the character of the school.
The new campus was nice and yeah that cold walk could get you especially with the rain or wind blowing hard. Downtown the wind was buffered by the buildings but getting a parking spot was almost impossible.
In some ways it's a shame that we didn't have the foresight to develop the Robeling complex into the college? Would Trenton have been a different place with MCCC to anchor the town?
skip
I attended MCCC for one year and remember Otten and Collier. Otten was a great teacher and actually made literature interesting -- quite a feat.
Ted Otten is STILL THERE.
I agree he is a good teacher.
His often amusing and accurate observations brought the class material to life. Had him for
EG101 and an advanced Lit elective.
He made us compile our OWN index for the 7 books we studied and then
tested us with questions that REQUIRED we had done the index.
In other words a student had zero
chance of "faking" it, you HAD to
read all of the books. The man was
born to teach and I am glad I was
a student of his.
I loved the West Windsor Campus. For a Burg kid it was like being out in the country on Mercers beautiful Campus.
A college at the old Roebling plant an interesting idea.
Most college jobs require advanced
degrees and Trenton bless its heart was a working class town so a small college like MCCC could certainly not anchor a town..
it would just be a place a bunch of suburban commuters came to...
there is a Rutgers in Camden for example...but it is still a cool idea and I like it:)
You are right about the Windsor campus being more relaxed and having a campus feel. But there was some beauty in the madness and unorganized confusion and cacophony of the early days. Rushing from the "SunRay" (old drug store), over to Kelsey and then up the steps to that alley across from the State House and ...... huffing and puffing to the old Hotel Hildebrecht ... it has me tired just thinking about and certainly kept many of us in shape. Relaxing in the "quad" or taking a stroll and a nap by the lake at Windsor certainly had merits didn't it?
Ted Otten came into our staid old blue collar and conservative Trenton like a mad man with his hair on fire. Wild bell bottoms, a tiger skin vest and "hippie" long hair, we were certain he was wanted for some nefarious deed having escaped from Greenwich Village with his smooth talking Big City ways. His "one liner" delivery at times? :) :)
"His ears were so big that he looked like a New York City taxi coming down the street with it's doors open" .. Some of his lines are still etched in my mind. I actually think I found his phone number a few weeks ago and wanted to call and thank him for opening up a new world for me, teaching me to read on several different levels; Mack if you see him on occasion tell him he did make a difference in life.
Skip
Ted Otten's email at
Mercer County Community College:
ottent@mccc.edu
Holy cow. Mack, thanks so much. Just last week I sat with my son and talked about a few courses he should take and how you need to seek out the good profs. He came to mind and I thought it might to be nice and out of the blue not to mention 40 years, call him with a simple thank you for being there, as a person who really knew his craft and gave so much .. I used to say that thanks to him I kind of got 2 novels for the price of one since there was the "liet motif" emerging below the surface.
Then I kind of chickened out and felt it was intrusive but certainly an e-mail is harmless enough. If he even remembered who I was at the least, it may shock him to think that such a slow cretin as such ... thought that he learned something ... ah, the horse that he led to water but just couldn't drink?
Skip ... thank you agin'
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