Interviews with Sandra "Sandy" Welter

Interviews with Sandra "Sandy" Welter

February 5, 2020

Skidmore College

This life history interview shares the story of Sandra "Sandy" Welter, who worked as director of University Without Wall (UWW) prison program, administrator for the Master of Arts and Liberal Studies (MALS), and English professor at Skidmore College from the early 80s, until she retired in 2017. After a childhood in in East Haven, Connecticut and studies at Elmira College that included a year abroad at Leicester University (UK), Sandy came to Saratoga Springs in the early 70s as a Skidmore College spouse, and worked at Saratoga High School. When teaching in and advising students of the UWW prison program, Sandy supported non-traditional, non-residential graduate and undergraduate students and taught EN 103 (Writing Seminar) for many years. She ended her tenure at Skidmore teaching a travel-writing course, reflecting her own love for travel.

Eng

Isabel M.R. Long

Sandy Welter

Isabel M.R. Long '21

Sandra Welter

Scribner Library, Skidmore College

November 23, 2019 Interview

Isabel M.R. Long: So, my name is Isabel Long. Today is November 23rd, 2019. It is approximately 12:05 in the afternoon. I am in library room 128B, here with Sandra Welter. Sandy has been a– is a retired professor from Skidmore. She worked here for many decades in many facets of the college. So, Sandy, could you introduce yourself?
Sandra Welter: Great, thank you, Isabel. It's actually a pleasure to be part of this project, and I was very glad to be asked to be involved.
I came to Saratoga Springs as a Skidmore wife back in 1971. So, I've been connected to Skidmore for many, many, many years. I was a graduate student at that time, finishing my graduate work, I finished that work. My husband at the time was working here at Skidmore, and I then spent seven years teaching in the high school. I was an English teacher in the high school – junior high school and high school. We had our children. I left public school teaching and then, when my children were young – three, four, five years old – I decided I would like to do some part-time work. The public schools at that time, in the late 70's, were not as modern in their thinking about people working part-time in positions like teaching. So, I was– I approached Skidmore and asked if there were any opportunities. I actually began my teaching and administrative career at the University Without Walls. The University Without Walls is no longer functioning here at Skidmore, but it was a very important aspect– branch of the educational opportunities at Skidmore for non-traditional, adult students who needed to complete their undergraduate degrees. These are men and women who began their college career and were unable to complete it for a number of reasons, or never started college at the traditional moment. At age eighteen. The University Without Walls was a fabulous introduction for me into the Skidmore community. I was an advisor to many of our UWW students. I taught basic English composition as independent studies for many of our students that were off campus, for which many of our UWW students were. And then I worked with a lot of faculty as I administered putting together programs, curricula, for some of our UWW students. So, I got to know a lot of our faculty.
One of the aspects, one of the branches of UWW that was vibrant in the mid-70's, all through the 80's, and into the early 90's was the UWW prison program. The prison program was a full academic bachelorette program that we brought to two correctional facilities in upstate New York, about an hour from Skidmore. Every night, at four o'clock, a cadre of twenty – fifteen or so, twenty – Skidmore faculty would finish their work here at Skidmore with the undergraduates, get in their cars and drive up to Comstock, New York, and teach their series of courses to a select group of inmate students who had applied to Skidmore, who had been accepted, and who had received funding – both federal and state funding ¬– to support their college education. So, I started teaching in that program because I could be home with my children during the day, and when my husband got home, I could be off doing my teaching at night. So, it worked out perfectly for me, I taught in the prison program for ten years. I became the director of that program, the last four years of it. I unfortunately– When we lost funding– both federal and state funding – I then, with the help then of the faculty here at Skidmore, we had to close the program down. But those ten year were the most vibrant teaching experience I had ever had, to date, at that point. And I met and worked with so many faculty that were so giving of their time to a population that didn't have access to education at all. And it changed lives radically. I say that with complete confidence. It's not like I imagine that they changed lives, I knew that this program changed individuals lives, and families lives, communities. Everything, these men would go back into their communities a much more viable source of positive influence, both on their families and on their communities. But unfortunately, in 1993 the funding for this program was pulled, both at the federal level and at the state level, and we had to close our program down. we graduated many hundreds of students. I worked in that program even after the program was closed. We volunteered. We had a group of volunteer faculty that would go up for no pay that would do reading groups, study groups, in order to talk with former students. We kept that going as long as we possibly could. At that point I began teaching part-time in the English department and moved to what the college had, at that point, was a master’s program. So, I moved from just part0time work teaching in the English department to full-time administrative work in the master of arts and liberal studies program. That program, again, was like UWW but at the graduate level. I was the administrator. I was the director of that program for some years and advised many graduate students as they put together these interesting interdisciplinary graduate programs. That program also was closed. And, so at that point I began teaching full-time in the English department, and that is what I did until I retired two years ago. And met wonderful students. like you, and students– the first time I had ever deeply embedded myself in the residential program. Many of my experiences at Skidmore were with our non-traditional students, our UWW students, our prison students, our graduate MLAS students, all of whom were off campus. They were not necessarily residential. So, that gave– this last ten year of my career gave me a wonderful experience of embedding myself in the residential community where I was working full-time with freshmen, sophomores, juniors, teaching English 103, English 105. I worked with our international students in a course numbered English 100 which was for international student for whom English as not their first language. So, I worked with them preparing them to begin doing the work that was required of them at Skidmore. So, I've had a really varied experience of teaching at Skidmore, and I one I couldn't possibly replicate any other place. One of the wonderful things about Skidmore is they were, historically were so open to new ideas about how to educate people, who could be educated, who should be educated. And Skidmore as a place that had a very open mind about that, those questions.
IL: Fantastic, thank you. You were taking about UWW, so I would like to go back that first [SW: Sure.] before kind of revisiting the different moments in your career. [SW: Sure.] So with UWW, you have set up kind of the who and when for me, can you tell me a bit about the how?
SW: Sure. Men and women would apply to the University Without Walls program, they would be reviewed through an admissions committee. They would be interviewed. We would determine what their interests were and whether or not Skidmore had the capacity to fulfil their undergraduate requirements. Historically, if a student came to us and said they wanted to become an electrical engineer, we would probably advise them to go to another institution. That was not a good fit for us. But, for those who were interested in the liberal arts and sciences, those we could accommodate. Once the student was accepted at UWW, he or she got two advisors. One was a major advisor, and one was a UWW office advisor. Someone who oversaw the compilation of the student's curriculum. That was my job. And so each semester, and in some cases not ever the semester, because in some cases the students were doing independent study and might be working on a course for six months rather than a regular, traditional semester-long experience. UWW would pair that student with an appropriate faculty member. So, my job was to talk to the student, listen to his or her desires of a particular course in environmental studies with a focus on land management, or on sustainability, or on water quality. I would then go to the department, like the environmental studies department, and I would talk with the faculty. I would say I have a student who is interested in land management, or water quality, and he or she wants to do an independent study or many if they were local, take a course with you. Would you be available and willing to work with that student? SO my job was to pair students and faculty in their learning. That was a hundred and twenty credits, so that was a lot of hands-on work. It was very labor-intensive process of getting a student through an undergraduate degree at UWW. But, we had an amazingly energetic faculty who were willing to work with our UWW students independently. They often invited local independent UWW students into their classes too so they could hear the lecture right on campus. So, it was a very useful kind of collaboration. That's how it worked. Students worked through their courses at their own pace. All of these UWW students were working men and women. They were not eighteen-year-olds, they were not living on campus, they were not full-time students. So, we had to balance– they had to balance their work life, their family life, and their student life as they proceed to get their undergraduate work done. Not an easy task. And so, for many years in working with these UWW students, I was incredibly impressed with their energy, with their commitment, with their focus because you know how hard it is to get your courses done, imagine if you had a family and a job to balance. And that's what these UWW students were doing. So my job was to facilitate that process and make sure their course work was appropriate, that their degree was balanced, that they had 120 credits, that they had correct distributions, that they had all the components of the major – all the things that your advisor does and your registrar does here on campus, that's what the UWW staff did.
IL: That seems very helpful to a broader community interested in pursuing their higher education.
SW: Exactly. And UWW was a national forum. Skidmore was not the only campus that ran a UWW program. It was actually a concept that was designed at the federal government level, offering opportunities for adults to go back and finish their degrees. And many campuses across the nation designed UWW program, and Skidmore was one of them. We were one of the earliest ones, and we were one of the latest ones to close. In the meantime, many other colleges across the county also had UWW programs.
IL: So then taking the UWW to the prison program, you were talking about faculty going there later in the evenings. So were they doing lectures, or was this again, kind of an independent study type?
SW: Yeah. Good question. The prison program looked very much like a residential college program. In other words, the faculty when in, they had a class. They had a class of ten, fifteen, eighteen students. They went in, they sat in the class, they gave lectures, they– the students had their textbooks, they did all the stuff that you would do, that any undergraduate student would do in a class. It was organized by semester, very traditionally. They started and ended in a traditional way. They started, they ended, the students had exams, they received grade. IT was very, very tradition looked because we had the structure. The students were there. It was easier to design that and run that that way than it was for independent adults who were working and living in places all over the country. Our prison program could follow a much more residential pattern, which is what we did. So, the students received transcripts. Their transcripts looked just like our undergraduate residential student's transcript, it's just that it said Comstock on it rather than just plain Skidmore College. It was Skidmore College Comstock Program, which mean that it was offered at the Comstock facilities.
IL: Could you help me understand what your personal experience was with that?
SW: Well, I had various experiences. Going in– The reason that I got involved in the prison program actually, was that I had a friend who was teaching up there. A colleague, an English professor. And he said to me, one night at home, at my house, we were having a dinner together with a group of friends, and he said "you know, Sandy, I think that you would really like teaching in the prison." And my then-husband looked askance, and said "really," and my friend Bob said "yeah. I think that you would like that. You're the kind of person that I think would be really good. It's not everybody who can do this. Any faculty go up, and they observe, and they say 'Not for me. I don't like the gates; I don't like the feeling worried about being in a prison.'" And he said, "well how do you feel about that?" And I said, well I need to go up and see how I feel. One was a maximum-security prison, and one was a medium security prison, and they were all-male. So of course, there was major concerns. I had major concerns. So, but I said, let me go try. And I walked– I went in with him. I got permission; I had a pass as a guest. I went in with him one evening, and I observed the teachers teaching. I observed the classrooms, I participated in teaching a class with my colleague, and he was right. It was a– it was instantaneous for me. The students were, one, incredibly prepared. Everybody had done their reading, everybody had done their work, everybody came in with hundreds of questions. Some of which were off the wall, but some of which were incredibly insightful. They were like sponges. They were so eager to get this learning and to participate in this exercise. It's like an adventure. This was not their life, imagine, living in a prison. So, at night they could come up and walk into a classroom which had windows and desks. They were with other people, there was a professor there. This as for them lifesaving. And I could tell. I could tell. So, the next semester I taught a class, and I never turned back. I just, I just loved it. I taught composition to mostly freshmen. I then became an advisor, so I was putting together curricula. So, I was making sure the students were developing their majors in certain good way. So, I was working as an advisor, and at the very end I was the director of the program, until we closed. So, lots of great experiences. We had full graduations at the camp– at the prison. We would bring up faculty in their full regalia. Their families could come up, observe their graduation. we would have cake and cookies afterwards. It was as close to normal as we possibly could create given where we were.
IL: Wonderful. You wrote a monograph about dealing with behavior.
SW: I did.
IL: Could you talk about what lead to that, and what you were dealing with?
SW: Yeah. One of the– Obviously as a woman, I was always approached by women faculty and men faculty who would say "aren't you afraid? Aren't you threatened? Isn't it dangerous?" Obviously, all appropriate questions. The fact is, I never once – in ten years – never once felt personally threatened. Not once. Now, were there moments? There were maybe, out of ten years, there were maybe three or four moments where there was a scruff. Where there was something that went on– not that had anything to do with me, but was with something in the hallway, or something was going on. But it was immediately shut down, it was immediately– the guards were right there. They're not in your classroom, but they are right in the hall. But personally, I was never approached by a student, by an inmate student, I was never spoken to inappropriately. The students knew that the health and the veracity of this program was on their shoulders. If they screwed up, the prison would close this program down immediately. Skidmore would want to keep coming, but the prison would close it down. So, they knew, if they wanted this program to work, they had to mind their manner. And they did. In fact, they go so wrapped up in their learning there was no time. There was really no time for that. But that being said, a colleague of mine who worked in another prison in the western part of the state, she and I were talking at a conference one time. A prison programs conference that was, happened across the state of New York, and we were talking about, yes, our colleagues were always asking us, you know, what about the behavior? What do you do? And we said, you know, why don't we write a little how-to. Because, yes, of course, there will be situations were a student will overstep, wither knowingly or not knowingly, overstep the line, what do you know. So we decided to put our head together and write a monograph, which we did and we distributed to all of the prison programs across the state for women instructors so that they had a kind of game plan. Or a kind of guidebook. Or to read to decide if they even wanted to do it. And it was great. It was very useful, and the state was very happy that they had it. I gave it to the officers to so that the officers could see what we were saying. And they approved. They said yes, this is appropriate instruction. So we had good cooperation with the prison administration as well.
IL: Wonderful. Was there anyone in the program, both with the prison program and with the University Without Walls that was particularly impactful for you personally?
SW: Woah. Hundreds, actually. [laughs] Yes, there were some amazing, amazing students. I remember a middle-aged man in the prison program. He was a philosophy major, so he wasn't– he was my advisee. And Michael was– loved to write poetry. And many of the men used to write poetry, and most of it was pretty horrible, but Michael’s was astonishing. It was absolutely publishable. And I can remember when he graduated, he handed me a collection of some of his writings, and I still have them. He's passed away, and he died of AIDS, I believe in the late 80's or early 90's. But he was a very brilliant man and had a really horrible life. But his mind was– just, always remember thinking, anyone looking at this man would think he was just this thug, but all you need to do is just let him speak. Listen to what he had to say, and look at what he was writing about, and you would realize that he had a heart and a mind that was quite beautiful. And so I do remember that. My UWW, not prison students, many students– what I loved about them, they went on to do great things. One on my UWW graduate students is currently directing the economic opportunity program in Saratoga. And she did her degree at Skidmore UWW and was one of my advisees and so she's making a huge difference here in our community here in Saratoga. And that makes me feel great. When I see her name in the paper, and her picture, and the projects that she's doing, I feel like we did the right thing.
IL: Well that's wonderful. Another program that I know has been impactful in the community is the Master's of Liberal Studies program. How– could you help me understand your involvement with that, and what that mean to you?
SW: Well, we realized that after many years of running UWW, we realized that so many of our graduates kept asking us "we want to do an interdisciplinary master's program. We loved the fact that we could put together our own programs here at UWW. We could create these interdisciplinary, these programs that saw the synergy between different disperate academic inquires. And that by allowing, you know, science and art to talk to each other, we get something bigger and more." And they kept wanting to know where there were graduate programs like that. There weren't very many. There were only, in the country, there was a master's of liberal studies at Gerogetown, there was one in the mid-west, there was maybe one out in Oregon. There weren't very many. And we thought, you know, we should really think about whether or not we the capacity to offer – we being Skidmore. Because of course all these programs need the energy and support of the faculty, and the faculty are [cough] – excuse me – [cough] The faculty have a fulltime job teaching the undergraduate residential students. So, we started small. And I was on the ground floor of this program. Once the prison program closed, I came over. The director of UWW had begun, became the director of MALS, he and his secretary were beginning to put the idea together, and they hired me as the advisor, as the person to help work with the students and put course programs together. It took a while, and we knew that we had to keep it small, cause again, it taxed the energies of the faculty. A graduate student needs more work, needs more attention, needs more intellectual stimulation than an undergraduate. And so we understood that starting a graduate program would mean a real commitment on the faculty's part. So, I worked with the director. We also had a faculty advising committee. We had a group of faculty who came on board and looked at what we could do. It felt like it was workable, so we went forward and designed it pretty much looking like UWW, but instead of 120 credit undergraduate program, it was a thirty credit master’s program. And it was interdisciplinary, so the students had to have at least two disciplines represented, they had to write a thesis, and/or a final program. Some of the performing arts students did photography exhibits, they did creative writing programs, but it was– they had to do a thesis at the end. And those were all to be reviewed by a team of readers. So again, it was very intensive faculty advising, which was on of the reasons why it eventually closed. I mean, it needed so much energy on the part of residential faculty, and the residential faculty was also needing and experiencing more and more with their residential students, their undergraduates, that the college really felt it couldn't sustain it. Which I thought, was probably a reasonable decision on the part of the college. If we are going to do it, we want to do it well, and to the best of everyone's ability. And I think the faculty were feeling very pulled in many directions.
IL: Thank you. With this, you were teaching, at the same time a couple classes?
SW: Yes. Every semester, while I was doing all my off campus UWW or MALS work, at least one course a semester I would teach in the evening, in the English department. I liked to keep connected– I liked to feel connected to the residential students. IT helped me to make sure that the work I was doing with UWW students and masters students was in line with what the college was doing with its residential students. So, the English department– I as an adjunct faculty member was hired for at least one or two courses in the evening, per semester to teach. And I taught English 103, English 105, and then I worked with the international students. So that was on going. I did that for decades, but it was always quiet, and it was always a smaller part of my Skidmore identity, the most being my work in the non-traditional programs. When both of them closed, UWW and Master, I was not quite ready to retire. I was, I really felt that I had more that I wanted to give, and more, more projects, more opportunities I wanted to offer. I also had a couple of classes that I'd never taught before that were in the back of my head. The most recent being my travel writing course. I'd never taught this, but I's always, always been an avid traveler, I'd always been an avid travel-writing reader, and I kept thinking this is a vehicle that could be a good one to teach freshman comp. The 103, I mean the one-oh-five courses have a topic base, and therefore I kept feeling like there was a real desire and possibility that this could be a great course. So I put together the course, and I proposed it to the English department the last couple of years of my tenure at Skidmore, and that was kind of what I finished my career doing, was teaching my travel-writing courses, which actually were almost another highlight of my career. So, I started with a great highlight in UWW and I ended with a great positive highlight with my travel-writing students. They were, it was a great course. I think they loved it; I learned a lot. We read wonderful writing from travel writers from all over the world, and since retirement I have tried to follow some of their footsteps, and so I have been to many of the places in which we read narratives. So, it's been great.
IL: It's fantastic that you were able to kind of move into a second-high point in your career.
SW: I did. And it wasn't more of the same. I really wanted to do something different. And I thank the English department very much for allowing me to do that, because they could have said no, keep doing what you are doing, it's fine. And it was fine, but this was a great plus for me, and I was very pleased to do it, and I had terrific students who still stay connected and are always contacting me and letting me know where they are, and where they're going, and were they are traveling, so it's always good.
IL: Wonderful. I remember you saying in a previous conversation, maybe a year, maybe two years ago that you taught in Chine briefly.
SW: Oh, yes! Yes! I forgot about that, didn't have that on my list! [both laugh] How could I forget?! Yes. When I was working in the master's program, I had done many years at UWW. We were in eh master's program, I was feeling– I was feeling a little stale. I was not doing as much teaching, as much one-on-one teaching. The UWW program offered me lots of really wonderful teaching opportunities. Once that program closed, then the prison program closed, I was doing almost all administration. And I was fine with that, except I really missed the communication and the connection with students. So, I applied for a sabbatical. As an administrator Skidmore does offer, occasionally, an administrative sabbatical. I was not a tenured faculty member, so I wasn't due a sabbatical, but I applied. I gave them a proposal in which I said I would like to teach for a year in China, at the university Skidmore had a relationship with. And my proposal was approved, I was given a nine months sabbatical, and I went to China. [Laughs] I took off. I did not speak Chinese; I did not need to speak Chinese. My students were all English majors at a teaching university in Shandong province, which is provincial. It is not near a big city; it is not near Beijing or Shanghai. It was in one of the oldest– it was one of the oldest universities in China, and one of the oldest communities. It was in the hometown of Confucius. It was were Confucius was born and were his family and he is buried. And around this very old community, they built a university, and it was a teaching university. So off I went. I left for a year. I lived at this university. I had an apartment on the campus. I taught six courses a semester with thirty-five or forty students in a class, so I taught three hundred students in the course of a year. And I taught composition. So, I was teaching – and they were – their reading English was actually quite good. They understood their reading quite well. Their spoken English was not very good because they had no access to native English speakers. The people who taught them oral English were Chinese teachers. Lovely, very lovely people, but their English was not very clear, and so the students' English was not very clear. So, I taught– I did a lot of informal, come to my apartment, let's practice our English. So, at night, I would teach all day, and then at night I would have twenty-five or thirty students for tea, and we would just talk, and practice our English. So, and then I did that for a year. But then I did composition. The year that I was there our students published a literary magazine. I was very proud of that. The only time they've ever done that. We out it together in the Spring semester. We had an editorial board, we had submissions. The students read the submissions, they made selections, they did editing, they did layout, they did artwork, and we put together a literary magazine for the whole junior class. The junior year was when they did their composition writing in their curriculum. So, I was very proud of that. I had it published, and every student got a copy, which I signed before I left. It was great. It was a good experience, a really good experience, and I have still stayed in contact with many of those students who are now middle-aged at this point. Cause I was there in 2001, 2002, so many of them are adults either working in teaching or working in cooperate situations where they are using their English as translation.
IL: That sounds really, really formative experience.
SW: Yeah. Well it also was– I think it was one of the impetuous for me wanting to do the travel-writing course. When I got back, I thought, there's so much wonderful writing that goes around travel, and new experiences that I really felt– that began to make more interest. And the reason I ended up going – let me share this with you – the reason I really wanted to go to China was that Skidmore was accepting many more international students at that point in the late-90s, early-2000s. And they were in my classes. They were in my one-oh-three classes, or my English one hundred classes, and I was so impressed with their work ethic, and their diligence, and how hard it was for them to work in an environment where this was completely not in their native language. And I thought, I would really like to know more about the Chinese educational system because they are producing these really interesting, smart, thoughtful, fun students that are coming to Skidmore. So that's really what got me started. And when I found out we had a relationship with a university in China that we could send faculty there to teach, I jumped on that opportunity. So Skidmore, the undergraduates were actually my stimulus for me going to China.
IL: That's fantastic that the courses here fed nicely in, and then the experience in China fed into your next [SW: Right, exactly.] set of courses. So in working with these international students in EN 100 and EN 103, I know you taught EN one-oh-three for, what, twenty-two years?
SW: Right. A really long time. [both laugh]
IL: Just a bit.
SW: Yeah.
IL: [both laugh] Could you talk about, sort of, what that meant to you as an adjunct professor?
SW: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's unusual, a little unusual for a faculty member to teach a course for that long. There are many more opportunities, with tenured faculty, for them to do more courses. The English department has to provide, kind of, nuts and bolts necessary writing instruction for every student that comes here. It's our responsibility. Obviously, as you know, every student is required to be a competent writer from the get-go. They walk on this campus and every faculty member expects them to be able to be a thoughtful, competent writer. That is true for most of our students, but not all of our students. And certainly, our international students have a much steeper learning curve. And so, I– I was always a teacher, I am a teacher who likes to work with students who are challenged. I find that absolutely so stimulating. Whether they are adult students coming back and need to work around family, or whether they are prison students who have to deal with their life in prison, as well as their education, or international students who have to deal with a new language, or students, regular residential students who are coming out a high school experience that was maybe not as absolutely basically fulfilling as it could have been. And so, they are here at Skidmore because they are smart. My students are really smart. They are so capable, but their skill level, the stuff that they need to know, the nuts and bolts – the kind of tools that they needed – they may not have them all in their toolbox yet. My job as a 103 teacher was to give them the tools that they may or may not have gotten in high school. And, for me, every student that walked into my class – even though I am teaching the same course – every student who walked in was an individual challenge. And for me that was so stimulating because I had to figure out a way to help each one of these students, in whatever way I could, to get him or her to the place where they could be fully successful at Skidmore. So, I loved that. I loved the idea that helping a student– especially writing. Writing is not a discipline that has right answers the way maybe biology does. Either this is this enzyme, or it’s that enzyme. Or history: it's either this year or that year. You have to know the facts. In writing there's a path to getting better at this skill, but that path is not a single path. Everybody chooses the path that works best for them. My job was to help each student find his or her path to becoming a competent writer. And a confident writer. So many times, my students were really fine writers, but they lacked the confidence. They kept saying, well I'm not a good writer, I'm not a good writer. I said, how do you know that? Somebody told me. I said, well, let's forget that. We're not going to worry about that voice, we're going to start a new voice which is you are a competent writer, and you can get better, and our job is to get you there. And that was how I approached English 103 for twenty years. Or more.
IL: This is a wonderful philosophy. Do you feel like you have a set– a guiding philosophies or principles that you've followed? Wanting to help people who have challenging perspectives and challenges that they are overcoming.
SW: Right, right. I don't know if I– other than the fact that my first– my basic point is that every student can do it. You can do this. This is not impossible for you. It may feel impossible and it may take twice as long than someone else, but you can become a better writer. Writing is not– Writing is a process, it's not a product, and if you think about that then you are going in the right direction. Students always say look at this piece of writing. My writing is not as good as this piece of writing. That's a product. I'm not interested in the product. How did that writer get to that product? That's what we all need to understand. So, if I can help students realize that the best writers edited, and edited, and rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote, if I can have students figure that out and understand that their writing can always get better, then I've done my job. Because then the student realizes they're in control. They have the capacity to become a better thinker, a better writer, a better reader. All those three things go together. So, that would be my philosophy, that it's a process not a product. Don't look at the product.
IL: That's a wonderful philosophy, and thinking about then, the process, you've been– or were at – Skidmore while technology was changing.
SW: Right.
IL: That effects many–
SW: Huge! Yes, yeah, great question. Yeah, I'm thinking back over my early years. In fact, I always used to tell my students about using a typewriter, and of course they would look at me like I was crazy. They would– I would tell them about the card catalog in the library, where you would have to go an actually look at a piece of three-by-five card to find the book and go in the stacks, and that there was no electronic databases at all, these kinds of things. But, yes. And writing has been incredibly impacted by all the technology. Research, for example, was a– used to be a big frustration for me. I always wanted the students to get into the library to understand the notion of searching out information using, what I considered the old way of thinking about knowledge acquisition. The students taught me so much more because they are so much more facile with the electronic databases, with accessing information. My job for them was to always help them sort out what was the value of the information. It's not quantity, it's quality, and so my shift– I had to shift my focus from here's how you get information – research, etc. – to how do we know this information is valuable, it's correct, it's been reviewed. That's critical nowadays because there's too much information out there and it make students crazy. They grab the first ten things they find, eight of which are bogus. They have to figure out, let's make sure they understand how to validate the data they are gathering and the information that they're reviewing, and to realized that more so now than ever before, the author has to be validated. What is the author's point of view? Who is the author? Is there an agenda behind the author's point of view? Are we getting a balanced approach to the information? So, technology has made students, faculty lives, both more helpful, more easier, but also there are much more responsibility that come along with this huge availability of information that we must be responsible for figuring out what's valid and what isn't.
IL: That's a great– That's really interesting for me to hear about the shift in research, because that is such a big part of student life now.
SW: Exactly. I mean, huge, huge amounts. Students do their research in their dorm rooms. That's not the way I did any of my research as an undergraduate or as a graduate student. Or as a teacher! Even as a professor I would be in the library, I still an in the library. It feels right to me to be in the library, but I'm becoming a relic. And students who are– the young faculty who are coming on board, they do their research just like our undergraduates do now. So it's becoming a little more seamless. We older folks are fading away [laughs] and moving into– we understand that times are changing.
IL: So we're wrapping up the interview here. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to cover?
SW: No. I'm glad you asked about China because I totally forget about my China experience which was amazing. As I said at the beginning, I think that my profession trajectory is so uniquely a part of the Skidmore philosophy. I don't know of another institution that would have allowed me, encouraged me, championed me, to do the kinds of things I have done at Skidmore over thirty-three years. It's a testament to Skidmore's creative thought matters slogan that they allow an individual like me, a faculty like me, to do, to think, to work with students, to incorporate, to invite different populations of students into the Skidmore learning experience. And I can't thank the college enough for that. It's been a terrific experience for me. My children, who did not go to Skidmore, they think very, very warmly of this place, and understand how much it's meant to me and it has affected them too as they've watched me do my teaching the way I have. So, I thank Skidmore a great deal for that opportunity.
IL: wonderful. So thank you very much Sandy.
SW: You're welcome, you're welcome, Isabel. This has been a great pleasure, and good luck on the project.
IL: Thank you very much.




February 5, 2020 Interview

Isabel M.R. Long: My name is Isabel Long. Today is February 5th, 2020 and I'm here with Sandra Walter in library 126 – sorry, 128C. We're on Skidmore College campus. We are here to do interview two of two in our series for the Saratoga Skidmore memory project. So just to give a brief overview of what we previously covered, we talked about the prison program that ran at Saratoga, in– with the local prison for a while, and we talked about graduate programs which Sandy was head for a while. We talked about her time teaching EN103, and traveling to China and working in China, and then teaching her travel writing class.
Sandy Welter: All good. [Both laugh.] All right. Thanks for reminding me.
IL: You're welcome. It was a fabulous conversation.
SW: It was, I enjoyed it very much.
IL: I'm glad, I did too. So, I have just a couple things to follow up with [SW: Sure.] that I'd love some clarification. So, one of the things you mentioned very briefly right at the end of our conversation was your sons' connection with Skidmore. You mentioned they felt very connected to college even though we did not attend here.
SW: Right.
IL: Could you elaborate on their connections with Skidmore?
SW: Well, as you know, I live right in Saratoga Springs. They were born and raised here in Saratoga. And in the early days of Skidmore, both my husband, at that time, and I were affiliated with Skidmore, he in the counseling center and me– I was, at that time, teaching in the public schools, but was involved with bringing my kids to campus for various projects and activities that happened here on campus. It was a much smaller community back then than it is now, and so the kids, my children, felt very much as though Skidmore was a sort of home away from home. When I started teaching here full time, they, um, they use my office as a great after school drop off place, sometimes, to stop in on their way off to a soccer game, or practice, or a bike ride with some friends. And so, while they did not necessarily participate, um, educationally in the activities, they did- they did fully appreciate the community that Skidmore offered all of them, the faculty and staff that lived- that lived and worked here. They used the library regularly, they loved to the library, and, uh, you know, they had many friends whose parents were also involved at Skidmore, and so it was a sort of a mini community. So that's sort of what I meant, was I think Skidmore was an extension of– they felt as comfortable here on the Skidmore campus as I would downtown, or at the high school, or the other places that they were active in.
IL: Wonderful, thank you. One of the things you mentioned is that your former husband worked at Skidmore.
SW: He did. Yep.
IL: Yeah, so, from my understanding from our last review you joined the working body of the Skidmore community later on.
SW: Right, exactly. I came to Skidmore as a new bride, actually. My husband, at the time, he and I got married right after– I got married right out of college, actually. He got the first– the job as the first director of counseling center here at Skidmore. Skidmore didn't have a counseling center in 1971. They were about– they had just started to accept men. There was a clear need for a network for support for students. The student body was moving to the new campus. When I first came in 1971, my husband's office was in downtown, in the old– on the old campus. Many of the activities of course we're still here at the new– I called the new campus, the campus. And, so, I came, as a new bride. My husband was working at Skidmore and I was in graduate school. I was doing my graduate work at SUNI Albany. So, I did my graduate work and finished. After finishing my graduate work, I got a job teaching in the Saratoga Springs high school, and taught there, and was tenured there for the next six– five or six years. At that point I had two small children and did not go back to teach full-time. And by the mid 80s, the early 80s my children were two and five. They were starting to go off to school or school in kindergarten, and I was anxious to get back to the workforce. I had many friends here at Skidmore, through my husband, and I was invited to come and work at UWW, and then in the English Department. So, it was an interestingly slow transition to Skidmore for me. I started actually as a faculty wife, as an employee's wife, but then came on as a– as a full-time employee and faculty member.
IL: Thank you for elaborating.
SW: Sure.
IL: There's several pieces of your comments I really want to touch on.
SW: Yeah.
IL: We're going to go back to a couple of the them.
SW: Sure.
IL: But first that I think is relevant– kind of in chronological order, working backwards, is the transition to a co-educational school for Skidmore.
SW: Right.
IL: You were here right as that was happening. [SW: Yeah, yes.] Was there a culture shift that was going on?
SW: Yeah.
IL: Could you help me understand what the campus atmosphere was like?
SW: Yeah, yeah. It was– it was a huge culture shift. I came from my undergraduate school, Elmira College in western part of New York State, went through exactly the same transition when I was an undergraduate student. So when I started at Elmira it was in all women's college, when I graduated it was a co-educational institution, so in four years at had transition to a co-educational institution. When I got here to Skidmore, right after I had graduated from my undergraduate school, it was also in that exact same transition. So, both Elmira and Skidmore were probably transitioning to a co-educational institution at exactly the same time. And there was a huge cultural shift. I guess the funniest story that I can share with you which I think encapsulates exactly the problem– actually two small stories. The first was, I can always remember my husband coming home and saying, 'Well the men are in the counseling center all the time.' I said, 'Oh dear are they having a terrible time?' He said 'No, actually the problems are fairly soluble. And I said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I mean are they are they having major emotional problems?' He said 'No, no.' He said, 'The first problem is that there's no options except ballet in terms of physical education for them, and they were having difficulties explaining to the phys-ed department that they needed more options. And the second was that they couldn't get enough food. That the cafeteria was not serving them large enough portions. That they kept going back, and back, and back and that the cafeteria ladies were used to feeding women, you know young women, and not used to feeding eighteen-year-old boys.' So, he said, 'Once we get those two things straightened out, I think that the mental health of the entire community will probably be a whole lot better.' So that gives you a sense of sort, the small problems that could go in co-education, you know, provided or presented to the college. Obviously, dormitories and space, and those kinds of things. But really, they needed to think about their curriculum, they needed to think about their support services, and I think they've done a great job of doing that over the years.
IL: Thank you. So, you mentioned, Elmira going co-ed, and being at Elmira. Could you help me understand what your time at Elmira was like?
SW: Sure! I was– I came from a fairly– a very blue-collar working-class community in southern Connecticut. Going– I was the first member of my whole family to go to college. And so, going off to college for me was huge, and the idea in the early 1960s, for me to go off to college, to really have a completely different experience would be to go to a girl school, for me. I don't know why that I was convinced that that was an important thing, but somehow, I was convinced that that was a good thing to do. And so, I started applying applied to many of the women's institutions at the time, and I got into a lot of them. I selected Elmira not because it was the best. Because in retrospect, probably in terms of just in terms of academic caliber, it probably wasn't the strongest of the ones that I had gotten accepted into, but it was the one that was the farthest away from home. And so, I chose that. Because I what I needed to do at that moment, was to prove to myself that I could be a college student and live in an environment completely different than when I was used to. And so, I went to Elmira. It actually was a wonderful, wonderful choice for me. I met some, some fantastic faculty who have– who remained supportive of me for my entire career, and beyond. I met some lovely, lovely women who have remained friends my whole life, in fact just had a reunion with a couple of them, over 50 years of reunion with a bunch of them recently. I went junior year abroad, and so I went to the University of Leicester in England for an entire year, which was an amazing experience for me, and was– and it probably fed my latent desire to all– to travel, to see the world, which I have continued to feed throughout my entire life. So, Elmira was a wonderful experience for me. It prepared me well for graduate school. I went to SUNI Albany and got my degree there, and felt well prepared, and was very happy to be trained in the early 70s to be a teacher, and so I felt as though I had gotten a very good education, even though I think, the reasons I ended up– I initially went there were probably not the best. [Chuckles.]
IL: You ended up being there, and then a transitional moment for Elmira.
SW: Yeah, yeah it was– of course, anywhere you were. If you were in college in the late 1960s, you were in the midst of a huge revolution, cultural revolution in terms of, of identity and educational opportunities, and politics, and countercultural definitions. This was all so embedded in a college experience at the time. I mean, I started college in 1967, I was at Woodstock in 1969. I was in– I was at the University of Leicester in 1969 and '70, and then I graduated in 1971. So, it was right in the in the heat of all of the activities that were going on campuses across the country so, you couldn't avoid, it is great.
IL: If you had to pick kind of a definitive moment of your college experience, what would it be? SW: Well, I think it was the opportunity to go abroad. That was– I mean Elmira is this small little sleeping community in western upstate New York. It doesn't necessarily provide the kinds of– even the simulations that Saratoga does. Saratoga Springs is a culturally rich environment beautiful, beautiful geography. Elmira is not that. Didn't have that kind of opportunity, both visually, geographically, and culturally. So, for me to go abroad and to study, and to be there for a year, was life changing for me. And that– I worked with some fantastic faculty at the university. I met several of them later on, after I finish my degree and have– and stayed in touch with many of them. Most of them are gone now, by now.
IL: Could you help me understand the wonderful experience of being at Leicester?
SW: Yeah, yup. It was– well it's– it's not– it's a red brick university, that's one of the quality characteristics. It's one of the universities that grew out of the push to enlarge the university system in Britain after the Second World War. It was well, well known for its English literature faculty. Many of the universities of Britain had a particular strength, and so if you were interested in X, Y, or Z you would think to look at, to go to those institutions. Leicester had a very strong English literature and culture department, and I, I was lucky enough to get accepted into that. And so, that to me was life changing. Their educational system, which is much different than United States, in which we took classes once a week, didn't have exams except at the end of the year, met in one on one tutorials with the faculty every week, so you were always had to be prepared, you always had to be ready to be able to speak what you had in your mind well face to face with a full professor, and then, and then prepare for an exam that you would have only at the end of the year. So, it was a very difficult, very different way of learning than I was used to here in the United States. And that taught me a lot about pedagogy, which I put to work when I came here to work at Skidmore.
IL: Fantastic. If you could only pick a couple individuals who defined your time at Leicester, who would they be and why?
SW: I think that the uh– I think that the Shakespeare professor was particularly wonderful. And I’m not going to remember his name, sorry. [IL: No worries.] I could've– I also took, I took an American history course. Because I was intrigued at the time to see how, how the British taught American history, and that professor also was absolutely fabulous. And showed me a way of looking at history in general, and history of my own country in relationship to Britain that I never had had been given before. So that was exceptionally fine. The third component– the third really important part of my experience at Leicester had really nothing much to do with my faculty as much as it had to do with two groups of students. One was a group of international students that we formed. There were six or seven of us. Two of us from United States, one from Australia, three from Germany, two from Japan, etc. So, we had this group of international students who were international students at Leicester at the time, all studying either in the foreign languages department, or in the history departments. And so, we ended up taking classes with each other and gathered in very informal friendship group throughout the year, because we were the– we were the foreigners, we were the outsiders. And it was– it's fairly small university and so they weren't a lot of us. We've stayed in contact with each other over almost– over almost 50 years now, so I just, in fact, two days ago spoke with the German student who friend of mine, and he's on his way to Japan to meet with Hiroshi, one of our other students. It has been over 50 years. So that group of students has were really influential and showing me how the rest of the world thought. How they think. How do other people in other parts of the world think. And again, that really informs that well how I teach.
The other group of students that helped me a huge amount where the women in my dormitory. We lived in a hall, called College Hall, and we were– we ate together. It was part of the system. We would be at least once or twice a week we would eat together and have high tea together. We studied together, often. And again, we have stayed in close contact with each other over all these years. A group of us just had a reunion last year. And went I went back to Britain and saw them for the first time in almost 50 years. And we had a lovely time. Picked up right where we left off. [Chuckles.]
IL: That's fantastic.
SW: So those kinds of experience, both friend friendships, were as much– as much a influencing force on who I am as a, as a teacher and as a, as a person as my faculty were, and they were also quite wonderful. So.
IL: Thank you for sharing.
SW: Yep, sure.
IL: In your time last year, did you travel elsewhere, were you mostly based there?
SW: I did travel. I came at the end of August. Our term started in September. We studied until December, and then they have a big long break. During that break, I traveled a great deal. I visited German students in Germany, I went to Austria and Switzerland, and did some skiing and– I did a lot of traveling. And then, in the– after the break in May, that was after my exams were over, many of the foreign students went home. I had– I, luckily, had saved enough money and then I could actually stay for another couple of months. So, I stayed through August. So, I was gone almost twelve months, and during that time I traveled to Spain, and Italy, France and did more of the southern European traveling, and again met up with many of the students and friends that I had met during the year. I did, I did hike in April. I hiked the Lake District with a with one of my college friends, in Britain. I went to Edinburgh; I went to Glasgow I went to Wales. I did see a great deal of Britain, because it was easy. It's easy to do so because of the train, trains, and it was inexpensive if I had a student pass, I could get anywhere, and I backpacked the whole time. So, I stayed in hostels and it was really inexpensive. I could, I could get around easily under $5 a day. So. I was able to do that as well.
IL: With being on campus and involved in student culture in Britain, you define some of the Elmira culture as having the counterculture movement super characteristic [SW: Right.] of the late 60s, early 70s. Was that something that [SW: No.] was distinct?
SW: No, yeah. It wasn't– we did not see that as much. I did not see that, at least I don't remember. It's a long time ago. [Chuckles.] I don't remember that at all. And it was funny because, because I was gone in 1969, 1970, I kind of unplugged from the height of the activities that were going on in my country at the time, and I didn't– I was gone a full year from August to August, and that's, that was a long time. That's a lot of– a lot of events occurred during that year that I was not in the in, you know, in my country, to experience. In Britain, it was much less– I was, I was very involved in my local life, and did not necessarily, feel a sense of that counterculture movement at all.
IL: So, you went to Woodstock, left for Britain–
SW: I did.
IL: Was away for a year, and then came back.
SW: Exactly, exactly! In fact, I got– I went to Woodstock, and two and half weeks later I left for Britain. And when I got there, everybody at the university said, 'did you go to Woodstock?' And I said, 'I, I did.' And they could not believe it. They said, 'no.' I said 'yeah. I was there.' And I was. [Both laugh.] I was. So, that was– I kind of became sort of instant celebrity for a few weeks. [Laughs.] And then classes start, and then everyone was busy.
IL: Was it like a story you told them to, kind of, share what that experience, since they were so interested?
SW: Well, well yeah, they asked because it had just happened. I mean, literally just happened, and here's two Americans arriving on their university not, you know, two-and-a-half or three or three weeks after they watched all this on their, on their telly. And here we are, and my friend Jackie and I, Jackie was not at Woodstock, and I arrive at Leicester. And, you know, that's what they wanted to know. Well, what was it like? And so, all I can remember telling them was it was very muddy, 'cause it rained the entire time. I said it was very muddy, and there were lots and lots of people, and it was the most peaceful group of half, quarter million people I've ever seen in my life. Ever. So, you know, it was– of course the music was fabulous. And they wanted to hear did you here so-and-so, and did you hear so-and-so? And I– yep, yep, yep.
IL: So, in learning about their culture, they also very–
SW: Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
IL: So then, when you got back to the US–
SW: Yeah.
IL: How had your perspective on Elmira, for example, or your life in the US changed?
SW: Yeah, and it had changed a great deal. Really good question. You know, I– I realized how–I mean there was a part of me that realized, because I wanted– 'cause I decided to go as far away from home as I could, that staying at home was small. That there was something– it was loving, and wonderful, and I loved my hometown, and my family but there was something about it that was a little stifling for me. And– because nobody ever left. It was a kind of place where everybody was happy being right where they were, and that southern Connecticut was just fine. Just a fine place to be born, and raised, and work, and die. And I'm thinking, no, no I don't think so. Not for me. And so by going off to Elmira and then going to England, that way– it was like, it was like I lit a fire, and that's, as you can imagine, as you know as one of my former travel writing students, you know that I continue to constantly desire to see more and more of the world. This interview had to be postponed because I was in Africa just until a couple of weeks ago. So, I have continued to be just enthralled with the variety and the complexity and the beauty of this world. And that's certainly what Elmira and my experience at Leicester started way back when I didn't know, I mean, didn't know a thing. I was so naive, and so young and so inexperienced that I give– I gotta give myself credit for trying as much as I did even back then, 'cause I think I didn't know what I was doing at all but, it will worked out fine.
IL: I'm glad.
SW: Yep.
IL: Could you kind of describe sort of an average day in your hometown?
SW: Ah! An average day my hometown. Well, my hometown was a working class, pretty much exclusively– not exclusively. About 80% Italian, first generation Italian Roman Catholic blue-collar community. Most of the men went off to New Haven and worked as tradesmen or as factory workers. Almost– most of the moms stayed home and took care of their families. I lived in a small post-World War Two little house in a little development where all the houses looked about the same. I walked to school. I walked home for lunch. I walked to my high school. It was– it had a very old downtown center, which of course, because it's Connecticut, it had some pieces of early pre-revolutionary notes– old stone church and an old green and area. But, and there was an old neighborhood. But the large portion of my day was spent in these kind of post-World War Two developments of young families. There were in every house in my neighborhood there was two to four children. And when you– when we walked to school, the whole street was filled with kids. When you walked home, it filled with children. You went home, you put your play clothes on, and you went outside. And you were in the neighborhood playing with friends until your mom called you for dinner, and dinner, homework, and in bed, and then off to school again. My parents owned a little tiny cottage on the shores of Long Island Sound in the town next to where I was, where I grew up, called Branford, and in the summers we would go there. So, I would unplug from this kind of intense, you know, kind of dense family community, kid-oriented, to a much more relaxed, out– get more or less about doors community, where I stayed all summer, with a whole group of families and friends that were not part of the group of neighbors that I grew up with. But I stayed– we stayed in that community. My sister and I grew up in East Haven, we both went to East Haven high school, graduated. My sister actually bought my parents' house when they graduated, and so she stayed there her whole life. She stayed there her life. She never, again, she never left. And that's was not at all atypical. She was friends with all of her high school friends. I was not. I mean, I didn't see my high school friends much 'cause I never– never was home again. And we had different– we had different interests. They were happy to be where they were, and I was not. You know, I wanted to see more. But, I mean, it was it was a lovely childhood. It was lots of fun, and lots of activities. I remember learning to roller-skate on the streets, and interesting things that people can't even imagine. That you rake your leaves. All the families would rake their leaves into the– into the edge of the street, and then you'd burn them. Which of course, God forbid you can't– but never do that now, and that you'd come home, and you'd play in the leaves, and they'd be these little fires in these little embers, and it would get dark and you can remember seeing the embers along the side of the road, and you come in and you smell like, like leaf smoke. These are, you know, these wonderful memories that kids don't have anymore. It's just not a– it's a different life, it's a different environment. But kids have other wonderful things to think about now too, right, so.
IL: Do you– is there, kind of, one memorable meal from your childhood you could tell me about?
SW: Well, I’m a– I'm from– my grandparents on my mother's side were both Swedish. They were first– they were born in Sweden, came as younger, young people, both my grandfather and my grandmother. My grandmother was a wonderful cook. I can always remember my grandmother making a roast– and they didn't have very much. They were– they had large family, not very much money, and we would go over to my grandparents' house on Sundays sometime, or certainly on a holiday. So, if it was a holiday like, I don't know, Easter, or Christmas, or something, she would make a roast pork. Some kind of a piece of large piece of meat. And there'd be hundreds of grandchildren, seems to me, there wasn't hundreds, but there was a lot of grandchildren, lots of children around. And she would be cooking and baking, and there'd be potatoes and, and she would make– always have– so this, this big piece of meat would come out and I will be sitting in my grandfather would cut it up, he was a carpenter. He built a lot of Yale University in his, in his active years as a carpenter. So, he would take the trolley from Branford, his hometown, to New Haven, work on the buildings at Yale, and then come home again. So, he always remembered– I remember as a child him telling me– we'd take the bus into New Haven, and he'd say, 'you see that? I built that, I built that archer, or I–’ ‘cause he built all the woodwork, he did all the woodwork. Anyway, so, we were at this, at this– he was cutting up the meat, and everybody got a piece of this meat, and then we had roast potatoes and vegetables, etc. And I looked at my grandmother's plate, and always, this was always the case, on my grandmother's plate were all the bones. Just the bones. And I said, 'Grandma, you don't have any meat.' She said, 'Oh, I don't want any of the meat.' She said, 'This is the best part.' And she would pick up and spend the whole meal just nibbling, and sucking, and chewing off all of the good parts of the bones. Now, I can– you know, as a child, I kept thinking, well she just doesn't want to give– she wants to make sure that everybody get some meat, and so she's giving it all to all the children, and she's just being generous. But I think she was right. I actually think she was right, that probably that was really delicious, all of the good roasted bones.
The other, other thing that I always remember– my grandmother was really the center of my meal remembrance. My mother was not a very good cook at all, and once I got to be a teenager, I ended up doing a lot of the cooking in my house 'cause my mother really was not, did not like to cook. So many, many of my memorable meals were at my grandmother's. Whenever you walked into my grandmother's house day or night, 8:00 o'clock in the morning, 10:00 o'clock at night, there was always a big pot of coffee perking on her stove. Didn't matter what time it was, it was always hot. and just perking. Hear that little blurp, blurp, and the whole house smelled of coffee. And the other thing you'd always smell is Swedish coffee cakes. She would bake Swedish coffee cakes every morning, and you could smell the cardamom, and the other in– clove, which you put in the coffee cakes, and so there was always, always coffee and always coffee cake in her house, whenever you walked in the house it didn't matter. And you, and you– and Grandma would always let us, the grandchildren, even as little as we were, taste a little sip of coffee, we could taste some. So that was always exciting.
IL: Sounds really lovely to have that– to know that you could go and get some coffee.
SW: Yes. Grandma was– she always had coffee going, and there was always a coffee cake that she had just taken out of the oven. She was a great cook, and she taught me how to cook. She was the one that taught me how to cook. I remember as I was in college, I went and visited her, and knew or realize that she was getting very old, and so I sat down and asked her to give me her recipes, some of her recipes. She of course, she never measured anything. And I said, 'Well Grandma, show me how you make the rice pudding.' She'd say, 'okay,' and then she would sit there, and she would say, 'Well first you take some rice.' And I said, 'Well, how much rice?' 'You know, enough.' [Laughing] And I say, 'This isn't going to work.' I said, 'I'll tell you what, you make the rice pudding, and let me watch you, and then I'll be able to figure it out.' So as she was making it, I would make her– I would ask her to stop, just before she would pour the milk in, or pour the rice in, or pour the seasoning in, and measure it. I would measure it because she didn't– it would be this is how much it is, whatever it was. I said, 'Okay,' and so I would measure it and then write it all down. I had to cut some of the recipes still.
IL: Do you have a favorite recipe you made?
SW: I like her rice pudding. That's what we– she always made the best rice pudding. And it's– again, that they were very poor, and so they used everything up. So rice, if you made rice, you always made rice pudding with it. And she would make oatmeal, oatmeal cookies because she'd make oatmeal or porridge for the, all the kids and then whatever was left she would make something. She would make delicious dumplings. She was a good dumpling maker. So these are some of the things I remember. Easy, inexpensive meals.
IL: It– food's always a really wonderful, I think, part of family life generally.
SW: Yes, yeah.
IL: Is there kind of a, memorable meal you've had with your kids since then?
SW: My own kids. Well, you know, we– yeah. I, I like to cook. I'm, I very much like to cook. And because I had two sons, and no daughters, I just taught them how to cook this, because why not? And they were interested. So, and they are now in their 40s, and so. One of the things I had– one of my sons, when he was seven, after having done a research paper at elementary school or kindergarten about animals, you know, and realizing that people ate animals, he decided he was going to be a vegetarian, at age eight, or so. And I said, 'That's fine, you know, that's fine. If that's what you want, and then we'll do.' Then the other son, he was like, you know, 'No I’m not going to do that.' So, I was making– I tried to make a vegetarian option for, for my– for Josh, the younger one. The problem was of course, is he didn't like vegetables. [IL laughs.] So, I said, 'Sweetie, if you're going to be a vegetarian you have to eat vegetables, and you have to figure out how to get some protein.' So, he said, 'Well, I like pasta.' So, I mean– and he liked peanut butter. So, there were many years, I think, in his life where he subsisted on pasta with tomato sauce, which had some vegetables, and peanut butter sandwiches. He's now, you know, six-two, and you know, is perfectly well, well-endowed in terms of a healthy strong man, and his– I think one of our favorite meals was we used to make homemade pasta. And with a with a roller, with a machine hand-cranked pasta rolling machine, and he was, got very good at– now he has twin seven-year-olds, little girls, and he, every month, every Sunday they make homemade pasta together. So, it's carried on several, you know, several generations now, homemade pasta which is one of the twins' favorite meals. And pizza, lots of pizza. They love pizza, which of course Josh makes from scratch, so. So, that kind of shaped our, our meals a lot.
IL: Meals are always prepared in kitchens. That's always something– I found now, being in college that that's very important [SW: Yeah.] space sometimes. So, with your home, would you define the kitchen– how, how would you define your kitchen?
SW: Yeah, it's the center of our house. And still is, even without the kids there, still the center of our house. When I entertain, we all end up in the kitchen, for some reason, because I have a big kitchen, I have a cooking and working kitchen, 'cause I like to cook, and I liked other people to be in my kitchen with me when I'm working and cooking. My kitchen is also an open space into a family room. So, there's a, a couch and a TV, and bookcases, and things to read and do as well as the kitchen area which is kitchen-y. So, it's a wing of my house that's probably the most used. My kids, when we did– my house is a 1791 farmhouse. This is this old farmhouse. When we first bought it, the kitchen was kind of an old Victorian 19th century add-on to the original revolutionary-time farmhouse, and it was not in very good shape. So, we tore it down very soon after we bought the house and built this bigger space, and in that space we made the kitchen area, but we made it because we knew that we wanted, also, the whole family to be part of it. So we made this larger space for the family living. And when the children were small, it was their play area. There was nothing in there with a big rug, and all their toys, and so that they could play, we could talk, I could cook, they could come over and help me cook, or go back and play. So, it was a good space for when they were younger. When they got older, and moved in my books, and a TV, and things like that so we could use it in that way as well. So, it's a big part of my– it's still a big part of my– big heart of, the heart of my house. So you've been to the house, so you, you remember what it was like. It's a– it's a working, it's a good working kitchen.
IL: It's very beautiful.
SW: Oh, thanks. [Chuckles.]
IL: So, I'm thinking that about, your house that you very much made your own, making the kitchen the way you want it.
SW: Right.
IL: That's– How would you say that's defined your experience in Saratoga?
SW: Yeah. That's a really good question because in 1971, we'll circle back to my graduating from Elmira, and getting married, and my then-newly-minted husband saying, 'I just got this job at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. We're going to move– we have to move there.' And I then change my graduate work to SUNI Albany, rather than other places. And I came up here, and Saratoga in 1971 was not a very attractive city. Skidmore was struggling. It was just starting to try to get its feet on the ground, in terms of co-education. It was changing its location from the old campus to the new campus. It was, it was struggling, it was. And the city itself was really struggling. It was very depressed, and depressing. I just got here and looked around and said, 'Oh my gosh. I really have to love this man to come and live here [laughs] because I don't know about this place.' And you know it– and it was, it was difficult at first because it was a difficult place, but within a year we made wonderful friends. We lived in several houses in the community before we moved to the farmhouse that I currently living now. I loved working in the high school. I met wonderful community leaders and friends, and other teachers. My graduate work was excellent at SUNI Albany, and I ended up lot starting to love the upstate New York area. I got to know the Adirondacks, so I got to understand lake environments, 'cause I was so used to being near the ocean that I missed the saltwater. I missed the ocean. And the lakes seemed to be not an adequate substitute. But in fact, it– they were. And I learned to really love this area. And Saratoga, at that time, was then beginning to really open up, and grow. It was a time when opportunities to do interesting things within the community were available as well. If you were young, and energetic, and had ideas, people were around that said, 'Well let's try it,' because there was– We needed to do something. So, I met a group of women, both faculty wives and community women. We did things like starting the gifted and talented program out of the high school in elementary school. We worked on art festivals where we took all of the abandoned, that, not abandoned, the for lease, vacant storefronts on Broadway, and there were many, if you can imagine. You think about Broadway now, it's absolutely chockablock with wonderful opportunities for businesses. There were places in blocks of Saratoga, of Broadway that were empty. That these businesses were just empty. And we put together things like an arts festival where high school kids could come in, and we would, we would display their artwork. We would have– we would bring in local artists to do demonstrations and classes. We started working with Historical Society. So, there was stuff that we could do, that young– if we were young and had energy, they were willing to have us do, and we did. And so that was lovely, and it was a way of, again, validating my interests and my energies, and my children could see their community really growing. And it was a lovely place to live. I mean, they're just nice people here. Just, just really nice people in this community, both here at Skidmore as well as in the, in the town itself.
IL: Is there any particular project in town that you're proud of?
SW: Well, I– you know, I'm very proud of the– I worked, early days, with the, with the gifted and talented program. Phyllis Aldridge, a wonderful friend who's still alive, still here in town, organized this project where we were able to take, present after school opportunities for talented young students in many of the elementary schools, and we would meet at the library, the library which was downtown, and we would do courses. I did a poetry writing course, I did a journal writing course. There was art classes, there were music classes. That I'm very proud of. We did, I did a journalism course where we put together a newspaper. We visited the Saratogian which was the local newspaper, is the local newspaper, and brought all the kids there. So this is the kind of thing that I'm very proud of, and it's still going. That, that's great. That kind of grassroots effort, I think, is so, so satisfying. And the town is big, much, much larger now and much more complex, but still, I think, it still has that kind of heart of wanting to do the best for its citizens.
IL: That's fantastic, thank you for describing that. I'm– have covered most of what I have on my list here.
SW: Sure.
IL: But I have one question that kind of jumps a little bit away from what we were discussing.
SW: Sure, yeah, yeah.
IL: When did you first realize you liked writing?
SW: Ah! That's a great question. I want to make sure I'm very honest and clear about this, I'm going to think. Well, I was always a reader. So that's first, first and foremost. And I, as you know, and as I've told my, all of my writing students, you can't be a good writer and less you're a good reader. You have to read because the word on the page becomes your models, and becomes your image– the images and the, and the cadences of the other writers as they write on the page become the voices in your head, and that's really, really terrific. So, I was always an avid, avid reader. I think that I never thought of myself as a writer primarily because it never was ever encouraged. It was again, if you think back, I've lived in this kind of community where it was not that sort of writing. Oh, you know, that's, that's fancy stuff, you know, that's writing is fancy stuff. I think I started writing in elementary school because I got a diary, for a gift, like a Christmas gift or something, or birthday present, and I, and I got a pen pal. And so, the idea of having a pen pal in another city– I got two pen pals when I was little girl, one was in another city in New England, someplace. I guess one of my teachers hooked us, you know, hooked the students up with a pen pal, and another was a pen pal in India. Don't ask me how I got that pen pal in India, but I got one, and I always remember loving to write letters to her and getting her letters back 'cause the stamps were so fabulous. The stamps were the best. And the paper felt so different than the paper that I had in the United States. So, those experiences of having a pen pal and having a diary actually probably were the things that started me off on writing, for myself. When I started teaching, I was always involved in, in student newspapers. Forever. From elementary school, to junior high school, to high school, to when I was in college, I was always on the newspaper staff. So, when I started teaching, although I wasn't a writing teacher, I was always teaching all the optional experiences of either journalism or being the newspaper club advisor. So that pushed me in that direction. As I started to do that, I realized that no one was actually teaching these kids how to write at all. It was just by osmosis that they were writing. That they were in English class, but writing wasn't really what was described. When I went to graduate school, I spent a lot of time learning pedagogy around, or, or theory around writing. Writing theory. How does– how do people think about writing, and how do they plant, how do they train themselves to be writers. Which is– what are some strategies. And that turned into some really interesting projects that I did with my high school students. That's what got me started in working with college students. So it was a kind of gradual process, both for me, and then through my early teaching experience to, to the needs of the Skidmore community, and I– because I like working with international students, I started working with international students first with my writing has a tutor, and then transitioned into teaching, working with the larger campus community with writing.
IL: Thank you for sharing. I'm– I have a follow-up question with that. You mentioned that your community was fairly dismissive of an interest in writing.
SW: Well, yeah. It was– I didn't– I don't remember in my high school, I'm thinking about my high school, my own high school, I don't remember, I mean, I think– the teachers that I remember encouraging me to, to love language was my Latin teacher. My Latin teacher was the person who really inspired me to love language. My English teachers were great, and I remember writing, and they all said, 'That's great, that's great,' but I don't think anybody ever gave me any actual constructive criticism. I don't think anybody sat down with me and said, 'You know, you could make this better.' It was always like, 'It's fine, it's good.' I was an A student, I was always. But I thought, well that doesn't help me. That isn't helping me. If I want to get better, you're just telling me that this is okay, and I'm done. And so, that's what I meant. I didn't– I don't, I don't remember my high school as being a place where creative writing, and in writing in general was encouraged. I could, I could be missing 'cause it was 100 years ago, so, I don't know. [Laughs.] But I'm remembering it mostly as a, something, a love that was nurtured mostly inside of me, and not from an external source until I started working with other students. Then I realized, oh I really love this.
IL: Thank you. But, I– Before we kind of wrapped things up, [SW: Yep.] is there anything you'd like to share? Things that have come up in this interview?
SW: When you have– you know, you know more about me than, [laughs] than anybody in Saratoga Springs right now! No, it's been a pleasure, actually a pleasure, Isabel talking with you about both my career at Skidmore and my life in Saratoga, and my life as a, as a youngster, and how I got to where I am. And it was, it's actually great fun to think about this because right before I came in here for, to have our conversation, I was FaceTiming with one of my children and my grandchildren, and as I was describing some of these stories I was telling you, I was thinking of them and saying, 'I should tell these stories to these kids. These kids don't know any of these stories.' And they need to know them, I think. So that's– you've peaked my interest ant gotten me excited about sharing some of this with, with them as well.
IL: Well I'm so glad, and thank you so much for sharing this with me.
SW: You're welcome.
IL: It's been an honor and a privilege.
SW: My pleasure, and I hope your project in this larger project continues to go as well as, as it seems to be going.
IL: Thank you very much.
SW: Okay, thank you.

Oral history interview

Interview 1 – 54:04
Interview 2 – 54:03

128 kbit/s

November 23, 2019 interview
00:00:00 Header
00:01:55 University Without Walls
00:03:20 University Without Walls prison program
00:05:20 "it changed lives"
00:06:40 Master's program at Skidmore
00:07:24 Master's program closed, and Welter started full-time at the Skidmore English Department
00:08:11 Last ten years of Welter's career
00:09:23 Question on University Without Walls (UWW)
00:13:34 Welter's job with UWW
00:14:09 UWW national forum
00:14:58 Prison program set-up
00:16:36 How Welter became involved in the prison program.
00:18:33 "They were like sponges."
00:19:52 "As close to normal as we could create" for the prison program.
00:20:12 Writing a monograph on behavior, she never felt in danger.
00:23:00 "game plan or guidebook"
00:23:42 Amazing students, hundreds positively impacted by the program.
00:25:12 "All you need to do is let him speak" [on a student of the prison program].
00:26:18 Master of Liberal Studies (MLS) program
00:28:16 Welter hired as an advisor.
00:30:01 Why the MLS program closed.
00:30:49 On-campus teaching
00:32:00 Not ready to retire, travel writing course.
00:33:40 "Since retirement"
00:34:40 Teaching in China
00:38:26 Literary magazine in China
00:40:00 Welter wanted to go to China because of international Chinese students at Skidmore.
00:41:40 Teaching EN 103
00:42:39 Welter likes "working with students who are challenged."
00:44:30 On the discipline of writing.
00:46:33 "Every student can do this."
00:47:51 Changing technology, writing incredibly impacted.
00:50:48 Technology added ease and responsibility.
00:52:25 Her professional trajectory reflection and in connection with Skidmore philosophy.
00:53:32 How Welter's children think of Skidmore.
00:54:02 END



February 5, 2020 interview
00:00:00 Header
00:00:24 Summary of previous interview.
00:01:14 Sons' connection with Skidmore.
00:03:12 Came to Skidmore "as a new bride."
00:04:36 Teaching in the Saratoga Springs High School.
00:05:04 "[A]nxious to get back to the workforce."
00:06:00 Going co-educational, Skidmore and Elmira.
00:08:25 Choosing Elmira.
00:11:27 Cultural revolution in the 1960s.
00:12:18 Going abroad.
00:13:15 University of Leicester.
00:16:06 International students at Leicester.
00:17:37 Women in her dormitory.
00:18:46 Traveling while studying abroad.
00:20:53 Missing events in 1969-70.
00:21:56 Experience with Woodstock.
00:23:39 Returning to the US and "staying at home was small."
00:24:37 "...lit a fire" of interest in seeing the world.
00:25:54 Talking about hometown and childhood.
00:30:14 Her maternal grandparents, eating a meal at their house.
00:32:58 Grandmother's house.
00:34:17 Cooking with her grandmother.
00:36:17 Cooking with her sons.
00:38:44 The kitchen is the center of her house.
00:41:00 Coming to Saratoga and being involved with happenings in town.
00:45:15 The gifted and talented program.
00:46:57 How Sandy's love of writing grew.
00:52:49 Closing comments.
00:54:03 END

7/2/2020