UNH Archive: Trip 1 (12/14/11)

Materials Discussed/Viewed Today:

• Box of Murray Boston Globe articles and other letters--definitely worth going through more carefully (from folks in VT)
• Box of Murray Teaching Evals (organized, not read, but skimmed)
• Box of UNH English miscellaneous

Murray's children, as of letter dated 11/13/2001:

Anne (computer graphics) and Karl Nestelberger (painter and artist)--Weymouth, MA

Hannah (social worker) and Michael Starobin (composer and orchestrator)--Mt. Kisco, NY

Impressions/Thoughts

While it was annoying to have most of the morning taken up with clerical/organizational work, so be it. I was able to organize the teaching evils into folders, which will make reading them, the next time I am here, much easier.

Impressions...I haven't read anything yet, but impressions: I have a very limited outline here of Don's teaching from 1975-1987. I need to find information from the years 1963-1975. I need to cross check with other sources to confirm his teaching schedule. I note that he taught mostly journalism courses--many, many sections of 621/622 and then an advanced nonfiction course 703/803. I note only one section of 501 and one 401 (honors) during this period. A few graduate courses in the teaching of writing. Perspectives I'd like to investigate more next time:

• Non-majors
• First-year students
• journalism students
• Graduate students

It's all here. I should be able to get a pretty good sense of the picture. I feel like there's two kinds of reading I'm trying to do:

• representative reading--reading a bit from each of the categories to get a sense of how he was received by the different kinds of students with whom he worked
• insights, revelations, profundities--the things, random things, that students say which bring him as a teacher to life.