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Show the biologist. Also it was about this time that four or five-day trips were begun to other areas such as Arches, Mesa Verde, and Natural Bridges. Shorter trips were taken to Dinosaur, Craters of the Moon and other places. Weber was growing and we had recognized for some time the necessity of a larger campus. Sometime in the late 1940s, we purchased the land where the college stands today and began construction of four new buildings with heating plant and other facilities. These were completed and most of the college moved in the summer of 1952, leaving physical education and all shop classes, together with some special labs and classes on the lower campus. Geology-geography moved from the Old Red Central to Building 4 on the new campus where we had a classroom and a lab with considerable storage space. Physics and chemistry moved from the Moench Building to Building 4 while zoology, botany, and bacteriology moved to Building 3. In 1959, the Utah Legislature passed the bill making Weber a four-year school. The next three years were busy planning for upper division classes which began in the fall of 1962. Dallas Peterson had been hired in the fall of 1958 to teach the physical science classes. His training was as a geologist, and he helped greatly in developing the upper division for both geology and geography. With only two faculty in these fields, they were offered only as a minor for the first year or so. About this time too, changes were made in the administration of the sciences. Previously, the physical and the biological or life sciences had operated as divisions. Now they were put into the College of Arts and Sciences. Ranking for teachers was also instituted. Enrollment in the sciences grew very rapidly. By the time of the first four-year graduation, we had hired additional faculty in physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany, many with Ph.D.s and many others were working hard for their degrees. In 1964, Wayne Wahlquist came to teach geography and in 1965, Richard Moyle began teaching geology and Don Murphy, geography, along with six in other fields. New faculty in one or more of the sciences were hired each year for the next few years. As new faculty were hired in geology, geography and the other sciences, some of the traditional activities were changed. As an example, with increased faculty in geology and geography, each with their own fields of specialization, more field trips were taken, to more areas, but with fewer students on each, and the once large Zion-Biyce trips were now taken in one or two cars instead of one or two buses. The department has always had good student-teacher relationships, and though the total student contact hours has remained more or less constant, each faculty member actually had contact with a smaller percentage of the total students of the department, so the size of individual trips decreased, unless two or three groups combined. About 1967, the natural sciences moved into the new science building, and, for the first time since 1940, all the physical and biological sciences were in the same building. By 1968, geology-geography had grown to the point where we hired two more in geology, Fred Pashley and Rodney Neff, and two more in geography, Deon Greer and Robert Waite. Two years later 211 Sidney Ash came to teach geology. Other departments experienced similar growth. In my forty one years at Weber, I have seen great changes, not only in the size of the school, but in the diversity of training of faculty. As an example, the faculty of geology-geography received doctorates from many universities. Dr. Moyle received his from the University of Iowa; Dr. Pashley from the University of Arizona; Dr. Ash from the University of Reading (England); Dr. Neff and Dr. Buss from Stanford; Dr. Wahlquist and Dr. Murphy from the University of Nebraska; Dr. Waite from UCLA; and Dr. Greer from the University of Indiana. To me this lifetime of teaching has been most rewarding and if I were to select a career again, it would be teaching, but I would try to do a better job, with more emphasis on thinking and less on memorizing. |