J Gordon T. Allred 1932 with 31) | quest for | sat deal of }): > has been | oducation. | © r career in| | where he js princips Bk 2 honor of |): H. Taylor 1 Iso served be |." Dean T. Hughes is presently an author ation and ah House | ud part-time visiting professor at Brigham sht years, Young University. He taught at University of Washington and Central Missouri State, 9] |: where he received the ‘“‘Outstanding Faculty er College Since 1979 he has published six: books: 7 en a © { { e€ason, ;| : ting 227 Sess Achievement Award.” Jniversity Under the Same Stars As Wide as the River Romance and Psycholegical Realism in William Godwin’s Novels Nutty for President Hooper Haller Honestly, Myron four more are set to come off the press before the end of next year. school { BA. Weber State College id. | 4 MA. University of Washington ~| | PhD. University of Washington € minds| ¢Post-Doctoral - Stanford, 1975 ove, bul ti and Yale, 1978 € / hoto by Jeannie Young Many students have been influenced by Dr. Gordon T. Allred, not the least of whom are three of his eight children, | | to r, Kathy, Tony and Amy, currently his students at WSC. He has been on the English department faculty since 1963, and has devoted much of his spare time to free-lance writing. He has published numerous magazine articles and books, several short stories, poetry, and was co-author of a ntionally syndicated medical column for 12 years. He received the Presidential Distinguished Professor Award at WSC in 1981; second prize in 1980-81 Cortez Honors competition; first place in the Utah Fine Arts Creative Writing Contest for a novel titled Starfire; and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for the book Kamikaze. | 3 to e. anyway. Actually, I shouldn’t open with a “cheap shot”’ like that. Gordon and I are very good friends. I 4 sa ~~ © ° was first his student, then his assistant, and then with ara. At his friend. And now our families are friends. For that reason it’s not easy to “divide up”’ his e influence on me. The fraternal refuses to slide loose ere from the pedagogical. But then, that says: ova something about the kind of professor he is. One veral back | feels the sense of his persona! interest -- his friendship -- from the first day of class. I came to Weber State with a fairly solid grounding in creative writing. It would be hard to say now what particulars Gordon added to my understanding. What I do remember is the painstaking way he read my writing. He certainly made me feel that I was worth the work, but he challenged every word I wrote. He made me think about what I was doing: from making sentences to controlling emotional impact. own Later I worked for him as a reader. I felt to read student papers as carefully as I _responsible - Steve | _knew he always did. Apparently, however, I lacked 3 as for )| some of his tact. One day one of his students d into his office and began to wave lethal sly, bu "_ barged knuckles in the air, threatening to Karate poor | Gordon into the next world. Later that day Gordon “found myself modeling on Gordon's approach.” way of dealing with those questions and was willing to describe his own process to me. He was my teacher; I was his student assistant; we were friends. In which of those capacities did he give me I recently turned to full-time writing, but before that I taught at a university for eight years. Certainly a person’s style of teaching is largely his or her own, and yet I found myself modeling on Gordon’s approach. I tried to be approachable, not distant, and not to be stingy with my time. I also remembered Gordon’s constant pursuit of a “‘better way.” He is a systematic teacher, always trying to improve his methods. I have taken classes from professors with more slickness of style, but never from a better teacher. When I try to name the most influential professors I had at Weber State, four names come to mind: Larry Evans, Jennings Olson, Robert Mikkelson and Gordon Allred. They are certainly different sorts, but what they share is a fascination with truth. They start with differing the realities that don’t “‘fit’”’ their systems. If there is one thing I have tried to do with my writing, even with novels that touch on religion, it is to face realities without resorting to simplistic or maudlin conclusions. A long time ago, at a time when I was in turmoil, trying to discover what made sense to me, ‘knew what the questions were.’’ He had found his his time that day? It doesn’t really matter, does it? —s in the me roadiheut I’m pretty sure he has repented, or even if he ) hasn’t, I have forgiven him. And I like him get ieee 2° grinned grimly into the gathering gloom. . ne conversation. I remember an intelligent man who telnet eir lifeme better way to learn it than at Gordon’s expense? everyone who knows him el estes aRiencnwed “... improved by experience I think the measure of a quality teacher is the same as for a quality human being. We talk about teaching as though it were a bag of tricks, a style, or a system. To some degree it is. But what we learn from someone is inevitably mixed with the nature of that person. Honestly, I cannot imagine anyone getting to know Gordon Allred fairly well -as most of his students do -- and not being somewhat improved by the experience. His essential goodness is inseparable from the act of his teaching. I thought of starting this whole thing by saying that I knew Gordon clear back when he had hair. But I decided I wouldn’t. Jokes about baldness are really less and less funny to me all the time. What I’m hoping now is that I won’t continue to follow Gordon’s example in all ways -- some roads a man has to walk alone. He can have that one. I’ve gone far enough along it already. Page 3 —— Gordon Allred is the man who once wrote: ) gec — a tae sheeting made Ait 3, if I spent a full afternoon with Gordon Allred. I only remember a few of the things he said, but I have retained a clear sense of the significance of the cae explained to me that one needed to watch one’s words when one commented on. one’s students’ writing. It was a good lesson to learn -- and what Dean T. Hughes