My Greatest Honor

    During my 15 years in the college administration, on Halloween 1983 the new HCC President gave me the greatest Trick or Treat of my life. On November 13, 1983 I was to be married to my wife, Dr. Marcelle Bessman of Jacksonville University. I had two weeks approved vacation leave beginning November 5. One week to organize our wedding, have the party, and then a week to have some fun with a vacation at a resort. I was called front and center on Halloween and told that I was to have a five year Excellence Plan to improve Math, Science, and Computer Education at HCC written in a grant to be delivered to Tallahassee on November 15. Explaining that I had leave and was getting married, I had to make a choice take my leave and find a new job or write the grant. Needless to say, we did get married, but here is the rest of the story:

   All the staff assigned to put together the plan all had other things to do and not one administrator contributed to the plan by following Friday November 5. So Rooney (the greatest secretary ever in the this college, Fransis Zink) and I continued to work night and day over the two weekends and the five days of November 7-11. We wrote an incredible document, over 200 pages with appendices. The President signed the grant on Monday November 14, and the new wife, of yes we got married on Sunday anyway, and I drove the grant to Tallahassee arriving at 2 a.m.on the 15th, delivered the grant at 10 am and then headed back to Tampa at 5 pm after meeting with some folks at Florida State in that afternoon, what a honeymoon!

   The grant was funded, the plan was slowly implemeted to make major changes in at HCC in Math, Science, and Computer Education. We were also funded for the next four years giving the campuses almost $800,000 in new science and computer equipment to stimulate the implementation of the plan. The plan had thre goals:

1. Implement the intent of the math requirement of the Gordon Rule (every student must complete College Algebra for graduation)
2. Require a formal science lab experience for every science course in the curriculum
3. Require every student to have a degree of computer literacy before exiting HCC

   Below is my greatest honor. A simple letter inviting me to testify before the United States House of Representatives concerning National Science Foundation funding for the next year. I was one of three selected in the U.S. to give my views on how to improve Science Education at the Nation's Community Colleges that year.

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