firsthand

Oral History Transcript

NARRATOR: Raphael Payne, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences

INTERVIEWER: Iani Dunbar

DATE: May 7th, 2009

Iani Dunbar: Alright, so it’s May 7th, 2009, I’m here with Dr. Rafe Payne, my name is Iani Dunbar, and we are in the Bradley annex of Bardwell Hall. We are going to be talking about the science department.

Rafe Payne: Yeah, now, that brings me to my first pet peeve, Iani (laughs). There are two departments. Actually, there are several different departments within the sciences division at Biola, but there are two departments which most people usually lump together and call the science department because we exist in this building now, in Bardwell. Uh, the two major departments would be the Department of Biological Sciences—separately chaired, right now by Dr. Matt Cruzen—and the Department of Physical Sciences, which is chaired by Dr. Jim Rynd. So, even when I came in 1970 there was that distinction. Alright, so let me back up to just pre-1970, and share with you a bit about who was here, and who has come and gone since then. So, we’ve got about 40 years worth of biological science and a little bit of physical science history, okay?

ID: Alright.

History of Biological Sciences Faculty

Pre-1970

RP: Um, I replaced a man whose name was, um, Dr. Robert…not Cruz…darn.

ID: Kurtz?

RP: No, Dr Kurtz was in Physical Sciences…it’ll come to be. I’ll get back to it.

ID: Sure.

RP: And, uh, when I came, Mr. Les Eddington was here already, and Paul Kuld was here already. And this other gentleman was not tenured and was let go. He taught ecology, which is what I was hired to teach, so I came in to teach ecology, genetics—can you believe it, I never did—developmental biology, which I did teach, and marine biology; and to develop a marine biology “program,” to get some marine courses oriented. So Mr. Eddington, Les Edington, Paul Kuld, and myself were the three faculty members in 1970. Eddington came in ’68, Kuld in ’69, I in ’70.

1970-85

ID: So you three were the biological sciences department?

RP: We were biological sciences for a good while.

ID: Ok.

RP: And then we hired back…uh, after she graduated—Ruth Ebeling graduated, she graduated, I think in ’68, I’m not positive, but she went to teach high school for a couple of years, went home and got her Masters in anatomy—she can fill you in on this—and then we hired her back part time to do some lab work and then gradually she took over the anatomy program. And gradually became the anatomy professor and became full time. But she was teaching at Los Angeles—no, she was teaching at Cleveland Chiropractic College, downtown LA, and she was teaching here part-time, so back and forth. Les Eddington taught here at Biola I believe for about 17 years. He was chairman when I came, he and I switched off and chaired the department for a good numbers of years. Then, in 1974—I think it was 1974—we hired Dr. Lin. Oops, got to back up a bit…before Dr Lin, for two years, we had a man by the name of Dr Robert, or Bob, Stevens. He had come from LeTourneau, we had him teach Micro and Anatomy. And he did that for a couple years and then he left and went back to LeTourneau, eventually went to Germany to teach, and finished his career in teaching at the Black Forest Academy in Germany.

ID: Wow.

RP: He has since passed away. So when Dr Stevens left us in the spring of ’74, we hired Dr. Lin, who had come from University of New Mexico Med School, as an instructor in pharmacology. So now we had, in ’74 we had Dr Lin, myself, Paul Kuld, Les Eddington: four. And Ruth is part-time. Then Les Eddington—I don’t remember the exact year—oh, yes I do—1984, Les left Biola, and went to Azusa, APU. And I was just leaving at that time to go back to the University of Nebraska to finish my PhD. So, while I was in Nebraska I had relinquished the chairmanship, and I think Albert had taken the chairmanship for a year…

ID: Really, ok.

1985-2005

RP: Yeah, Dr. Lin. And while I was there, though, I insisted that I be a part of the interview process for the new professor, since Dr., or Mr. Eddington left. And we hired at that time Dr Van Deusen, Elisha Van Deusen—Dr Van. Dr Van continued on our faculty for 15 years, and died of a heart attack in 1990, or ’91. It was in January while I was in Baja. So we named the cell biology lab in his honor. And his picture, that painting is hanging right there next to Dr Cruzen’s office right now. He was a remarkable person, absolutely stunning. PhD from University of Indiana in developmental biology, and had done a lot of post-doc work down at UC Irvine. Was a highly respected researcher. But, even better when he came here, was a great teacher. He was just loved, really loved.

ID: That’s awesome.

RP: So, it was a shock when he, he died in his sleep of a heart attack, in Switzerland. So, we spent then, a year looking. And during that year, Dr Havoonjian, Harvey, came in and taught the cell lab, in the spring.

ID: This was in, what year?

RP: I think it was in the spring of ’90 or ’91. Yeah, we could look that up.

ID: Okay.

RP: Yeah, so Harvey came in as an M.D., and just helped out teaching the cell lab. And then during that spring and through the summer we found Dr. Cruzen, who was also down at UC…he had gotten his PhD at UC Irvine, and was kind of what we call a ‘freeway flier.’ He’d gone to teach at a couple of community colleges and a couple other settings and was doing some research as well. But his PhD was in the area of molecular genetics, and microbiology, he came in to teach Gen Bio, Genetics, well, just the stuff that Dr. Van Deusen taught. And so, he’s now been here seven years. I think he’s in his seventh year. Yeah. And I chaired the department for 20 years, and then trained him, and he took over chairmanship three years ago.

ID: Ok.

RP: And then I retired, last May as Mr. Kuld retired. Yeah, officially, but back part time; both of us. And, in the last seven years, we’ve continually added more and more responsibility to Harvey’s plate, to a point where he’s virtually full-time now…

ID: Right, that’s true.

RP: …teaching human anatomy labs, uh, teaching with me in the parasitology lab, and doing all the pre-med advising—all the pre-health care advising. That’s been really helpful, awesome. Since he’s come, I think, we’ve got 100% acceptance into med school.

ID: That’s amazing.

RP: That’s pretty impressive. But he completely changed the format, the way we recommend students, the shadowing program and getting students involved in other doctors and dentists and other situations in health care. And that gives them the experience and gives us something strong to write about.

ID: For sure. Could you talk a bit more about what that process looked like before Harvey came?

Pre-Medical Advising

Transition from college to university

RP: Oh, sure. Uh, the first student I had go to medical school was in my first year: Dr Jane Purman, now Anderson. She went to UCLA. At that time, students just got letters of recommendation from various faculty members—we didn’t really have anything organized, other than to write letters of recommendation, on top of them having to take the MCATs and do well in school. And Biola at the time was probably fewer than 3000 students, maybe about 2500 students or so. Quite small, maybe less than that. So, you know, who’s Biola? Nobody had heard of them, and it was always the ‘Bible Institute of Los Angeles.’ Well, we were Biola College; when I came, we still had to explain ourselves. And so the acronym, BIOLA, you know, coming from the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, we were continually referred to, still, as the ‘Bible Institute of Los Angeles’ College, you know (laughs). And, you know, we wanted to move away from that, and it wasn’t until Dr Chase, at the conclusion of his presidency, moved us to Biola University, that we really gained a broader and bigger national university kind of status. The Christian college, Christian university kind of label made a lot of sense. So, before Harvey came then, what we did have, we called the pre-med advisory committee, made up of faculty members in the sciences, particularly biology and chemistry, and any of us who had had a given student who was applying to medical school, we were on that committee. And we would do a mock interview of students who was preparing to interview for medical school…we would do a mock interview, and we would write a joint letter of recommendation, based on what we kind of thought they were looking for. We did go visit at least a couple of medical school admissions people. We went out to Loma Linda…this is an interesting story, the Loma Linda one. The guy who was chairman, or head of Admissions, at Loma Linda Med School in the mid ‘70s, was a guy named Dr Evard, who had just come from Union University in Lincoln Nebraska; he was an organic chemist. We, Jim Rynd and I, went out there. And, we introduced ourselves as coming from Biola and had to explain who Biola University, or Biola College, was at that time.

ID: Ok.

Loma Linda School of Medicine

RP: This probably was in about ’74, or ’75, something like that. And we said, “What kind of students are you looking for at Loma Linda University Med School?” And he said, “Well you know, we’re looking for students who are, um, not afraid to take a course in biblical studies and religion.” And we grinned and said, “Well, you know, Biola students take 30 units (and we had then and we still do now), take 30 units of Biblical studies and theology.”

ID: (laughs)

RP: “Oh, is that so?” And, he said, “You know, we also require out students to go to a chapel once a week.” (laughs). And, Jim and I looked at each other and grinned, because at that time our students were going to chapel 5 times a week.

ID: Every day, wow.

RP: Every day, they were required. And it was only a half-hour chapel.

ID: Okay.

RP: So, you know, later on we moved it to an hour long chapel and cut it down to three days a week, but still. So we said, “Oh, I don’t think our students would mind going to chapel once a week; they’ve been going five times a week.” …“Oh, is that so?” And about from that time on, Biola got, I would just say, we just got a few more students into Loma Linda, and it’s been sort of our go-to school. I would say we probably have, in the neighborhood of 25 or 30 students now who’ve graduated from the med school program. And we’ve got students who’ve gone on and gotten their doctorates in physical therapy from there, or they’ve done dentistry from there. So, you know, Biola is well-known and accepted at Loma Linda—but that was just a really funny, cool experience.

ID: Yeah, that’s cool.

Current and Past Faculty

Current Biology: Jason Tresser and Wendy Billock

RP: Okay, so I brought us up to currently, and our faculty now. When Mr. Kuld and I retired at the same time, we had two faculty positions open, and it was time for the department to look for new, young faculty. So, Dr Tresser was hired, and he was a logical choice, initially. He had come to Biola—after his bachelor’s at UC San Diego—he’d come to Biola looking for a Master’s in Apologetics, and he worked over at Talbot, and he also taught labs with Dr Van Deusen.

ID: Ah, interesting.

RP: So he had already got a sense of who we were here at Biola, in our department. And he already had a position at Santa Barbara, UC Santa Barbara, for his PhD. So when he finished his Master’s in Apologetics, he went on to Santa Barbara, worked on his PhD. And when we were looking I said, “I know where we’re going to look, we’re gonna see if Jason’s interested in coming back,” and he was just ready to finish up. And so, we were really glad that he was interested in applying, and he’s turned out to be just remarkable, I just think he’s great. And then Wendy just kind of fell in our laps for Marine Biology. She’s finishing her PhD at Loma Linda, she’s got some really gangbusters publications and some very heavy-hitting, uh, peer-reviewed journals on her research, and we’re really pleased with that. And then, it’s very obvious, you know, she’s been married to a minister, and it’s very obvious that her walk with the Lord is very strong. So, her integration area and skills fit, just really fit, though she hadn’t had much teaching experience; in fact, virtually none. So, she’s growing in that profession.

ID: Yes, yes.

Past Biology: Bolton Davidheiser

RP: Okay. So there’s biology, for the most part, from about ’68 or ’69, to now. Ruth can fill you in on some of the other…I’m sure it was Dr Bob Kuntz, Bob Kuntz was the man I replaced, I’m sure it was Kuntz. Ruth can fill you in on another lady, Miss Erton, who taught her while she was here in to ‘60s. And we also had another gentleman whose name was—and he was fairly well renowned, in the 50s—Dr Bolton Davidheiser. He had a doctorate of science—a D.Sc.—from Johns Hopkins.

ID: Man, that’s serious.

RP: Yeah. And he was one of the forerunners in the evolution-creation, uh, creation being taught in schools and text books and stuff like that, movement back in the 50s and on, from Bernard Graham on. Davidheiser was pretty big there. There are some anecdotal stories, I’ll tell you one—it’s anecdotal, you’d have to confirm this with some other people who…Dave Peters would know this.

ID: Okay.

RP: Um, at the time Nixon was running for election—strong Republican, and Biola is, you know, 90% Republican, maybe more than that—there was a young Democrats club on campus, and they got some posters that supported Kennedy. And, they were put up on campus. Davidheiser went around and ripped them down. He was actually seen ripping them down.

ID: Ah, yeah. Dave Peters mentioned this in an interview that was done…

RP: And, this guy was the biology professor (laughs), and he lost his job because of that.

ID: Wow.

RP: He basically, lost his job. I don’t know what the situation was in regards to tenure, and the like was, back in the in 50s and 60s, but you know, this was a pretty big deal (laughs), free speech, you know. And that just, rings a bell, ‘cause I’m registered Democrat, and it just, Dave and I just kind of chuckled about that for a good number of years.

ID: (laughs).

Past Chemistry: Robert Crawford

RP: Okay, when I was hired, in ’70, we had a Dean of Faculty, whose name was Robert Crawford, Dr Robert Crawford; he had a PhD in chemistry. He taught a couple of the chemistry courses. I know he taught nursing chemistry when I first came. And he was the one who interviewed me. I came with a beard.

ID: Good for you.

RP: And, he asked me if I wanted the job would I be willing to cut my beard off, because in those days your hair could not touch your ears, sideburns couldn’t come below your earlobes, and your mustache had to only come to your…corner of your lip, it couldn’t hang down, you know. And we’re talking hippie days, you know, I had just come from UC Santa Barbara, and I had been out and gotten tear gassed when they burned the Bank of America and stuff like that, and I was pretty into war protesting. So, of course I wanted the job, so I said “Sure, no big deal, I, you know, I’ll take it off.” And I used to grow it back every summer, show up on campus for faculty workshop before students came, with the beard, and then have to be reminded—on purpose, of course—from Dr Crawford that beards weren’t allowed and I had to cut it off before the students showed up. “Oh, sure I’ll do that!” That was a little bit of my rebel-ness, you know.

ID: (laughs) Good for you.

Past Physical Science Facultyh2. RP: But Crawford moved from Dean of the Faculty to a vice presidential role, and worked with Dr Chase for a good number of years. Pretty straight-laced guy. When I came…and I’ll take you back over to the other department now, because Dr Crawford was in Physical Sciences, into Chemistry. Dr Rynd and I came at the same time, he and I came in 1970, but before Dr Rynd was a chemist by the name of Dr Bordman, and Jim replaced him—Dr Rynd replaced him—and he was the only chemist who taught both Gen Chem and O. Chem for a good number of years, until probably in the 80s we hired the Coads, Dr and Dr Coad, to teach more of the chemistry. And so Jim got to just teach O. Chem, which was more of his specialty. So Jim came in…we had a science division, and the physics professor…just one physics prof at the time, was Dr Peter Kurtz, k-u-r-t-z. He’d come from UCLA, and had a PhD in ceramic engineering. But he taught all the physics courses. We didn’t have a physics major, we just had the physical science major, with an emphasis in physics if you wanted, and the pre-engineering program didn’t get started until Dr Bloom came. So he’s the one who developed that, and he just changed the whole nature of Physical Sciences, and of course since then we’ve added, you know, more faculty members, more chemists, more physicists and the like, and that’s been really exciting.

Just before I came, and he still hung on for just a couple years part-time, was a young man who just finished his PhD in nuclear physics at UCLA. His name was Steven…first name was Steven, I’ll think of his last name in a bit. He designed a system here in Bardwell Hall, the science building, and had it installed, of a closed-circuit television. So in the ‘70s, we had closed-circuit TV in 112, the big lecture hall, and in 2 or 3 of the labs upstairs, where there were these big televisions, black and white televisions hanging down from the ceiling. And you could go anyplace you wanted to in the building, and we had a portable…on a tripod, you could put in on a tripod, TV camera, and you could—what we would say now—stream live TV to any one of these rooms. You could have a demonstration going on in one room, and show it somewhere else.

ID: Really.Steve Grahamh3. RP: Yeah. It was old technology, and it’s been ripped out since…well you could find the plugs in the wall still, but its basically gone, because it was all black and white stuff. And we used to, when we had science fair, we used to actually do a demonstration of a, say, a frog dissection, and show it on the TV screens for everybody to see, and it was kind of fun to do. Steve…what was his last name? Anyway, he became the nuclear, um, medicine instructor at UCLA Med School, for anybody who was involved in doing, like, radioactive isotope uptake, radioactive iodine and things like that. He was the one responsible for educating all the doctors about nuclear medicine and monitoring radiation doses and stuff like that, so he went over there. But, he taught here for a couple years, taught the physical science class for a couple years, to pay back his sabbatical that he had had. Jim Rynd might remember his name, Ruth might remember his name, I just remember Steve…yeah.

ID: Okay, that’s fine.

RP: …Graham, Steve Graham.

ID: Steve Graham?

RP: Steve Graham. Just gradual, you know? (laughs). The old grey cells are just gradually fitting in there…yeah. And he was really a gangbusters kind of guy. He really did neat stuff. Okay. You might remember or know that this building, Bardwell, started out as a one-story.Bardwell Hallh2. ID: Oh, I didn’t know that.

RP: Okay. For at least one year, it was one story. It was built with two stories in mind, so that the roof was extra…supported, strong. So at least the year or maybe the year later, the second floor was put on. And, Ruth could tell you that there were faculty that assisted in building the building. You know, putting up drywall and stuff. When I came in ’70, downstairs—except for the general chem lab in the corner—the rest of the downstairs was nursing.

ID: Really?

RP: Nursing department had the downstairs of Bardwell Hall. And then they moved to what’s now the nursing facility that they’re in right now, Soubirou Hall, and we were able to take over the whole downstairs. So, chemistry—the organic chem lab—used to be a nursing lab, used to be two nursing labs, actually. We used to have a darkroom downstairs here as well.

ID: What was that used for?

RP: Well, we used it in…well it was actually, initially, what we call the people in Public Relations, which is now Integrated Marketing and Communications, MarCom. But they, any of the photography they did, they developed their own stuff in this little, professional darkroom. We thought we were going to get it for biology, it was ours for a year, and then, in order to make the O. Chem lab, you know, we took everything apart, and that lab was built in ’84, and so we basically consolidated a couple of the rooms into O. Chem. And um, that works good, I mean, they got a good facility out of that. So, when I came, my office was upstairs, and I shared it with a business professor, Ben Powell, who is now at Masters. So, there was Business in the science building, and Mathematics was in this building as well. Dr Thurber’s office was next to ours, and he came part-time in 1970, so math, biology, chemistry, physics and nursing, and a little bit of business, were all in this building together.

ID: (laughs) That’s a lot.

RP: So, you know, that says how small we were, and then as we grew, we obviously needed more office space and more classrooms, and gradually, you know, things have been modified, particularly upstairs, to the way they are today. Yeah. Um, Dr Davidheiser, by the way, going back to him, he lives just across Biola Avenue, or he lived just across Biola Avenue, and his sons came to Biola…I bought a bicycle from one of his sons…that’s trivia…and I used to see him on campus almost every other day, he used to go into the library. And regularly he would write notes to the librarian, who at that time was Mr. Gooden, castigating him for having books on evolution—or books that had an evolutionary bent. You know, and those were books that we as the biology and the physics and the chemistry people were recommending that the library buy…

ID: Yeah, you wanted…

RP: And he would just, he was just really upset about this. And yet, you know, Jerry Gooden who was the librarian at the time…pointed out to him that he wasn’t that mad at Biola, because he sent his kids here (laughs). So, it was like double-speak, you know. And, just some of these little inside political things that go along with who we are and who we’ve become—where we’ve come from, you know.

ID: It’s really, really interesting.

RP: Yeah, it’s really quite amazing. Um, Dr Bloom or Dr Rynd could probably clue you in on the importance of a faculty member we had here in the ‘50s whose name was Bernard Ramm, who left, I guess, probably in the late ‘50s. But he was one of the early thinkers in the creation-evolution debate, and has a historical book on that area, I mean it’s a true classic. And that was before our current doctrinal statement had been honed and refined to where it is now, when it came to creation-evolution issues. And even since Dr Bloom has come we’ve revisited that and rewritten that. So he and, uh, J.P. Moreland headed up that committee, on which I sat, and somebody from anthropology, and I forget who else…there were several other people there. And then, once we got it written up, we ran it by the people at Talbot even, double-whammy you know, and had Dr. Saucy look at it…look at a few things. But John Bloom was just remarkable in his research ability, to go back and try to understand the founding fathers’ framing of that doctrinal statement—what was actually a teaching position about creation-evolution—and the words that were used in it were phrases that aren’t used today, you know. So we had to sort of try to understand what they were…for and against (laughs). So, but the current statement now is a good deal more inclusive and exclusive. I mean, we give ourselves some latitude, but we define our terms a lot better.

ID: Interesting.

RP: Okay, I think I’ve covered the faculty that I’m aware of…yeah, I think I’ve covered the faculty that I’m aware of. Historically, from the mid-‘60s on.

ID: Ok, great.

RP: So, now your turn to ask questions. Okay?

ID: Alright. Yeah, so, I appreciate that. That gives me a really good framework for understanding how the science department has looked.

RP: Science departments.

ID: The biology…yes. Sorry, the biological science department and the physical science department (laughs).

RP: Yes, that’s right.Dr Payne's Education, Careerh2. Undergraduateh3. ID: Um, so I’d like to find out, I guess, a little bit more about your experience, and maybe also your opinions relating to the science departments.

RP: Okay.

ID: So, could you talk a little bit about your education?

RP: Sure. I went to a Christian high school, I did my bachelor’s at Westmont, in biology…

ID: Okay.

RP: My major advisor there recommended that I go into parasitology. I didn’t even know what a parasite was at that time. I did a senior seminar on the tapeworm, just to get exposed a little bit to parasitology, and I applied to several schools, was accepted to Penn State, K State, and the University of Nebraska, and…I eventually wound up at the University of Nebraska. Turns out, you know, short story, it still is the best place in the nation to study parasitology.

ID: Really?

RP: Yeah. It still is, it’s remarkable. The history that goes on there is truly remarkable, in terms of who has taught, who is known, and all that stuff. So, I went there for my masters, I was…studied the parasites of ducks, and I was there for three years. And, uh, discovered why I liked Southern California, yet again (laughs). I’d come from Washington State—Nebraska is just not the place to be in the winter-time, and in the summer time it’s not a whole lot better (laughs).

ID: (laughs) That’s true.Graduateh3. RP: So I wound up having…my major professor was a world’s expert on fish parasites. And the study of parasitology is one where you can go out and collect the parasites from wherever you want, and bring them back to whatever school you’re at, and do the research there, write them up—in those days it was describing new species, and discussing where in the world these parasites were found, so some zoogeography and things like that. So, here I’ve been trained by a fish parasitologist, and I said “What am I doing in Nebraska? Let me get back to Santa Barbara!”

ID: Yeah.

RP: So I went back…I got an NIH, National Institutes of Health traineeship at the University of California Santa Barbara, studying with another world-renowned parasitologist, Dr. Noble. And I was at UC Santa Barbara for three years, from 1967 until 1970. Um, I had collected the parasites that I was studying for my PhD in the summer of ’67 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And, the woman I had collected them with had come from Nebraska, and this was her first grant, so we were collecting parasites together. And I took what were known as the monogenes, the gill parasites of the fishes we had been studying, with me to Santa Barbara. So, in 1970 I had passed my comprehensives, my qualifying exams, my comprehensives, my language exams, and my committee had approved my dissertation topic and outline, so all I had to do—all (laughs)—was write my dissertation. But, I got the call from Les Eddington, here at Biola, saying “would I be interested in, uh, applying for a position here at Biola?” “Well, sure!”

ID: Wait, how in the world did they…hear about you?Teaching at Biolah3. RP: How did he know about me? Oh, good. Thank you for asking that question. Okay. Side bar: In Nebraska, working on my masters…my wife Jan is a singer. She’d never taken a voice lesson in her life, but had a gorgeous voice. She, um, auditioned for singing with this great singing group, the University Singers, and her first voice teacher back there, Mr. Jenkins, was just marvelous, still a great friend of ours. At the same time, she also auditioned tossing in the University opera, never having sung opera in her life.

ID: Wow.

RP: And, we were sitting on the bench in the music building, waiting for her to go in and audition for the opera, when one of the graduate students in voice stopped by and said, “Oh, hello, are you a new student?” And Jan said “Yeah.” And, “Are you auditioning for the opera?” “Yes, I am.” “Um, and do you know, of course, that all the lead roles are taken, and are you auditioning just for the chorus?” “Well, no, I’m just going to audition.” Well, after her audition, a week later they put out who got each part. Well, the opera was Carmen, Bizet’s Carmen, and Jan got the lead role of Carmen.

ID: (laughs) That’s wonderful.

RP: Opposite her was a young man whose name was Wilmar Wall, w-a-l-l. And Wilmar was also the first tenor on the Back to the Bible Broadcast Quartet. A Christian, in voice, working on his masters at the University of Nebraska. Wilmar left Nebraska in ’67, or ’68, and came to Biola University, Biola College, to teach voice. And he and his wife, Marge, and Jan and I remained friends while we were in Santa Barbara and they were here, in La Mirada—we were going back and forth and phoning and having dinners every once in a while, and Wilmer became good friends of Mr. Eddington, in biology. So at the time, biology was looking for a faculty member, Wilmar said, “You need to call Rafe Payne, up at Santa Barbara, to see if he’d be interested in applying for the job. We know he’s a Christian, we know he’s got good background, and so on.” And they weren’t requiring anybody, at that time in biology, to have a PhD, although I was very close. So, there’s the connection.

ID: Wow. Can I just say, that’s amazing how the Lord orchestrated that.

RP: It is, and we look at how the Lord orchestrated that…we can go back to that moment, sitting in the hallway, Jan auditioning for the opera, and realize, that point in our lives is what brought me to Biola. You know, about 4 years later. Crazy, crazy. And we have multiple of those, you know, in our lives, that just say…confirm regularly, that we should be here, we were supposed to be here, and things like that. By the way, just another sidebar, that connection with Wilmar, and Back to the Bible Broadcast…when I went back to do my PhD, finish my PhD at University of Nebraska—we’ll get back to that in a bit—Jan became the voice instructor and the soprano soloist for Back to the Bible Broadcast, a lifelong dream of hers.

ID: Really.

RP: And she recorded a lot of songs with them, and recorded a cassette, or a CD, and it was a high point in her Christian ministry, up to that point…singing with the broadcast, which had had roots 20 years before. You know, it was just incredible the way this has worked out.

ID: What a blessing.PhD Workh3. RP: Okay. So, I came to Biola with all but my dissertation in 1970. And, in the summertime I would work on my dissertation a little bit, trying to get the research and writing done, but I had no real good direction, and my major professor from Santa Barbara was not a driver, not a pusher. Just a good guy, just a really good guy, but just not the kind of guy that would, you know, make you feel guilty for not doing it. So, even when we got a new academic vice president who wanted me to finish my doctorate, and took me out of the classroom…in 1977 took me out of the classroom, and gave me an office over in the administration building and said, “Sit here and write for the rest of the semester, and get your dissertation done.” And I just thought, ah man, there’s hardly any hope that I’ll actually get it done. We actually applied for a couple extensions, and eventually, it didn’t get done, and I washed out of the Santa Barbara program. Fast forward, 1982-3-4. We have a new provost, our first provost, Dr Fisher. They rewrite the, um, guidelines for promotion, at Biola, and Dr Fisher along with Dr Thurber had rewritten the promotion guidelines, which basically said you cannot become a full professor unless you have a doctorate in those areas in which the doctorate in the terminal degree. In art, it would be different, it would be the Masters in Fine Arts, but for me, it’s a PhD. Oh man, and I had always hoped that I was going to become a full professor, you know, and I’d been moved up to Associate Professor, and I was sitting there. And right about the same time, the lady who I’d collected with at Scripps, who was back at Nebraska, called me and said Rafe, I want you to get that stuff done and published. And I wasn’t really anxious to do it, but she said, “You know, what if we could get you your PhD along the way?” I said, “Well that would make a lot of difference, because, you know, the University would love that, as well as, you know, it’d be great.” She said, “Well, let’s see what we can do.” So at that time Dr Norman, Ed Norman was the uh, Dean of the Faculty. I went to him and I said, “I’ve got this opportunity to go back to the University of Nebraska and finish my Ph.D.” His eyes light up, and he restarts my sabbatical clock, so I could start over again. They paid for my out-of-state tuition, and allowed me to have half-salary while I was gone—they treated it like a sabbatical. So, we moved back to Nebraska for 1984. I was there for one year, and two summers. University of Nebraska accepted a lot of my PhD study coursework, they accepted the fact that I’d passed qualifying exams, but they require that you do half of your PhD at the inst—at the university—half of your coursework has to be at the university. So, in one year and two summers I took 42 units of PhD studies…

ID: (laughs)

RP: …Just, just killer. It was not…all that hard, it was a hardship, but most of the stuff I took, since I’d been teaching for 15 years already…

ID: You knew it?

RP: I, yeah, I kind of knew some of that stuff. I was behind in the field of parasitology, ‘cause I’d let it slip. But, they wanted me, as a grad student, because I already had a job, and I was tenured. So it’s going to look good on Nebraska’s record that they’ve got another tenured faculty member at a university who’s got a Ph.D. from Nebraska. They didn’t have to pay any tuition—I wasn’t on a fellowship or anything—I just wound up going back for that year. And my committee allowed me to take half of my comprehensives here at Biola. Because I was there for one year and two summers, and I came back at the end of the summer and started teaching again full-time in ’85, but they sent the comprehensive exam questions here and I wrote on them, and sent them back. Except for two professors, said “No, we want you to come back to the university and sit at a desk and sweat,” (laughs) literally. And so, you know, I went back and took those two questions from those guys. And then, during the course of the time I was able to publish four or five papers describing some new species that were in my dissertation, and got through my dissertation quite nicely, and everybody was just really happy. I finished in eighty…excuse me, in ’90 or…I think it was…1991, was when I actually, December, was when I actually got the final signed off and all that stuff. So, you know that’s a long trip to get a PhD, but I’ll tell you one thing Iani, the blessing of going back after I’d been teaching for 15 years, was I was reintroduced to what it was like to sit on the other side of a lectern. I’d been teaching for 15 years, and I’d kinda forgot what y’all go through ,you know, with the threat of exams, with new literature, with new language, in each class you take, you know.

ID: Yes.

RP: So I took courses, I took a course in paleo…marine biology and paleoecology, and I…I had no idea what the language of ecology—of paleontology was about. And, that was just, uh, an eye-opener to me. And it gave me a whole lot more empathy, to the student on the other side of the desk, you know. That they’re sitting there taking notes, and trying to figure out what in the world does this guy want, and at a graduate level it’s even more…you know… the younger graduate students were just scared spit-less about messing up on any professor’s exams, because they knew their livelihood and their jobs kind of depended on that stuff. And I was kind of scared because I didn’t know that to expect from some of my professors, although I had known a couple of them from several years before, I had never really had them as teachers. But, I turned out to get lifelong friends, anyway…that was just another result of being back at Nebraska, and seeing how good that program is. The other thing it did is it taught me how to write.

ID: Really.

RP: It taught me how to write, in the sciences particularly, and the value of writing in general. My first paper that I submitted for publication was only 11 pages of manuscript, and I submitted it to the journal, and they sent it out to peer review, so two reviewers review it, and then send back their comments, and the editor sends them to me. One reviewer had…two or three comments. It wasn’t very much. “Fix this, fix that, okay.” The other reviewer had six pages of comments, on an 11 page manuscript.

ID: Oh, my.

RP: That’s what I said. I told Mary Lou, my major advisor, I said, “I don’t need this grief. What am I doing this for?” She said, “It’s not a personal attack. The people in the discipline want the discipline to be relevant and good and quality. So anybody who writes and publishes in this journal, they want it to be up to certain standards. And the person who—(and it was anonymous, although I know who it was now)—the person who reviewed this really has a strong sharehold or stake in the discipline. So don’t take it personally, but just respond to each one of the comments. If you accept it, adjust. If you disagree, tell the editor why and send it back.” So we worked through it, and you know, a month or so later I sent it back to the editor, and it gets published.

ID: Okay.

RP: Uh, probably two months later, I receive in the mail from that editor, a manuscript, from somebody else who has submitted a manuscript to the journal to be published. And I said, “Mary Lou, how come I’m getting a manuscript to review? I’m just a peon! I published one paper. Why is Ralph sending me this manuscript?” She said, “Because you took the effort to respond carefully to each one of those comments, he knows that you will be as careful with this paper as somebody was with yours.”

ID: You showed that you had a high standard…

RP: Yeah, and that I knew what standards that the actual journal was looking for. So I tore that paper apart (laughs).Academic Standards at Biolah2. ID: Good for you. That’s really important and that actually brings me to something I’ve been wanting to ask you about, which is, how do you…uh I guess there’s two questions. One is, how do you feel about the state of the biological sciences department now, in terms of academic standards, how do you think it compares to other schools, what would you like to improve?

RP: Yeah. Well, let me back up to my days at Westmont. Because I went to a small Christian college, and then went to a major university for both my masters and my PhD start and then finish, I had the contrast of what Christian colleges are…have to…in a sense, put up with, or what they have to actually use and do in order to produce what they do. Mostly in the area of facilities, and supplies and equipment. So when I got to Biola, I was more or less prepared, from my Westmont experience 6 years before, what it would be like to teach in that kind of environment. Actually I got a chance at Westmont, while I was at Santa Barbara, to teach a marine biology class for them. Um, I knew we would have limited budget, limited space, and maybe students—while they were very committed to the Lord—may have been not as well-prepared. Not that Biola was their second choice, but that frequently, the cream of the crop in the sciences was going other places. You know, the UCLAs and the other major universities, even the Cal States. So, I came understanding what I was coming to in terms of equipment, space, resources. And I came able to speak the language of the student, which still is probably the most important…the integration area…I think is still the most important for new faculty coming.

ID: And that was also due to your experience at Westmont?Integration of Christianityh3. RP: Being a Christian for a long time, seeing how integration worked at Westmont, seeing how we grew into that here at Biola. Frequently, initially, it was the Bible department, and everybody else. And, we kinda, you know, you learned this in Bible, but there wasn’t a lot of spin-off or…integration. You know, other than, and it’s not really integration to pray at the beginning of a class, or to be available for a student to advise them, whether it’s personal issues, or….

ID: That’s not integrating the subject matter.

RP: Yeah, not. Not at all. And I grew into that, I actually grew into that, because, surrounded by other Christian science guys, I was confronted with a variety of different opinions about the philosophical, apologetic kind of issues that revolve around biology and the sciences. And so, my faith grew that way because I had delved into those issues—particularly creation-evolution—delved into those issues early on, and then why I felt or believed what I did wasn’t really solidified, crystallized. And I’ve changed my mind multiple times since then. So that’s about the professor side, but where we are as an institution…because, for so long, it was, the only thing you could do as a Christian who was going into the sciences was become a doctor…

ID: Yeah.

RP: …It was almost a stigma if you chose to go into some other field in the sciences, like, “What are you doing that for, you can’t glorify the Lord by studying hummingbirds.” You know, other than teach at another Christian college or something, but…and that frustrated me a lot. Because, I’d been at major universities. And actually, my major professor at Nebraska is a Christian. Now, her faith is generally parked outside the laboratory door when she walks in—she doesn’t integrate her faith. But she’s a remarkable woman, and I came to appreciate her recognizing her faith as a deep personal one. There was another faculty member at Nebraska who was a really vibrant, evangelical Christian. He taught…agricultural genetics, mostly chicken genetics (laughs). And John and I—his name was John Brumbaugh—John and I had some good conversations about what it was like to be a Christian in that hothouse environment of evolution. So I could see that kind of balance that he was…balancing act that he was going through, versus what I didn’t have to worry about at Biola, and my faith could grow here. I always felt that, you know, we could do good research with students, if they wanted to, and it didn’t have to be high tech stuff, at least initially. Now, I will admit that the day of descriptive, just pure descriptive science is pretty much gone. That’s what I did, I was describing new species, I discovered new stuff, and I was just describing it.

ID: Classical biology.

RP: Yeah, classical biology. But now, the stakes are much higher. To be competitive, you need to be trained in the molecular techniques, you need to understand modern physics, you need to have opportunities to work in those areas. And, that’s been slow in coming.

ID: Here?Improvement of academic standardsh3. RP: Yeah, here at Biola. It’s been exciting since Dr Bloom came, and then when Dave Lee was here for a while, and since then we brought in John Silzel, and we brought in Brent Ridley, and those guys are just, you know, they’re cutting edge kinda guys, too, and they’re really exciting to be around. So, Biola’s paying much more attention to the qualifications—discipline-wise—than they did in the past. Now we’ve got Jason, who’s got strong credentials in developmental biology, and that’s just really exciting. And Matt too, he’s had a lot of experience in sort of the high tech biological stuff. But then we bring in Wendy, who continues the tradition of organismal biology, and looking at, you know, marine organisms, or just vertebrates in general, and that’s really good. Granted, our health-science program has just ballooned—it’s gotten a kick in the pants from kinesiology when we got Marc…Apkarian down there who’s got a research background, and he’s building into the P.E., Kinesiology, Health and Physical Education people the sense that you do research…unless you’re just simply a jock, you need to be thinking in Physical Education, Health and Kines, what it means to…how we got this information, how you do…doing your sciences in that area. So, with Harvey bringing together the health careers, physical therapy, even occupational therapy, bringing some of the nursing back in, kinesiology and our pre-med, pre-dent, pre-vet stuff, it begins to take off. So yeah, you could still say, you know, you can do a lot of great stuff as a doctor for the Lord. And I like that—I like that we’ve strengthened that a lot, I’m glad that we can now stand face-to-face with a Westmont. Westmont has historically been, academically, head and shoulders above us in the sciences.

ID: Interesting.

RP: Even though they’re tiny, you know, even though they’re a small school, 1200 max, their faculty are able to get grants to do research, and they get their students involved in research. Now, we can’t go outside to get external funding that’s tied to the government, but we’ve got a lot of other ways to approach that. And I can see now that, with the faculty on this campus agreeing that the sciences need a shot in the arm, so that our…four years ago, I was thinking, “A new science building is ten or fifteen years away. Everybody else is crying for it.” And then, three years ago, or two years ago, all of a sudden, the science building is second on the list. And that’s in agreement across the faculty. I mean, granted, performing arts people are looking at the need for a better facility, so that the arts program has got a building that they’re gonna be going for, but the sciences, you know, with nursing, biology, chemistry, physics, speech pathology, and kinesiology all having a stake together in similarities and prerequisites, that’s got a real…and the idea that these are marketable careers. That we can get people into the sciences is just really good.Important benefactors of Biola sciencesh3. ID: Where do you think that awareness and enthusiasm that you had described as ‘across campus’ has come from?

RP: Oh, two people I could put at the top of that list. And that’s Dr Stangl, our Dean of Sciences, and Harvey.

ID: Really, okay.

RP: And after that, Carol Taylor, who was our Vice Provost of Undergraduate until last year, and Barry Corey. When Carol was here, she was so supportive of Harvey’s efforts to bring together this health-care coalition, and Walt was just pushing on this. And, then the next thing, we get a new president, and he says, “Even in this era of downturn economics, I want the University to pick five new programs and send me—in a sense, mandates—from five new programs, that say ‘We are not going to fall behind, we are going to push forward,’ and I’m going to set aside, three-quarters of a million dollars to get five new programs off the ground.” And the new health-care thing is one of them, and surprise of all surprises, I told Walt, over a year ago, that before I retired I would give him a curriculum in environmental science, an area I had become interested in, because, when I got sick, I kept asking the Lord, “What am I supposed to do?” Now that I can’t do what I though I was going to do in retirement, like go around the world and scuba dive everywhere, you know, what am I supposed to do? And it just, seemed like, coming back to me all over the place were these opportunities to speak and to formulate thoughts, and talks and lectures and things about creation, and creation care. The last two summers I’ve been exposed to some quality guys and gals, up at the AuSable Institute of Environmental Studies, that just kept me thinking more and more about creation care. So, while I was up at AuSable last summer—I had already retired—I finally wrote out the curriculum proposal, just kind of a rough outline, so to speak.New Environmental Science Majorh3. ID: Just to clarify, it’s an environmental studies major?

RP: Yeah, major in environmental science. B.S. in environmental science. And I came back this fall, this last fall, gave it to Walt, and said “I’m out of here.” He said, “No you’re not. The president has said to admissions, pick five areas that you think would be areas that the people out there are looking for. What kind of questions are you…‘Oh, you don’t have a major in this or this or this?’” And one of them was environmental studies or science. He said, “So now that’s on a fast track, and we’re going to meet together this fall and this spring with Admissions, MarCom, Finance, Registrar, Academics—Matt Cruzen, myself and Dr Stangl—and we’re going to put together a proposal that then goes to the Council of Instructional Deans, goes to the President’s Advisory Council…the PAC, and eventually winds up at the President’s desk, that says, “Here’s what were planning on doing.”

ID: That’s really exciting.

RP: And that’s happened. We’ve had several meetings, and that’s happened. In fact, here’s the first, no this is the second draft, and I’m now responsible for finishing this off. During this summer and up until next fall I’m going to write the actual course descriptions of the new courses that have to go into the catalog, and then next fall I’ve been appointed as interim director of the program—I’m not getting out of here—interim director of the new environmental science major, and I’m supposed to spearhead the faculty search. We’ve been authorized to hire one new faculty, completely new, who would teach environmental science. And, while we have several courses that we would like to have taught here, this person may not be able to teach all of them, but certainly the introductory course and maybe something in his or her specialty. So, that’s just, you know, something that has been really exciting to see Barry Corey say, “We’re not going to sit back and wait until we come out of this economic slump. We need to be looking forward.”

ID: Yeah, that’s monumental.

RP: Don’t, you know, get in a trench and wait, let’s get out there…you know, here on the West Coast, there really aren’t that many schools that have an environmental science major. Loma Linda does, Westmont has an option that allows you to emphasize that, but it’s not a full-on major. Azusa doesn’t have anything…our competition doesn’t really have anything. Vanguard is really hurting right now, Cal Baptist has got something going, but we’ve got the opportunity to get something right now, and really push it. It’s kind of scary, because I’m kind of the architect of it, but Walt has helped tremendously. So like I said, Harvey and Walt, Carol before she left a couple years ago, and then Barry since he’s been here has been driving this…this bus, and we can’t hardly get off, you know.BIOLA-BAJA Programh2. Beginningsh3. ID: That’s great. Let me just check the time, I don’t want to keep us going for too long. Um, okay. Well let me wrap up with a few more questions. One of the things that you’ve done that’s been really big, since you’ve been here, is develop the Biola-BAJA program. And, I wanted to hear a little bit about how that got started, and…

RP: Yeah, okay. This developed out a program we had called the Whale Watch program. Where I would take Biola students on Monday nights—I think it was Mondays—and we would drive down to San Pedro…what happened is I took my Marine Biology class down to San Pedro to go grunion hunting one night, and uh…it’s not like snipe hunting, there really are a fish called grunion that come out on the beach at night—went down there and I met this crazy guy, this interesting man named John Boldeen, who was the Director of the Education Program at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, and John said “Come back in the fall, and bring your students back, and we have this thing called the Whale Watch program where we train students to become ship board instructors for grade school students who go out whale watching.” And back in the mid-‘70s, I think it started in ’74, in the mid-‘70s it was 50 cents a student to go whale watching for a couple hours. The fishing boats are dead during the winter, so this more than paid for things. So I started taking students down there, until 1980…but…okay, before then, or during that time, I became really close friends with—he’s now my best friend—an instructor at Glendale College—his name is Lane McDonald, and he also was bringing his students down from Glendale to San Pedro to do the whale watch thing. And he had a summer field program in Baja. He began it in 1974, and I met him in ’76, and we started doing really cool things…and so 1978, in January of 1978 we took our first class to Baja, along with his group fro Glendale and a bunch of other people from the Whale Watch program, we spent eleven days during spring break—this is before we actually had Interterm—the year before. We spent 11 days down watching whales, and in those days, Connie Chung, who became a news anchor in a national news network, she was a Cub reporter, and she flew down, and we had 85 people on this trip to Baja.

ID: Wow, a huge success.

RP: (laughs) I’ll never do that again, but in 1979, we developed the Interterm program. While Lane was taking students in the summertime, I said “Oh, wow. Nobody’s down there in January, and that’s when the whales are down there. Let’s go.” So, I checked…I had a group, about 22 students—some were alumni and some were students—all set to go in January of ’79, and then it rained like crazy and the roads washed out in Baja, and so we wound up going to mainland Mexico down to…as far south as Guaymas. We didn’t see any whales, but we went…we went clear down to…here (showing on map). Came out here first, and drove down here, and then drove down here, and then drove back. And we did a carpool kind of thing, we didn’t even use school vehicles.

ID: And this was purely extracurricular at the time?

RP: No, they were getting credit for it.

ID: Oh, they were.

RP: Yeah, they were getting credit for it, yeah it was an Interterm class. It wasn’t called Natural History of Baja, I think we gave them Directed Studies credit for it, and like bird-watching credit and things like that we had on the books…ornithology credit. So that was ’79, and then in ’80, we started taking students down into Mexico—into Baja. And we went over and watched grey whales at Guerrero Negro and used the field station in the Bay of Los Angeles, where Lane had his field station, we started using it in January. And then…and I was still taking students down to San Pedro during the week, during the regular semesters. Well, my son Luke was born in 1982, and I didn’t want to leave home for that whole evening anymore, so I figured I could teach this marine mammals class myself here on campus. So I started doing that and continued the Baja program, and it just grew and grew and grew. When I went back to do my Ph.D. at Nebraska, I met an old friend back there who was teaching at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Glenn brought his students from Nebraska, for ten years he brought his students out to Baja, and went with us down to Baja. And so, we had Biola students, and Nebraska Wesleyan students interacting together, which was really quite a phenomenon, for 10 years. For two of those years, we had one of my professors from Nebraska join our class—his name was John Janovy—and he had written several books that were important in my life, and I invited him to come to Baja, and so he wrote that book about Biola’s Baja program.

ID: Wow, I had no idea.

RP: Yeah, he wrote that book about his two years’ experience in January going with Glenn and myself down to Baja, and we’ve remained friends for all these years, in fact I just emailed him not long ago telling him that we were retiring, Jan was retiring and we were having a big party down…we bought a house, in Baja, right near where the field station is, and inviting people to come down for two weeks. They can come whenever they want to and leave whenever they have to, and we’ll just enjoy, you know, telling old stories…I’ve got at least 30 people showing up. (laughs)

ID: That’s super.

RP: I don’t have to house them, fortunately. We’re going to feed them a couple of times, so…yeah. So, for 31 years, then I taught…I took classes to Baja. I’ve had students from Pacific Christian College, which is now Hope, I’ve had students form St. Olaf College, from Greenville College, from Westmont, from Azusa, a variety of different schools join us. And, so it kinda got a little bit of a reputation. But, when we hired Wendy, she wasn’t in a position where she really felt comfortable about learning how to do Baja, and this last January, just this January 2009 was essentially the last Baja that’ll every happen, I think.

ID: Really?Art students in Bajah3. RP: Yeah. 10 years, 12 years ago I started taking art students down, and that was really a great experience for me. Just, opened things up for us in terms of the way we look at nature. And then, for a couple years we took sociology students down, and Dick Flory brought his sociology students down. …since nobody wanted to pick it up, and all of how to do it is up in my head—I have not written out any instructions—and I was just hoping our new professor would like to accompany us and we could just show what we do and I could teach her, that’s not going to happen. The last four years I’ve used one of our alumni, alumnae, Karen Rittervald, and she’s flown from Norway to join us…

ID: No way!

RP: …yeah, and she’s been my teacher, she’s been my instructor, because I have not been able to do a lot of the fieldwork that we do, and so she takes them off on the field trips. And when we’re around the campfire, or when we’re at the field station we do lectures, and I can do those, but doing the hiking stuff I just don’t have the ability to hike out, on rough terrain and stuff like that. Karen would be the logical choice to continue the program, but to bring her back from Norway, it still requires somebody to set it all up here ahead of time. To organize the class, to select the students, to get them run through the off-campus program, and then eventually make all the arrangements for the transportation—renting vans and stuff—and then, you know, having her come and do it has just been an absolute Godsend over the last few years, so…she and her husband are even coming this summer, back to the reunion down in Baja, which will be kind of fun. But we’re gonna sit there on the beach and at the house, and just kind of, tell lies, and old stories…

ID: (laughs) fish stories?

RP: Yeah, fish stories, whale stories, stuff like that. Um, so in some ways it’s a disappointment that the program is gone. It was the longest running off-campus program in Biola’s history.

ID: That’s amazing.Longest running off-campus program=

RP: I know that Ron did the, uh, Jerusalem, or Israel program for about 19 years, 17 or 19 years, but you know, we eclipsed that by quite a bit. We were distinct in that area, unique—there’s no other school that does that or did that. Vanguard had a program in Baja for a few years, but then they quit doing that, so…yeah. It became my life, it really did. I kind of lived for it, in the sense of the fall, getting the class ready, and then we did the class, it was great, and then you kind of fed off of it during the spring, and just kind of did that, so…you know, Luke was down there when he was 4 months old and he’s just loved the place, and we finally found a place that was right close to our field station that we could buy, and I own it with the people who own the SEARCHER, and they’re really close friends of mine. Jan and I are there far more than Art and Celia, they can only come down for a week or maybe two at the most in any given year, while he still runs the boat, so…we’re looking forward to retiring down there, for two months at a time and then come back up here, spend time, and even next year while I’m interim director of environmental science I’ll probably spend a month or two down there and then come back so I’m here when students need to pre-reg, I’m here during the orientation and pre-reg, and then I’ll come back in the spring and do the same kinds of things, and be here for University Day and stuff like that, so we can boost the environmental science major.

ID: Yeah, Baja is such a neat place, it’s too bad…

RP: Yeah, it really is a unique environment, entirely unique environment. Once you get past the border, down you know, far enough into the peninsula, you realize that you’re…pretty isolated. It’s pretty spectacular to be driving along for hours at a time and not seeing a vehicle and not seeing a person…there are still places like that, not too far from us in the world. And there’s beauty there too. It’s a unique, desert beauty, but it’s still, in terms of wildlife and marine life, it’s pretty spectacular. Yeah, so that’s Baja, come and gone (laughs).

ID: Great. Thank you for that overview. Well, there’s so much to cover, Rafe, you know so much about the sciences departments, and I really appreciate…

RP: Yeah, and if you read through this stuff, think through it, and you have any other questions, email me first, or give me a call and we can sit and talk some more. Because I’m on campus three or four days a week, you know. So, yeah, I plan on being around for a while longer, anyway. We’re not selling the house here…

ID: Thanks so much, Rafe, this has been really helpful.

RP: Yeah, anytime, of course.