firsthand
Oral History Transcript
NARRATOR: Ruth Ebeling
INTERVIEWER: Iani Dunbar
DATE: May 8, 2009
Creationism and Evolution
Dr. Bolton Davidheiser
Iani Dunbar: It’s May 8th, 2009, my name is Iani Dunbar. I’m going to be interviewing Professor Ruth Ebeling.
Ruth Ebeling: I realized in thinking about it, Bolton Davidheiser was around a long time, before Biola moved out to this campus, so there must have been a science department downtown. So, I don’t know what it looked like—the only reason I remember that, my dad always used to complain about his name, because he wanted to call him David Boltonheiser, because it seemed more logical to him than Bolton Davidheiser did (laughs).
ID: That seems more logical (laughs).
RE: But, he was chair, and he was chair when I came as a student.
ID: Of the…biological sciences?
RE: Mmhmm, of biological sciences. Well, I don’t know that it was divided at that point, so there was like a science department. And he, um, he was your typical absent-minded professor. He would do things, and forget what he was doing. One day, my friend went up to ask him a question after class and he had forgotten to shave half his face. (laughs)
ID: Oh no! (laughs)
RE: So, just…yeah. He was really interested in cat anatomy, and he was actually writing a cat anatomy book. I don’t know whether it ever got finished and published, because he got real interested in creation-evolution issues, and he…one of the reasons he left was because he felt Biola wasn’t narrow enough on that issue.
ID: He was a strong creationist?
Biblical Inerrancy
RE: Right, very short…uh, young earth, very short time, that kind of thing. And, some of…some people….we allow a range of opinions about the origin of the earth. We don’t allow you not to say that God…didn’t…you have to say God created, you have to hold that position that God created, because if you don’t hold that position, then the whole rest of Christianity falls apart. If God didn’t create the earth, then how did sin come about, and if sin didn’t come about by a Fall, if Adam and Eve aren’t real people, then Jesus was a liar, and Paul too because many things are related…comparisons he makes are related back to the Fall. You know, for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. Well if Adam isn’t real, then being made alive in Christ isn’t real, either. So, you have problems on all sides. So, the institution is very strong on that, but you don’t have to believe it was only 6000 years ago. And in our department right now we have a range of belief. Of people, who, you know…I happen to be, probably not 6000, but I know it wasn’t a million either. I tend to be the 10-20,000 year range. But that, just, because you don’t have to be really narrow on it, and I also happen to believe that things are going to, if you use carbon dating you’re probably going to date very old if they were pre-Flood. Because there was something different back then.
ID: Yeah, chemical changes occurred.
RE: And so, there probably wasn’t as much carbon-14 in the air, and so anybody, anything alive at that time, from our basis of looking at it would date very, very old.
ID: So, do you think Dr. Davidheiser’s extreme creationism was helpful for Biola’s development at that time?
RE: I don’t recall it having a real impact on the individual students, you know…when you’re at that stage, you don’t care. I was pre-med, I thought I was going to be a doctor, and so it didn’t matter to me how old the earth was. You didn’t have to know that to treat patients. Now, when you’re teaching it’s a whole different issue, you have to know more about that, but when you’re planning to be a doctor, you don’t care. And I think God wanted me to apply to medical school; I don’t think he wanted me to go.
Education and Teaching
Undergraduate Studies
ID: So you did apply to medical school?
RE: Yes.
ID: So, you had your bachelor’s in biological science?
RE: Right. And I was on a waiting list. When I applied, that was just at the time that they were beginning to change and accept more women, and I was basically told if I had applied the next year I would’ve gotten in. I had started teaching and I liked that, and I didn’t look back.
ID: What year did you graduate?
RE: ’69.
ID: ’69, okay.
Teaching Experience
RE: So then I went, and taught high school for three years before I came back to this area.
ID: I see. So after teaching high school, you began teaching at Biola part time?
RE: Well, I was originally hired as Laboratory Coordinator, kind of supervising the stockroom and things like that. And then they needed somebody to do the chemistry labs, so I did that, and then somebody had to teach nursing chem lectures, so I did that. And then all of a sudden I was teaching a full load (laughs). Well, and I started with just a bachelor’s. I had a lot of post-graduate units, and I hold a standard secondary credential, so people like that…and then I started, at that same time I was teaching at the Chiropractic College, because I was in a position that was unpaid over the summer…
ID: Here at Biola?
RE: Here at Biola, so I had to have…food in the summertime. So, they called down here and they needed somebody to teach some classes, and I picked up five classes that year in their night school. So, until the night school got cancelled by the state, I taught full-time there and full-time here.
ID: Wow. How long were you at the Chiropractic College?
RE: 20 years. Partway through that time, about two-thirds of the way through, the state decided, in their infinite wisdom, that night students weren’t as serious as day students, ‘cause chiropractic is really narrowly, um, looked at. It’s looked at…it’s getting more valid now, but it was looked at as semi-invalid at the time. And so the state is very restrictive for them. So they…they decided that night students weren’t serious so they refused to give permission to have night classes. And so, now all chiropractic college is day…I mean, they might have one night class or something, but the school is basically a daytime school, not a whole…because they had a total curriculum in the day and a total curriculum in the night, previously…and they don’t do that anymore.
Advancement at Biola
ID: I see. So, you mentioned, um, you mentioned you were teaching chemistry lab, and pre-labs for nursing…or, something about nursing.
RE: No, I started out in the chemistry side, and then I did nursing chem. When nursing started growing…so, when I was a student here, nursing wasn’t a separate thing. There wasn’t a nursing department. Biola had a school of missionary medicine, in the past, and I don’t know if it was still going on right at that time—the idea was that the missionaries could come back and get enough training, so if you’re out in the boonies, you have the knowledge you need to survive simple stitching up, and you know, if you have to…if you’ve got severe cuts and things like that, you could take care of that. It wasn’t surgery, but you could sew up a wound, or you could handle pregnancies, and delivery and that kind of stuff. And then they decided to change it to a nursing school, and when they did that, they took courses here, but their actual nurse’s training, actual in–hospital training was through County USC Medical Center, and so they were actually USC students, in a sense. But since they were Biola students, Dr Soubirou insisted that they take a Bible class. And I know about this part, because my sister had a B.S. in biological sciences, and then she went into the nursing program. And they had to make up Bible classes for her, because she had taken all the Bible classes. So, they had to come on campus because Soubirou wanted them to have that connection, with the campus. And then finally the department grew into a full-fledged program, and that would have probably been about ’69. Because in ’68, late ’68 or ’69, that’s when they put the second floor on this building.
ID: Right, right.
Facilities in the Science Department
Labs
RE: So, the O. Chem lab, when I was here, was biology, and then the chem lab was chemistry. All the chemistry was there, and the O. Chem lab was biology. And then, we did a dissection in a Quonset hut down by the soccer field. Actually, our classroom floated away one year, because it flooded (laughs).
ID: (laughs) Oh no!
RE: That was, you know, that happened, because it used to flood down there a lot more. ‘Cause, where the soccer field is and everything, apparently, a while back, used to be a lake. And in fact, one of my friends at church has a friend who remembers buying his house overlooking Lake La Mirada, and that lake is no longer there.
ID: That’s fascinating.
RE: So it would flood on occasion. And then, they built this floor for the sciences. And the O. Chem lab was nursing lab. That’s where they had their beds and everything for teaching.
ID: So, as the nursing department began to develop and become like a separate department, was that also about the time when the science department sort of grew, and became more independent and split into biology and, and physical science?
RE: Yeah, we…I don’t…I’m not exactly sure the timing when that happened. But I think, probably when they put the second floor on here is when they really separated to, into two. We had a lady up here, I don’t know if she was chair…(garbled).
ID: Miss Erton?
RE: Miss Erton was teaching when I was a student here. And Dr Davidheiser was still chair then. And then Rafe came, I think, and I think Rafe took over from Davidheiser.
ID: In 1970?
RE: Yes, 1970.
ID: What did Miss Erton teach?
RE: Well I had her for physiology. I don’t know what else she taught. I don’t remember what else she taught. And the courses were, you know, basic. Like we didn’t have a cell class and stuff like that, but we had vertebrate biology, and they did both Gen Chem and O. Chem here, but before Dr Rynd came, when I took O. Chem they didn’t have a good professor. In fact, I caused an explosion in the O. Chem lab, and if they hadn’t lowered the ceiling you could still see the mark—if you know the right tile to push up in the O. Chem lab you can see where I made a mess on the ceiling.
ID: (laughs) Huh.
RE: I mixed three things together…and the teacher was standing that far away from me and he knew—he watched me do it. So, he was afraid…so actually I took my second semester of O. Chem at Cal State Fullerton. Because they were, it wasn’t really being offered here. And math was also in this building at that time too, but they didn’t offer Calculus, and I being pre-med needed Calculus, so I took that at Cal State Fullerton too. Or, no, Fullerton JC. So, there were a lot of things that had never been…I was the first student to come to Biola who ever had Advanced Placement units, because that just started at that time. And they didn’t know what to do about it. So they didn’t count mine, but by the time I left, they were counting them (laughs). I also was the only faculty dependent who had come to the school with a state scholarship.
ID: Really.
RE. Yeah, and they didn’t know what to do with it.
ID: There were all kinds of innovations going on at this time.
Offices
RE: So, yeah, there was a lot of change taking place, because the lower floor of this building had started out—where Dr Rynd’s office and all the other offices are—that was where you paid your bills.
ID: Hmm. That was like, administration?
RE: Yeah, that was all administration on that side. And so, as other places were built and as things went along, gradually, everything spread out more. And, of course we grew.
ID: Was the science department pretty…what was it like compared to other departments on campus?
RE: I don’t know, I didn’t really think about that. You know, you came and you did your work…it was kind of like today, you lived in the building sort of thing, and you had your Bible classes that you took other places, and so, um, this annex here, for a long time was bookstore, part of it was bookstore and part of it was part of the library. I don’t know when they moved out of there. So, we were just on this side over here, and upstairs here, there were two rooms, basically, and where the cell lab is, that was a stockroom, and the back of it was a lab for developing photographs and stuff.
ID: Ah, yeah. A darkroom.
RE: And where Rafe, where the stockroom is now, part of that was the chairman’s office. When Rafe was chair, that’s where he originally was. Where the door is that doesn’t go anywhere, there’s a door on the side of the building. ‘Cause they were supposed…they were going to put a lift there, so if you had stuff coming into the building, then you could just bring it up and bring it right in. Well, it had to be the chairperson’s office…
ID: So that never happened?
RE: …because these weren’t open offices, or available offices over here, because everybody was here.
ID: Because there were so many departments here.
RE: Yeah. And, um, when nursing finally moved out, when they got their room, then we could have more chemistry downstairs. And then physics needed to expand, so this room next door couldn’t be an office anymore, and it became a lab. And actually, for a long time I was housed in the physics stockroom. And the guy who was in this office, Peter Kurtz, he’s physics, he didn’t like me in there because I had started shifting over to be teaching biology.
ID: Interesting…so yeah, you were having a mixing up…of departments.
RE: Well he didn’t…”Why is this biologist in our space” kind of thing. And I was in there for quite a while, and I shared that with Rafe’s father-in-law for a while. And, this…so I would be in that room and I could walk through a door right into 210, and I was teaching anatomy. Because, at the chiropractic college, I taught all the anatomies, only in much more depth. And so, because I was doing that, I moved up here.
Getting her Masters Degree
ID: So, anatomy was becoming your specialty at that time, right?
RE: Yes.
ID: And you got your master’s in anatomy, correct?
RE: No, my master’s is in biological science, from Cal State Long Beach. But because I was teaching two full-time jobs, it took me 8 years to get a Masters.
ID: (laughs) I can imagine.
RE: So, it was slow. And then also, the kind of research project I did…the fist 6 brains that I stained didn’t take the stain. Well, we had beautiful blood vessels but no nerve cells. And, when you stain it, if you use a Golgi stain, it takes a long time—it takes a month before you know if you got anything…
ID: Wow.
RE: From where you start the process, and then a month later you know whether anything worked. Then we found a source for rabbit brains—they were doing stuff, the micro department was doing some antibody studies—and they were killing the rabbits by cardiac puncture, so I could then take the brains out of them. But they were still too long without oxygen, so the brains lost some, the neurons lost some of their spines, just in that time it took between the rabbit—between the time they drew all the blood out and the time I could get the brain out.
ID: Just those few minutes? That’s really fast.
RE: Yeah. But we wrote it up at that point.
Faculty and Staff
Peter Kurtz
ID: Um, you mentioned Peter Kurtz. Could you talk a little bit more about him and what his role in the physical sciences department was?
RE: He was chairman for a long period of time, of physical science, and he taught all the physics classes, all the…and so in the physical science you had physics—you had a physical science major, not a straight physics major, and then you had a chemistry major. And, Dr Rynd had become—he’d been here for a while, he came while I was a student here—so he was doing all the chemistry. So he did both Gen Chem and O. Chem. And because there weren’t as many majors, you didn‘t have like five sections of lab or something like that. So, you taught the class and you had maybe two labs, or something. So you had more time to be spread out over a lot of subjects. And I don’t remember whether they had an A. Chem, maybe they did. But I didn’t take it, because I—I didn’t take biochemistry either, which I ended up regretting, because O. Chem was so boring to me. I decided not to take any more classes in that area, and it wasn’t required for medical school…
ID: Interesting. Yeah, that’s still true.
RE: So why do it? So, I was up in the biology side, mostly. And you just took as much physics as you needed to get into medical school, and all those courses were offered at that time. But physics just had the corner lab and the stockroom, that’s all they had. And chemistry then had two labs, downstairs where nursing moved out.
ID: I see. What, uh, when you left Biola to go teach high school, what brought you back to, to teach here again? What motivated that?
RE: Well, I was in the Bay Area, and I had terrible allergies. So I decided to come back down here where the allergies weren’t bad. I didn’t remember having allergies when I was growing up, but after I was up in the Bay Area I’ve had allergies ever since. So I came back down here where I could breathe, and I kept applying to teach, and I had taken so many classes….every year I would teach, and then I would come back down here and take education classes.
ID: During the summer?
RE: During the summer. And I’d taken so many classes that the schools—and I was applying to Christian schools—said, “Well we would have to pay you at a master’s level, and we can’t afford that.” So I was looking for a job, and they had this laboratory coordinating position that they needed somebody for, and so Rafe hired me. And so that’s how I started out. They hired me as what they call special faculty, which are administrative positions. So it really was a nonexistent position. And then I started teaching different parts, so, you know, I did micro labs one year for a while, and I did the chemistry for the nurses, and it was quite a while that I did the chemistry for the nurses. So I was teaching six or eight units in physical science even after I started doing all the anatomy stuff. And, Dr Stevens was here at the time, and he did all the physiology and anatomy stuff, and Rafe was doing all the field type courses. Paul Kuld then came for botany and that kind of thing.
Dr Stevens
ID: Okay. Dr Stevens…do you know about when he was here and when he left?
RE: I couldn’t tell you that. He left…he overlapped in time, because I did labs with him, and then finally he had to leave, I think, for health reasons. And he was older anyway—he was an amazing guy. He would say, “Oh, did you know about so-and-so? She sat in the back corner of lab over here, and so-and-so was her lab partner?”
ID: (laughs) He would remember it all?
RE: It’s like…I can’t, I have troubles with names sometimes. And I’ve had that all my life, so it’s not a new thing, but he would have everybody come in, and after he handed them back their first test he knew who they were. I can’t do that, I don’t know how he did that. And just a real heart for students, but he was an older man. And, uh, I think he had heart problems and so he had to leave.
Influential Faculty
Rafe Payne
ID: Um, are there are professors who have been in the science department since you’ve been here, that you feel have made a really significant contribution?
RE: Oh, Rafe of course. He kept the department going and he added a lot of the field courses, and then Baja. But, ecology, the marine mammals emphasis, and stuff like that. So, the course work broadened out, and I think when I was here you had a general biology major—originally Biola, when it started up, was kind of assuming people would become missionaries and that kind of stuff. And that’s…our alumni office has had to get over that bit, because they didn’t follow some of the early alumni, because they figure they’re going to be missionaries, they can’t donate. You know, that kind of attitude. And, then they started having general majors, and so the emphasis wasn’t so much a variety of careers, you know, you were going to get a biology major, and then you were going to be a missionary, or you were going to teach, or you were going to go to medical school, basically. And so, back in those days there weren’t the options, especially for girls, that we see nowadays—you can do whatever you want. And, I had always wanted to be a doctor—I was going to be a missionary doctor in China when I was a little kid. And I think, as I said, I think God put that on my heart so that I would apply, not that I would go necessarily. Because I had been teaching children at church since I was 16.
ID: Yeah, you were meant to do that.
RE: Yeah. And, Miss Erton was the only person who said to me—and she was a young Christian, she wasn’t a mature Christian—she said “Are you sure you want to go get an M.D.? I have friends who have an M.D. and a PhD, and they get more satisfaction from their PhD than they get from their M.D.” She told me that…she wanted me to go into teaching, get a PhD. I didn’t listen. But, I can talk to people who are applying to medical school, because I’ve had that experience. I’ve been on waiting lists, I’ve gone for interviews, I’ve done all of that. Now, I will admit it was a while back, because I’ve been teaching here 35 years now—well not, I’ve been employed here 35 years, I don’t know if you can count it, although I think I started teaching here right away, because they just needed help in certain areas. So…what was the question we were answering?
ID: Oh, we were talking about professors, you mentioned Rafe.
Elisha Van Deusen
RE: Yeah, Rafe has done a lot. Paul has done a tremendous amount of work on the non-major side. To make sure that that class met education requirements, so that observational and principles could count for the Ed majors, for their credentials. He did a lot of work there. And, Dr Van Deusen came…and Van, his first name was Elisha, but nobody ever called him that.
ID: Called him Van?
RE: Everybody called him Van. He brought more of the technology in, and did the cell—brought the cellular stuff in. So he developed that part of the department. And his is the position that Dr Cruzen took.
ID: The chair?
RE: Well, no, not chair, the cellular part. Rafe was chair at that time, for a while, and when Rafe decided to retire, then the chair was passed to Dr Cruzen. So…and Dr Cruzen was brought in because Dr Van Deusen died. We didn’t realize that he Dr Van Deusen had so much heart problems, but he had been taking heart medication. He and wife went to Europe for—she was a musicologist—she taught one of the colleges down where they lived, a university down that way, and so she was going to give a paper. She was a medieval musicologist—you had to go to Europe to study that—and Van had worked for several years in a laboratory in Switzerland, so they went back to Switzerland, and she had gone over to England to give the paper, and he didn’t show up for a dinner, and so the friends got concerned, and so the next day the friends went to see about him, and he had died in his bed. So, that was a real shock, and so then we were scrambling for a faculty member, and we found Dr Cruzen.
Matt Cruzen
ID: Wow. Was this in the early ‘90s?
RE: Yeah, you’d have to look at the sign down the hall to see what date, because it does I think say…that’s Dr Van. Dr Cruzen’s been here, what 8 or 10 years, maybe. And I might have become chair if I had gotten my doctorate. But I was in a doctoral program, working two jobs at the same time. And then, my mom got very ill, she got cancer that metastasized. And then my dad was ill after that, and I was executrix. So there was a period of time of 8 or 9 years where I had family issues to deal with, because I had tried to do the doctorate, then. So, it never got finished. And the school that I was doing it at said “It’s been ten years, you’re not serious,” and so they dropped me, I couldn’t…they wouldn’t let me continue the program. I passed my comps, but…
ID: Was that frustrating?
Peter Kurtz
RE: A little bit, because they wanted you to start all over again. And I felt like saying to them, “You should’ve know I was going to take a long time—it took me eight years to do a Masters.” And that’s, you know, you can’t work two jobs and do that at the same time. So that was, you know I should have made some decisions sooner. And when my mom was ill, at that time I stopped teaching at the chiropractic college, so…when was that, I forgot…’98. I stopped teaching down there, but I had been 20 years down there. And, I was on the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners exam writing committee. So, I helped write the national boards for the chiropractic college and stuff like that. So, throughout the history, the faculty have been working together more in a collaborative way. There’s not, like one leader standing out, you know, shooting forward making it, but each person that comes in develops a different part. Now, on the physical science side, Dr Kurtz was here for a long time, and then Dr Bloom came. This was Dr Kurtz’ office, and when he left I asked permission to move over here, because the physics stockroom has no windows. And so you would…I would go in there in the morning and then I’d have class right next door with no windows, and so I would have absolutely no idea whether it was sunny outside or not. And so, I got so frustrated with that…and at that time the whole entire department was painted yellow. Mission yellow was the school color, kind of the light yellow color—it just was annoying. So I moved over here, and that’s why Dr Bloom ended up downstairs, because I was granted this office. And actually this was a…these two rooms are a classroom that got divided up to make more office space. And downstairs where there’s offices…there’s three sets of offices in the annex, those were supposed to be three classrooms. And they started out that way originally, and then they got used for the bookstore, and for other stuff.
ID: That seems to happen on campus a lot.
RE: Yeah, stuff has to be divided up, and you rearrange your space as you need. Because, my dad’s office was where 112 is. He was a Bible prof, and two-thirds of that room—he had office and classroom. And then, when they put the second floor on, they made a big lecture hall. So they took half of that other room, and opened that up.
ID: Okay.
RE: So, you, as you change, you have to change those kinds of things.
Old Buildings and New Buildings
ID: Right, right. Okay, so uh, so yeah, you’ve mentioned how some professors have come and brought new things, like Dr Rynd brought a stronger organic chemistry side, and Dr Van Deusen brought the more cell biology. I guess, what I’m wondering now is, how do you feel about how the science departments are looking now, and um, I guess, do you think there’s a good vision for the future? What sort of things should be coming?
Space for Faculty Research
RE: I think that we’re doing pretty good in the biology side. Jason Tresser and Wendy Billock have both brought different kinds of skills with them. The place we’re weakest in is botany, because Mr Kuld was our botanist, so we need some there. And then, we also are in desperate need of space for, uh, what is it…a fluorescent microscope for Jason, for his research, and some equipment, because we’re bringing in people who have…they’re doing some basic research that students can do too, and they can pull the students into their research projects, but we don’t have any space to do them. Originally what was the cell lab was supposed to be a place for faculty to do research…
ID: Ah, man.
RE: …and now it’s a lab. And then we had to chop off a third of the…210 and 211 were all one room, and then we put the wall in so we could have a little lab—well that lab is not really big enough for the classes we’re putting in there. Because when you put 20 students in there for Gen Bio, it’s too cramped, and the sink condition is not good. I’m so glad that I forced everybody to put my big sink in 210, because if I had in 210 the little sinks like they have in there, I’d go crazy. So we…you know, the cramping is part of the problem. And on the physics side, they’re really stuffed.
ID: Yeah, it’s even worse.
Space for Physics
RE: And, when the bookstore moved to its new location, down here, we had hoped that physics would take over the annex, but they’re housing thirty faculty, or so, over there. So, you know, that’s a real problem. And we actually had a walk-a-thon, where people could…it was right after I had my hip surgery, so we got people to support us, and we raised a couple thousand dollars—so much per lap around the building—and so it was like, Joshua walked around the building, so we kept walking around the building. And some of the students got involved in it, and they did all kinds of funny things, and Mr Pichaj got one of his machines, that had a weight on it that would bounce up and down and up and down, and so, he was saying ten cents per bounce, or something like that…
ID: (laughs)
RE: So, different people donated, and we did this all in one weekend. They ended up using the money to remodel the back section, and to get those bookshelves that are in the back section of the physics lab. But because they needed the space for something else, we couldn’t have it. Because, if physics had gone down there, then biology would’ve expanded to take the whole upper floor.
ID: Which would’ve been good for both.
Space for Chemistry
RE: But, there’s no place to put them. And chemistry is, falling out of its…you know, they just don’t have enough lab sections. And we also have a problem with some of the equipment. That ultra-centrifuge is downstairs because it’s too heavy to bring up here. They don’t—there are not enough beams under the floors. And, we wanted to put a huge sliding, um, third-again larger shelves where the chemicals are in the stockroom, but we couldn’t do it because the floors wouldn’t support it.
ID: Weight again?
RE: Yeah. And we actually, we were actually two years ago given money—when I shattered my shoulder—the university have the department money to put in cadaver storage. But there’s no place to put it. Because nobody thought you have to have twice the footprint—you have the storage unit, but you also have to have an equal amount of space to get the things out of it. So, you know, they don’t think about that kind of stuff. So that money, I don’t know what happened to it, it went into something else. And we’re trying to use our space as best we can, and we need to probably do another re-evaluation of space usage…
ID: Perhaps.
A New Building
RE: But, and then we’re talking about a new building, so. Talbot’s first, and then we’re second on the list.
ID: That’s pretty good.
RE: Yeah (laughs). But, if the economy keeps going down, it might not be until after I retire, ten or 15 years down the line. And then, you’re trying to anticipate, what can you get for the space…we’re trying to look at all the problems we’re having now, and make sure that we have space to solve those problems in the new building. And what they’re also trying to do in the new building is to put the science division together. And I’m not sure that that’s a good idea. Because science division is science, math and nursing, and KHPE, and comm disorders. So they’re trying to put comm disorders and the sciences and math at least in the new building, and maybe nursing.
ID: Wow. That’s going to be a big building.
RE: Because, it’s in a slot where they can go up more floors—if you’re too…right here we’re too close to the edge of campus, so they can’t put any more floors on this building. Now there is a footprint out here, so if we wanted to put a building out here and go up a number of floors, we could. But it would change the whole function of this part of the campus, then. So, they’re not willing quite to do that. And then, would we put a building here, and keep this building? And remodel this one for other science? That would be, you know, fairly expensive anyway. So their idea is to build a whole new science building over there, and remodel this building for something else, because it would be easier to remodel it into an education department function or something like that.
ID: Mmhmm. Or Bible department.
RE: Well, not Bible over this way—they try to keep Bible out where it is now, so…
Obstacles and Misconceptions
ID: Alright, great. Well, I want to talk a little bit more now about, I guess, the relationship between Biola administration and the science departments. So could you, um, talk a little bit about any, like, obstacles that may have stood in the way of the science departments’ development over the years, and where those may have come from?
Marketing
RE: I don’t know that we’ve had any overt obstacles—the problem we’ve had with administration is that most of those people don’t know anything about science. So, they don’t know the constraints of science. The vice provost one time asked us, one time, if we really needed to have those four hour labs. Or, couldn’t we do it two here and two here, you know or something like that? And, no, you can’t, because there are certain constraints that you have to, to accomplish the work you have to have a mass of time all together. So, it’s a lack of information. And, um, also that same problem really exists strongly in…the marketing end. Marketing people have no clue, and we’ve met with them and talked with them and stuff, and we’re still…they’re getting better and they’re seeing openings, but they don’t see—they see certain popular things, and they really don’t see all the other stuff. Like, they really want us to have a—well they want us to change the human biology major to a health careers major, or something, you know. And, they’re really excited about environmental studies, which is good, but they don’t see the cellular stuff that needs to be going on, you know. That’s not out in the news, so that’s not appreciated as much, and that’s a problem and it’s a constant battle. Sciences can be expensive too, so it took a while before we got a line item for a cadaver. And now cadavers are close to $4000 a piece—so that’s issues that we have there. And then, building use is sometimes an issue. We have a lot of non-science classes that want to come into the building, and that’s fine. Now they know that can’t schedule anybody else into a lab, but 207, 107 and 112 are often used by other classes, and we do have priority, but not…you know, if there’s a large bible class that needs the space, then they might put it in there. Originally, when the building—when the second floor was put on—they fixed that room with…they used federal funds to put cameras in there, and this building was actually wired at one point where you could be dissecting up here, and you could project it down in 112.
ID: Interesting.
RE: But, because federal funds were used for that, you couldn’t have bible classes in that room.
ID: Wow.
RE: And so, when the technology got so far beyond it, so the current cameras couldn’t drive that system, then they just pulled it all out. So now bible classes can meet in there.
Class Scheduling
ID: Okay, so the TV system was almost like, protecting Bardwell from excessive class scheduling.
RE: Right. But that means, with all these other groups coming in, that we don’t have the freedom to just use that whenever we want to. On these ends here, you know…for example Dr Cruzen has huge numbers of kids in cell—if he could just, on occasion, bring them down to 207 and do a lecture in there, it would save having to do it two or three times, or whatever. But, there’s classes scheduled in there. We have priority, but if you’re only going to use it two or three times a week—or, two or three times a semester, you can’t tie it up. So, we’re really hurting space-wise. Most of the problem I think, is, that we have—administratively—is not actively slowing down the science department, but basically ignoring them. So, you know, there’s not an active encouragement. Now it’s a little better, and, actually, marketing people are really encouraging, and because the government is putting on a huge science & technology…science, technology, engineering and math emphasis, the marketing has turned and said, “Oh, the government wants science, technology, engineering—we need to be…” And so now, it’s going better from that aspect. But, there was a period of time when we had a provost who knew nothing about the undergraduate programs—or he was more focused on the graduate programs. And so the undergraduate—all of the undergraduate programs kind of languished. Not stopping them, but not encouraging them along. Because he really wanted to get graduate programs established. And that’s when the vice provost for undergraduate…we in the school of arts and sciences saw we needed somebody to speak actively for us in the administration, and so, I was chair at the time of the steering committee, and so we pushed that through.
Vice Provost
ID: A new position?
RE: That position. And they said, “Oh, this position doesn’t have any power, it won’t…there’s no money assigned to that position…” But it oversees the budgets of all of the undergraduate, you know, and Dr Miller was the first vice provost for undergraduate education, and he developed it into the position that it is today. That has been very helpful for us because it is an additional voice for the undergraduates. Because, the undergraduate programs basically support the university. Graduate programs are very expensive to run, because you don’t—you have such a low student:faculty ratio. So you have to have the undergraduate programs there to keep it going, unless you have a huge endowment. There a few schools who survive with giant endowments.
Mission Statements
ID: Now, what about the overall mission statement and purpose of Biola University? Do you think that that flows well with the mission and purpose of the science departments? Is there a conflict there?
Integratiion
RE: Right. No, there’s no conflict there, because we are trying to—we want to be intellectually stimulating, and so we’re training you to be thoughtful people. And we’re trying to train you in the science and also in the Bible, so we’re trying to bring both sides together for you in your classes so that you’re not…when you do science it’s not separate from when you do Christian things. We don’t want that to be…and so as a result we are supporting the mission of the University in that regard. And our University—one of the goals is to be a leading center for Christian thought, and so you need to have leading centers of thinking about science too, you need to have that as well. And I would like to see even more interaction between the sciences and the MASR program, which is kind of going by the way right now, because I don’t know that people see it as a viable job opportunity.
ID: Right, it’s more like a self…
Masters in Science & Religion
RE: Right, if you’re interested in this kind of information, then you can do that, but…we do have one student whose working at UCI and taking the MASR, but he’s going to go into a doctoral program down there—because he’s gotten into a lab and gotten really excited about the work that they’re doing, and so he can go on and do more work in that area. But we want to have people thinking about evolution, we want to have people thinking about what God is showing us in t he little things that we see. Because I almost think that people… “Oh, you know, man has discovered computers, and man has discovered all this about the cell…” But you forget that God designed all of that initially—so God knew that, and if we can bring people to come to an understanding of the worship of that. And I actively work on that in anatomy. So that they have journals assignments to actively thank God for something they’re studying this week, and then they reflect on it in their journal. Because, one of the things that Romans says is that there’s a lack of praise and thanks—one of the characteristics of the end times—neither were they thankful, in Romans 1. So, we try to bring that into the classroom, and it crops up in all kinds of corners, you know, it’s not something—you don’t sit out and say, “Okay, today I’m going to make these many points about God.” But if you talk about it, if you truly are worshipping and you believe God and believe God created this, then this is going to come up over and over again.
ID: Yeah, you just get caught up in the intricacy and the beauty. I love it when that happens.
RE: Right, yeah.
Development of Integration
ID: Um, yeah. So, speaking of integration of, uh, sciences and faith—have you seen a change in that integration over the years in the science departments? Has that improved, has it changed?
RE: I think, originally, people kind of assumed that you didn’t have to be deliberate about it. That is would just, you know, it’s fine…you don’t have to think about it at all, you don’t have to make it a goal, and now, the whole University—people are trying to be more deliberate about their integration of faith into the learning process. So that we are patterning for the student that process, the student isn’t kind of catching it by accident, and so we are actively working on that, and we’re bringing it to the attention of the faculty. And they have the Institute for Spiritual Growth, does faculty—in Interterm, I think it is—they do have a course that you can take, for faculty to discuss some of these things. And just to stimulate your thinking, because you weren’t taught that way. I mean, I went to Cal State Long Beach. They’re not going to talk about…I had my major professor, no…I don’t know if he was a Christian—one of the professors that I had was a Christian, but the reaction of many of the students was, if he gave an article to read they wouldn’t read it because he was a Christian. But, you see, none of those people are actively trying to do that, so the teachers, as they come in, need to have some encouragement, and Biola’s being more deliberate about that in their new faculty training and then with the Institute for Spiritual Growth. And that way, it’s showing up more in the classroom, in a more deliberate way. And sometimes in the past, originally, you almost felt like if we spent a lot of time talking about something…because in many respects, I have to teach you a certain amount of information, and the God things are not what you need to do to get to medical school or to go to nursing, right? So they were kind of treated as “This is a sideline, here I’ve gone off chasing a rabbit,” but now, that’s not the way it’s looked at. Now it’s more—this is a good thing, and you don’t feel like you’re wasting class time to talk about it.
ID: Seems like a really important change.
RE: Right. And it wasn’t that they weren’t doing it before, it’s just that now it’s encouraged, and that makes a difference to how you go about doing it.
ID: Well, I don’t have any other specific questions for you. Was there anything else you wanted to add?
RE: We’ve kind of wandered all over the place, so…if this brings up anything that you think about, let me know and I’ll try to answer questions.
ID: Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.