Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Join Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and guests for conversations about interesting things happening in the Erie community.
Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
The 'Vision & Resilience' of Behrend's early leaders, with Dr. Joseph Beilein Jr.
Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Dr. Joseph Beilein Jr., professor of history, about his new book about Behrend in the years 1980-2010. Originally recorded on May 1, 2025.
I'm Dr Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and you are listening to Behrend Talks. My guest today is Dr Joe Beilein, a professor of history and the author of the new book Vision and Resilience, which explores the history of Penn State Behrend from 1980 to 2010. Welcome to the show, Joe.
Joseph Beilein:I'm very happy to be here and looking forward to a fun conversation.
Ralph Ford:Likewise and I'm going to go through what I traditionally do, which is a little bit of your background you have a PhD and Master's degree in American history from the University of Missouri. Maybe you'd say it a little differently Missouri and a bachelor's in history from Kenyon College. You are a noted Civil War historian, specializing in the study of guerrilla warfare, gender and violence. Some really nice book names here A Man by Any Other Name, William Quantrill in the Search for American Manhood. Second book, William Gregg's, Civil War, and then Bushwhackers. Your most recent one, Guerrilla War, Manhood and the Household in Civil War, Missouri. You've also appeared and we can't go without talking about your celebrity interactions here. You've been on the Learning Channel, the celebrity genealogy show, Who Do you Think You Are? You trace the family lineages of actresses Jessica Biel and Megan Mullally. So a whole lot of different things there. Welcome here again.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, no, you nailed the bio.
Ralph Ford:Thank you All. Right, well, let's talk about why did you become a historian?
Joseph Beilein:Well, as a kid I always loved history, and I think a lot of us can do this with our profession. You can sort of trace it back to when you're really, really young. But I loved history and I think it was, you know, whether it was like World War II movies or you know different books. I remember having like a book about Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and just you know all sorts of stuff. So I always loved it. And then when I went to college, I decided to major in history, despite the grumbles of my mother who wanted me to major in econ something that would actually, you know, your parents said don't do it. Yes, exactly, they said we're not paying this tuition for you to. You know, go do what you love. No, I'm joking, they were supportive, but yeah, I just I liked the history professors too, and so I sort of switched over very early on from econ to history and at that point, yeah, just kind of fell in love with it.
Joseph Beilein:Why Civil War? Sort of a strategic choice. When I was deciding on go, I think I'd made my decision to go to graduate school but I was trying to figure out exactly what I would focus on, and it was sort of between World War II and the Civil War, and my undergraduate advisor, Will Scott, made a very pragmatic and strategic decision for me. He basically did the math in his head and said, okay, when you're coming out with your PhD, it's going to be right around the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, so there's a chance there'll be more jobs available at that moment. Oh, wow, yeah. And I was like, wow, See, it was a career decision. Yeah, and so it really, because it really was he's like, because it really was he's like if it doesn't matter, if you love both of these things and you want to just go, and so that's what determined it.
Joseph Beilein:So that's why I ended up with Civil War history as my pursuit and I'm so happy because I look at what my fellow colleague, Amy Carney does and she can speak several languages. I mean there's no way I would have been able to learn German or Italian or French and be able to do both sides of the war and all that stuff. So thank goodness I ended up with the American Civil War. And where did you grow up? Are you from Missouri? I'm from St Louis originally, Okay, yeah. So St Louis is sort of a sterile bubble when it comes to the Civil War, it's not really Northern, not really Southern. There's not a lot of like feeling about it. But obviously in the outer parts of the state, you know, there's a lot of sentiment about the Civil War, and my mom's originally from Southern Missouri, so there is this sort of history that I could kind of feel and understand on a visceral level.
Ralph Ford:Well it is.
Joseph Beilein:You know, the place of the Missouri Compromise, right Well, yeah, I mean when it came into the Union there was trouble. Right, that's right.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, so let's talk about manhood, which shows up in the title. So what exactly you know? So, in that space, what are you looking at there?
Joseph Beilein:Well, just to offer a bit of background and context. There's a lot of straightforward military and political histories of the Civil War, but you know, beginning in probably the 80s really is where these scholars hit their stride. People started to look at other aspects of the war, taking the angle of race or social class or gender in my case, and with gender. A lot of the early focus although not exclusively, but a lot of the early focus was on women and in getting into gender relations. And then later on, in the early 2000s, sort of right around the time I started graduate school, a few scholars started to look more specifically at men and how they understood themselves as men, and it was sort of like the flip side of the coin. Right, there's both. You know, gender is not something that's exclusive to women.
Joseph Beilein:Men obviously have it too, and the more I read about it, the more I realized we could understand a lot about these people, not only their identities, but also, getting into my research, you could understand more about how they fought the war, like literally the ways in which they fought or why they decided to fight for the Confederacy or the North or whatever it was. So it opened up this way for me to answer questions that weren't just questions, that were social and cultural questions, which were important to me. But you could answer questions that military scholars weren't able to answer because they had never taken this sort of more social or cultural history approach. So it was just fascinating and obviously that's a unique time for American manhood. Right, you've got southerners, white southerners think of themselves very differently than like urban northern men, you know, and stuff. So it's almost a contest of manhood in the war. So those are some of the reasons how I got into it, if that makes sense.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, it does, and are you working on like a fourth book? Are you continuing your research in this?
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, yeah, I actually just got great news, literally minutes before I walked in here I just got a great summer fellowship to go to the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in Cody, wyoming, wow. So this summer or I might break it up this summer, next summer but my next project involves a lot of the guys who are on the opposite side of the bushwhackers, of the confederate guerrillas. A lot I'm interested in the men who grew up in Kansas during bleeding Kansas, became jayhawkers or fought for the north during the war and then continued on as scouts, as hunters for the us army and participated in the wars against the plains indians. So and and the focus of that is very much going to be how these guys conceptualize themselves as men and all of that- Well, congratulations.
Joseph Beilein:Thank you. Thank you, I'm pumped Now. We just got to figure out what we're going to do with three kids.
Ralph Ford:You've got young kids and three now.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, good for you, and maybe they'll come with us, who knows?
Ralph Ford:Well, how did you end up at Penn State Behrend, when?
Joseph Beilein:I was finishing up my graduate work and I think other academics know this. You know you're on the job market, you're looking at what's out there, what's been posted, and there were a few jobs that were awesome but were above what I was going to get, coming out of the University of Missouri as a you know, someone without any established credentials, like I remember applying for some reason for like a job at Princeton or Harvard, you know, but you're just trying to like, get you know as many applications as you can and so. But then I applied to Caltech for grad school. There you go, never heard from them. They didn't have the decency to write me back. Maybe they did, I can't remember.
Joseph Beilein:So there was some of that. And then there were some other jobs that were really good jobs, but mostly teaching-oriented jobs. And then there's this sort of sweet spot, which I think where Behrend sits, which is we really value teaching and that even became clear in the application. But also you were expected to do research and I remember reading the posting and was like Penn State Behrend. That sounds familiar and I remembered that. And I want to be clear, there was no nepotism involved here. But I remember that my second cousin, dave Nyland was the basketball coach here.
Joseph Beilein:I did not know that and so it sort of set off a little bit of a ringing bell and I was like there's something about this place and so I remembered hearing about it earlier. I didn't realize it was Penn State Behrend, but I knew that he worked at this college in Pennsylvania and so I started to dig into it and of course I called Dave and talked to Dave and he was able to share a lot about the campus and he had nothing but great things to say. So I applied for the job and luckily they were looking for someone who could do what I did. I think I was replacing someone who taught the Civil War. Those were really popular classes, so they wanted a Civil War historian, some of the people on the faculty and it just was one of those things that just worked out. It was sort of like a really good fit for someone who really likes to teach but also really likes to do research.
Joseph Beilein:Do you have a favorite course you like to teach here? Hmm, I have too many favorites probably. There's some of the ones that I teach almost every year I really like, but of course I really like getting into the sort of upper division Civil War class. I just taught an upper division class on colonial American history and I taught it for the first time and I just said goodbye to the students and it was sort of one of those like this was a lot of fun. I also apologize. This is the first time I've taught this course, so you guys were here for the rough draft, you know. But teaching new courses is awesome because you just learn a ton too. There are a lot of work, but over the course of the semester you're like learning kind of along with them. So I don't, I wouldn't say I have a favorite, but yeah, I've been lucky. I've taught mostly interesting stuff here.
Ralph Ford:And we're going to come back to teaching and what motivates you there. But I wanted to switch now to your book that, you know, is part of the subject of our discussion here today, which is something called Vision and Resilience, I think, the story of the remarkable growth of Penn State Behrend, and it covers our history from 1980 to 2010. And you know, I don't want to sound foolish and say well, how did you get involved in this project, dr Beilein? Because, as you well know, it was an idea that myself and others had, and I somehow one day knocked on your door and said, hey, I'm thinking about this, but why don't you talk about the genesis of this book project and what it's about?
Joseph Beilein:Well, yeah, first off, I do want to talk briefly for that. I remember I came in here and it was like I think it was around this time of year I feel like it was at the end of a year and maybe I have it flipped, maybe it was early August or something like that, but it was. Things were either shutting down or just starting and I brought my dog to work and I thought, all right, I got to get this thing into the building, get it in my office and we're good to go. And I think I saw you at the very end of the hallway, at Cockle, and I was like, damn it, the chancellor just saw me with my dog and so you knocked on the door of course we're like the only two people in the building and I was like oh hey, ralph and I had double in our dog there and that's when you sort of ran the idea by me and I thought well, I've got this illegal mammal on campus.
Joseph Beilein:I better say yes to this. Plus, it's the chancellor asking, but that's how I remember that Was.
Ralph Ford:I nice to your dog oh you were great.
Joseph Beilein:You were like. I think you said something like sometimes I bring my dogs on campus.
Ralph Ford:I was going to just tell you I've been known to bring my dog here.
Joseph Beilein:It's on record now. Yes, there you go, we're both in trouble, but no, so you, you brought the idea up and then it sounded like, or the way I recall it. The former leader of the college, John Lilley, was very interested in this project and we sort of started talking about it and it just seemed like something that we could probably pull off, which writing and researching, writing, publishing a book is not the easiest thing to pull off, but I think we had enough people that were interested in this book succeeding, so that's just kind of how we got the ball rolling.
Ralph Ford:Well, I remember it as well. I don't actually quite remember coming to your office, so I've got to work on my memory banks on that one.
Joseph Beilein:You have nothing going on.
Ralph Ford:You're not busy at all, or it could be other things started pinging on our memories. But the thing about writing this I do remember this part about the discussions early on is you really thought about it and you came back and you said what kind of book I mean, do you want the campy? I'm going to tell the nice history and it's going to be like the marketing piece and you really wanted to. Now I'm not saying we're writing the history of some historical period of the world that you've got to really be critical about, but you wanted to be critical in what you did and you wanted to be real and honest and do the research and not just make it a fluff piece. Sure, certainly it tells our story in a positive way, but not completely. I just wanted what was your thought process as that got started?
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, I mean and this was, in all honesty, with the exception of, like, the time that goes into doing something like this, this was the hardest part, right, and you know, because we sent drafts back and forth and there were also other people that got involved, and so it was difficult, and I think some drafts were overly critical.
Joseph Beilein:Other drafts I felt like were there was stuff that was too fluffy, and we did sort of kind of go back and forth and you and I very politely disagreed on stuff. We did, yeah, but more often than not we were able to come to a consensus, right. Like you might say, like well, that's not quite how that happened, and sometimes I go, oh yeah, that's right, and then other times you'd say that's not quite how that happened. I'm like, well, actually, it kind of is how it happened. Yeah, it had to be something that not only worked for me it couldn't just be me standing on my principles as a historian but it was a part of a larger project that we're doing here, which is preserving the history of the college and telling it in a faithful way, but in a way that reflects the growth and all the good things that we've done here.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, and I think that your point about going back and forth and I hope it was always, you know it made me go back and look at some things and try to find some of the facts. But you really did all of the research. I think it was hopefully few and far between, but there were some where I still have. I've got it written, I've saved it. I scribbled in there and a little bit of smoke comes out of my ears.
Ralph Ford:It didn't happen this way and then you came back and said, yes, it did All right, it happened that way. So I think it was a good process, but the credit goes to you and the students who did all the creative work. But I mean, one of the cool things about this was from 1980 to 2010. For many who know or are listening to this, probably, we had Jack Burke and John Lilley as the two leaders of campus and you actually had access to both of them. You were able to talk to them and hear it firsthand.
Ralph Ford:You don't always get that as a historian.
Joseph Beilein:No, and frankly it made me pretty uncomfortable on a certain level. I'm much more comfortable dealing with people who have been dead for 150 years. You can say a lot more about them and there's no repercussions. But the flip side of that I've thought about this a little bit the flip side of that is, as a Civil War historian, of course you're constantly thinking like, oh, if I could just get Lincoln in here for a sit down and run a couple of things by him, I could finally get some clarity right. So you're always wishing that these people were alive and so you could talk to them. So it was tough and it actually like Lilley wanted to meet with me a couple times early on and I remember just thinking I don't really want to do it this way.
Joseph Beilein:I want Jane to do these oral interviews and then I'll go through them. You know that's the way historians work. We have documents, we sort of work through those and then if I have like questions after the fact, it'll be great to ask those to John. But John wanted to sit down and finally, after a couple, clearly he wants to tell his story.
Joseph Beilein:Totally and right. And also in a lot of ways and I say this, in the book he is the source. Sometimes he was the only person in the room that's still here and so it was a challenge for me, and I think, especially early on, when you know, eric Cordy, the former leader of the School of H&SS school of an H, h and SS had this idea that this really needed to be, you know, a rigorous academic book and that that way it would count towards, you know, whatever promotion was going to be the next promotion. And I started off doing it that way and it was just so hard to do that because I would have had to read this whole other canon of literature about, you know, higher ed and you know, development and you know, and all this stuff. And I read some of that stuff, but I just I was not prepared to do that.
Joseph Beilein:And I think it became a lot easier to not only write the book but to engage directly with John and Jack Burke when I decided, okay, we're still going to stick to all the standards of good professional history, but it's not going to go through a rigorous peer review process.
Joseph Beilein:Right, it's still going to go through an academic press. But this isn't going to be the sort of thing where I'm making revisions because I didn't include this book or that book in the historiographical chapter and all that. So when I was able to do that, I sort of engaged with them a little bit more as like a I don't want to, I'm not a journalist, I don't hold myself to those standards. They're way better at this stuff than I am but it was a little bit more of like a journalist, interviewing them and being able to have my subject right there to get the information. And once I did that it was great. And John, as you know, John willing to talk about all this stuff and Jack is, you know, great and he's willing to talk about this stuff. So they were both incredibly helpful, sort of like, you know, finding the path through all this stuff.
Ralph Ford:What was the environment they walked into in 1980? What was it like here? From what you could see?
Joseph Beilein:What is the environment they walked into in 1980? What was it like here? From what you can see yeah, I mean, the words that they use are words like dire, bleak. I think Lilley came in prepared for it to be a bad situation, I think in a way. I don't know if he knew if he was going to move to. You know he was a leader at Kansas State but he wasn't the leader of Kansas State.
Joseph Beilein:I don't know if he thought his first job was going to be kind of like a place like this where you're going to have to like build a place up. So he seemed like he knew it was bad. But he came in with sort of a game plan. He was going to get the community leaders involved, alums involved. You know he had some allies down at uh University Park and so he knew it was bad but he seemed ready for the challenge.
Joseph Beilein:Jack Burke is so funny, he's like. You know I didn't even tell my wife how bad it was because I wanted this job and it's clear he believed in Lilley and he could sort of see it too. But for him I think it was a little bit riskier because you know he wasn't coming to take over this place. He was going to help this guy who had just taken over this place and he had a good job up in the SUNY system and so for him it felt a lot riskier. I think he was walking in and they might be packing their bags and you know, in academia sometimes you've got a good job.
Ralph Ford:It's a big risk to go somewhere else because you might have to be totally starting over and if you lose that job then there's no the story you're told about and what you walk into you really don't know, right, and you might end up with a board or yeah, totally, and then you're out the door in six months.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, so it was not a good situation and it's unclear what Penn State thought was going to happen, because they gave this place four know four-year college status a few years earlier in the 70s and I don't think they were sure how this was all supposed to work. So yeah, just the whole thing was kind of messy and difficult, but they believed in it, or believed in this vision for this place.
Ralph Ford:We talk a lot about John Lilley but go a little further on Jack Burke. What was the dynamic between the two? How did it work between those two?
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, I mean Lilley is definitely the vision guy, not to say that Burke doesn't have, you know, a vision or didn't see the vision for this place. He did. But I think when they were at their best, Lilley had a vision and he was looking out. You know, he was sort of constantly thinking about development, buying up more land for the school. You know, how are we going to do this, this bigger thing? And Burke was the one who was working behind the scenes. You know they would.
Joseph Beilein:There's stories that I found in the newspapers or even talking to them or other sources, where they'd end up with a problem and it might be a good problem, like they might not have enough beds for the freshmen coming in, and Burke would have a few weeks to figure that out and he'd figure it out. But other people I could see being presented with that issue, like hey, our incoming class is actually too big, we can't get them on campus, and that might lead to just a panic. But Burke was very cool and calm and I think he tucked himself away in his office and he, you know he was in control of all the finances, so he had that part figured out and he just he'd get on the phone or he'd, you know, get out there and he'd come up with a solution. So he's constantly the one who was, you know, putting out crises they couldn't foresee, and then also the ones that Lilley would sort of accidentally create by saying you know, we put in an offer on this house or right or um, we've got this.
Joseph Beilein:I created some sort of an issue at university park, or maybe university park created the issue and I can't figure a way out of this. So we've all got to go down there and, you know, figure it out. So he was, he was definitely the one who got things done. Yeah, here's a problem Please solve it.
Ralph Ford:He was the operations guy, but also everyone respected and liked him, and I think you hit that exactly, and so you know we switch as well. One of the things that John did when he came in immediately or soon thereafter, according to the book was he started to reach out to people in the community and he saw that as really important, and fundraising becomes a key part of his legacy. Talk to us about how did that evolve?
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, when he was interviewing the story goes, he wanted to meet with some local leaders who were also either alums or had a connection to Penn State in some way, shape or form, and he met with Ted Junker and Tom Hagen, I think, at the Erie Club and this was during the interviewing process and he basically said if I come, will you?
Joseph Beilein:guys help me. And Hagen had already been involved in doing some fundraising here and Ted Junker was, I think, happy to help I'm sure he had already been involved as well and that was kind of how this whole thing started and they introduced him to people and, to Lilley credit, he followed through on all those relationships and meetings and things like that and he was sort of able to build this network that grew and grew and grew and he reconfigured the. I can't remember the names, but it was was it did. Was he the one that took it from the board of trustees to the council of fellows? That's correct. Council of fellows, that's right.
Ralph Ford:Yep.
Joseph Beilein:So he rebuilt that. Yeah, a lot of the same people came over, but there were new people and maybe people who weren't anymore. And then and he also saw, I think, the talent that different people had. And so Tom Hagen was running the council of fellow. He was like the chair, and so he was running these campaigns to raise huge amounts of money for the time. You know, like five, $6 million, maybe. It started off as two and then it became five. That said, maybe we can raise 10. And that that's what he was doing. And and Ted Junker was like, he was the man on the ground everywhere. If you go back and look through the photo albums, he is in the background of every picture or like in the foreground, smiling and shaking someone's hand.
Ralph Ford:He's the ultimate connector.
Joseph Beilein:Ultimate connector. Yeah, and so he. Obviously Lilley recognized that about him, though. Right Like, this is how this guy can help me, and Ted obviously was happy to help that way, and this is how Tom can help me, and he was happy to help that way, and Susie Hurt Hagen became a huge advocate for the school and a huge help, and so he just sort of kept these people involved.
Ralph Ford:He did. And talking about Ted Junker, he was a banker, right, he was president or regional president of PNC and I will tell this story. Just a few months before he passed away, I was able to have dinner with him at my house and Joe Preshak, who was from Plastic, and they told me the story of how Plastics came to be at Behrend, which was basically Joe Preshak was saying I can't find any talent here, and Ted Junker said I know where we're going to go and he connected him to John Lilley and I mean that is truly how it started. The idea had been floating around but no one could make it happen for quite some time.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, that's how it started. That's great, that's great and that makes perfect sense. Yeah.
Ralph Ford:So let's talk about what were a few of the big milestones that happened.
Joseph Beilein:So, in terms of just the history from 80 to 2010, I mean there's a there are a lot of them, uh, as we know, I think, uh, getting rid of most of the trailers, not to start with the like stuff, like that, um, engineering complex, which is now you know, the science complex over there, was a big deal. Uh, the cockle building and which, you know, cockle and Lilley Library was probably incredibly modern, you know for the time, and still is a nice building, and so building the buildings was a big deal. Buying up all this land, the Athletic Center when that finally got built, which is now, of course, the Junker Center, and now we have a second one right for the students. So you have, so those are a lot of landmarks. I also think you know, as they passed, these different enrollment numbers, I think when Lilley came in, it was around 1,200 students, maybe something like that, 250, maybe juniors and seniors, and then you get to a couple thousand within a few years and I think by the end of the 90s they were, right, around 4,000. So all those were big watershed moments.
Joseph Beilein:And then there's other ways to look at it too. I mean there's these curricular moments too. Right, we go from the two-year engineering program to the four-year engineering program, which is happening while they're getting all of these people who you know helped build the engineering complex together, the Preshacks, and you know Fasenmayer and Zern, you know all these folks together. That's all happening in the mid to late 80s. And then I'm trying to think here you have the schools right, these curricular things. Schools are created, schools are created. Lilley was really big on and this was sort of a fad, but not a fad, that's the wrong word, because fads go away. But there was a lot trending towards business schools in the late eighties and so he decided we need, we have a business program, we need to have a business school that's off on its own. So I mean there's all sorts of things that that you know you could say were watershed moments or big moments in the development of this place.
Ralph Ford:Well, I think that's a good summary of a number of them In this book. In writing it, you hired a number of student researchers and got them involved. How were they involved and what did they find?
Joseph Beilein:So I hired. So, in terms of doing the research, I hired three students at different points in the process and what I wanted them to do, I had one of them sort of do two things. First, he kind of was working alongside me. This is at the very beginning, so he helped me kind of figure out the larger contours of the story. And then, towards the end of his time with me, I set him on this track of tell me what student life was like. And so he did a little bit of that and then he graduated and went on his way. And then I hired a couple more students to carry on with that and basically their job was to look through the newspapers and then anywhere else it took them to tell me what it was like to be a student here.
Joseph Beilein:And you know this is one of the difficult things about writing a book like this is you have so many different forces. Here you have the leaders of. The difficult things about writing a book like this is you have so many different forces. Here you have the leaders of the college, you have the partners from the community, you have Penn State University, you have the faculty, but it kept coming back to me the students are what matter here, right? They're not only what we produce, but they're also the means of production in this place in a lot of ways, and the reason why we're all here, of production in this place in a lot of ways, and the reason why we're all here.
Joseph Beilein:And so I thought we should have students do the research about the students, and so they did a lot of the stuff and I told them to find what was interesting and then sort of write up how this fits together in your own words, and I was hoping that.
Joseph Beilein:I don't know why I was hoping this, but I kind of was hoping that it would be a more whimsical part of the book. But these three students kept coming back with all these really serious social and political issues. And it's so funny because I don't think many of us think of Penn State Behrend as being this, like very rabid political campus, right, but what occurred to me and I didn't talk about this book, but what occurred to is the new student newspaper back in the day was the way in which people expressed their views and they wrote back to each other and it was almost like twitter, uh, you know, but where, where people were sort of going back and forth, you just had to wait a week you had to wait a week for the response yeah, and so they weren't for and it's a very Midwestern thing, right there weren't students confronting each other on campus.
Joseph Beilein:Instead, they're in their dorm room and they're writing about it and they have their own friends that believe in what they're saying, and then someone else would write back. And it's not passive, aggressive, but it's also like I don't want to get into a verbal altercation with this person, and so and I just see that as sort of a Midwestern way I was at the University of Missouri for graduate work and that was how that happened. A lot of times People weren't yelling at each other in the streets, they went back and forth in the newspaper. So, anyway, they found these different controversies and then they gave it to me and I was like, oh my goodness, now I have to try and write this up. And so I did the best I could, sort of pulling these different stories together. And, yeah, so it was a powerful moment because my students were they were much more serious than I thought they were and they just they did an excellent job sort of point out what was important and what they thought was important to the students at the time.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, I think it was great reading that, and it's one of the things that surprised me too all this discussion about gender and race and other things that were happening that you wouldn't associate with this campus immediately. So, as you said, it wasn't about donkey basketball.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, right, right, right silly stuff going on.
Ralph Ford:Can you tell us where can people find your book?
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, absolutely. So. You can find it on Amazon, but also you could buy it directly from Penn State University Press. It was printed under the Behrend College imprint, which is great. You know we have our own, our own book imprint. But Penn State University Press did an awesome job helping us produce the book and get it out, and you know they came up with a lot of the cover, artwork and stuff like that, so you could buy it directly from the press. It looks great, it's an easy read, great, and that's not because a lot of research and work didn't go into it, it's just. And that's not because a lot of research and work didn't go into it, it's just no it's not that it's simple, it's just.
Ralph Ford:But you know, of course I have a vested interest, absolutely. You know, once you sit down you can read it, and I found it very readable.
Joseph Beilein:Yeah, buy a copy for yourself and a hundred of your best friends.
Ralph Ford:There we go. So let's switch, and you know, talk again about your teaching, and you know how would you. I like to ask this question You're like, what's your philosophy like in teaching and you know what are you trying to achieve in the classroom with students.
Joseph Beilein:That's a great question and, as someone who has probably spent too much time thinking about it and you know many of us have it's a difficult one to answer. I want to form a connection with the students. I think that that's the first thing you have to do to get them to learn. So I think there has to be like a human connection there where I know their names, we're all comfortable speaking in the classroom, all of that. I want them to find history to be fun and dynamic, which is a change for a lot of them who come out of a high school where they've just been memorizing names and facts and all of that stuff. And I want to keep it fairly simple.
Joseph Beilein:A lot of my classes are taken by students who are trying to check a general education box. So there's a lot of engineers, business students, science students, nurses you know folks like that. So I want them to come away. My but really my goal is if you come away from each class learning one thing, that's a huge accomplishment. And if you come away from the whole class, as long as you go into your life and you can, like you, remember a couple things, you know a year down the road, two years from now down the road. That's that's huge for me. So that's that's really like at its most basic level. That's what I'm trying to achieve in the classroom with them.
Ralph Ford:So if I take that a step further, then what do you want them to think about your class 10 years later? So do you ever think about that, like, what do you hope they took away as the big life lesson?
Joseph Beilein:Yes, yes, and I have thought about it for years now. Not as a teacher, but I remember when I was a student. There was a lot of things I learned as an undergraduate student that didn't click until I was in my mid-20s, my late 20s my 30s, you know where you're sort of like, ah, someone put the part in the machine but it only just now sort of clicked, you know, into place.
Joseph Beilein:And so I think, first off, it's a huge accomplishment if anyone leaves this place and five years later they remember my class and remember me as a professor, five, ten years later. I mean I think that's great. And then I just I mean I hope they have like a positive feeling about it. And, like I said, if they remember one or two things, that's great. I mean I can't tell you how many college classes I took where I don't remember anything. I don't remember the professor's name, I don't remember what they look like. You know it was just a blur and it was not because of the extracurricular fun. I will say, you know, it's just, there's certain things that your mind retains and it's usually the things, the experiences that you felt like were fun experiences, positive experiences, where you felt comfortable in the classroom. And that's why all that stuff which doesn't seem like it has anything to do with history, I think is so important to actually teaching history.
Ralph Ford:I mean if someone remembered you five years later and they learned a lesson, and they will. And, by the way, many students here are very they remember your classes. My kids went through your classes. I can say that, my two sons. You may not even know that you probably forgot their names. Yeah, I mean probably, but let's talk about the history program. So you're a member of the history program here, faculty member, and we have a bachelor's degree in history. Why should someone come here and study history?
Joseph Beilein:Well, I think there's all sorts of reasons why you might study history. We have different spiels that we give at these open houses, but for me I think it's important that students if someone loves history, I see this as an opportunity for them to continue that education. And then you know, when you get out of this place we as a program are sure that you will be prepared to do whatever you really want to do. You know that excludes, you know, narrow sort of very specialized fields, but we have history majors that are in everything from like law enforcement and government work to obviously working in museums and teaching, to selling insurance and, you know, and working, you know, for large corporations. So the way that we try and prepare our students is we want to teach them some skills like writing, speaking they can do research, stuff like that but that they also. We're trying to teach them how to think, as opposed to just sort of what to think.
Joseph Beilein:Again, going back to the high school, you're memorizing stuff here. We want to teach you the fundamentals of how to think, how to have dynamic interpersonal relations with people, and I think history teaches you how to do a lot of that stuff. And the biggest thing, of course is we want you to be empathetic, we want to teach you this skill. Empathy is like a little muscle in your brain that you have to sort of pump it up, and the way that you pump it up is by teaching people to walk in other people's shoes, see the world from different perspectives, and all of that. But I always go back to if you love history, this is your last chance to learn about it, Absolutely yeah.
Ralph Ford:Well, we are coming to the end of the interview. Sure, I will give you the last word.
Joseph Beilein:There's not a ton. Other than you know, vision and resilience was a great learning experience for me and I think that people who pick up this book, whether they're in higher ed or they're interested in our college, I think it will hopefully give them a pretty accurate view of what happened here, and not just what happened, but why things happened in this place.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, well, thank you, I appreciate it. My guest today is Dr Joe Beilein. You have been listening to Behrend Talks.