RPCV Kay White says in 1962 "At this stage, the Peace Corps was very experimental," she said. "In our group alone, half washed out because of the physically demeaning environment, the psychological pressure of being watched constantly, and the realization that they didn't want to live this way for two years."
WHITE RETIRING AFTER 17 YEARS AT MSUCOM
by Pat Grauer
What do Eleanor Roosevelt, the Peace Corps and Billie Jean King have in common?
They're all on Kay White's personal "claim-to-fame" list.
White, who is retiring after 17 years as assistant dean for student affairs at MSUCOM, has had a remarkable career at MSU, which began with her master's studies in rehabilitation counseling and student personnel administration in 1963.
"I've seen eight U.S. and eight MSU presidents since I first came to Michigan State," she said. "JFK was alive and well, and I was only 22 when I hit campus."
While a graduate student at MSU, she worked as a residence hall adviser, an area director in East Campus and Red Cedar areas, and an assistant director for staff selection and training. It was a turbulent decade, and in the course of her work, she dealt with student demonstrators and was tear-gassed many times.
Nonetheless, the year she rode 112 hours in a bus to and from the Rose Bowl as a chaperone might have been the greatest test of her fortitude. MSU lost both the game, and, as fate would have it, two coeds who ran away with sailors stationed at Long Beach.
In 1972, she tucked two feathers into her cap: a Ph.D. in higher education administration (her thesis was "A History of Student Activism at Michigan State University during the Decade of the 1960s") and appointment as assistant vice president for Student Affairs and Services at MSU. She was the first woman and the (then) youngest ever to be hired as an assistant vice president by the university, a post she held until she came to MSUCOM in 1980.
From 1973 to the present, she's also held an appointment as an associate professor in the Department of Educational Administration.
So what about these claims to fame?
In 1962-63, White was one of the United States' first 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers.
"At this stage, the Peace Corps was very experimental," she said. "In our group alone, half washed out because of the physically demeaning environment, the psychological pressure of being watched constantly, and the realization that they didn't want to live this way for two years."
She noted that the training, which occurred at State University College in New Paltz, New York, included a variety of physical and mental challenges, including rappelling cliffs, learning tribal languages by ear, and a formidable battery of psychological tests.
She was assigned to teach English and science at an all-male teacher training college in the bush of Sierra Leone, West Africa.
"I was the only single white woman in a 50-mile radius," she noted, "and got many questions about the texture of my skin and hair. Much of what I had to teach were the basics: how the introduction of electricity into their villages would impact their lives, the rain cycle, a scientific understanding of the conception of children. Our texts were all British, and referred to things found in England, not in Africa."
Living conditions quickly taught her, she said, "not to take anything for granted." "Fresh" meat, which came from animals had walked across the Sahara, had to be ground or beaten with hammers because it was so tough. Their water source was the local river, and the oak-brown fluid had to be boiled, filtered, drained and chilled before use. During the rainy season, mud prevented travel for up to three months.
"It was a science teacher's heyday, however," she noted, citing "30-foot pythons, fire ants, giant anthills, and beetles from science fiction. Every morning we shook our shoes for scorpions, and every night we ducked the night adders that fell out of trees."
During her training for the Peace Corps, White had the opportunity to spend a half-day with First Lady Emerita Eleanor Roosevelt in her library in Hyde Park.
"In my family, the Roosevelts were almost considered to be full-blown Communists," White said, "and being young and naive, I figured she was tainted with the same brush. I went away from the experience impressed by her genuineness as a person, the breadth of her experience in the world, and her sincere sense of compassion for people who were poor and 'underclass'."
White proceeded to read most of the biographies about Ms. Roosevelt to become more educated about her.
"I'd never pictured her as real person," she said. "She is definitely the most prominent woman I've met in my lifetime, and may be the most prominent woman of the century."
But she spent time with other prominent women. In 1973, just five months before the highly touted rivalry between tennis champs Billie Jean King and Bobbie Riggs erupted into a battle of the sexes at the Astrodome, White spent a week with King at a tennis clinic at Hilton Head.
"King was a wonderful teacher and coach," she said, "and I had a renewed respect for how difficult it is to play high-level for a number of years."
During her many years at MSUCOM, White has seen the attitudes of medical students change
"Medical students in the period I've known them have become much more serious," she noted. "They are facing greater costs of education, increasing litigiousness, more medical malpractice costs, and must learn more and more in less time.
"It's been a joy to have the luxury of only working with 500 students," she said. "It allows me to be part of the students' whole lives, from before they get here to after they graduate: weddings, baptisms, godparenting, and wonderful continuing relationships - both joy and sadness.
"Most importantly," she said, "I have a tremendous appreciation for people who do their jobs well. It takes a pro to make it look easy."
White plans to spend more time with family and friends in her retirement, and will devote at least one year to traveling the nation counterclockwise by seasons, spending summer and early fall in Michigan. The only snow she hopes to see in the future is from afar.
Last Updated on 1/21/98
By Edward A. Vanek Jr.
Email: vanekedw@pilot.msu.edu
