Honors Time Travel
When the Honors Program progressed from being a concept through development to reality, I was hired as the first Executive Secretary. Even before students were recruited there was a lot of setup involved. Bedford Street was just a house with living room, kitchen, family room and bedrooms. The living room with its cloudy sky-blue carpet was my office and the family room which ran the lenth of the house was to be the operations center and conference room. Behind the kitchen was a kid’s bedroom with sailboat linoleum on the floor. Offices were upstairs.
I was involved with “picking out the furnishings” so Professor Marty Rogoff and I traipsed around Portland looking at new, pre-owned and distressed office furniture. The highlight of this venture was going to Mardens and being shown used naugahyde chairs by a salesperson appropriately named Vinal. We ended up ordering from a catalog. These were the days of the omnipresent copier salesman Rick Frost so we had the latest operations equipment. Internet wasn’t used much yet but the intranet from UMaine provided information from both inside and outside campus. Email was in its infancy.
I was immediately impressed by the quality of students who came for interviews. As the “Gatekeeper” I chatted with applicants and was delighted to find such creative, intelligent students. I knew I was going to love the job when one of the students walked in, stared at me and Marty who was retrieving a file from downstairs, and asked if an applicant had to have eyes that matched the blue carpet to be accepted. She was accepted, blue eyes or not.
Interaction among students, staff and faculty was mentally invigorating for all of us. As the program advanced and more students were added each semester, syllabi changed to meet the interdisciplinary demands and challenges from students. New Professors were added, intensive classes were designed around contemporary topics. I can only imagine that the Honors Program kept its forward momentum after I left! This was a memorable job and one that encouraged me to keep thinking and creating.
I’m back in Maine now after 12 years in Florida and would be happy to exchange information and thoughts with those I knew in the Honors Program from 1985-1988, whether students faculty or staff. Visit my website: Time Travel Graphics.
Annette M. Hanser
