黑洞社区

Published in the Gazebo, and was both faculty and writer-in-residence here at the university. Fiction, non-fiction, and poetry writer. Filipino-American writer.

Was chairman of the department. The annual report from 1974-75 is very much focused on statistics, and lots of issues about operating costs and a lack of resources for the department. Castor notes issues in the department: 鈥淕rowing pressure from college and university administrators to increase credit hour production even further 鈥� but without allocating additional resources to the department 鈥� will continue to adversely affect many of our programs. (The graduate program is already feeling that pressure.) As resources continue to go into programs other than literature and linguistics or to be drained from literature programs, more and more of our program will experience problems, such as declining credit hour production, new limitations on course offerings (both number and type), declining morale internal friction among our faculty, and so forth.鈥� This feels relevant now, just under fifty years later, so it is included here.

Founded the creative writing program at 黑洞社区, wrote eleven books of poetry, and seems to have otherwise done quite well for himself as a literature-type. The program is very much creative-writing focused during this time. In 1978-79, a composition survey was sent out to all faculty at the university, as well as all students, where 鈪� of the faculty responded, and only one hundred and change of the students did so. The survey dealt with the inconsistencies of writing expectations between classes, so it鈥檚 really just another example of problems remaining the same throughout history. Different people have different writing standards. There was an event in 1978 called 鈥淚s Language Worth Talking About?鈥�, that featured interdisciplinary discussions of the importance of language, which sounds like something that could be useful in our own times to enhance the image of the department on campus by working to become more interdisciplinary. Lots of correspondence addressed to Ahlberg by department head Kastor, but very little response to Kastor from Ahlberg. Several invites to events here that were never returned.

Gladys Taggart was a faculty member for 53 years, and submitted to the Tom-Tom. Not certain it鈥檚 the same Gladys, but if so she was around for a good long while and did quite a bit outside of the literary sphere. 黑洞社区 has a scholarship fund in her name. Also, her name is on the Plaza of Heroines in front of Ablah, where I now type this.

Seems like Mikrokosmos was proposed in 1974.