UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #184
LOW, CAMILLA M.

LOW, Camilla M. (1899-1996)
Professor of Counseling and Guidance
At UW: 1939-1961

Interviewed: 1979	
Series: School of Education
Interviewer: Mark Van Pelt
Length: 1.5 hours

Background; Reasons for coming to UW; Comparison of UW and Stanford Education departments; Impact of WWII on Department; GI students; Student teachers; Community work of Education 73; Classes in guidance and personnel; Early program vs.  recent program; Curriculum development; DPI; Guidance staff selection; Graduate Examination Committee; World trip, 1957; Problems of training foreign graduate students; Women's faculty group trip to Africa.

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:00	Introduction.

00:00:26	Low's early family background; teaching at South Orange High School; early work in guidance 1933-35.

00:05:23	Graduate work at Michigan.

00:06:22	Dr. Mildred Fisher.

00:06:54	Graduate work at Stanford in guidance and curriculum; Harold Hand her major professor.

00:08:17	Experience as Dean of Girls at Redwood City.

00:18:40	Relevance of course work versus experience in Low's counseling work; experience predominated.

00:19:54	How Low came to Wisconsin; Gordon MacKenzie brought Low to Wisconsin High School; Gladys Borchers and rest of methods people concerning Low's qualification to supervise speech teachers.
00:24.30	Comparison of Wisconsin to Stanford department of education in 1930s; Wisconsin service emphasis; diversity of Wisconsin students' background.

00:28:30	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:28:40	Adjustment to being first woman in Department of Education; relations to John Guy Fowlkes.

00:29:46	Impact of World War II on Department of Education follow-up study of student teachers; a "teacherage" in northern Wisconsin; adjustment of new teachers to their communities; best students were GI students.

00:38:35	Pre-student teaching for undergraduate students. Community work of Education 73; unique aspect of Wisconsin; practical experience course; Kai Jensen; a teaching laboratory manual; John Rothney.

00:45:07	National work on laboratory teaching.  Work in student teaching experiences in early 1950s.

00:48:03	Classes in guidance and personnel taught by Low; nature of students and methods; summer school and extension students were more serious than regular session students; emphasized importance in going to parents homes to students; Edgerton; Low had many students from nursing and engineering.

00:57:30	Contrast of early program with recent program; emphasized that teacher must be considered first line of guidance work; program was simpler then; Rothney and Low encouraged counselors to be active in certain school programs and work with teachers.

00:59:48	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:59:50	Continuation of early guidance instruction description; today no emphasis on classroom teaching in background of counselor--needed for coordination and good relationships between class teachers and counselors.

01:02:25	Origin of Low's interest in curriculum development, work with Department of Public Instruction (DPI) committee; production of four pamphlets on curriculum development had impact on her guidance teaching; impact of this pamphlet on Illinois school system.

01:07:43	Impact of new people, such as Gail Farwell, on guidance and personnel area; Low had no say on guidance staff selection; no coordination of Edgerton, Rothney, Low, etc. in a department-like effort; very few meetings.

01:10:30	Low's experience on graduate examination committee; construction of the exams.

01:13:52	Low's sabbatical trip around the world in 1957; visiting former graduate students; discouragement among students because of incompatibility of United States-style education with their own country's education system; problems of training graduate students from foreign countries with aim of them going back to aid their own country: how foreign students came over.

01:21:45	Women's faculty group to Africa; Verna Carley; workshops for African women: concerned primarily with teacher education and improvement of schools; hesitancy of Africans to act as equals with American women for they never had been given equal social treatment; African women returned the trip later.

01:29:10	End of side. End of interview. 

END