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New Center For Learning Homecoming Together Again, Despite Their Differences

And let it be said right up front that the guy in the cowboy boots is the one with the chauffeur.

This motley group gathers in the home of their former professor, Jim Reynolds. Some of the women wear business suits; others are in flowing dresses and sandals.

The men sport varied hairstyles as well, be it slicked back in a ponytail or cropped conservatively.

And they’re all there for not only the University’s 2000 homecoming but for a special reunion of their own as well.
Their journey together started when they first arrived at ETSU, some as long as 25 years before, with their admittance into a program of special studies called the New Center for Learning.

From the first, according to one of them, every NCL student shared one basic trait: “We were all strong-willed.”

So says Bryant Colley, one of the original bunch of freshmen who back in 1975 joined the NCL, which was the University’s interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. Bryant says being strong-willed is probably part of what it took to tackle such an innovative course of studies. “We all wanted to do things differently,” he says.

And doing things differently was what the NCL was all about. Students were taught by teams of professors. A math teacher might have been paired with a music teacher, with students expected to complete assignments that reflected learning in both disciplines.

Another charter student in the NCL was Sherry Tucker, these days a mom to three school-age children and a dance teacher in Arlington. While NCL students may have had some traits in common, she maintains that “We still were a diverse group.” As they are to this day, if haircuts and shoe choice count for anything.

Sherry remembers being recruited for the NCL at freshman orientation. She says the Center was perfect for someone like her who didn’t consider herself the intellectual college type. “I never considered myself a brainy person,” she says. “This way was more inclusive.”

The Center closed in 1992, but that spirit of inclusion is alive and well at Reynolds’ home on this rainy Friday night. They snack and chat in the kitchen, laugh in large groups in the living room, and pair up out on the patio for quiet conversations by the outdoor fireplace.

They reminisce about the old white frame house where their first classes were held, about how professors broke traditional barriers by encouraging students to drop the “doctor” and call them by their first name, and about the infamous word “concretize”—which instructors would scrawl in students’ journals, insisting the writer be more specific.
“Journaling” was particularly important to James Ragland, who started in the NCL in 1980. James is now a columnist for The Dallas Morning News (and the chauffeur was his).

He still has his journals, though he claims the contents aren’t particularly gripping. “I had a pretty boring life,” he says. “In my journals I was thinking about cafeteria food, about stiff mashed potatoes. . . . But it gets you to be more reflective about how your whole life is progressing and how to make a difference in the world.”

James has to answer his cell phone, and while he does, Sherry pulls up a chair to talk with David Zvanut, a Commerce artist and another NCL original. She tells him she recalls during those first days as a new student feeling as though her natural reserve set her apart from the others. David remembers the feeling that, whatever their differences, everybody in the NCL was accepted for who and what they were. Though they both were outwardly quite different—she the more straight-laced one, he the more edgy individual, they both say unequivocally that they initially were attracted to the NCL for the same reason: They both wanted to be Jim Reynolds.

Reynolds was the one who made the NCL presentation to students during orientation. The strength of his personality was tempered with a genuine acceptance of students that was special, they say.

James too remembers that Reynolds and other NCL faculty were a big attraction to participate in the program. “Despite how exceptional the NCL concept was, I must say it wouldn’t have worked if—and this is no small thing—it didn’t have the right people in the program. It was clear to all the students that the professors genuinely cared about us as human beings and extended themselves in a way professors in traditional settings often don’t.

“We were wonderfully different people—not just the professors but the students, too,” he recalls. How many places, he asked, have students from an academic program who still enthusiastically keep in touch with one another?

The NCL alumni are joined at Reynolds’ home by several NCL professors, along with former president F.H. McDowell, who initiated the NCL at the University, and this year’s Distinguished Alumnus, Barry
Thompson, a vice president during the NCL years.

As the others come in, they gravitate as their tastes dictate to either the hors d’oeuvres on the counter or the stew on the stove. While they do, Bryant recalls a story about Jan, an older nontraditional NCL student.

“She was conservative, straight, quiet—and very sweet. Back then Jimbo [Reynolds] would let us smoke in class, but Jan had asthma and couldn’t stand the smoke. She wanted a no-smoking section in the classroom, and this was back when there wasn’t any such thing.”

In support of her, several NCL students, including Bryant, decided to demonstrate for everyone how hard the smoke must be on Jan.

“Four of us went over to the student union building and bought four big old cigars—big, fat nasty things,” Bryant recalls. “ We went back to the Center, stationed ourselves around the room and started puffing away. Within minutes there was a black cloud in the room.
“Jan got her no-smoking section.”

The rain eases up and the volume of voices in and outside the house rises. James returns. It seems important to him to say what they all have at one time or another during the evening.
“The thing that I liked more than anything else was that the professors weren’t trying to tell you what to think—they were trying to challenge you to think.”

A little later someone on the patio bemoans the demise of the Center that enrolled more than 2000, students at the University. A smile comes to Reynolds’ face, and he stands on tiptoe so everyone can see and hear him. “Yeah, but I think it’s back,” he says. “It’s called the Mayo College, and we’ve got a real good crop of kids in there.”

He answers a small chorus of questions, but he does it almost absentmindedly, with a half smile that says he may already be imagining another reunion. At this one, perhaps the NCL alumni will be joined by Mayo College grads—arriving in heaven knows what kind of vehicle, wearing outfits he couldn’t even guess at, sporting perhaps tattoos and strangely pierced body parts. After all, with strong-willed individuals who’ve been taught to think for themselves, anything’s possible.