{"id":10130,"date":"2015-12-03T15:28:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=10130"},"modified":"2015-12-03T15:28:24","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:28:24","slug":"50-years-with-owen-cramer-tim-fuller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2015\/12\/50-years-with-owen-cramer-tim-fuller\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Years with Owen Cramer & Tim Fuller"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Owen Cramer went to Oberlin College in the late 1950s, he planned to pursue chemistry. Tim Fuller attended Kenyon College around the same time, ready for pre-med.<\/p>\n

The two Chicagoans settled in, started studying, and soon found passions leading them elsewhere.<\/p>\n

By 1965, that \u201celsewhere\u201d was Colorado College. Cramer, a Homerist who could recite Latin like \u201ca mad priest,\u201d was hired to restart a defunct classics program. Fuller, a political philosopher with eyes only for liberal arts education, would broaden the focus of the Political Science Department.<\/p>\n

A half century, of course, is no small chunk of time; as Cramer notes, Rome became the center of the world between 220 B.C. and 167 B.C. And over the last 50 years, he and Fuller have moved to their own exalted spots at CC. They\u2019ve served on countless committees, including the one that created the Block Plan; hired other longtime faculty members; and helped send thousands of students into successful careers of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are iconic, they are enduring; they anchor the college\u2019s values and mission,\u201d said Sandra Wong, dean of the college and dean of the faculty.<\/p>\n

\"CC-BUL-DECEMBER-19-CramerClass-2015\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

Owen Cramer, Professor of Classics<\/h3>\n

Owen Cramer spent his senior year of high school abroad, in Athens. At Oberlin College, he deepened his knowledge of Greek, studied German, \u201creactivated\u201d his middle-school Latin, and even served as an emergency French teacher. After graduate studies in classics at the University of Texas at Austin, he came to Colorado College \u2014 a place he said he\u2019d never heard of before being contacted for an interview.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the man has no fear of educational experimentation, which made him and CC an excellent match in 1965.<\/p>\n

At a college whose classics program had been mothballed for a decade, the 23-year-old Cramer immediately operated as his own department. He shared space with history faculty, and his first courses, in Greek and Roman history, were cross-listed.<\/p>\n

He also tackled Latin, as Jenny Holland \u201972<\/b> remembers well. Newly enrolled in 1968, she had some background in the classics \u2014 and near-certainty that they were irrelevant in the tumultuous modern era. That alone would have made her first meeting with Cramer inauspicious, but she also mistook the youthful professor for another student. No matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe assigned me a book by Apuleius called \u2018The Golden Ass,\u2019 which was written in Silver Age Rome about a total Roman counterculture,\u201d recalled Holland, who now as a music teacher strives to help young people make similar connections. \u201cI was kind of blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was no cursory nod to the present. Outside of class, Cramer was putting in time as a draft counselor and as a member of the El Paso County Democratic Central Committee. At the same time, he also was serving on CC\u2019s Academic Program Committee, which sought to establish the school\u2019s operational goals for the 1970s, and general objectives for the rest of the century.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were building utopia for after the war,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the war wasn\u2019t even over by 1974.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if the committee couldn\u2019t control that, it could establish the Block Plan. Longtime CC professor Glenn Brooks would call Cramer \u201ca steady source of fresh ideas\u201d during that time, though Cramer probably gained more attention for an episode in which he read Homer\u2019s \u201cIliad\u201d aloud, sunup to sundown, over three days with a group of students at various campus venues.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s definitely a maverick,\u201d said fellow Classics Professor Marcia Dobson, whose presence at CC\u2028is actually another testament to just that.<\/p>\n

In the \u201970s, Cramer was eager to expand the department. To enhance his chances, he led dozens of students in independent study blocks \u2014 up to 36\u2028at a time, he remembers \u2014 so that he could tell administrators, \u201cI have this heavy teaching load.\u2028I need staffing relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobson was his selection, and she turned down other offers to join Cramer at CC. She remembered, \u201cI said to myself, \u2018I could learn more from this man about classics in two years here, even if I leave after that, than I could going anyplace else in the country.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, neither of them has gone anyplace else. They established a major in classics in the \u201980s, and expanded the department with a third tenured position 20 years later.<\/p>\n

Along the way, Cramer has helped establish, and direct, CC\u2019s Comparative Literature program. He has chaired the Romance Languages and Spanish departments. He has sung in the Colorado College choir, contributed music criticism to local media, and served on neighborhood boards. He and his wife Becky have raised four kids.<\/p>\n

Cramer said sometimes he and other longtime professors talk about how their careers may have unfolded at big research universities. But he has no regrets about having taken a chance on CC back in \u201965, and no plans to stop teaching anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d he said, \u201cis as good as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CC-BUL-DECEMBER-20-FullerOffice-2015\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Fuller, Professor of Political Science<\/h3>\n

At a conference in England this fall, Paul Franco \u201978<\/b> ran into Tim Fuller, his college professor from 40 years ago. They got talking about movies, and Fuller said he\u2019d recently watched \u201cHer\u201d and \u201cEx Machina,\u201d at his students\u2019 recommendation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Whenever a student suggests that I watch something, I always do,\u2019\u201d said Franco, who\u2019s a \u2028professor of government at Bowdoin College. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018That is the secret formula for keeping \u2028in touch with students.\u2019 … He remains ceaselessly curious about them and interested in what they have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, Franco believes, helps explain Fuller\u2019s youthfulness and effectiveness as a professor. And it\u2019s evidence of what another alum, Todd Breyfogle \u201988<\/b>, considers Fuller\u2019s devotion to carrying on \u201cthe conversation of mankind,\u201d as Michael Oakeshott would phrase it.<\/p>\n

In Fuller\u2019s story, Oakeshott, the 20th-century British political philosopher, is a presence almost from the beginning. While researching a paper on Thomas Hobbes in his sophomore year at Kenyon College, Fuller picked up an edition of Leviathan <\/i>with an introduction by Oakeshott. He devoured all 60 pages that Saturday afternoon, and said, \u201cOn Monday morning I went to the professor … I said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve decided that I want to go to graduate school in this subject and teach it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, did I really know what I was talking about? Probably not.\u201d<\/p>\n

But through his graduate career at Johns Hopkins University, nothing changed his mind. \u201cI was interested in observing politics as the kind of dramatization of the human condition,\u201d he said. \u201cThe place where the human condition shows itself in its most public form.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was at Hopkins that Fuller met longtime CC professor Glenn Brooks through a mutual acquaintance, right when Brooks and company were seeking a professor of political theory. Fuller interviewed, got the job, and moved West to the first coed undergraduate environment he had ever experienced.<\/p>\n

As a new professor, Fuller said, he pressured himself to construct elaborate lectures \u201cthat had way more material in them than you could deliver in a 50-minute period.\u201d Then one day in class, he looked up from his papers and saw a sea of glazed faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I put down these notes,\u201d he remembered. \u201cI walked out in front of the podium and I just asked them what they thought. And that changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The changes were actually just beginning, with the Block Plan he helped create taking effect in 1970, and the college preparing for its 1974 centennial. For that latter celebration, Fuller invited Oakeshott to speak on campus, and the philosopher accepted. It started a relationship that deepened until Oakeshott died in 1990, and that Fuller has honored with extensive published work since.<\/p>\n

Fuller wrote in depth about his Oakeshott connection for CC\u2019s 125th<\/sup> anniversary memoir collection,\u2028in part to express gratitude for the opportunities the college has afforded him over the years. That concept comes up again when he talks about his turns as dean and acting president in the \u201990s and 2000s, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never wanted to become a professional administrator,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I was very happy to serve in those various capacities simply because I owe the college a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

His bond to CC includes his wife Kalah having earned an MAT degree here, and having two daughters graduate from the college in the \u201990s.<\/p>\n

Today, Fuller said he sees no reason to stop teaching and writing, and continues to feed a passion that falls somewhere in between the two. For decades, he has held an informal \u201cpolitical theory discussion\u201d group in his home, inviting any interested students in to talk about great literary works. \u201cSometimes I choose what we\u2019re going to read,\u201d he said, \u201csometimes they choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Tim Fuller, it would be hard to imagine it any other way.<\/p>\n

\"Professors <\/a>
Professors Cramer and Fuller were honored at a ceremony at Homecoming 2015, where many colleagues, friends, and former students came to wish them well. <\/div> <\/div>
\"Tim <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Owen <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Owen <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Professors <\/a>
Professors Cramer and Fuller were honored at a ceremony at Homecoming 2015, where many colleagues, friends, and former students came to wish them well. <\/div> <\/div>
\"Professors <\/a>
Professors Cramer and Fuller were honored at a ceremony at Homecoming 2015, where many colleagues, friends, and former students came to wish them well. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These two professors have been influencing students and the campus as a whole for a half century. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-10130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2015","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2015\/12\/CC-BUL-DECEMBER-18-FullerCramer-2015.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10239,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10130\/revisions\/10239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}