{"id":8916,"date":"2014-12-04T09:56:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T16:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=8916"},"modified":"2014-12-04T09:56:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T16:56:32","slug":"peak-profile-joseph-e-mattys-67","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2014\/12\/peak-profile-joseph-e-mattys-67\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak Profile: Joseph E. Mattys \u201967"},"content":{"rendered":"

J<\/span>oe E. Mattys \u201967<\/b> has seen Colorado College from both sides: as a student hungry for the Next Big Question and a teacher eager to pose it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first teaching job after my M.A. and a stint in the Army was back at CC,\u201d says Joe, who taught theater from 1972 to 1977. \u201cIt was interesting to return as a colleague, albeit a very junior colleague, of some of the same faculty who had taught me five years earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 1963, though, Joe had no idea he would study theater, much less become an honored professor in the field at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. As so many students have before him, he just knew that anything was possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds corny,\u201d he says in a phone interview, \u201cbut it\u2019s pretty genuine: it was the intellectual atmosphere, the excitement of grappling with the great questions and learning stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New Mexico native had been intrigued by theater for a long time. But he began his first year intending to major in English.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had Tom Ross, Neale Reinitz, and the indomitable Bill Hochman teaching in the Selected Students program,\u201d Joe says, his voice warm with the memory. \u201cBut I began to be attracted to psychology in sophomore year.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out that the college\u2019s coursework focused on the physiological side of psychology, however. Not so compelling to Joe. What about theater?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy adviser was (psychology professor) Gilbert Johns. He said, \u2018If you really want to be a theater major, then I think you should be one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe pursued theater, working on every CC production during his time as a student. He learned a lot, he says, including one pivotal lesson from Theater Professor Bill McMillen and the student-created Theatre Workshop: empower students to pursue their own projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very exciting period. I used it as a model for my own teaching . . . to encourage student work.<\/p>\n

He goes on: \u201cIt really was a place where you were expected to activate your brain, to talk and think and not just sit there and take classes. That\u2019s always been my ideal in teaching: to always get students to engage with the world and not just regurgitate the information back to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating, he went on to earn a master\u2019s degree in theater at Illinois State University and an MFA at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n

When he returned to CC in 1972, Joe found at least one fundamental change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Block Plan was an even more exhilarating version of the adventuresome academic atmosphere that I enjoyed as a student,\u201d he says of the program, then two years old. \u201cI did some of my most innovative work there . . . and developed content that I continued to use over the next 40 years
\nof teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a handful of other teaching posts, Joe joined the faculty of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., in 1990. There, he directed 50 school productions, including more than 100 performances of \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d (\u201cFamilies have come to it for 20 years\u201d). In 2005, he became the chairman of the Department of Arts.<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, Joe directed the First-Year Experience Program at Randolph-Macon, which paired professors in a year-long study of themes from contrasting points of view. (His favorite theme: identity, which he taught with a psychology professor.) And in 2009, Joe was honored with the college\u2019s Samuel Nelson Gray Distinguished Faculty award.<\/p>\n

He retired in May and was awarded the Bruce Unger Award for his 24 years of service to the college.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve decided to not go cold turkey into retirement. I\u2019m teaching one course in our new First-Year program. And even though I\u2019ve retired, I\u2019ve been asked to direct \u2018A Christmas Carol\u2019 again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, Joe says, he\u2019ll spend more time with family and other pursuits.<\/p>\n

He laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to catch up on 430 years of neglected reading.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe E. Mattys \u201967 has seen Colorado College from both sides: as a student hungry for the Next Big Question and a teacher eager to pose it. \u201cMy first teaching job after my M.A. and a stint in the Army was back at CC,\u201d says Joe, who taught theater from 1972 to 1977. \u201cIt was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8917,"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":[47],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-8916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2014","tag-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2014\/11\/Mattys-on-Christmas-Carol-set.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8918,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916\/revisions\/8918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}