Last fall when we asked the College's records office for the names of alumni who count Gilmore Stott as a "Swarthmore influence," we got a long list. Despite the fact that his 48-year career here has been spent largely as an administrator, the list confirmed that for generations of Swarthmore students, Stott has been a teacher and mentor of the first order.
Most of us have encountered a teacher who transcended the ordinary business of schooling. Some taught invaluable skills or showed us new ways to think. Others took a contrary approach, challenging us to define ourselves in opposition. Still others&emdash;and these, I think, are the most influential&emdash;saw and affirmed in us qualities we had not yet seen in ourselves.
I've been lucky enough to have encountered all three.
More than any other person, Richard Gregory taught me how to write. In his 10th-grade English class, we diagrammed sentences as though they were astrophysical equations. We took daily quizzes (made up of poor writing culled from our own sophomoric papers) in which we not only had to correct the grammar but improve the style as well. "How could you say this more clearly?" he would ask, waving The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and making us rewrite again and again.
On the contrary side, there was Hal Lewis, creative director of the magazine where I worked before coming to Swarthmore. Hal was a design genius, a brilliant polymath who was also capricious beyond all reason. He yelled a lot, driving the staff to do its best work; in a perverse way, he brought us together as a creative team. I was a much better editor (and, I hope, person) after those two hellish years with Hal.
Finally there was my printmaking teacher, David Bumbeck of Middlebury College. As a senior art major, I applied to some of the best graduate schools of the fine arts--and was rejected at every one. In truth my portfolio was weak. I had good technical skills but struggled with drawing. But Dave Bumbeck, a great draughtsman himself, never discouraged me. Instead, he gently steered me into a master's in teaching program at the Rhode Island School of Design, his alma mater. He saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself&emdash;that I might make a better art teacher than artist. He was right, and I went on to spend 12 happy years in the classroom.
What about your mentors? Because of his wide following and his longevity at the College, Gil Stott is a shining example of the mentoring that happens to almost every student here. I know that our article about him will prompt Bulletin readers to think of many other "Swarthmore influences," and I'd be interested to hear about them.