Elizabeth Rollins Epperly

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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Elizabeth Rollins Epperly - 00:00
I am Elizabeth Rollins Epperly and I was the first student to register at
the newly created University of Prince Edward Island, I went on to found
the LM Montgomery Institute and I was the first female President, the
fourth President of the University of Prince Edward Island.


Photo - 0:19
I was a faculty member for years, yes, and that was a glory actually of my
career, I usually point out the other things but because people remember
those but the teaching and being a faculty member that’s really the heart
of what we do here. Altogether I was thirty years a professor about
twenty-two were at UPEI, I was eight years at Memorial University in
Newfoundland. I was here as a sessional from 1976-1984 and then I was at
Memorial from 1984-1992 back here in 1992 and then retired in 2006.


Slide - Memories - 1:03
You know it’s funny there are so many because I have such a long
association with this university but I come back to perhaps because it
rests on my right hand the university ring that I wear and it was not the
receiving of the ring but it’s the image on the ring, the realization and
when I was giving my installation talk when I became President of the
university I had included in there, I was saying that Prince Edward Island,
how much I love Prince Edward Island and I was pointing out that those
words were perfectly balanced and that Prince, Edward, and Island all three
have six letters each and when you invision that people on the audience,
you could tell people who’d grown up on the Island they hadn’t really
thought about that, that those are perfectly balanced and beautiful and so
my image for the university is that perfect balance and image of the image
itself of the lucky “U” that’s on my ring and then those three words
and they are so buoyant and inspiring that’s a funny thing to pick out
because it’s not an event but it is an image that says a great deal to me
about the university.


Slide - The First Student to Register at UPEI - 2:21
Well I can tell you about the very first, I actually, registering and
accidentally becoming the first student to register at the university, my
father and my stepmother drove me up from Virginia to Prince Edward Island
because my mother and I had made the trip the year before in 1968 in June
and I had fallen in love of course with the physical Island and decided I
had to come back here but my father is the one who had read the Anne books
to my sister and to me and so he wanted to bring me and because he wanted
to bring me to the university himself to be able to see Prince Edward
Island himself for the first time, we were here early because it was part
of a holiday and so we decided we may as well do this, may as well register
and so we parked on the outside the campus here and we walked into the
Administration building and we, my father said “Can I pay the fees
please”, in his lawyerly way and so that’s how it happened they said
yes sir you can pay the fees and I like to tell people this part of the
story, so my father said how much will be and they told him and he wrote
the cheque and he said now I assume that’s for the tuition for the first
semester and they said no sir that’s room, board, and tuition for the
entire year and he said thank you and we walked outside and he said
“Honey nothing is this inexpensive”, he said here’s another cheque
for you to come home when you realize this cannot be a real school, so that
stands out in my mind of course always because the comedy of this American
coming to Canada and finding things on a different scale and the other
thing about that initial registering of course my embarrassment that my
father was writing his cheque and all of that you go through at eighteen
years old but that I was handed a potato sack and a potato sack that had
sleeves, the arm holes cut in it and I was told now as an official frosh of
the university I was to wear this potato sack over everything I owned for
the next week and so I dutifully when we got out on campus I put it on and
of course it shed burlap shed all over everything and I thought well this
makes an indelible impression on you for the university so that’s my
earliest memory of UPEI, that and going down to the Montgomery Hall can you
imagine how exciting it was for me to be staying in Montgomery Hall named
for Lucy Maud Montgomery so this was a thrill, downtown in Charlottetown
and to realize that there wasn’t an elevator for the students to go from
and I was on the fourth floor and so my trunk had to be carried up and that
my father immediately commandeered as he would do two young men who were
standing there and to my huge embarrassment one of them was the President
of the Student Union so the President of the Student Union and I think the
Vice President of the Student Union carried my trunk from that ground floor
up to the fourth floor of Montgomery Hall so I have, I have very vivid
memories of my early days there but it was such a privilege to be on that
downtown campus and I didn’t know that I had been the first student until
several years later the Information Officer Marita McNulty was doing a
story on this on the origin the original days of the university she said
there was the first student to register was this girl from Virginia who
loved Anne of Green Gables and she said we just think that’s such a great
story and I didn’t know that story so I said that is a good story thank
you for telling me that I’m really pleased to know I was indeed the very
first one.


Slide - Life as a UPEI Student - 6:36
My undergraduate days in the classroom, I’ll put it this way, in the
classroom I was very well prepared for anything that would come after by my
UPEI experience because I had excellent professors really wonderful
professors in the English department and I took primarily English courses
because we could choose in those day really what we wanted to do and once
you covered your major I suppose it’s like all times once you covered
your major you could take what you wanted but I just wanted to take more
English courses and so I did that but also I was well prepared for the
English courses here because I had gone to a boarding school in Virginia
and we used some of the same textbooks the Norton Anthology and so on that
we used here but from here Fran Fraser I took more courses from her then
from anyone else in the English department and she was a superb teacher for
a highly motivated student in particular so she was very, she was very
disciplined in everything she did with us and she made us be very
disciplined I can remember getting back the first paper that she had marked
of mine and I was thinking well oh I was well prepared for this I have a
good education I can do this you know how you are at that age, for
heaven’s sake, and she had written almost more than I had on the paper
and I thought oh, oh dear, oh dear and such good questions and I learned
that well this was the best thing that could possibly happen to me and I
had wonderful teachers too like Frank Ledwell just a superb teacher as well
and so generous with their enthusiasms and their knowledge and the great
thing about UPEI classes is that they were small even when we had a larger
class and I think one of Frank’s had a hundred in it, he made it feel as
though it were intimate, we had intimate conversations, he was just this
tremendous talent for that and so did my other professors, I didn’t have
no that’s not true, I was going to say I didn’t have a bad professor my
whole time in Undergraduate that is not true I did have a summer time
experience but not with a UPEI faculty member and I think that’s an
amazing thing and so that when I went to Dalhousie for my Master’s I was
thinking well Dalhousie is bigger and gee I don’t know how this will
measure up I’m not sure how my writing will measure up and so on and
there were no problems and people said well my goodness you, you’ve had
good training where did you get your training not realizing where I was
from and I said UPEI and they said really University of Prince Edward
Island and as though somehow that was a complete surprise to them that UPEI
could do that and it was not because St. Dunstan’s hadn’t produced
wonderful graduates and that Prince of Wales hadn’t in its short time as
a four year institution hadn’t produced good people but that UPEI was so
new and of course people thought how could UPEI have any kind of tradition
and the truth is that UPEI drew on the wonderful traditions of two
wonderful institutions and so we had a kind of double dose or triple dose
of excellence I think.


Slide - Goals of a UPEI President - 10:09
The main thing that I wanted to do with UPEI and to do for UPEI if I could
was to get people to realize how good UPEI is and that sounds like maybe a
small thing but it’s that we really, even on the campus, we didn’t know
how-people didn’t recognize how good were we really are and when you
start talking about accomplishments, when you start talking about the
graduates when you’d start talking about how people felt about the place
you realize wow this is such a great university and people in the community
too, which would sort of shrug it off oh well I just went to UPEI or
whatever and you think come on now this, that Island understand humility is
one thing and that ingrained kind of down play what’s closest to you and
what’s here is one thing but you cannot do that to the university because
you undermine what its own status in the country and also its funding, its
funding abilities from other places and you lose that opportunity to brag
about it outside Prince Edward Island and the region and I know bragging
doesn’t come really easily to Islanders ever but to think about this
institution that it can draw people from around the world and should and
now does and I think that’s a wonderful thing. St. Dunstan’s did too,
Prince of Wales didn’t have the ambition to do that necessarily because
it had a different mandate but UPEI really needs to be connected to the
world and to build that bridge for this Island to the rest of the world. My
goal was to make people feel that there was an island within Prince Edward
Island so to feel it was separate from PEI because it was a university but
that it was also very much, very much the Prince Edward Island and one of
the best ambassadors for Prince Edward Island so I wanted people locally
especially to be proud of their university and to know it to know what the
university does it’s not that separate place out there that’s isolated
from Prince Edward Island but it is that place that is rooted in Prince
Edward Island and roots for Prince Edward Island so that was my goal that
was my ambition and it was too, also I had a very practical one and that
was not that that isn’t practical but rooted in that one of you like we
needed to turn the university finances around we had a number of challenges
we were going to be cut and we were cut in a major way and we needed to be
able to look at that and to face it head on, we had tremendous fiscal help
at the university we had a really good record and good conservative
financing here, I would put it that way, but we really needed to make some
changes and so that also was part of my mandate. The third thing that I
really had to do, we needed some new young faculty members and we had not
had any in quite a few years and we needed that infusion we needed that so
that not because the people here were not capable at all but because the
young students needed to be able to identify with younger faculty they
also, we needed that infusion of enthusiasm that comes with a fresh ideas
from graduate school, mind you it brings also the arrogance and some of the
misguidedness to with it but that’s all part of the growing process and
you need different ages and faculty, different ages, different perspectives
and you need that variety and so that was the other thing that I had to do.
One of my greatest blessings, the blessing for me not necessarily for them
was that I met everyone of them in their job interview, I made that part of
the interview that they had to come as their final place they had to come
to me because I wanted to be able to look them in the eye to know whether
this person was really going to fit in with our culture here and our place
and if they could love the university, that was important to me not just to
love the global idea of a university but if they could love this university
and that doesn’t of course mean not questioning it and not finding fault
with it at times but if they could embrace it and that was important to be
able to do that and I think we did some very good, very good hirings during
that time.


Slide - L.M. Montgomery Institute - 14:54
One of the things that I love about the institute is the institute is
actually outreach teaching and so to follow up to the question about my
teaching the institute is, it is a research institute and so we provide a
place in a forum for other people to learn about Montgomery and so on but
those biannual conferences every two years we have an international
conference and those are about broadening the dialogue and the conversation
if you like about Montgomery and that also is a form of teaching and the
books that have been inspired by the L.M. Montgomery Institute conferences
all of that is about teaching and almost everyone who contributes to those
books is a teacher of some kind, a teacher in some form and so I think
that’s part of the L.M. Montgomery Institute mandate has to do with
ongoing and lifelong learning and education and so I feel that my part in
creating the L.M. Montgomery Institute was part of that whole vision and
mission of how good this university is, how it needs to be celebrated and
how people need to recognize and celebrate it and I think Montgomery in a
way is the perfect person who’s, to be an emblem for that because it has
been up until just the last few years an easy thing to dismiss L.M.
Montgomery on Prince Edward Island unfortunately that’s true with the
stores with the Anne free zones and so on downtown and people mistaking
Montgomery for her commodified work and what a mistake that is because now
people are turning and on the Island as well to that pride in L.M.
Montgomery as a person, and as a creator, as an author, and as an educator
because that’s what she continued to do as well and setting a wonderful
example internationally for what is the best about Prince Edward Island and
about Canada so I’m really proud of the Institute’s part in education.



Slide - Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies - 17:12 
I would like to say that I think the new journal, the online journal of
L.M. Montgomery Studies is just the perfect way for UPEI to support,
supporting that journal to support this outreach mission if you like of the
L.M. Montgomery Institute and to, it takes it into a new realm to have this
online, Montgomery herself loved technology, new technology she would have
been the first one to have her own website, she would have been doing all
the things that journal hopes to do and to bring up all the visual and the
interactive in the way that she was fascinated with the visual and the
interactive so that journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies I just think is a
marvelous gift and to, to mark the 50th anniversary of the university, that
there are the 1st edition of the journal of the L.M. Montgomery Studies is
out that it was announced on the 25th at the 25th anniversary of the L.M.
Montgomery Institute I think is a wonderful thing and I like to think the
L.M. Montgomery Institute because I was the first student to register at
the university fifty years ago has a fifty year history in a way to, it was
just embryonic that’s all and now it’s recognized for its growth and I
think that it’s getting to be with Kate Scarth recognized for its
flourishing.


Slide - A Passion for the Classroom - 18:40
When it was announced that I was going to be the new President of UPEI, I
met on campus Mickey Place and I don’t know whether people have talked
about him but they certainly should he was such a part of the fabric if
this place a wonderful supporter of the university and somebody who was
involved in fundraising, alumni, and student life for years for decades he
was and Mickey, I met Mickey on the campus and I stuck out my hand knowing
he would shake hands with me and I expected him to give me an enthusiastic
congratulations, oh congratulations Betsy this is such great news, and
instead he said I am so sorry, I am so sorry you have made this choice and
he said Administrators come and go, he said but really good teachers are
hard to find and I am sorry you are leaving the classroom and I was
stricken almost dumb by that comment at the time but I have looked back on
that very greatfully over the years becasue I loved the classroom it was a
passion for me, I can remember telling my brother that I had finally found
in life the thing that was the most important and that was being in the
classroom with the students and talking about ideas, opening up passages,
literature language to students who hadn’t thought it consiously that way
before and as I said I had wonderful teachers here and I hope that I can
join the ranks of the good teachers of this university and I was, because I
knew the classrooms intimately here as a student and then later as a
sessional lecturer and then as a professor and finally as a full professor
I feel like I had that full spectrum of knowledge of how different the
classroom environment is over time here as well and I talked about, I used
to talk about the difference between the UPEI students and the Memorial
students and the Memorial students were greatful to be in university and
they were greatful every day for the instruction that they had and people
said well how is that different from UPEI and I said the attitude the UPEI
students was show me, show me that you know what you’re talking about,
show me this matters, tell me why I should care but the wonderful thing
about Island students was when you did those things they were right there
with you and they took fire with you and I loved that, I loved it that I
was on Montgomery’s Island and that I was a teacher as she had been, a
teacher and that I had hoped I was inspiring other students to love
language and to love literature to see that literature is full of ideas and
about yourself and about your culture and so I’m really grateful for the
question about, I feel that’s probably my biggest contribution to UPEI
was in the classroom but it’s a hidden contribution for teacher’s and I
think that we forget too that others need to be reminded about that that
teaching is the basis of this campus, labs are wonderful, research is
terrific that’s a conversation with knowledge in a different way but
teaching is really what we are all about if you cannot come to a campus and
feel that you are involved in instruction and learning then I’m not sure
what a university is for but this university does those things really well
and so I’m grateful that I was able to teach here for so long. 


Slide - Final Thoughts - 22:30
I think that one of the measures of a campus is by its space and its
handling of space and when I was first here as a student we could hear the
cows lowing in the field next to us, the main building was filled with
graffiti what had been written on the walls when students were there when
it was an orphanage when it housed even some priests during that time so I
mean it was a palimpsest you know the walls really what had gone on there
and just imagine that difference in the campus and the size of it that
there was a real barn that was the Student Union, I’m sure other people
have talked about that and that it really that psychology was housed in a
piggery, I always think that’s a wonderful, a wonderful joke and a
reality of the campus to making the most of those old buildings and the old
tradition of the university and it’s integration in the community at the
time and now look at it, it’s filled with state of the art technology and
buildings, it’s beautiful, it has that drive by, it’s really a
university, when you drive by you look at it and it’s a gorgeous place
but it’s still also that beautifully integrated place everything on the
campus has a purpose everything on campus has a place and everyone who
comes to the campus I like to think finds a place here or creates a place
here and that is what I see what has grown from those early days is they,
the space that contains and is emblematic if you like of that growth
mission but UPEI is still the same and it’s better.