Maureen Wolff  |  Contributing Writer

Communications studies professor Ray McCormick has spent three decades teaching at APU and has seen just how much it’s grown and changed. Collide sat down with McCormick to discuss his perspective on the evolution of the home of the Cougars.

Collide: Tell me a little bit about what you teach now, how long you’ve taught here and what classes you’ve taught in the past.

McCormick: This is my 30th year teaching at APU. I teach rhetorical theory and communication theory. … I teach a senior sem and I taught, over the years, almost every class we have, I think. … When I came, there were only three people in our communications department, and now we have 12 full-time people. So, we’ve been able to move toward our specialty, which is better. Mine’s rhetoric, so I’m happy to be able to stay within rhetoric the whole time.

C: What was it like when you first came here, as compared to now, and what kind of changes have you seen?

M: When Richard Felix came, he was very concerned that we did not have an identity as a Christian university. … And then he established the Four Cornerstones that we have as part of our foundational ideas. And that sort of solidified who we were. Prior to that time, we were just this sort of religious school that was finding its way.

Another change that has taken place is the students. When I first got here 30 years ago, I loved those students to pieces, but they didn’t have visions of going to graduate school.… We were a small school trying to attract people, and that made it a little difficult. Now, since we are more well-known, and we have a higher visibility in sports and academic standing, and we have faculty attending conferences and so forth, we are now more of a destination place. … Because of our establishing vision, we now have attracted better students, and that’s exciting.

C: Over the years, there’s been huge technological advances and kind of a shift in the way communication is done. What has it been like to adapt the way you teach to fit that trend?

M: When I was hired here, no one had computers. We didn’t have office computers, we didn’t have email, we didn’t have PowerPoint. … If you wanted to pass out something, you couldn’t type it up on your computer and print it out. You had to mimeograph it. You had to type it up and then put it on a machine that made the copies. And so the technological advances have been significant. … However, there has been a downside as well. Because of the Internet and Google, Wikipedia and other sources, the quality of academic writing has deteriorated and research has deteriorated. So, the big struggle now is to keep people interested in doing significant research rather than just Googling it.

C: After teaching here for 30 years, are there any areas of nostalgia you have while looking back?

M: Yes, a couple of things. One is when I first started teaching here, chapel met three times a week and everybody was required to go. And so therefore, everything on this campus closed down during chapel. We didn’t have a coffee shop. But you couldn’t go to the library; you couldn’t go to any of the offices. All the offices were closed. And so students were expected to be in chapel three times a week. But now we have diversity in terms of senior chapel at night, or the liturgical chapel or the international chapel at different time periods and so forth. That’s better for students, but the faculty really liked having that time off because that was the time you could conduct meetings and departments could meet, or faculty senate committees could meet while students were in chapel.

And then every Tuesday and Thursday, they had doughnuts and coffee in the cafeteria for all faculty and staff. When I first got here, that was when major business took place. … Every Tuesday, even to this day, they do have doughnuts and coffee still, but they don’t have the camaraderie of people coming to meet at the same time because they have other commitments and so forth.

C: Looking into the future and your continued presence here at APU, how long do you plan to continue to teach, and what do you hope to see develop here?

M: I am looking ahead to retirement in a few years. … I want to look at the curriculum in my area of rhetoric, for instance, and try to make sure that when I leave, we have a good, solid, rational rhetorical emphasis that we should have. … I don’t have any long-term strategies. … I’m more interested in hiring the people that we hire because I can see whether they’re going to fit in and move us to the next level that we need to be at.