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Scholars at the Starting Line
Then and Now
Glenn Kendall
Charles Merrill-  Osenbaugh
Border Lines
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 lenn Kendall came to what was then Chico State College in 1950
and was president until 1966, when he retired. He came with a
two-fold mission: to make Chico State a truly regional college
that responded to the needs of its citizens and to move Chico
State from being primarily a teacher-training school to a more
broadly based institution. At the time when Kendall was considering
taking the job, a UC vice president, Baldwin Woods, asked him,
"Is Chico State going to grow?" Kendall answered, "Yes, why do
you ask?" "I would think that if you were just a caretaker, you
wouldn't be interested," answered Woods. |
Kendall made the decision to come. The first thing he did was
get in his car and drive all over the North State, talking to
community leaders, government officials, business people, and
everyday citizens. He wanted to know what they wanted from their
regional college. His philosophy, taken from a lecture he once
heard at Harvard, is that the job of education is, first, to help
people improve the desirable things they are going to do anyway,
and, second, to reveal higher things in life and make them both
desirable and possible. CSU, Chico is the university it is today in large part because
of Glenn Kendall, now ninety-five years old. In a recent two and
one-half hour conversation, he talked about his life as an educator,
sharing history, anecdotes, educational ideas, and a life philosophy.
It was a rich story from a remarkable man. He requested that this article be explicit that his intention,
from the time he retired, was not to "meddle" in university affairs.
He had his tenure, made his contribution, and recognized that
times change and that the University changes. In no way does he
want anything he says to be taken as a commentary on how things
should be. He cares deeply about the University and about the
state of education, and he trusts that those who now have responsibility
for it will make their contributions in their ways and in their
time.Glenn Kendall, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in 1901
in Tennessee. When he was ready to enter high school, his family
moved to Kentucky, where he graduated from high school and then
received a B.A. from Western Kentucky College and a master's from
the University of Kentucky. He started teaching in a rural high
school even before he finished his bachelor's degree.
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