{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/5x25b00t8r/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Peter Chabora Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePeter Chabora was a professor in the biology department of Queens College from 1969 to 2017; Chabora served as chairman of the biology department during the early 1980s and served as executive officer of the PhD program in biology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center from the mid-1980s through 1992. Chabora recalls how he fell in love with biology as an undergraduate at Paterson State College, which led him to pursuing a PhD at Cornell University and ultimately a teaching position at Queens College in 1969.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eChabora, who specializes in ecology, reflects on his career working with research students and teaching introductory-level courses in biology. Chabora explains how Queens College obtained permission to use Caumsett State Park in Suffolk County, New York as a field station for ecology classes from the 1970s through 2002. Chabora describes a program he organized in 1971 in which a series of guest speakers visited Queens College to discuss a range of topics related to environmental science. Chabora discusses the courses he taught for the William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, including one on the ecological footprint of New York City. Regarding his tenure at the CUNY Graduate Center, Chabora discusses his role in proposing and implementing a large-scale overhaul of the faculty and academic standards of the biology program. During the interview, Chabora also comments on the high quality of Queens College students and analyzes the concept of carbon offsets.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["1960s-2017 (temporal)","Queens College, Queens, NY; Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve, Lloyd Harbor, NY; New York, NY (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2011-11-15 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Peter Chabora (Interviewee)","Rebecca Rushfield (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/40462"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePeter Chabora was a professor in the biology department of Queens College from 1969 to 2017; Chabora served as chairman of the biology department during the early 1980s and served as executive officer of the PhD program in biology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center from the mid-1980s through 1992. Chabora recalls how he fell in love with biology as an undergraduate at Paterson State College, which led him to pursuing a PhD at Cornell University and ultimately a teaching position at Queens College in 1969.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eChabora, who specializes in ecology, reflects on his career working with research students and teaching introductory-level courses in biology. Chabora explains how Queens College obtained permission to use Caumsett State Park in Suffolk County, New York as a field station for ecology classes from the 1970s through 2002. Chabora describes a program he organized in 1971 in which a series of guest speakers visited Queens College to discuss a range of topics related to environmental science. Chabora discusses the courses he taught for the William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, including one on the ecological footprint of New York City. Regarding his tenure at the CUNY Graduate Center, Chabora discusses his role in proposing and implementing a large-scale overhaul of the faculty and academic standards of the biology program. During the interview, Chabora also comments on the high quality of Queens College students and analyzes the concept of carbon offsets.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/283/724/small/chabora_peter_20211115_portrait_resized.jpg?1753900760","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - chabora_peter_20211115_full.mp4"]},"duration":4779.13598,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/283/724/small/chabora_peter_20211115_portrait_resized.jpg?1753900760","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/283/724/original/chabora_peter_20211115_full.mp4?1753900696","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4779.13598,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Do you have any questions for me to start off with?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=0.0,3.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK, well first let me just say the official...Today is Monday, November 15th, 2021. It is now noon. I am Rebecca Rushfield. I am speaking with Dr. Peter Chabora, who is a retired member of the Queens College biology department. We're going to be speaking about his life and career. Primarily his career associated with Queens College. But we'll see where we go from there. All right. Can I ask? How did you come to be a biology professor and specifically one who deals with the ecological aspects of biology?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3.0,49.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Actually, when I first applied to college, I put in aeronautical engineer. That's where I thought I was going to go. Except my competence in mathematics was far below what I would need to be an aeronautical engineer. And, I wound up going to a local college in New Jersey -- Paterson, which was at that time it was called Paterson State College. It had just turned to Paterson State College that year, which...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=49.0,87.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: This was what year?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=87.0,88.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: This was 1962. And this was a, more of a liberal arts, getting into the liberal arts. Not just education as it had been before. It used to be Paterson State Teacher's College. And before that Paterson Normal School. But, so this is the first year that they were going to have sciences. And of course aeronautical engineering was science. You got physics and stuff. OK, let me try that. And I fell in love with biology. My mentor, a fellow by the name of C. Kent Warner, who did his degree work up at Cornell, and then worked with someone at Yale and impressed the devil out of me. And we spent a lot of time doing natural history. Not ecology per se, but more natural history. From that point, everything worked out great. Now, one of those I didn't send you was my activities as a student at the college when I was in my undergraduate years. Which I really got into. And just for the records, I will send that to you when I get a chance to get to campus. I thought I would get to campus. I didn't, and I'm scheduled to go there again this coming Thursday.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=88.0,173.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: It's very hard to get onto the campus. I live right across the street from the college, and I see, you've got to show ID and everything to get on. [Editor's note: The college was just beginning to open up following the COVID-19 pandemic.]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=173.0,183.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Once you've done it a few times, it becomes routine. It's not really a problem as long as you fulfill... and as a retired faculty member, I no longer have access to some of the cards that one would need. For instance, the card that has to go through CUNYFirst. We don't have CUNYFirst privileges anymore, so I come to campus as a visitor. And that has not been a problem. It has not been a problem. I set it up a month in advance, usually. Anyway, I finished my degree at Paterson and I was doing some high school teaching and I decided that the kids are too rambunctious for me. So at Christmas holiday I said, I don't want to do this. And I went up to see my mentor, who immediately went into his round file that was next to his desk and picked up an envelope that was sent from a faculty member at Cornell. About two weeks later after rapid correspondence, I got my acceptance to Cornell. And I did my Ph.D. there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=183.0,250.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: After which I went for a period of time at Oxford. And after that, I wanted to get back and my wife at the time wanted to be in New York. And actually I had come for an interview in 1966, when students were having a rambunctious time on campus. And that was my first interview. Then I went to Oxford and when I came back from Oxford, there was no position at Queens. I went out to Illinois for one year. Came back to Queens the following year, and that was 1969. And then I spent 48 years teaching at Queens and the Graduate School [the CUNY Graduate Center]. And it was a marvelous experience over all sorts of different activities.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=250.0,310.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Can I ask a question just for sort of historic [setting in] place. Nowadays...well, when you were still teaching -- I believe you retired, whatever that means -- about three years ago. Could you have, like your mentor, just gotten one of your students into Cornell graduate program? Or that was that time, and now things are very different?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=310.0,340.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Actually we had a number of students that worked in my lab and went off to graduate schools.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=340.0,349.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Right. But I mean...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=349.0,350.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Even getting accepted to Cornell, but not accepting Cornell.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=350.0,355.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: No, no, I meant did this quick two-week period...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=355.0,358.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Oh, you mean when I was applying. I wrote directly to the professor that had offered this and it turns out that he was running a fairly large lab. Interestingly, I felt a little bit uneasy. And the reason I felt uneasy was because the people that he had in his lab were from really prestigious institutions. Like one of the fellows who I wound up rooming with for a year, he was one of the valedictorians from his high school and he got his degree from Harvard. And another one from Amherst. And a few from European countries or even Australia and Tasmania. So it was a very, very diverse lab. And the people were really, the graduate students came from an impressive group. And what was interesting is the background that I got at this small college prepared me better for graduate school than a lot of these other students who had focused very much on one particular area as an undergraduate.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=358.0,428.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: As an undergraduate, we had a very -- at Paterson, we had a very diverse background. And that was what was interesting at Queens. Because they were doing the same sort of thing at that time. And I thought it was really effective. And what was interesting is when I first got to Queens, I was pretty damn impressed with the quality of the students because I had spent three, four...three years, four years doing teaching. Teaching assistant up at Cornell. And I felt that the students at Queens were equally as good, if not better, than the ones at Cornell. Interesting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=428.0,472.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Yes. Most of the students in the biology classes, were they there as pre-meds? Or were many of them there to be bio majors?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=472.0,483.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I would say a lot of them were doctor wannabes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=483.0,488.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK. And many of them didn't make it through the course?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=488.0,492.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I think we did a superb job of doing that. Students...the whole process has changed over the years when I've been there. In terms of the way that people approach going into medical schools. They seem to have a very diverse group of ways of getting there. As a matter of fact, the medical school advisor back when I first got there, said if you want to be, uh, get into medical school, be a religion major because I have 100 percent of all the students that were religion majors got into medical school. [Laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=492.0,532.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: All one of them! Do you think that it's a good thing if, let's say, the first bio course, and I know the first chemistry course, are made intensely difficult to weed out all the doctor wannabees?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=532.0,552.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: It's hard for me to say that because...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=552.0,555.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Does it also weed out the people who might want to go into biology and then think, oh my God, I'll never be able to do this?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=555.0,561.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Oh, I...in answer to that question, it's a little on the difficult side, because that was my job. I went through three iterations at Queens where my first 10 years were really heavily involved in the research and the students. I got, I became elected chair after about 10 years. At that time I had gotten promoted to full rank. The whole job of being chair and all the things that we did at that time, including changing the entire way we had the curriculum established. We actually changed course numbers. And that's the model that the college uses now. You know, with the introductory courses below 100. Then 100 the first year. And then 200-, 300-level courses. That all happened in the years that I had been chair -- which is only three, because then I had gotten a call from the Graduate School to come be executive director or the executive officer of the Ph.D. program in biology. And that was based at the Graduate School. So then I spent nine years at the Graduate School. And when I came back from that episode, I had taken my first sabbatical. And that first sabbatical was at Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=561.0,664.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Are you fluent in French?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=664.0,669.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I didn't need to. I was, I seemed to spend most of my time and my wife's time correcting theses that were, had to be written in English. In other words, taking your Ph.D. there, you had to write your thesis in English. So yes, I did not need that, and that the lectures that I did give, did do, were in English. And what was interesting is it changed me a lot. It changed the way I perceived what I should be doing, what my role is. And when I came back -- and this is in 1992. Excuse me; '93. When I returned back to Queens, I decided I wanted to teach the introductory course. And I, that semester I got involved in the course and the next year I took it over. And then I did that for the rest of my career. And that, I found, was the most enjoyable, the most rewarding and the most frustrating time that I could have. I loved it. I was able to keep up on the science. I found I kept up in a broader range of science than I would normally do, although I was still able to teach my specialty courses, which was ecology. And I also taught limnology, which is the study of inland waters. So I did those two courses in summers. And I would alternate those courses.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=669.0,779.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: When did ecology become...well, is it a subsection of the biology department or is it its own program?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=779.0,787.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Well, if you have a large enough department, you have it broken down that way, yes. Ecology as a subject sort of started getting big in the early 1900s at places like University of Chicago. We had a lot of big people there. Yale had a number of important people and that's where it sort of came out. It started becoming a little bit more popular, at Cornell, for instance, because in the zoology department, you had a professor, LaMont Cole. And LaMont Cole at one time was the president of the Ecological Society of America. I was in the entomology department doing insect ecology. And so it was becoming a big deal back in the early '60s -- although when I would tell people what I was studying, they would go, \"huh?\" You know, they really, the general public didn't have an idea too much about what ecology was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=787.0,859.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Now it's interesting. I entered the college in 1972, and my father said to me, \"you should be studying ecology. You'll be able to get a job. You'll work with some government whatever.\" But I didn't listen to him. And I ended up studying art history. And probably he was right, because the future is in...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=859.0,880.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Art history [laughing]. There's not going to be a world left to have ecological studies. I shouldn't laugh at that. I should not laugh at that. OK. So that's how I got into ecology and that's what I wound up doing. Unfortunately I wasn't able to spend all that much time on that in the introductory course because we had to cover a lot of different subjects, and how you prorate the different subjects, of course, was important. I only had a few lectures in ecology.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=880.0,880.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Did you find that students came from high school prepared for a college biology course?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=880.0,925.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I don't think so. They have to work hard. They're not used to that, the intensity of the work that they're going to get. And a lot of students will put it off at least until their second year or third year. It's just too much. I might've been fairly rigorous in what I demanded from the students, but I still got, had my good percentage of people that got into the A range. And so, I mean, it does filter them out. Unfortunately, too many, far too many, are in the D and F range. So that happens. I'm not one that is going to be curving. You know, saying, \"Oh, you got a 33 on the exam. I'll have to raise that up to a C.\" No, I'm not that way. If you got a 33, you got a 33.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=925.0,992.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Was it pretty much across the board, the department, very rigorous in its standards?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=992.0,1000.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I think the department for the most part had pretty good standards. Yes. Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1000.0,1004.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: How big was the department when you entered? How many full-time faculty?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1004.0,1011.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I entered at a time when population was growing. A few years after I got there, we had 33,000 students on campus. Our classes were being held at other buildings a few blocks away, for instance, the Electrical Industry's building [in the Electchester housing complex]. All the bio labs were in the Electrical Industry's space. And the geology labs were there. We just didn't have room on campus for everything. At that time things were really increasing. And, I think, overall, the quality of the students had gone up a bit. Because I think the way the policies of CUNY as a whole were established, you wound up with a lot of students being scared of going to Brooklyn College or scared of going to City College. And so they, the good ones wound up coming to Queens. And I think overall things went pretty good until the...the ugly truth hit New York City in the mid-70s [the New York City fiscal crisis]. You know, and I was fortunate because my tenure hearing had come up before that, but a lot of the people -- if I was a year later, there's a good chance that I probably would have been released. A lot of good people got released at that time. So that's the way it went. But a lot of interesting things happened right there in the beginning.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1011.0,1104.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Such as?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1104.0,1105.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: That's what I wanted to talk to you about today. And I think the first way I'll start is our relationship with what is now known as Caumsett State Park in Lloyd's Neck. It's in Lloyd's Neck, Long Island. And it is a kind of an interesting story. And actually the story goes back beyond the time that I, before I came to Queens. But, activity started about the winter of '69-'70. Heading into the spring of '70. And the chairman of our department at that time was a fellow by the name of Max Hecht. And Max had been chair for about 18 years until I took over from him in 1980. Max had some phone calls with a professor of microbiology from Adelphi. And they found out that there was a group of people who were interested in this area, that land that became Caumsett State Park.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1105.0,1187.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Now, let's go back in history a little bit. This park was the former estate of Marshall Field the 3rd. That's Marshall Field of the department store in Chicago. And this is the grandson. And he built this magnificent house overlooking a bluff and a 10-acre pond, and about three miles of beach. Spectacular place. It was the largest of the Gold Coast estates. Now, Gold Coast estates. Think about that for a second. It's the north shore of Long Island. And we blame it all on the glacier, because the glacier pushed this pile of rubble down here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1187.0,1242.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: It was a terminal moraine. That's what I remember from high school geology,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1242.0,1247.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Right. You have this terminal moraine. Now, if we drive, leave the campus and we drive on the, drive east on the Grand Central, if you look to the right, you see it's a flat outwash plane. Absolutely flat. To the north, you've got all kinds of hills. You have kettle ponds that are left over from huge loads of ice being buried. And this was the north shore of Long Island. It had topography. And so naturally, the people who could afford it are building their estates on this north shore. And Marshall Field had 1,600 acres, which included the spectacular, pristine salt marsh, beaches, the pond -- you name it. And lots and lots of woods. So, all that's well and good, but, a fellow by the name of Robert Moses comes along. And Robert Moses had already established a number of, say, recreational areas on the south shore of Long Island, and now he had his eyes on this island up there, this Lloyd's Neck: \"Hmm...that would be great. We can make the Jones Beach of the north.\" This happened before 1966. In my office, I have a geological map of the area and it shows a four-lane highway coming off of the L.I.E., going north, right through these towns which have very high-end properties, and ending up on Lloyd's Neck. And this was going to be the Jones Beach of the north.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1247.0,1359.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Now, if you live there, you're not going to put up with this. You're not going to put up with this. And so in late '69 and '70, a number of meetings were being held by the residents of Lloyd's Neck. And they incorporated a number of renowned people, such as Buckminster Fuller. And all these people were trying to preserve this in some way or other. I would, I was invited to come to these meetings by Max. And we went and listened and talked to the residents. And, well, what if it was set up as an environmental studies center? You know, all these proposals and such. And so the proposals went on and I had become acquainted with the superintendent of the place, a Mr. Walker. And he had given me permission to take my classes there. So I would take the classes on field trips. And...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1359.0,1424.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: At this moment, the property is still owned by the Field family? Or it had been...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1424.0,1430.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: They gave it over in the, I believe the mid- to early, early to mid-60s. It was turned over because who can afford the taxes on that much land? And I believe there was only one 85-year-old niece or someone who was at the place at the time. When we were there for the meetings, it was empty. And then they let a designer showcase use the place, where designers would come in, decorate rooms, and such. OK. So that was, that sort of stuff was going on. But it was state property. There were discussions of members of the legislature to turn it into a southern resort for the members of the legislature, where they can go play golf and such. That never happened. But Mr. Walker let me use the place. And eventually, a couple of years later, actually allowed me to come in with a boat trailer and a couple of boats. Two of these -- the type you use with oars. And I was able to keep those boats there. And I would just attach a hitch, bring them down to the pond whenever I had a class. So things were pretty good for...and this is the early '70s.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1430.0,1513.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: A little bit later on, one of the members of Queens College from the Phys Ed department, a fellow by the name of John Loret, had taken a number of handicapped students to the park. And the park had magnificent barns. Paddocks, because Marshall Field had his own herd of 200 cattle. Made his own milk. They had milk bottles with \"Caumsett\" on them. And so John Loret took his class, or this group of students, handicapped students, to see some Icelandic ponies. These short ponies that somebody got permission to keep in one of the paddocks. It just happened that someone running for office -- Mario Cuomo -- happened to be passing and saw that there was a bunch of handicapped kids in wheelchairs and Icelandic ponies. And what good politician is going to pass up a photo op? [RR laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1513.0,1584.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And John Loret started talking to him. So John Loret started talking to him about the college and the place and how they're using it. Hey, why not, you know? And then, about a year later, [Queens College] president Saul Cohen and Cuomo had a meeting out there. I was on the steps with them, of the main building, and talking about the college. And within a year, the college had a lease. Perhaps this was better than what the residents imagined. Because what they were afraid of is you're going to have all these people from New York City, the Bronx coming to our place? No way. They didn't say anything about the college. So the college got the lease [in 1979].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1584.0,1647.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: For how many years were they given a lease?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1647.0,1649.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: It was open-ended. There were a number of restrictions. For instance, in the beginning, they said the college was responsible for plowing the driveway. Now that was a mile and a half. That's a big driveway, and you're not going to get a bunch of kids with shovels to shovel the driveway. And so that I think disappeared. You had to fix the roof. The roof of the main building leaked. We had to provide heat, and you had to keep the temperature in the house above 60. And the reason for that was the pipes were in the exterior walls. And if it was below 60, the pipes would freeze. If you recall, back in the early '70s, the price of fuel oil got really, really expensive. And I think it was like 1,700 bucks for the first month we were there for oil.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1649.0,1710.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Did you have special funding for this? Or...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1710.0,1716.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: We tried to get special funding. As a matter of fact, we put in -- the roof repair was $165,000 at the time. And so we tried sending in grants. And we tried all the companies that were claiming to be environmentally sensitive -- Texaco, Mobil Oil, Exxon. We were turned down in every case. And the reason was: This is not your property. This is not your property. You don't own it. We could give you money to fix the roof and you could, it could be taken away from you next year. So, we failed on all those attempts. But nevertheless, we had the place. It was terrific. We were able to take classes out. My ecology classes, limnology classes would go out for a week at a time. And we had the pond. We knew a lot about the pond. I had graduate students do their thesis on the slope marsh. Another one did it on the insect life of the pond. And then, so there. It was very useful and great opportunity for us. We had a field station. We then come up to the 2000s. [George] Pataki is governor and he appoints someone who lived in the area as Commissioner of Parks. That was Bernadette Castro. You remember the Castro Convertible ads with the little girl jumping on the sofa?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1716.0,1816.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: That was her.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1816.0,1818.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: That was her. And she said, \"Why are people from New York City coming to my neighborhood?\" End of lease. So, the two people that handled it for Queens College were Phil White and Peter Schmidt. Phil White was the first cirector and then Peter was his handyman and then took over from him. And they did a very good job of handling it with the resources that we had. At one point, we actually had a school bus that Phil White would drive and take us on field, take the ecology class on field trips. Sometimes upstate New York, sometimes down to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. So that was, basically, that was basically the way, the things that happened over at Caumsett.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1818.0,1877.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: So the projects and programs that you were running just stopped?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1877.0,1881.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: They absolutely stopped. The last limnology course I ran was 2002, and that was the end of it. It was a sad thing to go, but unfortunately it was not used to the extent that it should have been used. I remember in 1983, the college ran a fall ball out there. Sort of a fancy dress-up affair for anybody they could get to go. And so we had a nice dinner and a full -- dinner, dance, drinks and...They ran some art shows out there to try to get some funds; a bird artist by the name of Arthur Singer. [He] had put up his paintings and you could buy those for...a good portion [went to] a contribution to the college. And so, but it wasn't used. It was too far away. If you're lucky with traffic, you could get there, say, in 45 minutes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1881.0,1957.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: And if you're not, it could be two and a half hours.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1957.0,1959.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Most of the time, you're not lucky with traffic. And particularly coming back. If you're going back to the campus, you can figure an hour, hour and a half for getting back in the afternoons and all. So it was not used to the extent that it could have been used. I know that they ran some programs out there, summer programs for kids. And they were the things that were bringing in enough income to run the place. But it was, it was a good experience to have Caumsett.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1959.0,1994.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: So the college has nothing like that now? No field projects?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1994.0,1998.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: We have tried to -- and I don't know what the current status is -- but there was a Black Rock Forest [in Orange County, NY] where they were looking, the Geology Department or E\u0026ES [Earth \u0026 Environmental Sciences]. Or there's, what is it, School of Environmental Studies. It was trying to operate this by setting up an arrangement where we could use their facility. And that was a nice, formal, established station. So, but I don't know what's happening these days. I retired in '17, so, I don't know what's been going on although I do attend the seminars on occasion.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=1998.0,2048.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Right. So...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2048.0,2053.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: So that was part, half of the story I wanted to tell you. And the other half of this story begins with [Queens College] President Joe McMurray. Now, I came to the college in '69, and sometime in the fall of '69 I get a call to show up at the president's office. Come to the president's office, I have a proposal. And I went up, and the president was meeting with a gentleman who was from the UAW -- United Auto Workers Union. And what they were interested in was nuclear power. The president and this gentleman -- I cannot remember his name -- were talking about having a conference at Queens College. And the conference would be focused on both problems and expectations of nuclear power. And they had grand visions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2053.0,2128.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: As a matter of fact, when I went upstairs and they told me what this was, and they wanted me to run it — what? I just got here, number one. And how are you going to run a conference with international visitors, with 3,000 people, on campus? Where are we going to do that? How are we going to feed these people? Where are they going to sleep? And we didn't have all the hotels that we have today. They said, well, we can house them in the city and bring them in by bus. Well, that would be an awful lot of buses coming in every day and taking people back and taking people to eat and so forth. I said, I didn't want it. I didn't want to get involved.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2128.0,2188.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Do you have any sense of why you were chosen?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2188.0,2191.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Yeah. Because I was ecology. OK? That was, that would -- so I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll run a program. I'll put together a program where we can have high-end visitors come once a week. We could do the talks and people will be visiting the campus. And the president agreed and gave me approximately $4,000 to run that program. And so I started putting it together, that spring through the fall. And it actually happened in the spring of '71.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2191.0,2241.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Now, Earth Day just happened. Earth Day just happened. I called the program -- I have to look at a note here. This comes from back in the old days. [Note: Shows a sheet of paper.] We used to get these for information, faculty information flyers. So this is the faculty staff newsletter of February 9th, of '71. And the program is \"Man in Environment: Ecological Perspectives.\" And I was able to run this through the Honors and Interdisciplinary Studies program[s]. And, in the year that it happened, I was running around trying to find people to come and talk who would be appropriate, and also a very diverse group of speakers. I wanted them from a lot of disciplines and a lot of backgrounds. And also to have some degree of importance. You know, have a recognition of these people. So...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2241.0,2316.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Was $4,000 enough to do this at that time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2316.0,2320.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Are you kidding? [Laughs] No, it was -- it was embarrassing. As a matter of fact, how do you bring in somebody from California, and give a talk and, you know, have a limit of about 400 bucks you can give him? That doesn't float. So you had to arrange with people's schedules when they might be coming in. So, I would like to mention a few of the people that we had come in here. And my first speaker was perhaps the most colorful and perhaps one of the more colorful speakers that ever came to Queens College. A professor from the University of Pennsylvania in landscape architecture. And this was Mr. Ian McHarg. M-C-H-A-R-G. Ian McHarg. And, of course, he dressed his Scottish background with his mustache and his brogue, his tartan wear, and it was extremely colorful. We had a really good audience. We were in Remsen 100. And he talked about really a course and books that he had written called Design [With] Nature. And he was trying to take natural situations and come up with architectural designs that, where they would blend. And it was a very, very fine, fine talk.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2320.0,2439.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: My next speaker was one of my old professors, who was President of the Ecological Society. That's Dr. LaMont Cole, whose expertise, really, it was in mathematical type of analysis of populations. Like histories and such. And LaMont Cole was talking about what are we doing to the Earth? So, in other words, he was presenting a big picture from the ecological point of view. What are we doing to the Earth? So then that gave us a beginning of where we're going to go. The next speaker was an attorney from the Environmental Defense Fund. And this was a man by the name of Victor Yannacone. And there's a cute side story to this. So Mr. Yannacone came in and was talking about legal aspects and civil litigation. Now, it just turned out, at that time we had a faculty member who was very much interested -- who lived out on Long Island by the way -- who was very interested in environmental situations. Both with the water situation on Long Island and what could we do about this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2439.0,2525.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: What if, what if —and I remember us sitting in my office. So you had faculty member, Yannacone, and myself. And the faculty member says, \"Hey, you know, I want to bring something to court. I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna bring some agency to court because they're ruining our environment.\" And Yannacone sort of told him the truth. He says, \"Look. Regardless of what, you're going to go to court, you're going to lose. And it's going to cost you about $50,000 to take that to court.\" Faculty member said, \"What? $50,000! I could become a lawyer for $50,000.\" Which he did. The faculty member became a lawyer and worked in that field.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2525.0,2583.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: The faculty member's name was...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2583.0,2586.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I'm not saying. I'm not saying who it was, but he did become an attorney. And he worked on a lot of important issues, including this Agent Orange which you probably remember. So that was the side story on Victor Yannacone's visit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2586.0,2615.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Now, who would attend the talks? It was anyone from the College?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2615.0,2620.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: It was interesting. I opened it as an, this special honors program. So I had a number of students. But, actually I had faculty from other departments coming. I had a lot of staff. I was surprised at the number of staff that were attending this. And some lectures were better attended than others, but we did a pretty good job of putting bodies all throughout Remsen 100. We had a swing room on days when it wasn't available, which varied. It's interesting. The bigger room seemed to attract a lot more people. A smaller room, not so many. Then I brought in some more specific environmental scientists, like a fellow who studied the phosphorus and the nitrogen in Long Island Sound. A fellow by the name of John Rader. Excuse me, John Ryder. And, so he did a more local presentation, on the sciences. I had a philosopher -- a physics, professor of physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago by the name of John Rader Platt. And he gave us a different perspective on this, taking a look at how do societies and humans metamorphose.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2620.0,2720.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And then that was the theme that he was dealing with. In terms of specific human populations -- I don't know if you remember the year, we're talking about '71 -- one of the hot things that was going on in the country at that time was R v Wade. Roe versus Wade. And so I had to get someone from population sciences to come in. And I got in touch with the Population Council of New York City and got one of their directors. And that's Christopher Tietze, came in; he was very much involved in the abortion rights and the whole idea of population control. Now remember, this is, in this period of time, just before Earth Day, a fellow from California by the name of Paul Ehrlich, a population biologist from Stanford, he wrote a book called \"The Population Bomb.\" And practically everybody knew about \"The Population Bomb.\" And the reason that they knew about it was because he was on the Johnny Carson Show over 30 times.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2720.0,2811.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: There's also a side story to this. Because I went to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that spring in Detroit. And I was talking with Paul Ehrlich and I invited him to come and speak. And he said he would, but he wasn't sure if he would be able to, but I should call his secretary. So I did call him and check with the secretary. We talked about a date, and then I got another sad call from the secretary saying, sorry, he's going to be on the Johnny Carson Show that day. Conflict. Besides, Carson pays more than you do. So, in any case. So Paul Ehrlich did not show up at our little show here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2811.0,2877.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I had a psychologist from the Graduate Center, Bill Adelson, came in to give a psychological view because at that time environmental psychology was becoming an exploding area. So that brought in the psychological component. And I brought in one speaker who happened to be my mentor from Cornell, David Pimentel, who at that time was on the Office of Science Technology at the White House. So we had to bring in this, essentially, a national perspective. And also political perspective of what was going on. And the whole thing got wrapped up with a magnificent presentation by a grand old gentleman by the name of Professor Rene Dubos, who we can thank because he, as a microbiologist at Rockefeller University, gave us a number of antibiotics, some of which are still in use. And in his later years, he became almost with a religious view of the world. He had written several books on this subject and he gave us a presentation called \"The Creative Stewardship of the Earth,\" which I thought was a really nice way to round things off. So it was, we had a pretty decent semester. And you have to remember that this was taking place at the time when Earth Day was just coming. And there was a certain amount of acceptance of this view that, jeez, this Earth is really something that's precarious. We have to take care of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=2877.0,3017.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: I'm thinking that's 52 years ago.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3017.0,3021.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: No, 50 years ago now; '71 it happened. It's 52 years since \"The Population Bomb.\" Which, of course, has a very mixed history -- but that's for another story. But basically I wanted to be able to record somewhere that, you know, Queens College did do something at that time. We tried. We tried and, basically, I'm content with that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3021.0,3060.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Can I ask? Oh, I lost my train of thought. But I was wondering if you're willing after this to stay a little bit longer to talk about, I guess, your work with Macaulay Honors Program and your sort of, I guess, more public... work. I was looking you up trying to find out a little bit more of you, and I saw you have a chapter in something called \"The Family Creative Workshop, Volume Eight,\" which includes...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3060.0,3095.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Oh my goodness. That's an embarrassment. [laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3095.0,3098.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: How did that happen?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3098.0,3098.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Because it was a publication of basically how to make an insect collection. That Creative Family Workshop was things to do. And so how do you go about making an insect collection? Insects are pretty remarkable creatures and the diversity is astounding. Not as diverse as it used to be. Not as abundant today as it used to be. I remember back in those days, particularly the days driving back and forth between New Jersey and Cornell, I'd have to stop halfway through to wash the windshield with all the insects on it. We don't do that anymore.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3098.0,3151.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: It's true.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3151.0,3155.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I just took a trip to Maine this past summer and I don't think I bummed up more than half a dozen insects on the window. That's about it. We're losing it. We're losing it. So yes, that's where that started off. And now you mentioned the Honors [CUNY's Macaulay Honors College] -- which I thought was terrific. Those were some of the best courses. I was doing the third semester of the science and technology business there. And each year I would have a different theme. And the first year...well, first off, I would have the students read a couple of books before the class started. And that year I had them read a Jared Diamond book, which was called \"Germs, Guns and Steel.\" Or whatever it was. Guns Steel or whatever. I think you might remember that book; that was \"Guns, Germs, and Steel.\" [Note: This is the correct title.] And that was to sort of give a perspective of how things developed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3155.0,3236.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And secondly, I had a small volume that was published by the Smithsonian and it had to do with flying saucers. And the theme of that book is really, how do people get to believe the things that they believe? I mean, if you look at the whole flying saucer bit in Roswell and this stuff with Hangar 52 and all this, it's almost QAnon-type conspiracy theory stuff. And, basically, it started off as a joke where some radio announcer on a local program said that they had found some remnants of stuff that they couldn't understand, and it must've come from outer space, so probably it was, must've been some UFO that came down here and lost this stuff. And part of it was a substance which was really flexible and strong and [they] didn't exactly know what it was. Nobody was familiar with it. And it turned out to be Mylar. Back in those days, in 1947 or so, you didn't know about Mylar -- but the military did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3236.0,3329.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And what the military was doing was launching series of attached balloons to maintain a particular altitude. And they would have these Mylar kites hanging from it. And that was to be able to detect Soviet, Russian nuclear explosions. That's what this was all about. But they found this and the guy said it was flying saucers. And then the story developed. And the story went through a series of maybe seven iterations. And each iteration, it gets a little bit more dark. All of a sudden the military is involved and guns are involved and all this develops. And all of a sudden we have a myth. And so how do people get to believe this? And he ties it into such things as religion. How do we believe religiousness? It was written by a couple of psychologists. And actually there were three authors -- two psychologists, and an atmospheric scientist who was involved with these balloon trains. And, so I wanted the students to have that background.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3329.0,3409.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And then the first year, the theme that we did had to do with the footprint, the ecological footprint of New York City. Which, of course, is too huge for any one class, but we took different components of it. In other words, what is the ecological cost of having an airport like JFK? How many takeoffs do you have? How much CO2 is put out each time an airplane takes off? And then we did, some other groups of students worked on the garbage in New York City. Garbage collection, the cost of garbage collection. The landfills. Another group of students worked on the Roosevelt Island tram. What is the ecological cost of that tram? How much does it save by having a tram? Or, how expensive is the tram? So that was the sort of thing that we did the first year -- which came out terrific. We did a presentation in the -- I'm not sure whether it was the Graduate Center. But I had all the students get these large clown blowup slippers to put on. So this is the big footprint of New York. I still have them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3409.0,3503.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: The second year, we looked at feeding New York in terms of the cost of production of food. How much water does it take to make a pound of beef, for instance. So we did aspects of food. The third semester was a dark semester. It was called Dying in New York. And that was from the 1700s to the present. And we were able to, you know, get a lot of data from New York City in terms of, say, infant mortality. You know, you look at infant mortality and you say, well, this infant mortality is really ZIP code-related. Then you look at different ZIP codes, you look at the Upper East Side, Upper West Side of New York, and it has a mortality of maybe three, four per thousand. Very, very low.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3503.0,3577.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: You look at other ZIP codes and it's 16, 17, 18 per thousand. You know, you're getting like Third World country. So it's, you're winding up with what we used to call a Third World country back in those days, in terms of mortality. We looked at water supply and mortality from water that the people who lived in the three wards where they suffered the greatest cholera mortality in the 1800s. We had three major outbreaks of cholera. And those outbreaks happened in, mostly in the poor wards of the city; you didn't have good supply of water. And what were these people doing for labor? They were putting in the wooden pipes that eventually led to the Croton system to feed the wealthy areas of New York. That's the way it is —New York has been very brilliant in its system by being able to provide good water, surface water, and not underground water, at a good rate with the whole Catskill reservoir system that we have in the Croton system. So, these are the sorts of things that we looked at in detail. It's kind of fun; kind of fun to do those.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3577.0,3667.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: And you did that only three years? Or it...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3667.0,3673.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I think I did three years then another year after that. I don't recall what happened.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3673.0,3679.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK. They sound like such fascinating courses. And...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3679.0,3685.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: They were -- they were good. And just like doing the introductory course, you're always dealing with something new. You're learning something from this. And it turns out to be a fairly big subject these days, you know, this whole idea of sustainability and the, what is the cost of this sustainability?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3685.0,3711.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Can I ask you -- and this can be taken off, because I just don't understand carbon offsets. Can you explain it? Like, how is paying money somewhere going to take away the fact that you took your private jet around the world?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3711.0,3728.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I think this -- I really can't give you a good definition of that today. Many years ago, starting in the late '70s to about '92, I was involved with an organization called the Organization for Tropical Studies. Which is an organization made up of mostly academic institutions throughout the United States plus a few other countries. Since I have left, they have expanded into Africa. But they had a major research field station in Costa Rica. And, at that time, carbon offsets was one of the subjects that we were dealing with in terms of...for instance, there was a period called the \"hamburger connection\" between Central America and the States because they -- people were cutting down forests. Putting in pasture and growing hamburgers. And so you had this whole hamburger connection.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3728.0,3815.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Now, the question is these pastures for growing cattle are not long-lived. They're gonna go. So how do you reconstitute that? And you do it by putting in certain plants. What plants are going to grow best? You know, [they] sort of have a deep porphyric soil and what kind of plants should we plant that are going to give us the biggest growth, absorb the most carbon? And this is what you're doing. Now, I think we, we've sort of gone a little too far in extending some of these things. For instance, there's a particular brand of coffee that I like. So I guess since about the early '90s I've been purchasing coffee from this company in California. This past year or so, I switched to a carbon offset kind of coffee. So every time I buy a couple of pounds of coffee, they're going to plant three trees for me. And they actually send me the geographical location. Latitude, longitude. I can look it up on the Google Maps and I'll see exactly where my plants are being planted. So, this is a carbon offset where you're trying to make up for the carbon dioxide that we're giving off by doing something good.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3815.0,3913.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Trying to plant there. Now, some people say, well, we've planted so much we have excess. Let's sell it. You know, all of a sudden it's become a commodity. And I'm waiting to see it up on the stock market -- you know, carbon offsets. I just don't know where it's going to go. And I also think that regardless of the amount of planned carbon offset operations that we do, it's really hard to make up for the instantaneous blasts of carbon dioxide that we get from the forest fires or the peat fires. It's going to be hard to really counterbalance what nature has stored for us over all these years. So peat has been storing huge amounts of carbon for a long, long, long time. And now we burn it quickly. So we get huge bursts of this stuff. Hard to figure where it's going to go. There's plans to make the oceans more productive, but...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3913.0,3998.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: There's a thing in nature. There's a thing in nature that in the beginning if you take, say, a farm. You take farmland, and that farmland really has no diversity. It had soybeans. It had corn or sunflowers or something like that. And you let it go fallow. Now, in time, in our Northern Hemisphere in time -- say over a couple of hundred years -- what's going to happen is you're going to go through a succession of things. You're gonna have weeds. And then herbs and other forbs coming in. And small trees, bigger trees. Until finally you get to what we call a climax. A more or less self-sustaining forest. That would be the natural progression of things. And if you look, in the beginning, the reason it's changing is because those first plants that are there are adding -- by their deaths -- nutrients to the soil. The nature of the soil is changing. And this happens until you reach this stage. Now, in the beginning, you're accumulating organic matter.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=3998.0,4082.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: But when you reach the final stages, the amount of organic matter that's being produced is about equal to what's being decomposed. You've reached a stable state. And that's why succession stops. You've reached a stable state. And I think the same thing is happening with a lot of this discussion of nature. We talk about taking a rainforest or a mature forest, which is stable. In other words, whatever's going in, in terms of production of carbon, is being released as carbon dioxide. So if we cut that down, allow it to grow from the beginning again, you're going to be putting more carbon into the soil. So, eventually, you're going to come to the same thing. It's eventually going to be balanced out. So...somehow I don't have that much faith in carbon offsets at the present time. I think it's a dream that we would like to have. And we like to think we're doing something, and, it's something that we can make money on. And that's all. That's what counts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4082.0,4164.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK. I have a question for you. You've spoken a little more than an hour. I don't know. You know, you said you spoke about the two things you wanted to speak about. There's so much more one could ask about your time at Queens College and the Graduate Center. I guess, do you want to go on now? Would you like to do it again in a second interview? Have you said all that you want to say?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4164.0,4191.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Well, I would like to...if you have ideas.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4191.0,4196.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Well, I'm interested in the whole thing of you come and the last 25 years of your career, you're teaching. You're teaching entry-level students. Before that you were doing something totally different as an, you know, in terms of administrating. And...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4196.0,4215.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Most of the time I was doing ecology. In the beginning. I used to do ecology three times a year. I would do an undergraduate course in the fall. A graduate course in the springtime. And then a field course in the summer. And so that was what I would do, maybe mostly. Plus a couple of other labs. For instance, I taught labs in invertebrate zoology. I taught the introductory biology labs when I first came. So, you did a few other things, but your focus was really in the, your area of interest. So that's where I did the -- mostly ecology. Then when I became Chair, I really...well, first off, I didn't send you my undergraduate stuff, and I was very much involved in undergraduate activities. You know, from sports to working with the players group, the actors. Putting on performances. I used to be the stage manager.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4215.0,4292.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: What we really should do is do a whole second interview. Come back another time and talk about all the other things in your life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4292.0,4301.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Some of them weren't, are not fit to be put on tape. We'd have to be careful of that, but that sounds reasonable.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4301.0,4315.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK. So shall we end here and then we'll make a date for another one? And this way we can both look at the transcript, correct it, and then sort of, you know, you'll read it through and figure out where you want to go and what you want to talk about. Because I'm sort of, one of the things I'm interested in is when the Graduate Center started and how they determined which departments to have. And getting it up to speed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4315.0,4343.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: You know, I was -- again, when I was at the graduate school, I became very much involved in terms of the operation of the graduate school. There was one committee called the Doctoral Faculty Policy Committee. Which essentially is almost like the Academic Senate of the College. And I think I was on that for six years or so. And then I was chair of that for four years. And I was getting very interested in perhaps continuing in administration. I had a rough time at the graduate school in that when I took the position of Executive Officer the spring before that, the program was put on probation and it was about to be closed down for a number of reasons. One of which was one of the big criticisms that the committee had found. It was a powerful committee, let me tell you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4343.0,4428.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: I happened to know the person who was in charge of that committee. And that was, who became Lord Robert May. He was, at that time, he was a professor of ecology at Princeton. And May was a very brilliant person and he could see through things. The program was -- so I came into the program when it was on probation. And I had a problem and that is, of the 150 or so faculty that were listed, 75 were dead wood. They were fireplace ready. They, there was no production. They were not...they were, they had graduate students for as long as 18 years. Can you imagine having a graduate student for 18 years?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4428.0,4499.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Well, no. When I went to the Institute of Fine Arts for graduate school, there were people there who had been around for 15, 16 years. And then a new director said you have eight years, that's it. So yes, I can sort of imagine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4499.0,4515.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: This was not looked on as a good thing. The average time of completing a doctoral degree was far too long. You know, aim for five years, not 10. So, and that was because we had a lot of people that were just not active and the poor student is just fumbling along and...what kind of degree are you going to get? That had to change. And so, in my first year, as a matter of fact, I had, I was sitting on the board of the association, Organization for Tropical Studies. And I went down to their annual meeting, which was held in Costa Rica. And I stayed for an extra two weeks, essentially locking myself inside. Not looking at the wonderful rainforest we're in, but stayed inside. And I wrote a constitution for the program, which essentially had all 150 faculty resign. They were gone. I brought it back. I presented it to the Executive Committee. They took it back to their campuses and it was unanimously rejected. It took one year -- with not very many changes --but within one year it was accepted.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4515.0,4615.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And we established four disciplines in which we got faculty to put in applications for that discipline. And there were requirements. You had to be published. You had to have some sort of funding. We then had 75 faculty. And within three years, this was all operational. That was the length of my term. I made the presentation before 49 provosts and deans and the committee, including Robert May. And they were impressed. They said, \"How could you have done this in three years?\" I said, \"Well, it worked.\" And he says, \"Well, let's check it again in three more years to see how you're doing.\" So I had another review to prepare for, for three years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4615.0,4677.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: And then because of financial difficulties in the State, it didn't happen till eight years. And after eight years, we got our blessing. We were good. So, that was a difficult time because the graduate school really didn't even have money to help me do this stuff. You know, essentially what we turned in is three books about the size of a telephone book with all the information that they were looking for. We had a review, it was done. And at that time I said, you know, I think I'm through with administration. I want to go teach introductory kids.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4677.0,4731.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: OK. I'm embarrassed, but I'm going to have to end now only because my husband works at home and he's going to want to eat lunch soon and I'm talking in the kitchen.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4731.0,4746.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: You're going to give him lunch? [laughs] Well, I hope you have something good prepared.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4746.0,4749.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Right. [laughs] So we will plan another session after the transcript is done and we've both looked at it. And you'll decide what you want to carry on with. OK? It's been really a pleasure speaking with you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4749.0,4765.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: The same with you, Rebecca. And take care of yourself and let me know. If it's worthwhile, we'll see what we can do, OK?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4765.0,4774.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: Wonderful. Thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4774.0,4775.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Peter Chabora: Bye-bye now.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4775.0,4776.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724/transcript/82075/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Rebecca Rushfield: All right, bye-bye.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/154691/file/283724#t=4776.0,4779.13598"}]}]}]}