Lail Stockfish / Roundup
On December 14, 1970, Pierce College was still a campus made up of mainly farm lands where cows fed on art hill and the old business building was a creamery that sold milk to Carnation, and Political Science Professor William de Rubertis Ph.D. had his first day of 40 years at Pierce.
“It looked a lot different than it does now,” he said.
De Rubertis recalls a time that ice cream was made and sold on campus, and warm eggs fresh out of hens were handed to patrons, Lambs would cross over what is now El Rancho road, and the cows would roam nearly onto campus.
“It was like a scene out of whales or something,” he chuckles. “You’d have the windows open because there was no air conditioning and you were dying for a breath of air and I’d be sitting there, grading papers, reading all those blue books. And then all of a sudden a cow, almost looking in your window would go ‘moooo’,” said de Rubertis.
During his long lived career, de Rubertis has served on multiple faculty government committees, including 18 years on the Academic Senate, and 12 years as Pierce College Chapter President of the Faculty Guild (AFT).
Now at the age of 67, after witnessing the nationwide college campus streaking craze after the end of Vietnam War, helping to organize a re-election campaign speech in the football stadium for Former United States President Ronald Regan, and finally being able to turn up the air conditioning, he is serving his last semester at Pierce.
And with the final honor of being selected to receive the professor of the year award by the Professional Development Committee, de Rubertis says good bye.
“It’s going to be hard to give it up. My whole sense of self, my concept of self is tied up with Pierce, but I’m sure that I will enjoy the next phase of my life. Everybody’s telling me that,” said de Rubertis.
His most memorable experience came in 1999 when Former Pierce College President Darroch “Rocky” Young was brought to Pierce and created a Leadership Group to battle the various challenges Pierce was facing.
According to de Rubertis it was a time when it was rumored that Pierce was in danger of losing accreditation and enrollment had dropped to unprecedented levels.
“The future of the college was looking very, very dark, and in a short period of time we turned it around, as a matter of fact we often refer to it as the ‘Miracle on Winnetka’,” Said de Rubertis.
De Rubertis and a few other Pierce College senior staffers, including Assistant Administrative Analyst Debbie Swarens made up the members of the Leadership Group.
Swarens described the Leadership Group as “the core group that was advisors to Rocky (Young), and enabled him to make the decisions to get the students coming back to Pierce,” said Swarens.” “Enrollment had dropped to something around 14,000 and after that increased to 23,000,” she said.
During that time period both Swarens and de Rubertis were Chair persons in the AFT.
“In a way Bill (de Rubertis) served as a mentor during that time period,” she said.
According to de Rubertis the Leadership Group also helped get a proposition approved by California voters that allowed for a school bond to be approved by less than two-thirds vote.
“Today you can see what’s coming, what we’ve already achieved. All of that is the product of what we were doing in the first year and a half there,” said de Rubertis. “When I look back I would say that, and this is kind of corny, paraphrasing dickens, ‘it was the worst of times but it was also the best of times,” he said.
Part of the reason he is choosing to leave now, when many might think that he still has some good years left, is that he wants to end strong while he’s still on his game, physically strong and alert.
“What you need to do is go when they still want you, when the college is happy to have you back, when people are saying ‘well, why are you retiring Bill?’Not until they say, ‘oh god, can someone talk to him,'” said de Rubertis. “I’m not going to wait till I need a walker.” he said
He admits that while it will be difficult to move on there are some things he’ll be glad to leave behind.
“I think there’s nothing better than an absolutely great, very, very affective class meeting, where everything is clicking,” said de Rubertis.
“But, I won’t miss grading all these papers, revising the courses or in the case of the Guild the emails, it’s unbelievable the volume of it,” he said. “The emails, the emails, for the guild part gosh dozens and dozens of emails”
This is why he might return to teach for the Pierce Encore Oasis program.
“That’s fun, that’s just pure enjoyment,” said de Rubertis.
Overall he is looking forward to his retirement and some long awaited rest.
“Since I came here, I never took a sabbatical,” he said. “What I want to do is actually feel that I can just kind of kick back and read, read for pleasure… do some travelling, and then spending a lot of time with my little grand daughter who has sort of captured me,” he said.
De Rubertis will be officially retired, with a 100 percent income replacement on June 30, and because the Teacher of The Year Award is given out on the first day of the fall semester, he will have to wait one more year to say he missed the first day of school.
Political Science professor William De Rubertis has seen anationwide college campus streaking craze after the end of Vietnam War and helped to organize a re-election campaign speech in the football stadium for former United States President Ronald Regan while at Pierce. ()
