Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: Blast Yearbook, Class of 1955. Coleraine, MN: Greenway High School, 1955. p7. Image copyright Greenway Public Schools; used in accordance with fair use doctrine for educational and non-commercial archival research, as set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 107, the fair use section of the Copyright Act of 1976..
Source: Cornerstones Yearbook, Class of 1956. Dallas, TX: Hockaday High School, 1956. p22. Used with permission, courtesy of Hockaday High School Digital Archives Collection; used with permission.
Source: Private Photograph and Documents Collection. Digitally reprinted with permission, courtesy of Homer B. Lusk, Grossmont College Professor Emeritus and former English Department Chair.
After the conclusion of his U.S. Army service in 1946, Stanford Thomas Carlson attended University of Minnesota, where he obtained his Bachelor's in English in 1950, then a Master’s degree in 1952. Around this same time, he was chosen to live in Iran for a U.S. Fulbright Teachers Exchange Program. Once out of graduate school in 1953, Carlson, now an Assistant Professor of English, held several short-term teaching positions in Colorado, Illinois, and Texas before finally moving to San Diego, where he initially taught freshman English at California Western University in its Department of Communications. In 1966, Carlson was one of three California Western College professors to be interviewed by Cal. State Fullerton Professor Hazel J. Jones and Chico State College Professor N. Field Winn for their research study on teacher preparation for secondary school English. The resulting book, English Composition: A College Problem, was published by Western College Association in 1967.
That same year, Carlson accepted an offer of tenure with Grossmont College's English Department, where he remained for more than twenty-five years. Renowned for conducting his entire classes out of his office in one-on-one meetings with students, he was infamous for making as few appearances in front of a camera as he did in front of a classroom. Yearbooks from his brief teaching stints at schools in Texas and Colorado have offered rare glimpses into what Stanford looked like early in his career; however, while employed at Grossmont, he adamantly refused to have his likeness included in any faculty directories, catalogs, or ceremonial publications—including his own retirement announcement. One lone English Department gallery portrait of Carlson shows him in mid paparazzi pose, with a hand outstretched to hide his face. Otherwise, no photographs or drawings of him are available anywhere.
Stanford's life off-campus was as enigmatic, even to his own family. Carlson’s niece was the only one of her sisters present during his brief visit in fall of 1983, when he came to Fullerton, California to pay his respects to his terminally ill brother, Robert. Remembering the stories of his early years being “like something out of Nabokov,” Cynthia Carlson recounts the few hours she spent with her "Uncle Stan...who drank Scotch and sounded like William F. Buckley and seemed to be rather fascinated with me.”
Stanford, himself, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1992 and, that same year, took early retirement to make the best of his remaining time—which, unfortunately, was short. While in hospice care at the ironically named “Stanford Court” Nursing Center in Santee, his condition rapidly deteriorated, and he succumbed near the end of July in 1993.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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