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: Migma 62: A Yearbook and Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. La Mesa, CA: Grossmont Junior College / Monte Vista High School, 1962. np.
Source: 1970-1971 Speakers Bureau. Dallas, TX: El Centro College, 1971. np. Image copyright, Dallas County Junior College District; 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: Scanlan, Tom. "Where Are They Now?" GCCCD Grapevine 19.1 (March 2009): p5. [Cropped; shown with Mickey Shelley and Shirl Collamer in foreground.] Photo by John Dixon.
During his graduate studies at University of Arizona, Chester "Bud" Palmertaught English for a local area high school while finishing his Master's thesis on trends in post-war short fiction writing. He earned his his degree in 1956 and moved to California, where, after a brief period of employment at Reedley College, he accepted an offer of tenure in Grossmont Junior College's English Department, becoming one of the youngest charter members to join the faculty.
Between 1962 and 1965, Palmer would serve administratively as the College’s Evening Dean. Also, drawing from his graduate experience and his repertoire with the contemporary literary trends, he collaborated with English colleague George Kirazian to create the college's first literary magazine, Talon, a collection of original student-written poems, stories, and artwork. Talon put out only two issues, each of them clearly a labor of love, but the project died on the vine after Palmer moved on to another administrative position at Imperial Valley College. Nevertheless, Talon inspired Grossmont College’s campus newspaper, The G, to publish several literary supplements during the 1970s, and the interest it generated in a campus literary scene helped kickstart other literary publications such as Cowles Mountain Journal and FirstDraft (which has since become Acorn Review).
At the inland Imperial Valley College, Palmer served for another five years as Deputy Superintendent and Dean of Instruction, then took the position of Dean of Instruction at El Centro College, in Dallas, Texas, where future Grossmont College English Department faculty member, Scott C. Pearce, was already making a name for himself as one of the El Centro's most innovative instructors. Dean Bud Palmer, it should be said, was also making his mark by championing a "Special Studies" arrangement at El Centro College that allowed its instructors a "wild card" to create courses of instruction on a trial basis, free of prerequisites, that did not have to undergo a curriculum review process until proven successful and worthy to formalize. Palmer also lead several symposia and was a member of the Speakers Bureau of the El Centro College and Dallas County Junior College District.
By 1974, Palmer had resumed the life of a classroom instructor, this time in the Journalism Department, and in the following year he moved on again and held a position on staff in Speech and English at Columbia College (in the Yosemite Community College District), from which he would retire in 1989 and be awarded the status of Professor Emeritus. He eventually settled in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, where he passed away in 2008 at the age of 77.
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
Accessibility
Social Media Accounts
