Review of Shaping Educational Change: The First Century of the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley

Authors

Maxine Benson, Denver, Colorado

Date of this Version

1991

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 11:2 (Spring 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

In 1936, when a young instructor named James Michener was offered a position at the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, his faculty mentors at the Ohio State University summer school warned him not to accept the job: "The sands of the desert are white with the bones of promising young men who went West and perished trying to get back East" (ix). Undeterred, Michener did go to Greeley, where he taught at the school's College High until 1941. He also acquired a master's degree as well as the historical background that he incorporated into his 1974 novel, Centennial.