In October, President Schwichtenberg invited Bill and Arlene Becker for lunch at the College’s City View Grille. Other staff members joined in to interview the 94-year-old Becker about his teaching days at “the vocational school” now known as Saint Paul College.
How many years were you employed at the St. Paul Technical Vocational Institute?
I taught from 1957-1975. In the evenings I taught accounting and data processing. During the day I was the coordinator of distributive education which meant I helped students get into retailing jobs at places like Golden Rule.
What other business classes did you teach or coordinate?
I also taught Faulkner and Gregg shorthand (that’s two different kinds), typing, keypunch, and personality development.
What was personality development?
That would be things like manners and proper speech. I hired people from industry, like St. Paul Fire and Marine to teach these classes.
How about your own education?
I graduated from Johnson High School in 1933 and received my master’s in curriculum instruction from the University of Minnesota in 1952.
What was your profession before you began teaching?
I was a comptometer* operator for City Service Oil and for 3M. I would always joke with the management: “you have it in your head — I have it in my fingers.”
What is your favorite memory?
Not just one thing but all the wonderful students I had. They were intent on learning, never had discipline problems, and were interested and motivated. I just loved to teach.
*Wikipedia: A Comptometer was a type of mechanical (or electro-mechanical) adding machine. The comptometer was the first adding device to be driven solely by the action of pressing keys, which are arranged in an array of vertical and horizontal columns. Although the comptometer was designed primarily for adding, it could also do subtractions, multiplication, and division.
Would you like to submit your story to be included here on the Saint Paul College Centennial website? Please visit our story submission page for more details.