Roger L. Collins – 50th Reunion Essay

Roger L. Collins

2101 Grandin Rd, Apt 910

Cincinnati, OH 45208

Roger.Collins@uc.edu

513-509-7133

Spouse(s): Patricia Hill Collins (1977)

Child(ren): Valerie Lisa Collins (1979)

Grandchild(ren): Harrison Collins Pruitt (2013); Grant Collins Pruitt (2016)

Education: Yale BA, 1969; Yale Master of Arts in Teaching, 1970; Harvard PhD, Clinical Psychology, 1979

Career: Professor of Education, University of Cincinnati, 1980-2011

Avocations: creative writing, including short fiction and stage plays; local social justice organizations too numerous to name…

College: Morse

First things first: I have my parents to thank for launching me on my life’s journey. They are Mrs. Eda Collins (DOD, 1972) and Mr. Vincent Collins (DOD, 2011), a nurse’s aide and cabinet maker respectively. Their support, emotional and material, helped guide me to New Haven in the fall of 1965. Thinking back on my experiences after my arrival at Yale, I’m struck by the straight trajectory of my interests as an undergraduate, a graduate student, and, ultimately, a professor of education.

I majored in psychology. In my senior year, I sponsored a Morse College seminar in urban education. Two months after I graduated, I entered Yale’s Master of Arts in Teaching program. That year I also served as the second director of Yale’s Urban Improvement Corps, a program that provides academic tutoring to New Haven public school students and continues to operate under the auspices of Yale’s Afro American Cultural Center. After completing the M.A.T program (1970), I taught in the history department for several years at Richard C. Lee High School in New Haven before entering a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Harvard University.

During the decade that followed, I married Patricia Hill Collins (1977), received my Ph.D. (1979), and welcomed our daughter, Valerie, into our lives (1979). I spent the next three decades as a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati which granted me the D. B. Cohen Award for excellence in teaching (1988). Again, the continuity of my interests over the years is hard to miss. For Yale’s contribution to those interests, I am very thankful.

I’m also thankful for Yale’s contribution to my current avocational interest in creative writing. Since my retirement from the professoriate, I’ve pursued an interest in writing short fiction and stage plays and have published several short stories and have had several plays produced in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, and in Brooklyn, New York. I can trace my interest in literature back to the courses I took from such inspiring professors as Erich Segal, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Arna Bontemps, and Austin Clarke, a Hoyt fellow from 1968–70 at Morse College. These latter two faculty members, fiction authors of African descent, were recruited by Yale to contribute to the development of the newly founded undergraduate major in Afro-American Studies (1969), a contribution to the university initiated by the Black Student Alliance at Yale, a college organization I joined during my four years as an undergraduate and follow to this day.

After completing our class reunion’s online survey, I realized more than ever that my life’s path before, during, and since my Yale experience hasn’t deviated from my hope to contribute to achieving social justice, in general, and promoting racial equality, in particular. That my hopes would require continuous struggle was nothing new to me then, nor now. I am gratified to believe our daughter, Valerie, a Howard University Law graduate, and (hopefully!) our grandsons, (Harrison, b. 2013; and Grant, b. 2016), will continue this struggle.