WAUKESHA – When dinner guest David Hundhausen suggested to at-home mom Carol Dolphin that she return to teaching and fill a vacancy at the college where he was on the faculty, she decided to give it whirl. It lasted more than 20 years. Dolphin, a professor of Communication & Theatre Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, will retire in May. She started teaching at UW-Waukesha in 1978.
Dolphin, 60, always wanted to teach. “My place in life is as a teacher,” she proclaims. She remembers coming home from kindergarten and announcing her intentions to her mother, who, having just finished making a nurse’s costume for her to wear on Halloween, countered with a “No you’re not!” Dolphin, however, was speaking for the long-term.
Firmly focused, Dolphin serendipitously discovered what she would teach when she went to high school. Taking the required public speaking course as a freshman, she landed in the class taught by the school’s drama director. So impressive was that teacher that Dolphin pursued three more years in drama. She went on to Alverno College, Milwaukee, graduating in May 1962 with a degree in speech/theater and English and a minor in education. In 1967, she completed a master’s degree in speech and theater at Marquette University.
She taught for 7 years at New Berlin High School and served as director of dramatic activities. Then she returned for 2 years to Alverno as the director of national alumnae relations.
During the following stay-at-home-with-children period, she continued to serve Alverno and was member of the first group of “assessors” trained by Alverno to evaluate student learning. The program of student assessment since has gained international acclaim. In 1993, Dolphin was honored by Alverno for 20 years of service to the Assessment Center.
All the while, the smell of the greasepaint kept luring her. Dolphin has appeared in productions in theaters throughout the area, often in leading roles. She assumed the theater director position at UW-Waukesha from David Hundhausen when he retired in 1996 and relinquished it in 1999, as she made plans to take a sabbatical leave in New Zealand. Last year she studied Maori storytelling and practiced the good old American variety in “the land of the long white cloud.”
Dolphin rose through five ranks at UW-Waukesha, from lecturer to professor, and has taught nearly every course in the communications department curriculum. She has served as department chair for 3 years in the past and now holds that position again. Looking back, she is awed: “I’m overwhelmed by where my career has gone. I never aspired to be a college professor and never thought I would publish, become a full professor, chair a department, and stay here for 23 years.”
Impressed by the quality of the faculty at the institution and with their dedication to teaching and research, she’s found her interaction with them rewarding. “I am eternally grateful for the life-long friendships I have established here, especially in the department. It’s wonderful to work with my best friends,” she comments.
Often called on to demonstrate her public speaking ability by emceeing events and introducing visiting dignitaries at the campus, Dolphin fondly remembers one highlight. In 1985 a special guest came to the dedication ceremony for the new Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Her delight with the campus facility, with such great sightlines and acoustics, was surpassed only by the opportunity she had to introduce the great lady of theater, Helen Hayes.
“I had more opportunities here than I would have had anyplace else,” Dolphin believes. “The challenges always made me grow to new discoveries. I’ve had an exciting, very satisfying career. I’ve worked hard and had wonderful opportunities.” It has kept her young, she feels. “It’s hard to grow old in a profession like teaching,” she reflects. After all, she continues, if the students always are 18, 19, 20, or so, how can she help but stay young, too?
She sees retirement as a time for new opportunities. Among her ambitions are to travel in the fall of the year and to celebrate her December birthday outside of Wisconsin. As a teacher, those have been impossible for the past 23 years
Professionally she plans to remain active as well. She hopes to work with the Milwaukee Repertory educational department, to become a docent at the Lunt-Fontanne home-turned-museum, Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, to continue performing as a storyteller, and to do more professional acting.
Dolphin lives in Waukesha. |
