We would put our blue jeans on, roll them up to our knees ... and wear these {full circle] skirts over them to come on campus.
Mimi Reisel Gladstein Student, 1954-1956; 1958-1966 Faculty, 1966-1969; 1971¡Present
I've
been at UTEP almost continuously since 1954, either as a student or as a professor. I came to Texas Western College in the summer of 1954, straight out of EI Paso High. Then I went away to the University of Oklahoma [for two years, but in the summers I attended Texas Western]. I moved to Germany for about a year and a half, and came back and got • my bachelor's degree from Texas Western in '59. In 1960 I began my master's degree, which I completed in '66, the first year it was The University of Texas at EI Paso. Those were the halcyon days of academe, when student populations were just soaring, so I decided that I ought to go get my Ph.D. if I wanted to teach at a university. I was going to take a few courses here before I went to enroll in the Ph.D. program at the University of New Mexico. I was at registration, and John West [of the English Department] walked up to me and said, "Can you teach a freshman course for us?" I didn't have better sense than to say, "Yes." So I started that way. I went away in 1970 to work on my degree, and in 1971 I came back to UTEP as a full-time faculty member. 203