\n
ALAN GRUBB IS CELEBRATING 51 years of teaching history at Clemson. Dozens of past and present students and faculty saluted Grubb during an annual gathering of history alumni at Hardin Hall in September. Grubb, the longest-serving current professor on campus, regaled the crowd with anecdotes from his career.
\nIn 1967, when Grubb arrived on campus, the student population was one-third the size it is today. Few women attended the University. The Vietnam conflict was raging; no one had stepped foot on the moon; and the Beatles were still together.
\nGrubb, 24 at the time, walked into Hardin Hall for an interview in February 1967. He began teaching that August and has spent his entire teaching career in Hardin, the oldest building on campus. He said he never imagined he\u2019d be at Clemson more than a few years.
\n\u201cA lot of us came here, and we weren\u2019t married,\u201d Grubb said. \u201cClemson was not the greatest place to be a bachelor. Most of the faculty were married. It was a common statement among young professors, \u2018We won\u2019t be here very long.\u2019\u201d
\nHalf a century later, Grubb teaches a variety of courses on European intellectual history, World War I, modern France and the age of absolutism.
\n[pullquote]Born in Washington, D.C., Grubb credits the nation\u2019s capital with fostering his interest in history.[\/pullquote] \u201cMost of my youth, I was aiming to be a lawyer, but being around so many historical sites brought me to history. Washington, D.C., was kind of a small, Southern town. I delivered prescriptions to the Supreme Court, to Congress, to the Library of Congress. It was a very small world. Now it\u2019s a pricey world.\u201d
\nGrubb studied pre-law, then English, but he eventually earned his undergraduate degree in history at Washington and Lee University. After earning his master\u2019s and doctorate in history from Columbia University, he received a teaching offer from Clemson. When Grubb was hired to teach history, the Department of History didn\u2019t exist. The Department of Social Sciences encompassed history, political science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and religion.
\nSince then, Grubb has seen a lot of changes across campus.
\n\u201cHistorians talk about tradition a lot, but most traditions are actually pretty new,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the things you think have been around forever are recently invented.
\n\u201cThere was no Tiger Paw flag,\u201d Grubb said. \u201cThere was a Dixie flag. That disappeared in the 1970s. There were some protests about the (Confederate) flag, and it went away, which was kind of neat. There was also a guy, sort of a mascot, who went around as a Southern gentleman. He disappeared, too.\u201d
\nClemson had become a co-educational, civilian college 12 years before Grubb\u2019s arrival. At the time, 6,305 undergraduates attended Clemson. Now, undergraduate enrollment is 19,402.
\nIn his courses, Grubb often assigns popular history texts \u2014 such as the works of Pulitzer Prize-winning Barbara Tuchman \u2014 rather than academic histories. \u201cGood popular historians keep history alive,\u201d he said. \u201cSo many historians are good writers.\u201d
\nAfter 51 years of teaching, Grubb has no plans to retire. The students keep him going, he said, particularly the occasional ones who discover a new love for history.
\n\u201cI find the classroom exciting,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had students who say they hated history, but by the end of the semester, they come to love it. It\u2019s exciting when you make connections like that. You don\u2019t set out to make converts, but there are people who write me years later and tell me they remember my lectures.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t even remember my lectures sometimes,\u201d Grubb added with a laugh. \u201cBut they remember them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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