Among the several milestone anniversaries the APA is celebrating between 2024 and 2027, the one perhaps least known but, in my view, among the most important is this year’s 50th anniversary of the APA’s headquarters being founded at the University of Delaware.
Looking back on the APA’s five decades on campus here in Newark, Delaware, it strikes me just how far the association has come and how much it has grown and changed in that time. All of us who participate in and benefit from the APA today owe a debt of gratitude to the APA leaders who, in the early 1970s, recognized the need for the APA to have a permanent headquarters and acted to fulfill that need. So, I think it’s only right to take a moment to reflect on the history of how the APA came to be headquartered at UD and how the APA has transformed during these 50 years.
First, the APA/UD origin story. To understand this history, which was well before my time with the APA, I have relied heavily on the historical account published in the Proceedings and Addresses in 1985, titled “A Decade at Delaware: Some Notes on the Recent History of the APA,” by then-Executive Secretary David Hoekema and Shirley Anderson, one of the APA’s first permanent staff members.
Up until 1975, the APA had no headquarters—its administrative office had moved every few years to the institution where the newly appointed secretary-treasurer (later known as the executive secretary and now as the executive director) held a faculty position. Usually the secretary-treasurer’s institution would provide a graduate student assistant to provide modest administrative support, but that was the extent of the APA’s staff. This model, similar to how many academic journals and some small scholarly societies still operate today, worked fairly well for the first seven decades of the APA’s existence.
But around 1973, Executive Secretary Norman Bowie and Board Chair Lewis W. Beck recognized that the APA had grown to the point where it needed a permanent staff and thus a permanent headquarters. As such, Beck appointed a committee to consider the feasibility of establishing a permanent APA headquarters. At that time, it was common for scholarly societies to be headquartered at universities, in part because the expectation was that the executive secretary would be a faculty member who would maintain a faculty position and identity. So the committee sought out, as described in the 1985 piece linked above, “an institution large enough to provide a stimulating philosophical atmosphere and a part-time faculty appointment for the Executive Secretary” where the APA office “would be easily accessible to members and which would have easy access to metropolitan areas, especially Washington, D.C., and New York.”
After initial conversations with at least seven potential host institutions, it came down to two finalists: the State University of New York at Stonybrook and the University of Delaware. In the end, the generous support offered by the University of Delaware administration, the campus’s geographic location (offering easy access by car or train to major cities up and down the East Coast), and other factors led the APA board to select UD as the APA’s permanent home, and the APA headquarters was established here in summer 1975.
Like many of the offices on the UD campus, the APA headquarters is located in a former residential home—a small Cape Cod-style house that has been lightly renovated into offices, situated very near the philosophy department and just a block from the beautiful campus green. You can see a photo of the house in this post, and if you’re ever on the UD campus, I invite you to stop by!
Once the APA had a permanent headquarters, Executive Secretary Norman Bowie set about hiring its first permanent staff members. By the end of 1975, there were two new employees—including Shirley Anderson, who wrote much of the 1985 piece above and remained on the APA staff for more than 20 years, retiring in 1997. And Shirley Anderson’s long tenure with the association set the tone for staff for decades to come. Though the APA has, of course, seen many staff members come and go over the 50 years at UD, we have been fortunate to have a remarkable number of long-serving staff members, including Janet Sample, who was hired as the APA’s third staff member in 1981 and retired as membership coordinator in 2016; and Linda Smallbrook, who worked for the APA from 1994 until her retirement in 2014, serving most of that time as meeting coordinator.
And the tradition continues: I have now been executive director for more than 12 years, and yet I am the newest of the APA’s five current full-time employees. Erin Shepherd, communications and publications coordinator, has been with the APA since 2005; Linda Nuoffer, membership coordinator, has been with the APA since 2008; Mike Morris, deputy director, has been with the APA since 2011; and Melissa Smallbrook, meeting coordinator, officially joined the APA as an employee in 2011, but started helping her mother, Linda, at meetings as a teenager. And though our part-time staff are newer, they too have stuck with the APA: Michelle Crabb, IT and operations coordinator, joined the APA in 2016; Deborah Bullock, staff accountant, joined the APA in 2022; and Devin Brymer, program assistant, joined the APA in 2023.
Over the 50 years the APA has been at UD, the role I occupy—known as secretary-treasurer until 1970, then as executive secretary until 1988, and now as executive director—has changed significantly too. When the APA came to UD, the executive secretary held a half-time, non-tenure-track faculty appointment in the UD philosophy department as well as a half-time administrative role with the APA. This arrangement continued until 2000, by which time it had become clear that the executive director role was not a half-time job. My predecessors since 2000 still occasionally taught philosophy courses by mutual agreement with the philosophy department, since they were all coming to the APA from faculty positions at other institutions. That arrangement changed when I was hired in 2012, since I am the first executive director who has not been a philosophy professor—I’m a nonprofit administrator by training.
Though I’m not part of the faculty, I’ve worked hard to maintain and grow the APA’s relationship with the philosophy department at UD by cosponsoring events, providing internships for philosophy students, and more. And I’ve also built strong connections within the UD administration—for example, I regularly collaborate with UD leaders to advocate for federal funding of humanities programs as part of the National Humanities Alliance’s annual Humanities Advocacy Day. And, since 2014, we’ve hosted the APA’s annual in-person board meeting at UD approximately every third year, including organizing a public event, the APA Lecture, given by a board member for the benefit of the campus community. These are just some of the ways in which the APA being headquartered at the University of Delaware has been mutually beneficial.
As we mark this 50th year at the University of Delaware, I remain grateful to UD for its support of the APA over the decades, and I look forward to celebrating this important anniversary with some local events and other exciting developments, so stay tuned!
The post Reflecting on 50 Years of the APA at the University of Delaware first appeared on Blog of the APA.
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