The Experiment in Higher Education

In 1966, SIUE officially began an East St. Louis special program named “Experiment in Higher Education” (EHE). This program was established through federal funding and provided financial support to disadvantaged students for their first two years of college. This was my dad's first teaching job. This is where he received crucial mentoring and set collegial patterns in motion that would characterize his entire career. Community mindedness, serving Black learners, developing curriculums and programs designed to build not just the knowledge base of students, but the self-esteem and character, were all lessons my dad took from EHE. Listen as he takes us back to his days as a novice teacher in East St. Louis, Illinois. The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn't write a memoir, so this series of conversations is partly that.