Kansas City Kansas Community College

Dr. Jack Flint’s first hire when he became the first president at Kansas City Kansas Community College in 1967 was that of Gerald Hodgson to teach physics.

Now, 43 years later, Hodgson is retiring with more years of service to the college than anyone in history, breaking the old record of 41years established by the late J. Paul Jewell. He’s also the last full-time instructor who taught at the old downtown campus at 9th and State Avenue.

“I didn’t plan on it, that’s just the way it worked out,” says Hodgson, 66. “I considered several other things along the way but by the late ‘70’s, I had other interests that held me here.”

Hodgson came to KCKCC at age 23 after teaching two years at Dodge City High School. “I liked Dodge City but my wife (Marie) didn’t like it because it was too windy and we had a Plymouth Barracuda with a stick shift and she couldn’t handle a stick shift on all those hills in Dodge City,” he says.

One of several new hires when the college was breaking away from the KCK public school district, Hodgson shared science office space with Derald Lind, David Klein and Warren Kitzman in a former broom closet on the main floor adjacent to the swimming pool in the gymnasium. Most classes were held in the main (Horace Mann) building across State Avenue although the new nursing division and student union were housed in adjacent metal buildings.

“People don’t remember but three federal highways (U.S. 24, 40 and 73) followed through the middle of the campus and we’d cross three highways to get from one building to another,” says Hodgson. “Parking was a big problem. Teachers had a private lot but there was only one student lot with about 200 places for a thousand or more students. I remember coming out to the new campus and being amused with the complaints about having to walk perhaps 100 yards.”

The move to the present campus came in the summer of 1972. “I think the cost was $6.4 million and it was a real strain,” recalls Hodgson. “Originally there were going to be glass walls in the halls looking into the classroom but they turned out to be too expensive. Then they started running out of money and cut out a bunch of electric circuits, leaving one outlet in every wall. With all the electric typewriters in the business office, they had only one plug and maze of wires leading to the desks.”

A long-time pioneer in high technology, Hodgson learned to program a computer as far back as 1964. He and Derald Lind were the first to incorporate overhead projectors, film strips, slides and super 8 movies into instruction in the late 1960’s at the old campus. He also had the college’s first black and white video camera and when the college moved to the new campus in 1972, the video camera and other high tech equipment were used to start the new media services department.

In more recent years, the providing of computer equipment for the students to use in the classroom by Bill Chennault, now retired Dean of Information Services, opened up more doors and beginning with a primitive “smart classroom” in about 1990, Hodgson designed instructional software and started requiring students to use a computer in the classroom in the mid-1990’s. Today the physics students are using a full electronic textbook.

The statistician for KCKCC home basketball games for 20 years, Hodgson wrote a computer program in the late 1960’s to calculate game statistics. Among many other physics demonstrations, he invented a bed of nails sandwich to illustrate pressure. Made in two sections, it took two student volunteers 40 pounds of nails and 20 hours to build and appropriately, Hodgson was the first to lie down between the two boards as a student stood on top.

Hodgson grew up on a farm near Kincaid, Kan., but his lifetime goal was to be a teacher. “Growing up in a town of 300, the only professionals I saw were teachers so I was always going to be a teacher,” said Hodgson, who bought a milk cow and sold milk as a youngster. By the time he was 10, he had learned to drive a tractor and was out of the dairy business.

Active in sports and FFA and editor of the yearbook in high school, Hodgson received a scholarship to what was then Iola Junior College (now Allen County) where he got his first introduction to physics and chemistry, then earned a BS in Physical Science in 1965 and a Masters in 1967 at Emporia State.

The Hodgsons have two daughters, Michelle Zamora and Jennifer Lasley, both of whom live in Basehor, and three grandchildren. They also have several rental properties which will take some of their time in retirement.

Looking back on his 43 years, there have been many changes but not everything. “I tell students that the laws of physics have not changed in about 13 billion years; only the way we teach them has changed. The material is the same, the methods we use and emphasis we put on different topics is a lot different. We didn’t have technology we could use in those days.”

His decision to retire was easy. “I always thought when the time came I would know it; it’s just not as much fun anymore. All I’ve wanted was to be the best teacher I could be. I’ve worked hard all my life and now I’m going to try and enjoy what is left of it.”