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They've Seen It All, and Like What They See

Profs. Petersen and McLaughlin each boast a BC tenure of 50 years -- and counting

By Reid Oslin | Chronicle Staff

With more than a century of Boston College teaching experience between them, Economics Department faculty members Frank McLaughlin and Harold Petersen have had a long-term view of — and considerable involvement in — the University’s emergence as one of the nation’s leading academic institutions.

Petersen is in his 51st year of teaching undergraduate classes at the University this fall, McLaughlin his 50th. Between them they estimate they have taught some 25,000 undergraduate students both the basics and fine points of economics.

“The student body has changed,” noted Petersen, reflecting on a BC career that began when he was hired as an instructor in 1960. “Back in the ‘60s, we primarily had a lot of first generation college students, and almost all of them were commuters. But they were very hard-working and very determined to succeed. Now, far more of them are from suburban families, and are no longer ‘first generation’ students.

“But my teaching hasn’t changed all that much,” Petersen adds. “I’m still a ‘chalk and blackboard’ instructor. The biggest change is that I wear a microphone when I teach a big class. But of course, I didn’t teach too many big classes 50 years ago.”

McLaughlin, who was hired to teach labor economics in 1961, adds, “There are probably more students who write well now. There were always some bright kids who came to BC, but on average, I get better essays in my classes now than I did years ago."

Like Petersen, McLaughlin still favors the methods he’s always used in the classroom. “I teach the same way I always did — lecture, questions, responding, blue book exams, blackboard and chalk. But my current course, History of Economic Thought, has no textbook. Most of the materials are available on line. Frankly, it’s sometimes easier to read a screen than it is from a book.”

McLaughlin says he uses modern classroom technology to enhance his lectures. “A lot of class contact is now through e-mail. Sometimes students will send in questions, particularly before an exam. My practice is that when I get a good question I type it out and answer it and then I send the question and answer to the entire class – without identifying the student – just as if it were a question asked and responded to in class. Educationally, it expands the classroom.”

McLaughlin says he even uses his half-century teaching career to better illustrate certain points in his class on labor economics. “I tell the class that when I came here and I got tenure, the agreement was that I could teach until I was 65. I am now 81.

“Why am I beyond that retirement age? It’s because Congress passed the Age Discrimination Employment Act and so BC could not enforce that part of the tenure contract,” he laughs. “So, I tell the kids if you want to ask about what effect labor legislation can have on the labor market – well, just look at me.”

The two senior faculty members took widely divergent paths to their teaching careers. McLaughlin, who grew up in Roxbury, took a full-time job in the US Postal Service in 1943 when he was just 14 years old to help his family make ends meet. The long working hours did little to enhance his academic work at Boston Latin School, and he was “asked to leave” the scholastically challenging city school to finish his studies at the former Roxbury Memorial High School.

“We were a family of eight,” he says. “We lived in public housing. I was the first in my family to graduate from high school.”  A conversation with a friend during the late summer of 1947 convinced him to apply to BC’s former Intown School – the predecessor of today’s Woods College of Advancing Studies – and two weeks later McLaughlin was enrolled in the evening program, then located on Newbury Street. 

“It was on the fifth and sixth floors that were over a Sunbeam Appliance store,” he laughs. “I was there six years, four nights a week, before I was called up for active duty in the Air Force during the Korean War. It took me seven years from start to finish.”

He continued his night courses in BC’s master’s program in economics while working full-time with a Boston engineering firm to support his wife and three children. “But I had managed to save some money, so [former economics chair] Fr. Robert McEwan, SJ, suggested that I apply for a doctorate at MIT. Fr. McEwan later hired me to teach at BC. I had six kids when I got hired over here.”

McLaughlin and his wife Clare are the parents of 11 children, nine of them BC graduates. Three of his grandchildren are also current undergraduates.

Petersen, who grew up in northwest Minnesota, followed a more traditional route to an academic career than his colleague. “I took my first teaching job at the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1959,” Petersen says. “But I wanted to come back east to finish my doctoral thesis at Brown. My thesis advisor introduced me to Fr. McEwan and Professor Alice Bourneuf and I loved them from the start. They were building a PhD program at BC, so the chance to come here was irresistible. 

“They sent me a telegram offering me a job and I wired right back accepting it. I didn’t have to look around.

“I never would have guessed that I would be here this long,” he laughs. “But I loved it right from the start. There’s no place I would have rather been. It’s a great department.”

Petersen says Boston College’s growth has been impressive. “My first office was in Fulton Hall – there were four of us in one office. Then we built Carney [1963] and BC purposely made those offices small, so they could be single offices.

“The school’s reputation has grown so much,” Petersen says. “It has been a great thrill to be here while this was happening. I served two terms as department chair and I was on the budget committee in the 1970s and 1980s. There were some amazing things that were done in those years. The leadership of Rev. J. Donald Monan, SJ, [BC’s president from 1972-96] in bringing this place to what it has become is just immense. I think, without question, he is the best college president of his generation.”

Petersen and his wife are the parents of three children, all BC graduates. “It has been so much fun being here,” he says. “That’s why I can’t quit. I think I still have something to offer, so I want to keep going.”