Introduction: 

 

     Dr. Wayne Phillips graduated with the class of 1962 at then Bridgewater

State Teachers College with a degree in history and a minor in education 
(yearbook photo at right). 

     After graduation, he went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of

Connecticut in 1963 (and eventually a doctorate from Boston University, in

1973) and spent several years of public school teaching in Sharon,

Massachusetts. 

      In September, 1967, he was appointed to the faculty at his alma mater,

serving for one year as an instructor in the Martha Burnell Campus School

before he was appointed to the faculty in the Department of Elementary and

Secondary Education, where he spent the majority of his 37-year career at

Bridgewater.  

     During his tenure he served for 15 years as chairman of the Campus

Beautification Committee and was appointed the university’s faculty marshal,

where his duties included chairing the committee that planned and led the 2002

inaugural of Dr. Dana Mohler-Faria as BSU’s eleventh president.  

    Dr. Phillips is a veteran of the U.S. Army who initially served with the Army

Reserve, which he joined in 1962, but he was called to active duty in 1968 for

a two-year tour following an international incident involving the United States

and the government of North Korea over the capture of the crew of the U.S.S.

Pueblo, which allegedly crossed into North Korean waters.  

       He served his duty at an Army base in Colorado, where he was also involved

in assisting American military personnel upon their return from service in Vietnam. 

    In 1983 he and his wife Linda began conducting research on the topic of executive etiquette, which deals with business protocols (he explains this more fully in the interview that follows), eventually offering classes at Bridgewater on the subject. Subsequently they offered such courses on a national basis, traveling the country to address audiences in colleges and business organizations. They also published a book on the subject, which sold more than 40,000 copies. 

    In the following interview, conducted in November via telephone from his home in Florida, he shares his biography: 

 

Q. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
A. I was born in Boston and my family, including my parents and younger sister, Adele, lived in Dorchester. I attended local schools in that section of the city until I was in the eighth grade, when we moved to Weymouth. I graduated from Weymouth High School in 1957. 

 

Q. Did you go directly to college after your high school graduation?
A. That fall I enrolled at Northeastern University, choosing a liberal arts major, but I quickly decided that this wasn’t what I wanted to do and I withdrew. 

     In high school I had held a part-time job working for the local Supreme Supermarket store and I decided to go to work there full-time, postponing any plans for the moment about furthering my education.  

     At Supreme, which at the time had a number of stores in the Boston area, I worked at whatever store needed me doing whatever I was asked to do, sometimes stocking shelves, other times unloading trucks that were delivering supplies and other times working on the cash register where I eventually became a head cashier. 

 

Q. How did you decide to attend Bridgewater?
A.  My job with Supreme Supermarket convinced me that I didn’t want to do that kind of work on a full-time basis permanently, although while at Bridgewater I continued to work part-time there as often as I could, including school vacations and during the summer.  

     As I thought about other options for what I wanted to do with my life I knew I liked the idea of becoming a teacher, and although up to that point I had never visited what was then Bridgewater State Teachers College, I was aware that it was local and, compared to Northeastern, it was inexpensive. I applied for admission and was accepted for the class entering in September, 1958. 

 

Q. There was no on-campus housing for men at Bridgewater at the time. Did you commute to the campus?
A. I was a commuter for my first three years at Bridgewater but I didn’t have a car, so I joined a carpool of other students from Weymouth to get back and forth. In my senior year a dormitory for men opened – what is now Scott Hall – and I lived there for my final year. 

 

Q. You chose to major in history at Bridgewater, correct?
A. I did because I’d always been interested in the subject and I had always done well in high school. Education as a minor was of course what just about every Bridgewater student elected. 

 

Q. Looking back, who among your professors made the most lasting impressions? 

A. I was fortunate to be at Bridgewater when Jordan Fiore was teaching history, and, by far, he was the best professor I had among the many very good instructors I had as a student. Jordan was a masterful story-teller and renowned for his gifts as a teacher and scholar.  

    And – unusual perhaps for a history major – for me a close “runner-up” as a favorite faculty member was Otis Alley, who taught physics. I had always enjoyed studying mathematics and Professor Alley’s approach to teaching physics was to make his classes more like solving puzzles than dealing solely with the study of complex equations. 

     That particular experience would prove of lasting value to me, especially when I joined the faculty at Bridgewater and, starting in the middle of the '80s, I had to rely upon my technical knowledge as computers were first introduced to the campus, allowing me the opportunity to use that background both in my own classes and with helping the institution make the sweeping changes necessary to the overall curriculum to accommodate the growing importance of computers to teaching and learning.. 

    I'm forever grateful to Jordan Fiore and Otis Alley, each of whom was a towering figure in my undergraduate education.   

 

Q. In terms of extra-curricular activities, what were the ones you chose to participate in?
A. I was a member of the Herodotus Club, was a member of Alpha Upsilon, a local fraternity of which I was president in my senior year, and I had an active interest in theater, appearing in several productions. As is true for commuting students in general, there are challenges in joining campus organizations but I enjoyed thoroughly the friendships I made through the various campus activities I could manage to be involved with. 

 

 

Q. In the fall of 2007 Bridgewater magazine published a story on another major project in which you had a lead role – campus beautification. How did you become involved in that effort?
A. It started out as a request made in the fall of 1992 to improve the outward appearance of the campus by then-president Adrian Tinsley, who asked me and several of my faculty and administrative colleagues to join the effort. 

     Among those most involved was Professor (now Emerita) Shirley Krasinski, then a faculty member in the school’s physical education department who was very active in helping the town of Bridgewater in similar activities.  

        Dr. Tinsley appointed me chairman of what was really a fledgling organization. We had no budget but we got together a group of volunteers, and started to look at what we could do over the course of time to improve the campus. 

      When we started to look closer at the campus from this new perspective, I almost came down with an anxiety attack – there was so much to do has perpetuated and flourished – transforming Bridgewater State College into, arguably, the most beautiful public college campus in the state.  

 

Q. Specifically, you were to lead that campaign for 15 years – through the presidencies of Dr. Tinsley and her successor Dr. Dana Mohler-Faria. What happened as a result of the work you and your team did?

A. It was an ambitious program to be sure. We made progress fast, however, and by the time Commencement of 1993 rolled around in late May, many new plants and trees were sprouting and considerable work had been done to improve the appearance of the area known to alumni as the Lower Campus, including Boyden Hall.   

    At the time, I was quoted in an issue of Bridgewater magazine about the importance of involving the whole campus community. “People want to have a voice in the work being done on campus, and we value their suggestions," I said and we did that, reaching out widely to students, faculty and staff and alumni for suggestions. The wonderful things was that when President Tinsley put out the memo about the new committee, the number of telephone calls and letters that I received with advice was truly amazing.

    When Dr. Mohler-Faria succeeded Dr. Tinsley in 2002 he was just as strong an advocate of our goals, and he asked me to stay on as chairman and work with the team along to continue identifying areas of the campus that needed improvement and to develop ideas to improve those areas. 

       We targeted areas in need of work and decided which plantings would be necessary to do the job. Some things were chosen to screen and others to beautify. We also tried to keep in mind the required maintenance of the plants and tried to cut down on care by choosing no or low maintenance groupings.        

    We took many trips around the campus to try to identify what needed to be done and we met weekly. Truly, I've never seen people work harder or more diligently, but the members of the committee never 

complained. 

     As I explained at the time, the purpose of the committee was not just to beautify, in its literal sense, but as part of a long-range plan to make Bridgewater State the kind of place where everyone who comes here says, 'Wow, what a great looking institution!'

Q. In a completely different but also an extremely crucial role, 
you were an early advocate of introducing computers to the college, both for classroom use and for administrative purposes.

A. My arrival at Bridgewater in the fall of 1967 – which was soon to be interrupted when, as noted in the introduction above, I was called to active duty for two years to serve in the U.S. Army – was a time when the very first large-scale mainframe computers were starting to appear in the country and they began to be used by government, education and business and industry to replace tasks formerly done by hand by humans.
  At Bridgewater, the first-such mainframe computer did not arrive on campus until the early 1970s, when one was installed in the basement of Boyden Hall.  
    Before that, the college employed the services of such computers that were available at the local Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Bridgewater. There for several years in the late 1960s a select team of inmates produced grade reports and class schedules under the supervision of college staff.
    But everyone saw how vital computers were going to be to every aspect of higher education, and I was eager to help the school make that leap as quickly as possible. Consequently I was offered the chance to take courses at other institutions on the best strategies to involve computers in the classroom and I began developing lesson plans and proposals toward those goals.
   Bridgewater moved fast in this direction with encouragement from the state, and a real push came in the mid-1990s, when under the auspices of the Board of Higher Education's Campus Performance Improvement Program, the college was awarded a grant to create a “Courseware Development Center.” 
   I was among ten Bridgewater faculty members, representing a range of academic disciplines, chosen to direct its activities.  The new media had become a full-fledged integral part of undergraduate education and, specifically, I used the opportunity to create two new courses to help students in my department master the fundamentals of computers and to give them the skills to, in turn, teach those skills to elementary-age children. 
    All of the many of us who were involved in these pioneering efforts are enormously proud that Bridgewater State University has today become one of the nation’s most admired public colleges in terms of technology, a respect that began growing rapidly with, first, the opening of the John Joseph Moakley Center for Technological Applications and more recently the building of a $100 million dollar science and mathematics center, one of the gems of the state’s most advanced intellectual assets available at any of the Commonwealth’s colleges and universities. 
    I find amazing the progress that’s taken place since under the leadership of Adrian Tinsley, Dana Mohler-Faria and Fred Clark. For example, when I read last year that BSU had developed, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a program in optical engineering I felt great pride that the institution from which I graduated, and then served for so long on its faculty, had achieved such status.

Q. Quite aside from your key roles in campus beautification and advances in technology - and in a different arena entirely – you and your wife Linda (also a Bridgewater State alumna, G ’74) led a long-time effort to help generations of Bridgewater students improve their social skills
A. You refer to a program we created called “Executive Etiquette,” and there’s a bit of history that will help explain it that was captured, I think very effectively, back in 1990 by an article in Bridgewater magazine. I quote from that article:

    “As a young professional, have you ever found yourself perplexed by the maze of silverware at a formal business dinner? Frightened at the thought of ordering a suitable wine for a client? Not sure of the protocol of corporate gift-giving? If so, you are not alone. 
   “These and countless other questions are answered in The Concise Guide to Executive Etiquette by Linda Phillip, M.Ed., '74, and Wayne Phillips,'62. 
    “The idea for teaching and writing about executive etiquette occurred to the husband and wife team about seven years ago [1983] when they discovered that most of their business discussions took place at a dining table, not a conference table.
    “Recognizing the many distractions which could occur in this setting, the couple sought out a leading authority in the field of etiquette and spent a summer in England studying under her guidance.
    “After returning to the states, they continued their study and research in Washington, D.C., and started the Executive Etiquette Training Institute.  
    “While the basics of etiquette used to be taught in the home, attention to these skills has declined as families are on more hectic schedules and family dinners are more infrequent. ‘We're teaching a skill,’ says Dr. Phillips, ‘Once you learn it you know it forever - it is just a matter of practice. As he so aptly puts it, ‘Good manners don't stand out, bad manners do.’ “
    At the time the article appeared, Linda and I were giving more than 300 in-house corporate seminars on executive manners each year, and our clients were from throughout the country. Companies hired us because  they recognize the need for training their young professionals in the essentials of business protocol. 
   As I said in that article, "When the boss asks them to take very important clients to dinner, he wants to be sure that focus is on the client and not the silverware. Young people today are in large part, growing up on fast food, pizza, and styrofoam cups - as a result, some of the finer points of etiquette are lost.”
   By 1990 our client list included the Chrysler First Corporation, Westin Hotels, Boston's Ritz Carlton Hotel and a host of other well-known enterprises. Our business had also received positive coverage in numerous publications including Business Week, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, The Chicago Sun Times, The Boston Globe, and Business New Hampshire.

    In addition to the workshops, we also had a book on the subject of executive etiquette. Still in print today, more than 40,000 copies have been sold.
    At Bridgewater one day during his presidency Dr. Mohler-Faria – well-aware of our project - called me into his office and asked if Linda and I might offer such workshops for our own students. “I believe they could learn a great deal from these lessons and that will be a boost to them professionally,” he said.
   We agreed to do it and thus began a relationship that lasted for more than a decade, with Linda and I periodically offering on-campus sessions where students would dress formally, be served professionally by experienced wait staff, and listen as we explained carefully all of the basics of dining etiquette during every phase of a meal in a business setting. 
   Even after I retired and we moved to Florida, Linda and I would an annual trip to the university to offer the workshop.
 

Q. Your Bridgewater years have certainly been both immensely eventful and memorable for Linda and you and for the university as a whole.
A.  We are blessed with the many great connections we have to Bridgewater State. We cherish every one of them and all of the people associated with this remarkable institution of higher learning. From the day I first stepped on campus as a member of the Class of 1962, my path from then to now has been enriched beyond measure by that connection. Bridgewater is in our hearts forever.