For most students, the end of spring quarter signals the relaxation and fun of summer break. But for Edmonds Community College, this June represents the end of an era with the retirement of professor Charles Mish after a 37-year career, the last 10 years of which he spent as faculty adviser for The Review.
“I always found something interesting to do,” Mish said. Three-and-a-half decades at Edmonds have been spent finding more interesting topics in which to immerse himself: Film in the 1970s after a foray to San Francisco’s counter-culture scene, mythology in the 1980s, influenced and inspired by poet and mythologist Robert Bly and Jungian psychologist James Hillman, and journalism in the 1990s.
“I came in with my only journalism background being editor of my high school newspaper,” he said, “but in 1996, I noticed the mediocre condition of the college paper. The staff lacked an instructor to teach them the basics.”
There was a sharp learning curve, but by 1998, the paper had reached the point where it won third place in the Northwest region for best overall program as well as numerous individual awards. Mish attributes the success to the journalism class motto of GOYB &KOD (Get off your butt and knock on doors), and an emphasis on constructive self-criticism.
“Each incoming staff we had would build on what the previous staff had done, and there was incremental development,” he said.
The high point for the paper came during Mish’s tenure as co-adviser along with Hayden Nichols in 2001, when editor Alan Tagle converted the paper’s format into line with a USA Today model, with color pictures. This layout revamp, combined with an increased emphasis on pressing issues, led the year’s first edition to recognition as the fourth best in the entire nation.
He plans to spend more time in the solar home he and his wife and two sons built on Lopez Island.
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