Keith Kozloff::  My name is Keith Kozloff. I currently live in Tacoma Park, Maryland. I’m a member of the Grinnell class of 1973.
Sophie Haas & Keith Kozloff::  (Quietly, away from the mic: There we go.) Alright.
Sophie Haas & Keith Kozloff::  So, when I first arrived in Grinnell, I had been told by a friend of my older brother’s who was at Grinnell that I had two logical choices for a dorm. One was the co-ed dorm, which at that time was just one dorm on campus, and the other was the radical dorm, and I chose the radical dorm. Maybe he called it the freak dorm, I can’t remember. Anyway, it was a great experience. I had a lot of good friends in that dorm and I think it sort of set the stage for the rest of my- my time at Grinnell.
Keith Kozloff::  One of the professors that had the strongest effect on me was a young Biology professor named John Armstrong, and he was the kind of professor who really treated students as equals and outside of class he was really a friend and mentor and often invited me and other students over to his house for dinner. And I got to know him quite well, and this is somewhat of an indication of the times that we were in; he was very concerned about the war and the general direction that the world was heading and environmental degradation.
Keith Kozloff::  I think it was in the spring of 19… it was either the fall of 1970 or perhaps the spring of 1971, where there was a large demonstration taking place in Washington, D.C. So, one weekend he loaded up all the students he could fit in his Toyota land cruiser and drove us all out to Washington, D.C. to participate in this demonstration, and I think he drove all night to get us there. So, he was quite dedicated.
Keith Kozloff::  Unfortunately, he left Grinnell shortly thereafter. He was so worried about the state of the world that he thought the only place that was going to survive was in the traditional area known as Hopi land in the American Southwest, so he uprooted his wife and his two little kids and quit his faculty position at Grinnell and moved to an old adobe stagecoach in... somewhere in the Southwest and, as far as I know was never heard of since. So, again it sort of says something about the times that people were so strongly influenced by these external events.
Keith Kozloff::  I have a number of fond memories from Grinnell. I was a DJ, if you will, at the Grinnell radio station, which was only a few watts, although there was some, maybe urban legend that somehow, some clever student figured out how to use the railway tracks running through campus as an antenna and expanded the broadcast range of the radio station. I don’t know if that’s really true or not. But I had a classical station, and I just remember how much fun it was to learn how to work the turntables, which is all we had then, and playing my favorite classical pieces.
Keith Kozloff & Sophie Haas::  I also had a job picking the movies for bringing onto campus, to show.
Keith Kozloff & Sophie Haas::  Wow.
Keith Kozloff & Sophie Haas::  And there was a woman on staff in the administration who was, y’know, the- my supervisor, but she gave me a pretty free hand unless she thought I was getting a little bit too artsy and then she would try to steer me back toward more conventional movies. But, y'know, if I pushed back ultimately she let me pick what I wanted to pick, so that was a lot of fun.
Keith Kozloff::  And the other job I had was as a dishwasher for the Food Service. Some of the students were the ones who used the Hobart dish machine which, you know, has the dishes go through a conveyor belt and then washes them and so on. But my reflexes were too slow for that, so I was given the job of, you know, the big heavy pots that were used for mashed potato and stew and things like that, that are, you know, really messy and hard to wash, and I would inevitably, you know, slop some of the dirty dishwater on my shoes as I was washing. I didn’t notice it until the next morning, I had an early English class in the morning, and after a while all the flies in the room would settle on my shoes, and I realized that I need to be more careful as I washed the dishes.
Keith Kozloff::  So, I think the only other aspect I’ll mention is perhaps the most important one, which is how Grinnell influenced my career path. I started out as a Biology major but with the state of the world and the concern that I gleaned about it from being at Grinnell, I decided to shift into something that was more interdisciplinary, perhaps more applied to the world’s problems. So, I created an Interdisciplinary major in Environmental Studies.
Keith Kozloff & Sophie Haas::  And... I also went on the India Studies program, which was an ACM sponsored program at that time, and so, it combined International Development with my own interest in Environmental Studies, ‘cause I had a research project that had to do with that. And the only reason I mention it is because, although my career has taken a few twists and turns since then, basically, it set me on a course that I’ve, you know, continued for the past 40 years, working in the environmental field and international development, and it just.. Y'know, it really shows how strong an influence the experience here can have. I mean, not everyone may have had a career that so closely corresponds with what they study but in my case, it was.
Keith Kozloff & Sophie Haas::  Great.
