- Persona
- 1919-20??
A. Richard (Dick) King (1919-x years) [can’t find obit] was an Associate Professor in UVic’s Faculty of Education who worked at UVic from 1969 to his retirement in 1985. He was born in Seattle, Washington and became a Canadian citizen in 1975. He was a member of the Department of Communication & Social Foundation when the Faculty of Education was departmentalized.
King served in World War Two in the US Merchant Marine and Marine Corps. After the war he graduated with a BA in Education (Social Science) from Western Washington State College in Bellingham Washington, and taught elementary school in Washington State before teaching and serving as a school administrator in Saipan and the Caroline Islands, part of the then Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Moving back to Washington State in the mid-50s, he taught and took graduate courses before undertaking a PhD program at Stanford University in education and cultural anthropology.
His PhD dissertation in Comparative Education was about the school year 1962-1963 he taught grade four at the Carcross Indian Residential School in Carcross, Yukon. “The School at Mopass” is an abridged version of his “A Case study of a Yukon Indian Residential School” dissertation and is available for use in our reading room. The name “Mopass” was intended to anonymize the Carcross Residential School.
Between finishing his dissertation and working at UVic, King was an associate professor of the International Service of the Teachers College, Columbia University, which had a contract with the United States Agency for International Development to assist with the development of a Faculty of Education at Kabul University, Afghanistan. First employed with the Teachers College as an elementary education specialist, he worked in Kabul from October 1964 to June 1968. Upon arrival he was the co-ordinator for the Faculty of Education project and in 1966 was appointed as the associate chief of party until the end of the tour, and was briefly acting chief of party in early 1968. Following his time in Afghanistan, in 1968-1969 he was Director of International Education at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
At UVic, he was appointed as Associate Professor and achieved tenure in 1971. He served as Assistant Dean of Education in 1972-73, and throughout the 1970s and 80s on a number of Faculty of Education committees and Presidential Advisory committees. He was the Co-ordinator for the university’s Indian Education Resources Centre (1973-197? ) and an advisor to the Native Students’ Union; member of the Board of Directors of the Victoria Native Friendship Centre; and served on the provincial Ministry of Education’s Advisory Council on Indian Education in 1982.