From the Health and Wellness Department, School of Wellness, Education, Behavioral and Social Sciences, Community College of Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland.
Phil Mooney
pmooney@ccbcmd.edu
I started working for Catonsville Community College on February 1, 1969. I was hired to start the men's lacrosse team and to teach health and physical education. I was the first ever lacrosse coach at Catonsville Community College, and our first year was rough. But, you know, starting a new sport is hard to do. Before the season started I couldn't recruit because I hadn't been hired yet, so I had a lot of players who had never played before. We recruited out of our classes. We mentioned what school sports the college had, and asked if anybody's interested trying to get students to participate. Some of our players had come out of military service and were starting college. It was OK, but I don't think we won any games the first year.
When I first came to the college, we didn't have an athletic facility on the campus. Catonsville Community College opened in 1957, but the Wellness Building didn't open here until 1972. Before that we were at an elementary school over in Catonsville, Banneker Elementary. We had outdoor facilities—one tennis court plus baseball, soccer, and lacrosse fields. That's all we had for training and practice. We taught all our health and physical education classes at Banneker at that time too.
It was different back in 1969. The students were better—at least they were more prepared than the students are nowadays. When I came to Catonsville Community College, we were probably the best community college in the state, academically in athletically. We had a great president, and we had a great athletic director. We grew to 21 sports teams just at Catonsville, and now we have like 7. It's not just CCBC, a lot of schools have stopped some of their sports programs. For example swimming, wrestling, field hockey—a lot of schools have stopped them because of both the expense of the sports and the effort of trying to recruit the student athletes and to get them into the college. A lot of the best players go to 4-year schools, they don't come to 2-year schools. Catonsville had a great swimming team, but then we had nobody to swim against in meets. So to swim against other schools we had to travel out to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or New York, and it just became too hard. I stopped coaching in 1975, and the reason I stopped is because I needed to supplement my income. I was working some other jobs because I didn't make enough money coaching. So, I haven't always coached during my career here, but I have taught continuously, since 1969, for the college that has become CCBC.
In 1979, the college sent about 11 faculty to teach at a branch the college had in Carroll County. I was one of those faculty, and I was there for 10 years. I taught part time at the Caroll branch, and part time at Catonsville. When they built Carroll Community College, they offered all of us the choice to just stay at Carroll or come back to Catonsville. I had already been here 20 some years, so I decided to come back to Catonsville even though I lived in Carroll County because this school is my home.
In addition to coaching and teaching for the Wellness Department, I have also taught for Continuing Education (CE). I developed a swimming pool operators course for Baltimore County, and we taught that through CE. I also have both credit and CE students in my classes. I even help Baltimore County Public Schools by teaching students in the Post Secondary Functional Academic Learning Support (PSFALS) program. The PSFALS students have finished high school but have some developmental issues, and they can stay in the program until they're 21. I've been working with the PSFALS students for close to 30 years and they just keep me going.
The people at CCBC have been a big part of what's kept me going. I've had several students come up to me and say “My mother had you,” or “My father had you,” and I tell everybody I work with that as soon as somebody says “My grandfather had you,” it's time to leave! I haven't had that happen yet, but I have stayed in touch with some of my lacrosse players who I first knew decades ago, and they always talk about how they really enjoyed Catonsville Community College. I counted and I've taught 7 current or former faculty members including my current department chair. I don't think anybody else can say that. Jack Manley, our original department chair, treated us like a family. I've seen everybody's kids grow up and now I'm seeing their grandkids grow up. My former boss, past department chair Bucky Workman, he and I went to high school together. He did a great job as chair too—I felt like I had a family community at work so school felt like home. Rob Hess took over as department chair from Bucky, and Rob continued that tradition where we got together for lunches and we'd sit in out in the hallway and talk. It's like we're family here, and that keeps me going.
CCBC today is really different from when I came to Catonsville Community College. Even so, I'm still trying to prepare my students to be contributing adults. I talk with them about getting a job and benefits and so forth. I'm a firm believer that you've got to like what you do, because if you don't, you just won't put the time in that you need to do your job well. Take me for example, I come to CCBC at 7:15 or 7:30 in the morning so that some of the seniors can come in and work out in our fitness center. Then I hold class in the center from 8 to 9 but I stay there until 10 spending extra time for people who want to work out. I've got a lot of CCBC retirees who come, and it's something I like to do to the point where I feel bad when I can't get in. I have 38 months of sick leave built up! I really don't get sick often.
To stay well, I think you need to exercise every day and watch what you eat. I tell my students you cannot smoke and only take alcohol in moderation. American eating habits are the worst in the world because of all the fast food we consume, and I try to get the students to think about that and to exercise. The body was made to move. If your job has you sitting behind a computer for 8 hours, you've got to do something to be active. I try to get that ingrained into my students.
I've had a lot of memorable students in my time, and I still talk with some of them. I had a student in my class in 1996, a 46-year-old woman studying to be a pharmacist. At first she couldn't get into pharmacy school, so she went and became a physician's assistant in the PA program at CCBC Essex. Even so, she kept trying to get into pharmacy school. And when she turned 50, she got into the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland. We lost touch with each other after that, and then 3 years ago I saw her on Facebook. We reconnected and now we're together. She's retired from pharmacy now, but she keeps her license. I think she's a model for our students because she put in the time at CCBC and achieved her goal, but it took a lot of drive. I try to tell my students they've got to have an ultimate goal, and also intermediate goals before they get to the ultimate goal. It's all in the trying, and if you feel successful in your short-term goals that helps you get to your long-term goal. I say just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to reach your goal. But don't feel you haven't been successful if you don't get to the ultimate goal, because you did get to all these other intermediate goals along the way. I also tell them for most jobs you need a little luck to be in the right place at the right time. That's how I got hired at Catonsville Community College, right? They needed a lacrosse coach and there I was.
Retirement may come one of these days—let's not name the date. You know, it's funny, Sandra [CCBC's President] and I started teaching in the same year. We have that kinship and she always says to me, “When are you gonna retire?” and I'll say to her “When are you gonna retire?” So, when I got to 50 years at CCBC I thought, you know what? I can make it to 55! So now I've passed 55 years, and I thought can I make it to 60? I don't know. As long as I like what I do.