Award recipient's strategy seeks student interaction

Dr. Michael Cartwright grew up in a family that valued education and enjoyed reading. His love for literature surged when as a seventh-grader at the Whitney School he won a Dawes County 4-H essay contest on conservation. He still possesses the pen and pencil set that he received.

A few years later when he was a junior at Chadron High School, Cartwright recalls he was “stunned” when his entry in a contest sponsored by the Nebraska Council of Teachers of English also earned top honors.

“As I look back, those two events helped get me started in my love affair with reading and writing,” says Cartwright, who has been an English professor 39 years, including 24 at Chadron State.

“I really never imagined doing anything except teaching,” he says. “It’s a good life when you are paid for doing what you really enjoy.”

Close contacts report that besides having a deep interest in literature, Cartwright has a knack for developing that interest among his students.

“I use the Socratic method of teaching,” he said. “I ask a lot of questions and try to get the students to say the important things. I frequently tell the students, ‘Did you hear what your colleague said? Write that down.’”

Cartwright is a descendant of four of Dawes County’s first pioneer families. His grandfather, Lewis Nathan Cartwright, came west in 1884 and spent his first year at O’Linn, the forerunner to Chadron, before settling near Whitney, then known as Dawes City. The family of his paternal grandmother, Cora Cripps, had homesteaded in the Whitney area about the same time while the families of his mother’s parents, Calvin Dodd and Clara Moody, also put down roots north of Crawford in the mid-1880s.

His parents, Percy Cartwright and Ellen Dodd, were married in 1921. Cartwright has two older sisters, Evelyn Geu of Sidney and Nancy Hamer of Mankato, Minn. Both his mother and sister Evelyn earned two-year certificates from Chadron State and taught in area rural schools. Evelyn earned her bachelor’s degree from CSC in 1982 after her family was raised.

After graduating from Chadron High in 1960, Cartwright attended Chadron State two years. Because he scored high on English proficiency tests and did well in Freshman Composition and Introduction to Literature his first semester at CSC, one of his primary mentors, Dr. Dorset Graves, chairman of the English Department at the time, made it possible for him to enroll in upper division courses his remaining three semesters at CSC.

“I was in the classes with all the heavy hitters, the junior and senior English majors,” he recalls. “I really had to work to keep up with them. I had 45 hours in English when I transferred to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and they accepted all the credits.”

Cartwright spent the next eight years at UNL. He earned his bachelor’s degree in the summer of 1964, completed his master’s degree a year later and began working on his doctorate. He was only 28 when he earned his Ph.D. in the summer of 1970. During his final four years in Lincoln, he was a graduate teaching assistant and taught numerous composition courses. He also taught an honors literature course his final semester at the university.

In the fall of 1970, the new Dr. Cartwright was one of about 70 young professors hired at California State University at Bakersfield, where a new campus was being constructed. He recalls that the average age of the faculty was 28 while the average age of the students was 30.

Initially, he was the director of freshman composition and later was chairman of the English Department three years. He also served halftime as assistant to the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Cartwright took a leave of absence and returned to Whitney to take care of estate matters following his father’s death in 1981. He also taught a couple of composition courses at CSC as an adjunct faculty member that year.

He returned to California the following year, but when Dr. Shirley Morgan announced her retirement at CSC in the spring of 1983, he was hired to fill the position.

A few years later when the college’s academic structure was reorganized, Cartwright became dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science. But after three years in administration, he returned to full-time teaching. “I decided the classroom was where I really wanted to be,” he relates.

While serving as dean, Cartwright probably “saved the day” for the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society as it has evolved. The society was begun at Chadron State in the early 1970s, but hadn’t created much news for a few years before he became the dean. When he got wind that a group of Sandoz admirers in eastern Nebraska was planning to create a new society, he rushed to Lincoln for the meeting. He told them a society was already in place, and convinced them to help re-establish it.

Cartwright was elected executive director and has been a society board member ever since. He says one of the highlights of his tenure at CSC was seeing the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center open at CSC in the summer of 2001, and credits Dr. Tom Krepel, the college president, with providing outstanding leadership that made the center a reality.

Although he admits that checking the papers is wearing, Cartwright said he has particularly enjoyed teaching composition course.

“You can see students making progress through their writing,” he says. “In recent years, I’ve also taught numerous world literature courses. I believe that in order to understand other people, we need to study not only their geography, but also their culture.”

As the 2004-05 school year at CSC was ending and it was announced that Cartwright was the college’s nominee for the Teaching Excellence Award, he opted to begin a phased retirement. That means that he’ll teach during the fall semesters the next three years, but will be free from teaching in the spring. This fall, he’ll teach Introduction to Literature and World Literature.

The phased retirement will allow him to do more research and creative writing and spend more time in Lincoln, where his wife, Jeanetta, is associate professor of library science at UNL.

Among his plans is to study the life of George Mallory, who was prominent in British literature circles and died during his third attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1924. He also expects to write poetry and short stories. One of the latter, “The Sand Café,” which he calls “my best piece so far,” was published in the November-December issue of Nebraska Life.

Cartwright also has other duties. Besides serving on the Sandoz Society board, he’s on the boards of the Nebraska Humanities Council and the Upper Niobrara-White Natural Resources District.

He also served six years on the Nebraska Public Radio board and is chairman of the Dawes County Democratic Party.

Cartwright says one of the his special memories of his 24 years at CSC is the camaraderie within what is now known as the Department of Language, Literature and Communications Arts.

“We have a great group of professionals who have many conversations about education and teaching. We’re always discussing what works and what doesn’t. It helps make it easier to be a good teacher when you know you’ve got great support from the people occupying the offices next to yours.”