Sioux City Journal
03-31-06
Before leading university of 13,000, UNI president taught at Moville
By Bret Hayworth Journal staff writer
After leaving Hawarden High School in 1959 for college in Cedar Falls, Robert
Koob has spent only one year out of higher education during the last 47 years,
and it came with a teaching stint in Woodbury Central.
The Moville school district was the home to Koob and his young wife, Yvonne,
and two children for the 1963-64 year. He was attending the University of Kansas
for a doctoral degree, and money was tight, so he needed to get out and make
some green for the family.
The $5,400 salary that year, Koob recalls, was just the antidote. A WC teacher
had a need for a one-year leave of absence, which "worked out perfectly for me,"
Koob says, since after making the cash, he returned to KU to finish his degree.
One of his most lasting memories of teaching in Moville came the night before
classes began. He wanted to be on top of his game, so Koob prepped for class in
the chemistry lab that evening -- and was rousted out by a law enforcement
official, since the ethic at the time was that no one could be in the school after
hours.
Koob says the term arrested would be overstating it, since he never was booked,
but "it was really a funny feeling to be chased out of my building, to have to show
that I was legitimate."
Although it has been 42 years, Woodbury Central secretary Betty Rhue recalled
Koob immediately on seeing his picture. Rhue has been secretary since 1959
and says, "I know he was a nice man to get along with, in those days I suppose
he was a kid."
Koob took a course at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion during his
year in Moville. He would meet up with other Sioux City teachers taking USD
courses at the Holiday Inn on Hamilton Boulevard and switch off driving.
Long before becoming the eighth president in the 130-year-history of the
University of Northern Iowa, Koob was well acquainted with other portions of
Northwest Iowa, having moved from Graettinger to Hawarden with his parents,
Emil John and RoseMary (Slinger) Koob, at age 2. World War II had began, and
they gave up the Graettinger five-and-dime store to move to Emil Koob's
hometown, and near the Maurice town that RoseMary hailed from.
Koob, his parents and two younger sisters lived in a one-bedroom apartment,
and he recalls Hawarden as "a really interesting town, I guess you would call it a
railroad town." His lasting impression was how religious the townspeople were
and how the Roman Catholic, Reformed and Protestant churches coexisted.
Koob says back in the 1940s and 1950s in Hawarden the big questions of the
day were "about which church you belonged to."
Education always seemed to fit for the man who became UNI president in 1995.
"I enjoyed school. I have to admit, it was a good experience for me," Koob says.
"My mother would always get on my case because I would get lost in books," and
his favorites were "Gulliver's Travels," science fiction and the output of Ray
Bradbury.
Koob's father died at age 12, and his mom went onto work for the Hawarden
Independent newspaper, the Sioux City Journal and then the Greeley, Colo.,
newspaper. (Now 90, she still lives in Greeley). Koob worked in a grocery store in
which he met his future wife, Yvonne Ervin.
Koob was in band, a class officer and got the male leads in school plays, he
says, "not because I was a good actor, but because I could remember lines. I'd
like to go back and look at it. It felt, at the time, very stilted." He says "my mother
didn't support me going out for athletics," but as an underclassman, Koob snuck
out for basketball -- then sprained an ankle and therefore got caught. The only
sport he was allowed to do was track his senior year.
As high school wrapped up, Koob was considering Iowa State University, Briar
Cliff College and State Teachers College in Cedar Falls. "I went to ISU to take an
aptitude test and found out I was apt at nothing," he recalls with a hearty laugh. "I
went off to college not really knowing what I should be doing," but gravitated to
chemistry and science teaching, "and it turned out I had a knack for it."
The Koobs married at 19, with Yvonne working to help put him through college,
and they soon thereafter had the first of seven children.
Koob recalls how expectations for higher education were much different when he
left Hawarden. At the time, he said, a person didn't need a college degree to
work at many jobs in Iowa, and Koob was one of only six of his class of 67
graduates to go onto college.
After graduating with a B.A. in 1962 and getting the Kansas doctorate, he spent
22 years as a professor, department head and administrator in North Dakota
State University in Fargo.
"This was the mid-60s and scientists were hot properties," Koob recalls. At
NDSU, he saw how a university could balance "good teaching" with research,
"and that has been my model ever since" for how a university should function. He
left for a senior vice president post at California-San Luis Obispo, then after five
years, interviewed for the UNI opening. He's the only grad who returned to be
president.
"I had never aspired to be a college president, it was not on my career track," he
says, and Koob's still surprised he won the post in 1995.
With only a matter of weeks to serve until a successor is named in May, Koob
reminisces the stint at his alma mater has "been a great, great opportunity to me.
I've grown a lot here, I had the opportunity to work with great people."