Sam Dougan ’48 encouraged students to learn responsibility

Education wasn’t a career that Sam Dougan ’48 actively pursued, but it presented itself as an opportunity, and it grew to be a significant force in his life.

Dougan was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and enrolled at Ripon College in 1940 as the first in his family to attend college. He says he came from a farm family where the men previously had not gone on to school, but two aunts on his father’s side and an aunt on his mother’s side were teachers.

He spent only a year at Ripon before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. “Instead of showing up for my sophomore year, I enlisted in the Army three months before Pearl Harbor,” he said. “I was overseas for 34 months.”

His service included the invasion of North Africa.

He returned to Ripon at the conclusion of the war. He majored in history and he had a job helping to clean the biology classrooms and labs. This job paid for a third of his yearly tuition of $510.

After graduating, he taught history for three years in Oconomowoc and geography for four years in Watertown.

He then received a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied education at the University of Arizona. He remained in Tucson and taught social studies for 27 years. He also acted as a liaison between the school district and the University of Arizona’s teacher training program.

At first, he says, he felt it was “just a job, and I was pretty strict. But soon, I got to really like the kids and their enthusiasm.”

He also liked to help young people who needed it. “If I got a kid who had a bad time at home, he could be a little negative to the teacher,” he said. “I wanted to teach them responsibility. When I was a kid, people did whatever they did and got the best out of it and made the best out of it. The kids in those days are not the same kids who are in the classroom today. Kids today are more demanding and freewheeling.”

One of his favorite students is a retired medical doctor who still stays at Dougan’s house when he visits Tucson.

He says the qualities that make a good educator are confidence in their subject matter, patience and a good self-image.

For 25 years, Dougan was a volunteer at the Arizona Postal Museum in Tucson. He also was actively involved with his church. Dougan retired in 1983. At 95 years old, he remains actively committed to working out, managing his collections of stamps, art and postcards, and keeping up with what is going on in the world and at Ripon College. He is a member of Ripon’s Partners in the Legacy.