It All Started Here … Bill Short
Published on April 25, 2018
Bill and Donna Short
NORTH EAST, Md. – Even before thinking outside the box was a fashionable trait, Bill Short embraced the concept when developing his style of teaching history for more than 30 years at Cecil College. This freedom enabled him to expand beyond the limits of standardized testing found in modern education.
“Cecil College was much more heterogeneous than a high school right from the start regarding ages and experiences of students. After the first couple of years, I determined what textbooks I wanted to use, what I wanted to teach, and how I wanted to teach it. It gave me a lot of flexibility that I probably would not have had in some other situations,” said Short, who began his career at the college in September 1969. “The diversity of students, the subject area itself, and the freedom I had to teach. That is what drew me to Cecil.”
Short earned the rank of Assistant Professor of History and served as division chair during his 30-year career. He was one of a dozen or so first-time, full-time instructors at the college of which several came from the Cecil County Public School District. Two courses he was able to add to the early curriculum were Maryland State History and Cecil County History.
As a passionate historian and the research involved, Short correlated the growth and success of Cecil College by the evolution of its library. From a small alcove at Elkton High School in 1969 to a vacant classroom at North East High School a few years later, the expansion of the library marked new opportunities for students.
“When we moved to (the North East Campus), the library occupied half of a floor of the only building on campus. That to me was a big step. Then, we moved to the current building. I use that as a kind of an evolutionary yardstick of how the facilities evolved,” said Short, who retired from Cecil College in January 1999.
The diversity of Cecil’s students added another dimension to Short’s lessons as non-traditional learners provided life-experience insight to classroom discussions. He taught both parents and children of the same family as well as aunts and uncles of students.
“The college redefined its role multiple times over the years, so it reaches more segments of the population than it did when it first started. … It responds very quickly to demands on it. Meaning, if a manufacturing company was putting together tubes for Ft. McHenry Tunnel, we could put on welding classes. Cecil is still a small college where you can still get answers to your questions. That’s one of our strengths,” said Short.
Short is proud of his role at Cecil in preparing community members to become public leaders and successful business people; proud to have pushed them to become more. This dedication earned him Teacher of the Year honors five times.
“Of all the people I’ve worked with at Cecil, Bill Short, better than anyone, represented my concept of professionalism and doing the job right. He was someone who took the job seriously. Besides sharing an office with him, I also had an office outside of his classroom and could hear his lectures, so I know how much attention to detail he gave. Everything about the way he taught, the way he prepared for classes and the way he dealt with students was very, very impressive. I also worked on some of the same committees with him. I always thought he was the epitome of what a good faculty member should be,” said Dennis Fabella, who taught English for 40 years at Cecil College.
Short is optimistic about the college’s future, growing in many ways that he would never have thought possible.