Alice Knoll Borden

Alice Knoll Borden

“Prepared Me Well”: Alice Knoll Borden (’89) Remembers Playing Basketball and Finding Her Models for Teaching -- Memory #39 of 100

Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Alice Knoll Borden.  She was raised in Audubon, New Jersey.  She attended a Catholic elementary school and then public schools, graduating from Audubon High School in 1984.  Her father passed away when she was just seven years old, leaving her mother to raise eleven children.  He was a painter.  After he died, her mother became a realtor and was successful in southern New Jersey.  In high school, Alice played tennis, basketball, softball, and track.  English and history were the two subjects she liked the most, and she thought she might want to be a writer.  After graduating from high school, she entered Richard Stockton College, where she had been recruited to play basketball under the well-known coach, Joe Fussner.  He left, however, to coach in Atlantic City, and Alice returned home and enrolled in Glassboro State College, where she played basketball while commuting from home.  After graduating with majors in history and secondary education from Glassboro State in 1989, she struggled to find a job at first.  Her first position was as a teacher’s aide and head basketball coach at Audubon High School.  She then got a job at Washington Township High School teaching world history.  She still coached at Audubon.  After several years of teaching, she decided that she would stay home and raise her four children.  After her youngest child entered kindergarten, she began working at Haddon Heights High School, teaching history part-time at first.  After two years, in 2010, she began teaching full-time again.  Her final year of teaching was the 2022-2023 academic year. 

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After I left Richard Stockton, I knew that I wanted to teach, and Glassboro State College had a good reputation for training teachers.  I also knew the newly named women’s basketball coach, Dawn Schilling.  So, I didn’t consider any other college.  It was also important that it was affordable and close enough that I could commute.  I began as an English major, but I ended up switching to history since it seemed better suited to my desire to be a classroom teacher. I just thought history would be more interesting to teach.

I built great friendships and relationships through my participation in the basketball program.  Dawn built up a great program, and we ended up having great success.  In my senior year, we were nationally ranked and played in “March Madness,” the NCAA championship.  I started on the team right from my arrival on the campus, and I became the captain in my junior and senior years.  (Editor: In 2002, Rowan University inducted her into the Rowan-Glassboro State Hall of Fame.)

Almost every faculty member that I had in the Department of History was excellent.  Lee Kress was very knowledgeable and a great teacher. I remember him always finding a way to work in references to New Jersey history into his teaching no matter the topic of the particular course.  In particular, he liked to note the importance of the state’s red clay for some reason.  Robert Hewsen had a big beard, and he taught Russian history.  The way he lectured and taught was so captivating.  He was a great storyteller, and I remember thinking that his style was the way that all history classes should be.  I remember having David Applebaum for several classes, including historiography.  He was fantastic at encouraging deep thinking and interesting discussions.  When his classes were over, I didn’t want to leave. Even after I did leave, I was still thinking about the discussions he had gotten started. In my own teaching, I knew that I wanted to combine Dr. Hewsen’s lecturing style with the way that Dr. Applebaum facilitated critical thinking through discussion.

I was very busy while I was at Glassboro State.  In addition to playing on the basketball team and pursuing two majors, I was always working two or three jobs to minimize the amount of money that I had to borrow.  In the end, I felt like Glassboro State prepared me well for my future career.  It is, of course, true that you can never fully prepare for teaching until you start doing it.  Yet, I think that the College could not have prepared me better.  I had great professors, and I had a wonderful experience on the basketball team.  Two of our children went to Rowan.  One graduated in 2020 after just three years.  The other will be entering his senior year in the Fall of 2023.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.