Growing up in China, I never had to work to help support my education. This was probably due to the cultural value Chinese traditionally placed on education, and, hence, to the fact that the government funded most educational costs. Therefore, I do not remember how much it cost to go to school then. I only remember my parents’ rigorous faces if the topic of money and school came up, as if it was none of my business. In fact, it was not my business because it was common knowledge in China during those times that a child’s role as a student was to study; finances were the parents’ problem. Despite the differences between Chinese and American cultures, I held the same attitude when our daughter went to high school and university. We did not encourage her to get a part-time, paying job. I remember that when she went to high school, my husband and I both taught part-time at her school in exchange for part of her tuition. When she went to university, however, the costs involved meant that I had to encourage our daughter to work summers. She was happy to do so. Although we did our best to see to it that during the school year her role was only to study, the cost of education was now definitely the business of both the parent and the child. Still, I have always felt in my heart that a student’s role is to study, and that a student’s part-time job is in conflict with that role.

I am beginning to change my opinion, however. When the International Writers Center hired eight students from the Federal Work-Study (FWS) Program this academic year, I began to understand the differences between the philosophy of education I grew up with in China, and the one operating here in the United States. We hired undergraduates to assist with functions and duties at IWC events, and help us with our library. Luckily, we included a phrase in the advertisements that would cover all the other things we need help with on a daily basis: we asked that students be “expected to carry out additional duties as directed.” Although I did not realize it at the time, this phrase allowed us flexibility to make the best use of the students’ time, and it allowed them to make good use of the opportunity. For the IWC, flexibility in the job description is important. It is no exaggeration to say that we rely on these students to keep our office running. For the students, the phrase means they do not just put in their time. They also have the opportunity to learn and take on responsibilities. Moreover, the opportunity to do something important for others is something they can enjoy. Perhaps this was why our daughter was happy to seek a summer job.

I asked several work-study students to tell me what they gained from their work, and I learned things about including work-for-hire as part of education that I should have understood long ago. Of course, as Jonathan Magee noted, “The most obvious benefit of a work-study job” is the money, but I had not realized his appreciation of “the greater sense of belonging, of being a contributing part of the community of scholars.” Nor had I understood the chance to explore new interests. Latisha Gilbert explained it this way: “When I first heard about work-study jobs … I looked at them as something that were a part of my financial package and not as something that was present for me to necessarily enjoy or be fulfilled by. But this preconception of mine was wrong; it wasn’t until my interview with the IWC that I realized that work-study was an opportunity. It was an opportunity to figure out my interests and whet the appetite that I had for the world of literature.” Jade Wandell echoed this when she said that she looks forward to coming to work because she can “learn new things about the inner workings of a non-profit organization” and do things “that actually matter.” Maggie Wichmann thinks the work provides “a positive opportunity to learn…while expanding my literary horizons.” She ends her description, “Since I am trusted with and inspired to be creative in my work…I actually enjoy going to work!”
Although the cost of education now makes it the business of both the parent and the student, there are several things these students have taught me about the advantages of work-study. On the one hand, their responses taught me that working can be an important part of learning because it breaks down the separate worlds between formal course work and recreational activities. On the other hand, work itself can become part of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. As Cara Johnson, a freshman, adds, her work at the IWC is “very helpful in my exploration of different options for majors…Working here has become more than a job, it is now part of my education and personal interests.” In the final analysis, that is the kind of education that every parent wants for every child.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director, IWC

Six years ago I helped to start an inconspicuous little open mic night in the coffee house next door to Left Bank Books—at that time called Café Danielle. As with all open mic’s there were lofty ambitions and about 3000 gallons of enthusiasm, all in the form of three young men—Nick Luedde, Mark Dischinger, and myself. We were nobodies really. But we had a crazy idea that if we had an open mic night, it would somehow be different from others.

And it was. There was word from poets running other open mics that we were a bunch of stuffed shirts and prudes—names we took as compliments and not the insults I suppose they were meant to be. But we wanted to do more. We wanted to bring all of St. Louis to hear these poets that we were so excited about, and so the Underwood Poetry Reading was born January 19, 1998. The idea was to showcase St. Louis as a home of working and emerging poets. The first year it featured 36 readers and lasted for twelve hours. The year after, it was shortened to six hours, inviting twelve known poets and six new poets to read with them. It would be impossible to name everyone who over the four years of the reading’s existence participated, but I have to include a few: Carl Phillips, Mary Jo Bang, Rodney Jones, Jennifer Atkinson, Jane Mead, Kevin Prufer, David Clewell, Donald Finkel, Jason Sommer, Allison Funk, and many, many more.

All of them are poets that show Underwood’s dedication to finding only the best writers and inviting them to read, a priority carried into this year as Underwood changed format and extended its focus.

With 2002, the Underwood Poetry Reading became the Underwood Reading Series. Jason Stumpf joined the organization and now serves with me as the other Co-Director of the program. We have partnered with Delmar magazine, a local literary journal, to host five readings over the course of the year. And perhaps what we are most excited about is the Underwood Broadside Portfolio—a project that will feature fine letterpress broadsides from poets participating in the reading series as well as other nationally known poets. The goal is to raise money through the sale of the portfolio to fund next year’s reading series. And, seeing as how we’ve yet to fully tap that 3000 gallons of enthusiasm, we’re hoping to raise money for other future projects we have in mind: fine press chapbooks, a web site indexing poets’ publications, and, well, we have this top secret file we like to refer to as The Imagination—it’s got lots more plans for the future.

Feel free to check our web site (www.underwoodpoetry.org) for dates of upcoming readings, project updates, and the sale date of the broadside portfolio. Or contact us at underwoodpoetry@yahoo.com.

Kent Shaw is founder and co-director of Underwood. He is in the MFA program at Washington University.

The event is free and open to the public and takes place in the Ann W. Olin Women's Building Formal Lounge, located on Throop Drive, just off Forest Park Parkway on the Hilltop Campus. A book signing and reception will follow and copies of Korr's works will be available for purchase.

From threats of a strike to battles over new stadiums, the business of baseball is today scrutinized with almost as much passion and intensity as the activities on the field. Yet during the game's so-called "golden age," players had few rights and little control over the fate of their careers. That began to change in the 1960s and '70s with the advent of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), which engineered a shift in power from the hands of management to those of the players, setting a new standard for all professional sports.

The End of Baseball as We Knew It is the first book to chronicle this change in the nation's favorite pastime, providing new understanding of the many ways the union has shaped baseball's economics. Through the study of numerous archived materials -- including letters, interviews, articles and the correspondence of the MLBPA -- Korr reveals how the union leveraged its position and how, by 1981, it had achieved drastic increases to players' salaries, improved their rights during contract negotiations and replaced the hated "reserve system" with free agency.

Harry Levins, writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, noted that, "The End of Baseball ranks as an important book, probably because it goes past baseball as a game to look at baseball as a business. We fans tend to think that while we go to 'work' for a salary that's never enough, baseball players go to 'play' for outlandish sums. Korr reminds his readers of a reality we overlook: Baseball players are workers, employees, just like you and me."

Korr is a professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where his areas of expertise are British history and politics and the role of sports in history and society. He is also the author of West Ham United: The Making of a Football Club (Sport and Society), which compares and contrasts America's favorite pastime, baseball, to the soccer craze in England. For more information, call the International Writers Center at (314) 935-5576.