Business professor Thomas Rhoads will retire with a family legacy of 54 uninterrupted years of commitment to Cal State Long Beach. The Rhoads family, Kenneth (1956-1973) and son, Thomas (1973-present), taught in the College of Business and Administration. Even though Rhoads will continue advising for several groups on campus, he has already made retirement plans.
“I’m going to start reading novels,” Rhoads said. “My summer reading has always been non-fiction. I haven’t read a novel since high school.”
First on Rhoads’ reading list is “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson.
Even with retirement plans in the works, Rhoads has been hesitant about leaving CSULB.
“I know we’ve affected many students,” said Rhoads of his family’s influence. “For both him and I, our primary mission was to be good teachers. We take potential and turn it into success. That’s what our legacy is, students who have become successful.”
FERP, short for Faculty Early Retirement Program, allows a tenured faculty member who is eligible for service retirement to retire and continue teaching one semester per year for up to five years.
“If it wasn’t for the FERP program, I’m not sure I would have retired because [CSULB] has been such a big part of my life,” Rhoads said. “I’ve never taken sabbatical. My father never did either.”
Despite a long career at CSULB, Rhoads admits that teaching wasn’t his primary goal.
“[My father] was going to law school when I was born as part of the GI Bill. He taught business class at night and went to law school. I did exactly as he had done,” Rhoads explained. “I started teaching at night and went to law school during the daytime. I didn’t intend on being a professor and teaching as a career.”
Kenneth Rhoads’ 17-year career was cut short by a heart attack in September of 1973. He was the Associated Students Professor of the Year for the 1959-60 term.
“He was a two-packs-a-day smoker,” Rhoads said. “The hardest day ever was when I quit smoking. I took that lesson from him and I’m 34 years smoke free. My doctors tell me it’s like I never smoked.”
Rhoads attributes his father as a major inspiration.
“I keep his trophy from his 1959 Professor of the Year award on my desk,” Rhoads said. “Most valuable professor of College of Business.”
Rhoads’ involvement in the campus did not stop in the classroom. He has been the advisor for the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity since he arrived on campus, and has dealt with some of the misconceptions people have about fraternities.
“Fraternity guys might be drawn away from the fraternity by the bar scene, but the frat provides a place to ground them,” Rhoads explained. “The more contact the student has with the campus, the more likely they are to graduate.”
As he reflected on his career at CSULB, Rhoads shared one thought about the legacy of his family.
“I always think about measuring up to the model that [my father] set for me. I was always very impressed when a former student would speak admirably about him and I hope to continue that legacy,” Rhoades said. “Last semester, for the first time, a student came up to me and said that their father was a student of mine. I’ve been very lucky.”
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