Bob Mayberry has forgotten most of what he learned as an undergrad (U of Nevada, Reno), a Masters candidate (U of Utah), and a doctoral student (U of Rhode Island). He flunked out of one grad program (SUNY Albany) and was asked--gently--to leave another (UNR), finally completing his PhD in dramatic literature in 1979.
After a short career as a professor (U of Oklahoma and TCU), he returned to grad school (U of Iowa) to become a playwright. He completed his MFA in theatre in 1985.
His itinerant teaching career has taken him from Oklahoma and Texas to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Alaska, Michigan, and now back to California. CSUCI is the 13th institution he has taught at. Lucky 13.
At every institution he has taught composition, and sometimes directed comp programs. At UNLV, he introduced team holistic grading; and at Grand Valley State in Michigan, he was part of the team that first developed Directed Self-Placement, an alternative to the traditional practice of placing students in writing classes based on timed-essay scores. Bob helped develop CSUCI's composition program, so it's no surprise that team grading and DSP are essential characteristics of this campus' program.
Bob's theatre career includes awards for his plays "Disappearing in Nepal," which won a national playwriting contest for the best environmental play in 1998, and "A Single Numberless Death," honored with "special recognition" by the American College Theatre Festival in 2002.
He produced CSUCI's Fall Festival of Short Plays from 2004-2007 and, more recently, co-authored and performed in "Breakfast at Bob's," a short collection of comic theatre pieces. In the fall of 2011, Bob directed his one act play about two women who escape from Cuba by raft, "Adiós, Cuba!"
Bob's 25-years-long project "The Donner Party Cycle" finally saw life on the stage in spring of 2011 when the first half of the cycle of 8 plays, which tell the story of the tragic Donner Party wagon train of 1846-47, was produced at CSUCI. The second half of the cycle, entitled "End of the Trail," is scheduled for production in fall of 2012.
What Bob will do after he finally puts those Donners in their grave, no one knows. Vegas bookies are posting 5-4 odds that Bob will die an ignominious death searching for the trail of the Donner Party in the snows of the Sierras.
