COL Stan Phipps (PhD)

Phipps, COL Stanley S.

NMMI(1983) Professor of History

B.A., Eastern Washington University

M.A., Ph.D., University of Idaho

Biographical Sketch

            Mobility and an uncertain future characterized the experience of the Earl Phipps family during and after World War II. On December 7, 1941, the Phipps were an Eastern Washington tenant-farm family of six. In addition to Minnie, his wife of 17 years, Earl’s family consisted of three daughters and a son ranging in age from 15-year old Norma, the eldest, to Howard, age 11. By “VJ” Day, Earl had abandoned farming for work as a skilled carpenter in Spokane’s war-related construction industry and had added two more children to the family—Steven Earl born in December 1942, and Stanley Stewart in February 1945.

            Like many others in the postwar era, the Phipps family in 1948 was split by divorce. The next four years Minnie ably fulfilled her role as a “single-parent” of the six children. Then after remarrying in 1952, she and the two youngest boys returned to life in rural America. Steve and Stan Phipps spent their formative years in the farming, mining, logging and service industry-oriented community of Colville, Washington (population 3,806). A life of warmth and security reinforced by the close proximity of Minnie’s extended family culminated in the 1960s with high school graduations. Steve then went to work full time in the area’s service industry. Stan was the only one of Earl and Minnie’s children to pursue a college education.

            Eastern Washington University in Cheney provided the most affordable higher education in the region. While a Political Science and History student there, Stan met Linda Butler, whom he married in 1967. With her encouragement and support, Stan earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science (with highest honors) from EWU; a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Idaho; and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) also from UI. In 1983, the Stan Phipps family relocated to Roswell New Mexico, where Stan began a tenure-track teaching career at New Mexico Military Institute as an Assistant Professor (NMMI-MAJ) in the Social Science Department.

            While at NMMI, Dr. Phipps has aspired to fulfill the role of teacher-scholar model. That is he continues to research in history, while teaching a rather heavy load of classes. One of the milestones in that endeavor came in 1988 with Garland Press’s publication of Stan’s Doctoral Dissertation: From Bull Pen to Bargaining Table: The Tumultuous Struggle of the Coeur d’Alene Miners for the Right to Organize, 1887-1942.

    At the present time Phipps is researching the Labor Party movement in the United States, beginning with the Workingmen’s Parties of the 1820s. Other NMMI highlights in Phipps’s teaching career include his selection to be Social Science Department Chair in 1992 and his promotion to Full Professor (NMMI-COL) in 1996.