By Javier Cabrera / Editor-in-Chief
‘This is my house’ (Diego Alvarez / Staff Photographer)
By Javier Cabrera / Editor-in-Chief
In Room 105 of the Quadrangle at Riverside City College, an assistant coach of the college’s men’s track and field team reflects on the journey he has taken thus far in life.
The classroom is dedicated to Bill Wiley, a professor of English, who served at RCC from 1956 to 1992. In the classroom sat Duverick Wiley, son of Bill, as he remembers how his relationship with his father has strong ties to RCC.
Duverick is the hurdles coach for the college’s men’s track and field team, which won its fourth state championship in five years on May 19. He is also a Spanish instructor at Riverside Poly High School and teaches part-time at RCC.
Duverick recalls his childhood being at RCC. He said he was one of several children of RCC professors that were known as the RCC brats.
Duverick said he and the other children were allowed to go to class with their parents and hangout at school. Duverick said he enjoyed being at Wheelock Stadium to watch the RCC football team practice.
“This place was a heaven for my friends and me,” he said as he remembers the times he and his friends were riding their bikes throughout the campus after school.
Later, Duverick enrolled at RCC as a student in 1977. He said this is where his life began to move into the right direction with the tough demands his father and other RCC instructors expected from him.
He said his instructors were great models to him because they led by example.
“They set their standard bar very high,” Duverick said. “If you didn’t achieve it then you didn’t pass.”
Duverick said students, who wanted to learn and be prepared for life, took the classes of these instructors because they knew the instructors were great at what they taught.
He said the instructors who taught at RCC fit the description of the college because they knew how to teach undergrad students.
“When I was going to school here, we had teachers who were tough,” he said. “If you were a (serious) student, you took the people that were difficult teachers, because you knew you were going to learn and you knew they were going to prepare you for the next level.”
Duverick said his father has taught him more than the value of education, which Duverick has used to offer his students.
“Everything he did was student focus,” Duverick said. “When I step into the classroom or step on the field, that is where I come from, ‘What can I do to help them to get better and grow to deal with this complex society we live in?'”
Duverick said his dad was always working to make RCC a better place for students, as his father would help each student individually with writing.
“His biggest contribution was that he taught students how to write; he taught students how to express themselves,” he said. “My dad helped thousands of people to write and I was one of them; he brought a sense of family and teamwork.”
Duverick said when his father died, his family was stunned with the outcome of how many former students attended his father’s funeral.
“The place was packed, 400 people easily,” he said.
Duverick shares more than the memories and experiences he and his father had at RCC. They share the opportunity to teach the same class.
His father started a physical education class, hiking and backpacking.
“(It is an honor) to be carrying on a family legacy and a college legacy,” he said. “For me, there is not a moment or trip that I don’t stop and take a moment to be grateful for the opportunity to represent the college, help students and continue on what my father started.”
Duverick said RCC is about tradition as it still holds itself to the academic excellence and integrity since it first opened its doors.
He said he wants to carry on and give students the tradition of excellence, and be the same instructor that his father and the other instructors have been.
“If I can do that than I feel that I am doing a good job,” Duverick said.
