Jon Ericson

1928 - 2021

Jon Ericson
August 1, 1928 - January 19, 2021
Pacific Grove, California - Dr. Jon Ericson, Cal Poly Dean, dies at 92
Dr. Jon Meyer Ericson died at home in Pacific Grove, California on Tuesday, January 19th. He is survived by his beloved spouse, Amy K. Ericson, nee Knutson, two daughters, Beth Ericson and Ingrid Ericson, and a son, Joel Ericson. Ericson's first child, Jon Robert Ericson, died in 1992.
Jon Ericson was born in Three Forks, Montana to George and Olga Ericson in 1928. He spent most of his childhood years in Ada, Minnesota and Richland, Washington. Following graduation from Richland High School in 1945, he enlisted in the United States Navy in 1946 as a medical corpsman. Ericson's US Naval service included a visit to China in 1948--a journey he often recollected to family and friends with tales of visits to Tsingtao and Shanghai.
Ericson met Amy Knutson at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington and they were married in Oslo, Texas on August 19th, 1951. Following graduation from PLU, he attended Stanford University as an MA student from 1952-53 and then taught speech and drama in Seguin, Texas and Parkland, Washington until 1957 when he returned to Stanford University to earn a Ph.D. in Rhetoric.
Ericson was an active debater as a doctoral student and became a debate coach at Stanford while he was a faculty member from 1959-1964. He published The Debater's Guide in 1963, a book so popular among competitive debaters and in US university speech courses that it continues to be published to date. Ericson led the Speech and Drama Department at Central Washington State University in Ellensburg, Washington from 1964 to 1970 leaving Washington to become founding Dean of the School of Communicative Arts and Humanities at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo in 1970.
As Dean at Cal Poly, Ericson pioneered international education programs for students highlighted by a popular London Study program which emphasized low cost and inclusiveness at a time when only elite US students could afford to participate in such programs. Exclusivity was also maintained by academic standards for participation which served to further restrict participation to those with top academic marks. As Dean Ericson remarked about the program:
The London Study Program prospered, became the largest study abroad program in the country, served over a thousand Cal Poly students, involved over a hundred faculty, and served as a model for many other programs. And these opportunities were made available, in many cases, to students from rural areas who had never been out of California, some who had never been to Los Angeles.
As he worked to establish Liberal Arts and study abroad at Cal Poly, Ericson launched summer English language programs for visiting Japanese university students and organized numerous campus cultural events to enrich student and faculty experiences at the university including a symposium devoted to Leonardo DaVinci, numerous campus musical performances, and a rare book collection. The School of Communicative Arts and Humanities brought new inter-disciplinary approaches to a campus focused on engineering, agriculture and other highly technical fields. As Dr. Ericson summed up his accomplishment:
As the founding Dean of a new school, the most important work that could be done was to build a solid foundation to accomplish the work appropriate to a Liberal Arts school in a polytechnic university. I believe that was done and done exceptionally well. Most significant was the hiring and retention of quality faculty. The quality of the liberal arts faculty hired in the 1970-1988 period has had a profound impact on the entire university in all of the subsequent years. Because of those faculty the place and the value of the liberal arts is now unquestioned in a university which is now a highly respected academic institution.
Ericson taught Speech at Cal Poly in his last two years of service before retiring in 1996. Jon and his life-long love, Amy Ericson, remained in San Luis Obispo until 2009 and then moved to Pacific Grove, California to spend their final years together in a favorite spot for family vacations and holiday celebrations.