Well, good morning. Today is 13 November 2012 and we're conducting an
interview for the Arizona State University retirees association video
history project. Very important project.
I'm bob Barnhill, it's nice to be with you here today. And the technical
support staff are john McIntosh with the camera roger carter with audio
and linda vance coy, the chair of the A. S. U. R. A video history project.
Now
who are you again? Sorry? So let me introduce Amerigo linton. Who among
other distinguishing features is my wife declared that right up front. Now
, why don't you tell us a little bit about first of all what you were at A.
S. U. And then about your early life. My name again is Marichal Glinton
and I was director of America of educational services and the College of
Education ah was the director of education services and mathematics and
then became director of american indian outreach.
American indian programs at CSU East, the titles all sort of blurred
together over the decades. Let's go back to your early life. Okay. I was
born on the Marengo reservation in southern California. My father is
indian, my mother was not ah the I'm Kaweah Cupertino and an enrolled
member of the Marengo Band. And yes, we do have the biggest casino now in
southern California, although at the time we were the poorest of the poor.
Um The B I A schools closed a couple of years before I was born. So
although my parents and that generation all went to b I a schools actually
got decently educated but I went to the banning public schools bust from
the reservation just a few miles into the, into town. Um then are you
going to trace your life path through school jobs before you arrived at
Arizona State University.
Um
most interesting probably is that I am the first ah California reservation
indian to have ever left the reservation to have gone to college now in
the old days I used to say and that wasn't so long ago now. It is that
long ago. But the frightening thing is that people still aren't doing that.
My cousins still are not educated. My brother's reservations are there in
California. I think there are at least 50 reservations but it's very hard
to really get account. You can't go up on youtube and the internet and say
count them because there are recognized and unrecognized. There are
California recognizing federal, recognized and on and on it. So it's a
very very complicated system but there at least 17 or 18 in southern
California and at least probably 10 in mid California and 20 in northern
California. And where did you go to university? Uh I was very, very brave
. I went to UC Riverside which was 25 miles away. Um I had a full tuition
scholarship at USC
ah and as I like to kid ucr who now make a big deal of me the and you guys
didn't give me a penny and I still came here and I mean and the joke there
is that my mother worked in riverside and we used to drive past this
beautiful building and I would say oh I want to go to school there I
wanted and it was the um Citrusy experiment station at U. C. I mean it is
now at UC Riverside but the year that I was ready to go to college, they
built a university for me there. And so I didn't get to go to the
beautiful building but I got to go to the other buildings around there.
Now everybody had said you're an indian, why why are you going to college
? Indians don't go to college. You'll never get out. And if you ever get
out you won't get to be able to get a job. And uh at any rate. But
everybody, you know, even my father who actually liked me which most
people didn't said when you flunk out, we're always here for you, which is
very generous of course, but not exactly the encouragement you needed. So
at any rate, the end of the first semester, little Indian girl goes, gets
her little grades. She has been working her butt off 18 hours a day. I did
nothing except study study study study study, study Day & Night, seven
days a week. And uh
at the end of semester I had straight A's
and said well obviously I like that. My father is the most honest man in
the world, look at the grades and say but they're not mine. I have to give
them back. So I go into the go to the register and I say I like these
grades very much but they're not mine you should give them to whoever they
are. Give me mine. They said we don't make that kind of mistake. Of course
those your grades go away and don't bother us. So at any rate there are
those who claim I got straight A's in college. I actually think I gotta be
in something. This isn't a time where they only gave 6% A's. Sort of
gotten straight A's. It was not like it is today where they give 65% A's
and a few bees and the C. Or D. But that was literally never more than 6%.
But I had straight A's except a B. And in a class or when I when I was in
class they called on me I cried and ran out so I didn't have a I didn't do
well in classes where the
graded on performance in class. So I went to U. C. R. I then spent a
couple of years at the University of Iowa which was way too cold for me.
Came back and got my PhD at um U. C. L. A. I am arguably the 17th
American Indian to have ever gotten a PhD. And it's There are now at least
700 I mean four or five years ago there was 650 700 american people
claiming America Then you say but I'm the 17th. Can that really be the
case? And the answer is no of course it can't be the case because in the
day nobody wanted to admit that they were indian because there was so much
prejudice And you just simply it was just simply not said except you have
it stamped on your birth certificate and your 25 miles from your
reservation and you have an Indian accent. Hey it was pretty hard to to
remain concealed. Alright. My first job after getting my PhD uh my then
husband was still in graduate school and but I was able to get a job. I
was at U. C. L. A. I was able to get a job at L. A. County general
hospital. I was I worked for Schneiderman And Farnborough two very famous.
Uh in fact their stuff is still being published. A very famous uh suicide
research and adolescent suicide researchers. And it's I was reminded last
night when I was thinking about this that I was in their research group
the day that uh john Kennedy was assassinated. And so there was a lot of
discussion about sub intended suicide. Why would anybody go to Dallas if
you were a Kennedy and who was not terribly popular there. So we then
moved to San Diego. And at that time I was able to get a job just walking
on campus. Hi I'm a psychologist and I would like a job
and the psychology department said we don't have anything now, but you can
probably get a job in the um counseling service now. You have to remember
that I'm an experimental psychologist. I had probably seen Freud's name in
a book somewhere. I had I knew nothing about counseling, I knew nothing
about clinical, although I had spent a year dealing with adolescent
suicide. So they figured I was, they gave me all their hard cases because
I obviously was very skilled uh by the end of the day, psychology called
back and said, hey we have a couple of classes. So I know I'm halftime in
psychology and halftime in the counseling center. A year later I was full
time in the in the psychology department and immediately started my move
up the ladder. The one of the interesting stories that bob reminded me of
was that
the I when I checked everybody, all the men were on tenure track, none of
the women, There were about eight or so women, none of the women were on
tenure track. And I went to a friend, I didn't go to the chairman, I went
to a friend who was a full professor and had a professional life and said
uh you know I have more publications than any of the men do I have you
know I have better research background and ah I want to be put on a tenure
track and they said well I said and not only do I want to be put on tenure
track I want all of the women to be put on tenure track Now I did not go
out and get a vote from the women. I don't imagine that any woman in the
department knows that I am the instrument by which they were put onto
tenure track. And they said well you know if we put them on tenure track
we might have to fire them. I said if they're not good enough to be work
teaching here you want to fire him. And I never had any problem about that
but at any rate. So I marched up through the ranks. I was a Full professor
at 35. You have to remember I was on the reservation left the reservation
Just before my 18th birthday. So it took me 17 years to get educated and
to make it to full professor. I then took a sabbatical leave and I went to
use C san Diego uh with a wonderful ah set of mentors there. I wrote a
chapter for a book that yeah still gets occasional notice. Well however
many years later this is
decades and decades later. Uh but I also wrote a statistics book which is
the practical statistician which was in print for over 20 years and was
the best selling statistics book.
That was in part because you're teaching specialty was quantitative
methods for social scientists wasn't it? Whereas your research is long
term memory that thank you for mentioning that. Yes. So and the reason I
wrote the book was because I discovered that my students you know you
lecture all semester and your students on the tests demonstrate that they
don't know
what it is you've been talking about you say. Ah But I could write a book
that would show what I was talking about and it really did extremely
effectively. The book was also very popular because I had a system of the
equations are all there and they are all completely systematic right from
the beginning of analysis of variance up through all of the relatively
simple statistics that would be used by any undergraduate but it's very
systematic and so people were able to use it when they were creating the
programs which they were doing during those years.
Now I come to the university of Utah
the highlight of my. Uh So I one of the interesting things about the
system in California in the day. Uh Women didn't get hired by the U. C.
System. The men got hired by the U. C. System. The women got hired by the
state college system and then you couldn't move from the state. They
couldn't hire the university could not hire from the state college. And so
if you were a woman you were now stuck at the state college. And I said I
have a crafty plan. I would leave the state and I got hired by the
University of Utah
uh
as a full professor, I was smart enough not to go as an associate
professor because then you have all the problems. So I said, I'll come,
but only as a full professor, it required a unanimous vote of the faculty
in the psychology department, which apparently we got, I don't know who
twisted his arm, but I got a unanimous vote of the psychology department
and
um,
I am okay, but I am the first woman
ever hired by the University of Utah as a full professor. Now they hired
administrators like you might hire a dean, make her a full professor, but
a faculty member, I was the first faculty member ever hired. Now one of
the things that was amusing is that now I'm sort of a little celebrity uh
in a very small way, but sterling Macmurray inn who was a graduate dean or
something, was on the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching
and he was just going off, he had the board, he had the Carnegie board
beat on campus, they forced me to give a talk to the board and what I said
to them was, you know, you say, what am I gonna say to these people, I
can't say anything, I don't have anything to say, I'm you know, and so on
, but I dressed beautifully and I went in and said crucially that the
university of Utah hired me because they wanted, because they said they
wanted an american indian woman. In fact they hired me because I profile
as an, as a white male. So they loved the fact that, I mean, one of the
parts of my interview was that I beat all the males in the department in
the racquet sport of their choice. I mean, so that's, I mean, this is, but
which is unusual for a woman applying for a job. The Carnegie Foundation
invited me to be on the Carnegie Foundation is an eight year term and I
thought I have no business being in here. It's a whole bunch of precedents
and the, and my friends called it the prince, the princes and the
president's ah, but it turned and, and at first I had no idea what anybody
was talking about and after about a year I could predict what people are
going to say because everybody has one theme and they're all talking, they
have one position there. And anyway, so, but I learned a lot about
administration at that time. A little digression there, weren't you? The
Utah scores champion. Yes, later I o because President Gardner, who is
David David President David Gardner of the University of Utah who later
became
Chancellor of the university of California system, you see system. Uh, but
any rate, he were at a party one day, huge 100 couple 100 people and I,
you know, I'm talking to him and he says, oh and by the way I have done
the only selfish thing I've ever done, I have put in some squat courts at
the university of Utah and I said, oh do you play squash? And how does,
how does humble
psychology professor play squash with the president? He says call Lillian
and say Lillian set it up. I said good. Then I ran across this huge thing
and found Bill Bill was the be squash champion that year in the state of
Utah. So the best, I mean not the a champion, those guys were much too,
but and I didn't know any of them, but he was the bee champion and I did
know him and said you have three months in which teach me how to play
squash. So he took me out, played with me every, you know, once a week for
two hours, just beat the one piece out of me at the beginning and I kept
getting better and better and better. By the time I got to Dave Gardner,
he was putty in my hands. So you know, I called up Lillian and Lillian
said, okay, what day? And we set it up and then after the, after these
games, the secretaries all did the same thing, they all said, oh and how
did the squash game go marigold? And I said we had a very, very good game
and she said, oh you beat him again, Good any right. So and the problem
was like most that he had, he had some weaknesses in his game namely his
backhand. And you know you played if you, if you wanted to give him a good
game, you played to his forehand, if you wanted to win that you hit him to
his backhand or hit a chimney shot which came down and he couldn't handle
those. So
then the next exciting thing is that I was invited by some friends to go
on a river trip. It is a 10 day river trip down the Grand Canyon
and you wouldn't think this would be an educational matter. But I, I met
Bob on this 10 Day River trip. The short story is after 10 days. I said I
don't want to see any of those people ever again.
But five years later bob and I got married And I acquired two delightful
stepchildren who were quite young at the time. But Margaret who uh spent
one semester at A. S. U. She's, she has gone up to, she has gone up on the
stage to receive the best freshman essay. The thing that they give, she
comes down and she says oh I hate it here and I'm leaving. Well she didn't
say, I hate it here. She said I want to go out and find myself and I'm
leaving john however, she's now a um has her PhD and is teaching at san
luis Obispo john got his B. A. Here, that's the second the sun got his end.
Still talks about his favorite teacher, Pat Goldberg.
Well why did we choose A. S. U. Let's talk about that. Okay bob was wanted
a new position. He had been at Utah for 23 years and he was tired of being
at Utah. I was having a good time I thought and didn't want to leave. But
and I figured, I mean I had the best office on campus, I mean I had all
these great all this great stuff and I thought I was never going to do
better than this. And there were, the problem was there were a whole bunch
of institutions who wanted bob uh for example in Minnesota I said you
might be too cold bob too cold won't come, no bad, bad. And so we have
Minnesota we and and several other places and then there are all these
places that want me but they're small places where they specialize in
indians and so on and but I had nothing to offer to bob. So finally he
said how about a. S. U. And his selling point is there are lots of indians
in Arizona aren't there? So and what I remembered was the bogan via on the
campus and so it was indians and bougainvillea that got me at least here.
But you also knew about phoenix. You had an aunt that have been here for
many years. Oh yeah but we won't say what I said to my aunt when she moved
to phoenix. Why would anybody that was much earlier when we arrived today
? Issue. And how many years were we here? We arrived in 1986 and I was
here for 12 years. uh Bob was here only 11 years. And in fact my very
first retirement Was from A. S. U. in 1998. Now why would one retire from
s you will, they had just changed the rules so that you could get some
kind of All of your retirement, all of your sick leave and everything
in 1986. Well it was beautiful of course as it is now, there weren't as
many buildings and it was fascinating watching the buildings being built.
Ask you West had apparently just been initiated and issue east, the
polytechnic campus, it was a few years in the future but we're going to be
coming back to that. And I think that as you achieved Research one status
during this time. Incidentally given by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching with Ernie Boyer who I hired while I was on the I
mean I hired the board hired, well I was serving with them. So there's
that little research one in 1994 99. Okay. Who were some of the folks at a.
S. U. In charge of the administration at the time. The president provost
, the various Dean's that you served under. I was I was ahead of my unit
educational services in the College of Education. The dean was Gladys
johnston followed by Leonard valverde and then followed by Dean Webb. Ah
The provost I came in under as I've indicated was Jack Kinzinger followed
by interim Elmer Gooding and then Milk Glick and the president I came in
under was Russell nelson then acting president. Richard Peck. Now why did
we have such a good relationship with peck fellow Wisconsin graduate? So
we had a lot of conversations with peck because bob knew him and then
finally laddie cours which as I remember you helped recruit find something
possibly I was on the search committee for the okay
so what was your home department?
My home unit when I arrived? Um I am very small dog bob is very big dog
and bob brought his entire entourage with him. I was merely a part of the
entourage. Uh And then provost Jack Kinzinger basically said I could do
anything I wanted, they offered me for example I could do my research
which I mean I had a very interesting line of research and I could do that
for three years. The only catch is at the end of three years I had to be
self supporting and you say I'm
too young to die, I cannot afford to do this. Um Then I could have gone to
the psychology department. But Kinzinger was good enough to say that three
people from the central administration had just exercised retreat rights
into the, into psychology and that psychology might not be Extremely
pleased to have a 4th person heaped in there, you know, because they don't
get any choice in, you know what, what is it? Somebody said to me there is
no free lunch, you know, you've got all these people in the wrong
disciplines there, possibly not up to date. So at any rate, he suggested
that wasn't really a great idea. Uh but he said I could be an
administrator in some department in some college. And so there were two
colleges that looked interesting and would seem suitable and the first of
them was social work which had a black dean and uh
education which also had a black dean. And I decided that education which
at least overlap to some extent with because I have ed psych and so on to
some extent with my interest would be more appropriate Now what they did
once I had made this choice, they said, oh we've got this real easy little
job for you, Mark Gold. Real nice easy job. There are these three units
and we're bringing them together and they will be under you. Now the first
problem is that I had never administered anything more than 1/6 of a
secretary.
So I had no administrative experience and
these three units all hated each other and did not want to be all lumped
together. And so there I am, it lasted about two years and I won't go
through all the details of that. It was very complicated, very
ups and downs, all sorts of things. And um at the end of two years they
put me out of my misery and put me took me as a head of one of the three
units. So I'm now the head of still have the same title still looks like
the same thing. But it's a unit that has a different set of
responsibilities. Now I thought I was going to die. I was so humiliated. I
was so
sad. I felt so stupid. I felt so you know you name the word, I was just
felt terrible. Ah
then they put me in a leadership training thing. That was interesting
enough and you think well they're probably not firing me if they're doing
this. So that made me feel really remember what the name of the thing was.
But anyway, I got to do that.
Actually do well what I wanted. I do want to mention though that here I am
in this absolute abject misery. And uh there was a person Bill Murphy's on
campus who was who talk to people who were having difficulties and I am so
grateful to him. I will never forget him. I was so sad when he died. I
mean he's just a wonderful person who talked very sensibly. You know he
said you're obviously a very bright girl, you should, I mean most of the
people I get in here are have serious problems. You have minor problems.
But anyway very straightforward very and but very compassionate and I give
a lot of credit to A. S. U. For having number one had having an office
like that. That was that effective and having somebody like mermaids who
was such a decent and compassionate person.
My new job. Well it turns out that once I once I look at my new job it's
actually wonderful
and that's one of the morals of everything is that it a lot of it depends
on how you look at it and your willingness to be flexible and to change.
And so I ended up uh in a in a brand new little unit that was responsible
for scholarships. You look around you discover there are these paul
Douglas scholarships and A. S. U. Isn't getting any of them, we might have
gotten one a year or something like that and they're the paul Douglas
teaching scholar teachers scholarship program, great program. And so what
I did is grabbed everybody in, asked them if they were interested and
eligible and then sat there, you know you have to write a you have to
write a story. And one of the things I indicated I managed to get through
undergraduate school by writing brilliantly I managed to write a book that
was well received. I really do understand how to capture images. So I let
the kids talk, you know, and I'd say, what did you do, What? You know, and
you have somebody who says, and then my family,
our seasonal workers, they pick, you know the pick the beans and so on. So
moving through and you say stop,
that's what you want to highlight. This is my background, this is the, you
know, my brothers are not and sisters are not educated, I want to get an
education. Then you have them come in, you didn't write it for him, but
you had them take this vignette, they would write it, you'd say do a spell
check on it or some equivalent, make sure it's written in english. And but
we won almost all of the scholarships just as a result of that. Rather
minor intervention. I mean, so that alone would have paid to the extent
that you can do that paid my salary. But we were also responsible. I don't
know whether it's still required in Arizona. Uh the pre professional
skills test to get into uh college of education, they had, they wanted to
be sure that people could read, write and do math. And it turned out just
differential e affected all of the minorities. There were no american
indians who were passing the test, relatively few Hispanics, relatively
few african americans. But we devised a program. The first thing was it
was very interesting that it doesn't sound like much, but you know, I'm
sitting there one day and I realized that everybody thinks they can come
in and spend two hours, you know, there At the 5th grade in math. They
figure they come in and they'll spend two hours and they can go out and
they'll be ready to pass the math test. I mean,
well, at any rate. So the first thing, you know, I said one day, how many
hours do you think it takes for a point to raise a point? And they said
probably four hours. So we would just, that's what we did took the number
of points. They missed it, multiplied it by four hours. Sometimes this is
100 hours. But at least you now know. And anybody who did, sometimes it
was only 16 hours. We had somebody who came in who had flunked it, came in
, spent two days went out and passed it easily. But sometimes it took 100
hours. But if the person sat there regardless of race creed color, they
spent the 100 hours, they were able to make up enough of the deficiencies
that they, you know, and they're whining the entire time. I'm only going
to be teaching kindergarten. Why do I have to be able to add and subtract
? But it ain't right. So, but that was something that was
very, it was very satisfying. The other very satisfying thing that
happened during that period was that the White mountain Apache tribe
apparently 20 years earlier. So this would have been early nineties. It
would have been an early seventies, 20 years earlier had the College of
Education had trained all of their teachers and they came and they said
all these teachers have gotten old and are retiring and they want some
more teachers and could s. U. Train there. Um teacher aides and so every,
I won't mention any names. So everybody said oh that'll be easy. And you
say you say no, not that easy. Not that easy. You know when you go and you
meet them and everybody,
the Dean's staff are all saying oh easy we can, we should be able to do
this. Say not that easy. You know, and then you start looking at the
transcripts. They've been taking classes for 20 years. They have six
credits that will transfer. They have scores that were worse than the
scores that the kids going to the PPS. T. Were. So they're not gonna be
able to pass the PPS. T. But we started creating a program and we spent
several years working with um
especially well working with White Mountain Apache getting them. Now there
was one really embarrassing thing but it's certainly taught me a lesson. I
will never forget. You know, I had no fantasy that I grew up on a small
reservation. I know all about the other 600 tribes. I didn't have that
fantasy but I didn't realize how ignorant it was possible to be. So I'm
going there and there are two cities, their Civic You and White River and
we only have enough money to run run program. So I wanted them to all play
together. I did not realize that Civic, you had been the rebels in 18
80 to 90. And White River, Fort Apache. I mean it never registered Fort
Apache until I saw one of those old pictures. And you say, what are all
those tents? Well after all that was Fort Apache. Those are the
the scouts that were out chasing the people who are at Civic you. And if
you live on a reservation you will understand the phrase. It's only 100
years. Nobody had forgotten everybody hated the other group. And I'm there
saying play nice play nice. And I also interest you. And it's one of the A.
S. U. Research reports where I said, is it okay for me to say that you
are the people of Geronimo
now? Mm hmm. And the guy gritted his teeth and said yes you could say that.
But of course its Civic you. That's the people of Geronimo. And and so
and so it's a it's really I mean it's one of those blunders where you say
so. That's why everything was so funny for a while. Mr Intercession in
this series. Um Conrad's story has an interview as well and he's the one
that produced those A. S. U. Research magazines. Yes. Well anyway it's a
beautiful story but it's got this wonderful error.
I really liked working with the Apache but
the College of Education decided they didn't want to do this anymore. And
so they just abandoned the program. And so I abandoned the College of
Education. And I had an offer from Joaquin Gusteau's to work in the math
department because he was doing things with tribes and with indians and he
thought that would be a good fit now as we all know. Well as many who have
dealt with Joaquin. No, he's extremely difficult to work with. But I I
thought me I can get along with anybody. I'm easy to get along with. He's
well it turns out that it's true Joaquin, very very difficult together.
This is nothing, you know, it's one of those things where it has nothing
to do with the quality of his work, his sincerity, his you name it, a
wonderful person who's legacy is unquestioned but very hard to work with.
Uh but during the time I was working for him, I was encouraged by one of
my friends at santa Cruz Cliff pu dri Who won't be mentioned again
probably, but is a very very important figure throughout the next 20 years
of my life uh as he moved up in his ranks. But he wanted me to become
involved with the National Science Foundation's rural systemic initiative
input. So he had me serve on a on the group that in fact wrote the RFP the
request for proposal and I then went two
a huge meeting. They had a huge meeting where they're trying to develop
the coalitions that are going to be funded by the ah,
that will be funded by NSF. And there, this was just a Joaquin said, nah,
you'll never get the money, not worth doing a waist big waste of time. You
can go if you want to. But I'm not going. So I went with my little troupe
of people and we met, well there are hundreds of people wandering around
and you're there trying to get a big enough group and you'd say, well I
have six Arizona counties and 10 tribes and they'd say too small. You know
, I have, we have the state of Arizona too small and we keep, so finally I
got in with a group that was called, you can Utah colorado Arizona new
Mexico four states and I carved out a piece of it And every day I am
pleased that I did not say I must have Navajo, the Navajo had its own
coalition. I got the other 19 tribes in Arizona. So I was the head of the
Arizona tribal coalition. Um and we were funded for five years and did all
sorts of remarkable things going from reservation to reservation. One of
the, one of the jokes of my staff was before you leave, you have to be
able to name All 20 tribes in under two minutes and I still can't do that
. I mean, you know, you always leave out who will appear have a pyre
something, but any rate. So that was very, it was very, very satisfying
and certainly worthwhile. There were endless adventures with this. Uh, but
I shall leave those out, moving on to another thing. There's one really
sort of funny uh, note Nasa, what is Nasa? Space guys? Space guys. Well,
you know, so Nasa uh, came to a number of tribal colleges and universities
and they wanted to develop a thing called Aztec american indian science
Technology Engineering consortium. You know, it had like University of
Washington, Arizona State, South Dakota School of Mines and then tribal
Haskell, indian nations which fits into a later part of the story. Ah So
at any rate, Nasa wanted the president of the institution to be the lead.
So President Core gets a message asking him to set this up. President Core
passed it on to provost, click
provost, click, passes it on to bob who was then vice President for
Research and says, you know about indians, bob passes it on to me who says
, I'm not going to pretend to be a president. And so bob and I went
together
and became by far the best president in the entire consortium because we
knew everything. I mean there was some real presidents, but they didn't
know much. So anyway, so that was sort of fun, just just as a small
interruption. I reminded laddie of this couple of days ago at the end of
tomorrow's college retreat. Did he recognize it
well at any rate. So we had a lot of fun. Then A. S. U. East was invented
and as chuck bacchus who's is walking across the campus after having been
appointed as provost of the of east, he asked me two, he said you'll be my
first hire, will you come to east? I mean I think that's not literally the
case but that's nevertheless what he said. Now chuck had been a good
friends of bob's and I had had an opportunity to get to know him pretty
well so and I thought he was a good guy. In addition there are certain
problems about being the psychologist in the math department. A lot of
little indignities. I mean the this is not a science kind of indignities.
So I was delighted to go to leave, taking with me the big grant
that
and chuck and and boost oh said you can't take that. I said hey I'm the P
. I on it. I can take it. You didn't want it, you didn't and I am taking
it thank you. So At at east in addition to providing services to the tribe
which we served the 19 reservations. You know had activities on campus
training of their staff that is always less successful than you would
think because you train the staff and the staff can only stand it on the
reservation for two years and they leave so you're sort of just constantly
cleaning out the stables and it's just very very difficult. So I don't
claim any great successes. But at least we tried very hard and I had some
amazing experiences because I got to meet all the education directors of
all the tribes. There was one wonderful thing where I attended the Tejano
Autumn meeting um of the tribal council. It was extremely edifying because
of course the entire thing was in autumn so
they didn't bother to translate for me. So I just, but it was very, I mean
it was nice, it was beautiful. It sounded the languages are not at all
similar. I mean they're not related as far as I know, but it sounded just
like my grandmother, which was very nice. Um and I'm sort of vague on all
of the things that happened at A. S. U. East because mostly I was racing
around, you know, to visit Hopi to visit
here, the river to visit and so on. And to be fair, CSU East wasn't set up
yet.
That's a yes it wasn't.
But we did manage to bring have summer programs for indian kids from the
reservation. We did do a lot of tutoring of students who needed to be, who
needed help getting through getting through school. Um
Then after a year or so bob announced we were going to Kansas.
My response was has taken me all this time to get my programs going. I
mean you administrators can go off but I you know the people doing the
work, I can't I can't just leave and I don't have time to do all of this
over again before
I retire. I mean I'm old, I don't have time. But Bob's mother lived in
Lawrence, Bob's mother was 85 years old and this gave us an opportunity to
spend the last years with this wonderful kind woman who liked me a lot who
liked me a lot. I will leave off comparisons who liked me a lot. So I
agreed to go but I followed followed a year later so that I could hire
somebody to replace me and and so on.
So is there a special person that had an impact? You mentioned chuck
bacchus? Who are you thinking about that? I knew as he was the associate
dean for research of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Anyway, how about somebody else at a. S. U. U. Stand polytechnic? Okay.
One person that I have to mention is Karen Brighton. Uh She had a master's
degree in some obscure thing but she couldn't get a job and so she needed
a job and she answer got an ad and came into my office and
You know I don't know what, she's been getting paid $6 an hour. Uh And she
was wonderful. She was so good with the kids, she was so good, so kind, so
smart, really understood things. And she in fact implemented most of the
programs in White Mountain, she input in fact one of the great stories
about Karen is you know, I'm looking at the little thing on the back of
the, you know, when is Karen coming back from White Mountain and I said
she's supposed to be back today, isn't she? And they said yes. So I called
her roommate and said isn't Karen suppose? I think so,
and Karen has disappeared. So we then start calling the police. Ah and we
called everybody. They said, well could she have run off with them man?
And you say, oh absolutely not, no not. Karen fingers crossed, you know.
Ah But Karen might have done anything, but we didn't think Karen had, we
thought Karen was lost out there somewhere. It took him three days to find
her. She was down to two crackers, a bottle of water And she would have
walked out the 20 miles. She took a shortcut, They should have walked out
the 20 miles.
Uh the coyotes started following her. So she decided this was not a good
idea. And besides, she only had two crackers. So she stayed there. We
finally, I mean they finally sent helicopters out, they finally found her.
And of course. Um Anyway, so that's that's a Karen story. But Karen was a
very interesting and unusual person, but any rate. So she's working in my
office and The first few years were basically I can't live on the $6. OK,
so you raised it to seven, you know, a month goes by. She said I can't
live on that, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. So finally she gets to a a
reasonable amount of money. So that stops. She's a superb worker and was
just absolutely great. But about once a month she'd say I can't stand it,
I just can't stand being here. I can't stand being confined. I can't be,
you know, I want to move on, I want to do something you say. And so about
every month or two I'd say Karen, you can't do that, you don't have a
retirement, you have to at least get invested, you must get invested, you
have to stay here
and you know, it would take me an hour or an hour and a half
day after day, month after month, year after year just now. It's weird
because she's an absolutely great person and was resourceful, inventive,
creative and she had this one weird thing which is she wanted to move on
and I got so tired of it. So one of the really good things was when I
decided to leave ah A. S. U. I thought well at least I don't have to deal
with Karen anymore. Thank heavens. So when I retire, when I'm at my little
retirement party. She gives me this absolutely fabulously beautiful indian
necklace. It must have cost a month's salary. Just fabulous on the back is
engraved. So you can never forget me.
Yes. So at any rate ah She she she stayed on for about 10 years. I mean
without me to whine about to whine too. She took over the unit and ran
everything managed to deal with lots of problems. And I counter as being
largely successful, largely responsible for my success is I mean she did a
lot of the work. I was
you know a great for her. I was a great leader. She was a great follow
except for the whining and she's not one of my closest friends. I mean we
really love spending time with her. I would never want to be your boss
again. But she is. What were some of the special and outstanding things
about those departments? You've said a lot about that but maybe you could
say a little summary. Well I think that what we did for american indians
was just absolutely outstanding. I mean we really did move a. S. U. Up to
another level on some of those things. And there's one other little thing
I had spent years reading proposals in Washington. So I had never gotten
one of these myself but because I wasn't eligible but a sc was interested
in applying for an I. M. S. D. That's initiative at that time was
initiative for minority student development. They've changed the name now
but they were trying to get one in the biology department.
So that would have been Teresa and Teresa Marco Marco and Jim Collins and
but I knew how I knew how the game was played, I had site visited, I knew
just exactly they were gonna have a site visit and so I managed to tell
them how to play the game that was with the NIH. Right. Yes these are NIH.
Oh I'm sorry. Oh NIH grants. Okay.
How about a notable achievement personal or otherwise? Ah I think the
collaborative work with bob bob was closely involved in developing the CSU
chairs and directors leadership academy. Uh in fact became the head of it.
This was originally designed only for chairs and bob became the head of
it and miraculously all the directors were included as well. So you have
60 Uh chairs and 40 directors and that group. Ah
It was ah just amazing in terms of the talented developed and I'm just
gonna go on and I think that A. S. U. Is is X. Has is and has been
extraordinary in its ability to develop leaders. I basically learned all
the skills that I needed at A. S. U. Thinking broadly managing grants and
understanding american indian populations and but I did it from this
perspective where you have a sort of an overarching umbrella of concepts
with which with which to do it. Uh K. U. University of Kansas where we
went after issue was the lucky recipient of this very sound base. Ah
for both of us. I mean they really asked you really provided us the base
with which we were able to be even more successful at the next place. And
we have been this is now back to the leadership uh institute. We've been
very proud to meet people in the leadership group over the next decades
and re encounter them in positions of considerable authority elsewhere in
in academia for example bob and I went to uh university of north texas to
try to get funding from uh from the university for the sickness conference
that was going to be held in Dallas and lo and behold Gretchen. But I what
was her original department sociology properly something of the sort but
anyway she was in the leadership institute with us is now president and
Wendy Wilkins english was now provost. So We go in and say Hi we'd like
$100,000
and got it. So I mean we had some but I mean we cut some deals but but
that that was for the sickness conference held in 2000 and nine.
A society for the advancement of chicanos and native americans in science
and it was a great conference and they were our platinum platinum sponsors.
We'll come back to them. Yes. How about challenges encountered during
your career. You you talked about a lot of them um Well summarizing it. I
think there is a real challenge in combining being an independent
professional and being a trailing spouse. Um I mean it is very difficult
and it it uh the real need is to be flexible and I think being flexible, I
had a great time as long as I relaxed and said it's okay, I can do it. Um
and I made every change that I've talked about every single change and
spend a lot of time whining, I can't do it. Oh I don't want to do it,
won't do it. But I was able to
of all your accomplishment today Issue. What's giving you the most
satisfaction?
Well, creating the programs for the american indians on the reservations
was
something that's really pleased me a lot. And but from outsiders, I think
that probably the thing that would be most impressive was I ran the
sadness, the Society for Advancement of chicanos. Um and native americans
. I ran their annual conference at A. S. U. In 1987. And that was a
nightmare as well as whole bunch of people remember it. Welcome back to
what was your outstanding memory here at the issue. In terms of a vignette.
I think the the single thing that probably made me happiest was Dorothy
lipson was a person who had come through our programs had gotten her B. A.
She's absolutely first generation first person and her family off the
Navajo reservation and radical or single singled her out And her family,
she must have had 20 members of the family in the audience sitting up
there and they all stood up and were applauded when when she graduated. So
he mentioned he she was the vignette for that just to set the stage for
that in a way. Always had his two point commencement speech help others
and keep learning which apparently I learned and used myself. And then the
other thing he did was talk about specific examples like Dorothy lipson
which is one of the real strength in his commencement speeches which were
the best that I've ever heard out of Many 50's or hundreds of them. Let's
see something about advice for young people.
Okay. The first thing find a place that you love that appears to have the
qualities that need to help you develop, find a place that will encourage
you to grow
and always remember that challenges
and setbacks are not disasters, they are the dread opportunity for growth
.
I like to call those pauses between successes. Okay some of them are sort
of
now remembering that we're talking in large part to a S. U. R. A. What
occupies your time as a retiree? Okay. I retired from stu and followed bob
to the University of Kansas where I became director of american indian
outreach. I reported to the provost and had a job assignment of doing good
for indians one of bob's I mean it's a great job description. Uh One of
bob's jokes is that when they had decided they would make him vp for
research. Uh You know they said do you have any goats and canoes? Do you
have any people you have to bring? And he said I have a wife who's
american indian and you would have to know the provost. The provost always
sits like this that that particular provost at any rate. And according to
bob he sat up and then he became the trailing spouse. So that's the way I
tell the story. Well uh so during this time During the last 14 years I've
worked closely with high school in donations university who we met through
the Ace Tech things. So the same president is still there, it provided a
nice little entree to an institution that's not very easy to get into. Uh
so I worked with Haskell and K. U. and in 14 years I'm still working for
them. I have man I have helped bring in about $25 million dollars uh of
funds through programs. Now this is the first the proposal I have ever
written. I won't tell you how old I was but very old but that isn't the
barrier to doing stuff. So I wrote a proposal to these are all NIH grants.
They are all but but anyway so I wrote bridges to the baccalaureate, the
I. M. S. D. Which is now called initiative for maximizing student
development because you can't have minorities in a title anymore. Uh The
rise which is research initiative for scientific enhancement, the Iraq to
the institutional research and academic career development award, prep
postbaccalaureate research education program. And all of these have been
funded and refunded
some of them Up to four times. And I'm currently writing the I. M. S. The
revision of the MSD. I retired from K. U. But continue to serve as senior
advisor for all the programs I developed.
In addition I've been active in sadness again. The society for the
advancement of chicanos and native americans in science Since 19 the 1980s.
After I came to a S. U. I became a member of the board of directors. Put
together the 1987 sickness annual national conference. I became the
president of Sagna's in 2004 - 2007. And I have since served on the board.
I'm now I'm getting keep getting kicked upstairs. I'm now a member of
cosa. The council of senior advisers on sickness and serve as a
representative to the board. I'm also the P. I. On the Current Sadness $5
Million Grant. I think I actually wrote that one with my own tiny hands
and I am a p. I on the pending Sagna's $8 million dollar grant and I
didn't have to write nearly as much of that. Uh Both bob and I are mentors
of the sadness summer leadership institute. This is held in Washington D.
C. Every july and our appreciation for a sus leadership training strongly
influenced our appreciate our appreciation for the value of such efforts.
So we had been through these leadership things it sort of permeates your
consciousness and when you see an opportunity to do something you this was
the thing that we tried to do. I developed I developed a specific concept
and developed obtained funding through sicknesses big conference grant 30
individuals each year and three tracks postdoc early career and mid career
and I always joke I'm mid career so we take anybody who is seems to have
any life left in them. Um The institute is enormously successful and it's
a big favorite of funders. You know everybody is saying how can we get in
on the leadership institute action. So we're and we're now planning to
visit to D. C. Where we're going to be trying to I said you don't go in
with no ideas what would be a great idea and so I've forgotten what it was
but somebody hopefully wrote it down. Um Well somebody it will happen. Yes
amusingly enough bob became vice president for
science policy and strategic initiatives for science for sickness. I'm
sorry a title based on his title from provost click at A. S. U. Which is
sort of amusing another I think it's an amusing story although the other
four of you may not. So when it is announced that they're going to hire
bob as the new vice president, everybody who knows him says oh great he's
been so good, he's blah blah wonderful. One person hasn't doesn't know him.
Goes up on the web finds a picture and says you but does he have to be so
white?
Let me add that with something from you. They,
so okay let me say a little bit more about that since you started that
that is they never had a vice president for anything and they wanted to
have a presence established in Washington D. C. And also learn about
science policy as it affected stock knossos goals. And through my work
starting at A. S. U. I became concerned about the future high tech
workforce namely that we should have won and particularly composed of our
own citizens. So that started here and as in has become the vehicle for us
to work together on on this activity.
Start talking about your awards for which I'm the designated back man.
Okay I have started receiving lifetime awards including pays meme which is
the presidential award for excellence in science, mathematics and
Engineering mentoring awarded in the Oval Office by President Obama in
January 2011 pomona college. I had no idea how rich Pomona College was.
They have more money than God. I mean that's just amazing. Oh sorry
awarded me an honorary degree in May 2012
and the University of California riverside made me their distinguished
alumnus in september In October 2012. Um The Pay's meme award specifically
cited american activities at both A. S. U. And K. U.
Much of, much of my time is devoted to collecting art. Especially american
indian art. This is very important to me both because it supports
excellent american indian artists, but because it helps me beautify my
home. So bob is always saying you haven't adopted him to have you? You say
yes. I mean for example, I've adopted Penny Singer who Yes a wonderful
fabric artist. But we have 26 paintings by the same artist in the bedroom
and one of those jackets appears in the paceman picture with the
president's arm around her. So that's not so bad. Uh You talked about
beautifying the home, how about comments in areas that we haven't covered.
Okay we live in three places. We live in phoenix. Uh We have a condo in
just outside of Washington D. C. And we have a cabin in southern Utah uh
near Capitol reef national park when we left. Um Now we'll give the plight
version when we left in 1998. I refused to sell the Phoenix House because
I always wanted to return here and it's great. I mean you say we we want
to be where it's nice and warm and we have a lifetime of friends at A. S.
U. And this is a great place to be. We participate in A. S. U. R. A.
Events in the emeritus college events, bob occasionally gets little
offices and so on. Nobody wants me but we continue to mentor many people
including some faculty at A. S. U. And we are trying to get more. Yes we
have lots of K. You people in the leadership institute. We're trying to
get more A. S. You people into the leadership institute.
And I wanted to mention about President growth. We met we know President
Crow quite well. Uh He consulted for S. You from Colombia with promises.
Glick and bob. And we used to he still says are you still doing puzzles
on the floor of your living room? You know when we when we bump into him
in Costco another place. So at any rate he still remembers us. Anything
else that you'd like to add? I don't think so. There's one tiny thing all
that and that is we wrote an article together that has a issue connections
in the book edited by Roland Hayden, the Dean that brought me here and
Jeannie brink and in the humanities on how to strengthen research and
universities. And our topic was how to strengthen research as a
departmental chair. And I reread it last night and it still applies
terrific.Thanks