This is december four 2009. We are at the Fulton built building at the
Arizona State University campus. I am ted Humphrey and I'm interviewing uh
Professor Jack Kinzinger. Uh This is a living history video project to
help us establish um an oral history of the development of Arizona State
University as a university
Jack to begin with. Would you give us a sense of your childhood and your
educational development and your early career? Yes, I was born and what
stone is the midwestern rust belt these days in Akron Ohio, it's a city
that would have a very big industries. All three of the major big river
plants were there. And so I grew up in a manufacturing town, so to speak.
I left Akron to go to service. I applied as a cadet to the Air Force,
became accepted at the beginning of World War two and became a navigator
As at 19 years old was a second lieutenant in the Air Force and the fluid
B 29 which was a new airplane for period of time. So I did that for about
a year, year and a half, two years. The war ended, I went to Hiram College
which was close to Akron and the place where my brother had gone to
college. Um, and completed my bachelor's degree there. Now I had a little
unusual Bachelor's degree. I had two majors, chemistry major and
mathematics major and that was both good for me and bad for me and left me
with not as much chemistry as I should have had Cornell for my next degree
because the competition was extraordinarily tough in that institution. In
any case I finished the Masters head Cornell and that master as I worked
with what later became a nobel prize winner who was paul j Flory who was a
famous name in the physical chemistry of large molecules and somebody I
admired and as a matter of fact I learned a lot from him, he was a genius
and I began to understand the difference between me and
there is such a, there is such a group and then I left Cornell and came
and worked in the industry at roman hose company in philadelphia 34 years
and at that time I competed with phds and thought it would be a good idea
if I just go ahead and complete my PhD and the roman haas company was very
, very nice too, allow me to go to penn at the time. So I finished my PhD
in here in the head a pen and then came to at that point to michigan state
at first day as an assistant professor 50 1958. And it was
the first person in that institution to be promoted to associate professor
in less than six years. Actually promoted up in four years, breaking a
long term president in our college. And just a few years later I became
the associate chairman by acclimation of the faculty and within two years
I became the chairman of Chemistry, what was beneficial for me was at the
time I became chairman. I wrote uh for a proposal for part of an
institutional proposal for my Physics, math and Chemistry to become what
it was called by the National Science Foundation Centers of Excellence and
we did win an award. So as chairman, I had a million dollars extra per
year, my department, which lasted for three years and we got the only
renewal of our program, the campus. So it was a very, very big boost and
it placed in me and under a clear understanding of where the quality of
the university is, it's in the departments and that if you have a good
chairman it works well with the faculty, you can move that department,
move it up. Bye. Getting additional new people and by raising standards
within the institution. My next experience was before I left to become the
Director of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation, the Physics
department asked me if I would be their chairman and I said, do you mean
both of chemistry and Physics? They said no, we want you to be our
chairman. Well that again, a sort of unprecedented for somebody from one
field of endeavor to be asked to come into another field and do that, but
that had to do with the quality of what was going on in my chemistry
department. Any case I did get this national recognition
by being appointed as the director, the Chemistry division. I don't know
the National Science Foundation. I moved down there a period about a year
and a half and that experience was very, very big time experience because
there I met the top of the line in all the institutions around the United
States and understood what the highest quality research was, understood,
how that research has done, understood how its proposed, understood how
the money was handed out to the institutions and understood why some
institutions been better than others. So that was a very big learning
experience for me to put my name into the Nationals, what would call
registered?
Um at the time I left the National Science Foundation Carnegie Mellon
asked me to come to be Dean of their Arts and Sciences program and I very
seriously considered that, but in the long run decided to go back to
michigan state and there I was appointed as the system, the vice President
for Research. And within just a few months I became associate provost. And
then uh and I enjoyed that position because the provost became with our
new president at that time, the shadow president, doing mostly
presidential
duties and the provost's duties were turned over to me and I learned how
to be a provost. The full promo poster Sure Vice president in that job.
In any case, the history of being here is very important. I have to tell
you as I was in the National Science Foundation, one of my duties was to
come out to the universities that visit their chemistry requirement. Tell
them about the National Science Foundation and to tell them what's going
on in the field. Well, I came to msu when I walked on this campus in that
year, that was probably about 19 80, somewhere around there, I thought
this was such a beautiful place and I visited around to several
departments and I went down to view of a and I said to myself, boy, I love
the
and then I said if these guys can be dean's here, I surely can't get a job
as a dean. So I when the, when the position came open to be vice president
, I made a determination to go after to really go after that position
because I really wanted to come here. And so I did that. My too big people
that backed me for this job was the nobel prize winner paul Flory. And
then the man who ran, he was head of the National Science Dick Atkinson,
who was it that later than the president of the University of California
system, a psychologist, you may know him no love him. So those two people
were nationally recognized and I think he had a lot to do with me getting
the job. Now you said you came as vice president, I thought you came as
provost. Did you know that's always, that's always an issue between the
president and and the vice president or provost. The concept. When I came
in, my course was working with Russ nelson, Russ nelson's preference was
not to have a provost. That was his because he was not used to that
because he came from a large system in which he was there, he ran for
president and he was not present, but he was the president or chief
executive officer of the University of Colorado. So when he came here, his
concept of the protest, he didn't want to do, uh in addition to that, he
was not anxious to create the vice president for research, but he did
create it after I was here for a little while and after I left the
province position was created because the deans and others wanted it In
the worst way they wanted the pros to be quote 2nd in command and clear
separation of. And so that was what happened after that. Did you have a
faculty appointment as well?
Yeah. And did you have a research program when you came or had you, did
you have to decide to set that aside. I set that aside, pretty much in my
2nd and 3rd years associate program at michigan state because I recognized
that the demands of those jobs would not let me deal with graduate
students the way I like to be in the way I had to nurture them through. So
I had my last graduate students PhD graduate, maybe a year before I came
down here. So when I came here, I did not,
What do you believe were the reasons why it was precisely you at that time
who was appointed vice president? Was it your region? Well, I think again
, I had that combination. What what did they issue needed the time? Well,
it had emerged out of being a teachers college, it was always in the
shadow of your day and
I was getting larger. There was no question about that. From my own
perspective, I could see that there were some huge to be huge urban
institutions being surrounded by large populations and large manufacturing
and all kinds of other activities that would need these universities and
that's pretty much happen. So to me, I could see that issues in a
transition. It had to go the next step. The next step was to be moved from
what was called a comprehensive university with limited PhD programs,
mostly undergraduate work, mostly undergraduate students. And move up that
next step to a comprehensive university at advanced degrees PhD degrees
and began the experience of developing research as a, as a big adjunct to
the, to the institution. So I have been through that, but then I should
and I have watched that happen there and helped create. So it became a
natural for me to want to come.
There's always a delicate uh negotiation that goes on when uh one comes
into the kind of position that you assumed here and I'd like you to talk a
little bit about the negotiations that you and Russ carried out how you
establish your goals?
I think that's a very bad because when when you're going to consider to
take a job like this, it's not just another job, You have the
responsibility for a lot of people and a big institution and you two are
going to do this together. First of all, Russ immediately let me know this
would be a team effort. And I was it was it was definitely that he and I
always had a very poor which permitted me and I always discussed
everything I was interested in with him. It was an excellent choice for me
and for him to do this. Now the way it happened was he taught me something
else. I didn't know when you're looking for a president or provost at that
level. You better go to the campus where that person is serving and you
know, walk around and ask people how that person is, what kind of
personality they have because things somehow in the process of hiring
doesn't get said many times. So he came and he said, well now Russ, what
is it you want from me? I'm looking right now said, what exactly do you
want from me? He said, well I want you to deliver me the faculty and the
deeds. I said, what is that? I said, what is that? What is it? He said,
well you your responsibility will be to deal with the fact that so of
course it is. That's what the vice president does. I said, but what is he
said, well, I don't want to spend my time interceding. What I want you to
do is to handle that problem and to do it. And he said, the deans are
another level in the administrators in the institution and they're very
important. And when they get arrested, they come up and talk to the
president. So I said, well, basically then what you're asking me to do is
to develop the faculty, develop a rapport with the faculty and get the
institution to organize and become a real university, you see, Yeah,
that's the sort of thing. The title and the deans, I said, I gotta tell
you right now we need some changes. And if you're not interested in making
those changes, then uh, we'll have some difficulty. So he said, I agree
with you. So we knew what I knew what he expected of me. And then I came
in and did what was expected me and I knew I had to be done here to make
the big change. Okay. So that was part of the program I came in with and
one day he came to me and he said, how would you like to have a campus on
the west side?
Well, you know, can we do that? And I said, well, yeah, we didn't do that.
And I said immediately we need to do that now. There's a reason for why
we needed to do that. The West side politicians. I had never supported a S.
U. For this issue of equality or equity. We thought if we would put the
campus over there, we'd have a much stronger the advantage and we did in
the long run. And I think the west campus has been successful. Maybe it's
made the institution grow a little different and so forth. And I was my
suggestion to put jerry McSheffrey, It's the first provost over there. So
um that was, that came about during my period and it was page Mulholland
who developed the plans for the campus, not the academic plans, but the
building plans. And that worked out to me really good.
We were entering this, they transferred information and communications
through the Pcs. That was just, it was starting to flow into universities
of late 70s, early 80's and one day I went to rest and I said, Russ, we've
got to put a pc in everybody's office. He says, you know, we do, He says,
Okay, Jack, I'll give you $1 million, let's do something. I said no, I
know he's giving me my million dollars,
we're gonna million dollars, but it was right to do so I had this
wonderful opportunity just wonderful. I was just frothing at the mouth to
do this. We brought the people down from IBM including the scientists that
was almost directly responsible for producing their PC. And the IBM people
gave us a pretty large craft that I set up a central system too where
people could go into and either get training or use a computer. But the
big trick was to get it out into the humanities and other places where uh
the sciences didn't worry about it because they all use computer. So we
did this and I did it by creating a proposal. I made each department to
create a proposal how they would bring these in and use them in their
department. And we got some very good proposals and someone unusual
proposal. But eventually within a couple of three years, I think I had
computers in all of the departments or less. And it was clear to me what
they would do. They would start writing their papers with his computer.
They would use it as a, it's a fancy typewriter. They weren't going to do
computational research or any type, although it probably boosted
statistical research and a lot of like education and so forth. They did
that kind of research. So that worked out in my view very well. I was very
pleased with it. And the big surprise that I got the very big surprises.
We could not teach the faculty how to operate this computer in the central
system. They would learn from their graduate students. They would go into
a closet with a graduate students and the graduate students would show
them what to do and they felt good about that, but they would not go over
to the central system with our instructors that were there. So that, that
I don't know how long that lasted on campus because it needed to evolve,
but it was the opening guns and I think it was, I think we did it fairly
early in the game, I think it was a nice boost in the game and I think
that helped us enormously. So that was a nice thing. Incidentally, it's
now the undergraduates, I believe, I believe, and I just came from
listening to a guru in the computer business, talk about the future and
he's absolutely right in some ways, but wrong in other ways, that's gonna
be the new communications and you're absolutely right. The young people
are already doing things with small devices, but also with wifi, it's all
changing so rapidly and the faculty, somebody aren't keeping up with. Now
, the problem is that these gurus are from that industry, keep telling us
as educators, well, you can do this and you can do that and I said to
myself, but you're not moving any new knowledge, you're just moving
knowledge around and packaging, well, that may be in the books will go or
something like that, but that's not creating new knowledge that's just
creating what I call a nice package so you can learn faster and that's
what the students can do now. They're very good at pulling things together
, putting together and get on the internet and get stuff for their papers
and there's some tricks to that to which manufacturers don't know. But how
we use it to enhance the overall education is still, but it's coming. Well
, I think we're learning, we're learning and it's coming. I mean, there's
no question in my mind is coming And I'll tell you, I just got my first MP
three. So
what do you remember as the really large challenges that you faced
economic? Yeah. I had some killers. one killer ahead was a disgruntled
number of people here who I think had been treated very poorly. Not not
nicely, but very poorly. And there were about 25 of them and I arrived on
the campus when I left, there was zero.
Now there may be some disgruntlement from me, but I did take care of that
group. Now, what are you talking about faculty from that period? When we
Changed the rules for 10 years? Yes. All of it had to do with tenure and
promotion. Almost all not, not much with hiring. And and then again, you
have essentially a little campus
came in and told Russ under me that will change. I had committed myself to
diversity and for very good reason and and I did that I managed to do that
both with women. I came here and found an enormously bright group of women
, they were already here. But they had no positions of authority. I think
when I left there more than a dozen department chairs at that point, maybe
more. It took time to do that. But so I needed to release that. I I had to
get that intelligence to be released to get in the right slots because
they would be the builders of the institution. See, And that was the
challenge. And I think that challenge went pretty well for me because of
how I did it. And because of the beans I brought in and I always laid down
the ground rules for each higher than I did. I made some mistakes and in
terms of and some people left. But on the whole, I think it raised the
quality. So that was one the diversity and then taking care of this
faculty grievance procedure. I put in a new grievance procedure. We went
through the provinces, They worked out, we found a way to resolve the
nasty problems and people remained fairly happy targets of opportunity,
targets of opportunity was to give me the chance. They give me the chance
of locating the money when I heard a good thing. So that really did work
and it was to go out and get the best faculty of fine and also to build
the diversity in the institution. So that's right. So I remember that
incidentally, I brought in the first two and probably the only two african
american deeds,
I guess, uh, Gladys and uh, Jessie McClure socialism. I don't think
there's been any since then. I'm very proud of that because they both
managed their departments better than had been done and did well for the
institution, Jessie McClure, I think is in Vanderbilt now. And of course
Gladys is is what moved up to be the chancellor of the university. So that
was a big issue for me was diversity and Russ bought into my views on that
because they were his views and that made it easy for me and it made it
pleasant for me to deal with the hispanic population here. And also with
the african americans here. So that was, that was a nice feature thing.
But there was also the women and the women here, as I told you were
excellent. There was a very good crowd of women and so I had many meetings
with them and try to get them opportunities within the institutional and
to bring in someone brought in. So that happened to and that left feeling
very, very good about that aspect of it. And so I was able to view the,
create the diversity and inch up at the same time.
But Maricopa County had one of the best community college systems in the
United States and there was no joke about that even when I was here. So we
had this wonderful community college system and we had problems with the
students leaving that system and coming into our system. So I got together
with provost over and uh community college system Alfredo and we created
this program to make transformation. It was seamless and we did it. And
one of the big things we did and it really worked for us. We had the
faculties for say in the business college would sit in with the business
faculty at the community college and the community college would send a
faculty member over to sit in faculty meetings at the business school.
That way we stop this bind between, is this my course or your course,
which we're gonna teach. So we got this seamless. The relationship between
the community colleges and universities. I don't know how it's worked out
. I guess. It's still good. It's very good. It's very good. I found also
that there were older women going to Layton when I was here, there was
older women going to the community colleges that was afraid to come out of
the big university and we set up a program to guide them in here and get
them to come in and finish their degrees here. I was also proud of the
fact that we had several women that got phds in their sixties while I was
here. So we did. We were open enough to have that kind of anybody who
could do it could do it if the department wanted to take him in, we'd let
him take him in and I thought that was a big advantage here.
Now, I'd like to put a point in here when I came to interview, this is
very key. The Board of Regents had recently done something which I found
abhorrent,
they decided which of the institutions would have, which departments of
excellence. And I first question I got is as a candidate, what are you
going to do about my department? We have good people and we're not on
accident. That was that was a valid question. It was a it was a trauma. It
was trauma because the question is why would they do it? And who had the
the knowledge base to create it in the first place. And how are they going
to test it or keeping well in the long run? I gave it up, give it to say
several years after. Right. But I went back to michigan state and I said,
I told these people that I met the faculty here, I said when I come back,
if I get this job I will tell you what I'm going to do about. So I went to
michigan back to michigan state and I asked myself which departments were
the greatest departments we had on the campus. And lo and behold when I
did that analysis on my own, it was all the departments with the strong
chairman had little to do with doctors. It didn't have a lot to do with
those who got the most money. It had to do who had the strongest chairman
because the chairman was the leader. If the chairman could work with the
faculty that became a team and and we did have some departments at that
point that we're ready to make that. Yes, you did have some and my job was
to get push those as far as we can get them and to create that that whole
desire and the remainder. And in fact we we had a pretty decent chemistry
department. Well as a matter of fact there was an outstanding department.
That's why I came down from the NSF. Uh it and then why was an
outstanding apartment because it picked theme and stuck with the theme of
solid state chemistry and they were practically the only major chemistry
department, United States that did solve state Chemistry. So Chemistry,
yes was a strong department. It had research and that he was to research.
Physics was pretty strong, there was a number of them. And then and then
rolling the comparable. Mhm.
Com and have boosted the engineering. Well that's true and you have this
really quite remarkable administrator in morton who was exactly chemistry.
Chemistry. He was he was my idea of a chairman that made that department.
That's what makes a great university is to make great departments and he
had that early and created that department that way. And when we had those
strong chairman we generally have better departments and so along with
chemistry. What were the, what were the really strong departments on? Well
, I was especially pleased at the fine arts. I first of all, the art
department was strong. It had some wonderful faculty. It should have been
uh known better than it was. So I was pleased with that. I was pleased
with the music department and the theater department. All of those. Uh To
me it was great to have, we did not have that kind of fine fine arts in
michigan state. But for me I always had an interest in the arts. I was
pleased. We also have it here. My arrival that goes with the arts. A
wonderful museum. Wonderful, great. The guy that was running that museum
and a really great collection. So that was a nice piece. The engineering
was strong. Uh Education was middle, middle strong, but had the potential
to get strong rapidly which it did. And architecture was beginning to show
some good movement. Was pleased with the architecture. Let's see what else
I can think of. All the biochemistry was pretty good. Biological sciences
weren't as strong as the physical sciences, but they were getting ready.
And so that's pretty much how I saw the campus now. Law was good. I had a
decent reputation.
You say you saw us as as ready to emerge as a comprehensive institute. But
what did you see our role to be here again? I gathered first this
information about the Mountain States and Southwestern states in general.
There was not what I would call a great institution in those states up
until around maybe the early 80s. Now you might pick Colorado's high
quality, high quality, but I never thought of it as I didn't either say it
was an emerging university of Utah was starting. But other than that,
that's about what you had in the, in the States here. Well, why is that?
Well, that was because you didn't have the huge populations in these
states, among other things nor the huge amount of manufacturing or the
fiscal backup to really build a great university. I would say that the for
what you did very well in its period. And so it had already been taken
into
That organizationally. Well, I think it's a, it's another into the famous
35
but they didn't really Equal that 35 group very well.
But they got in because of a huge Optics program which they had $400
million. That's right. And that to me was not education, but it was
research. It didn't have any high impact on education, but they had very
high impact on national research because it was a nationally the thing
that they're doing, dealing with astronomy and the fix that. So I felt the
A. S. You being located here in this valley in the city which was
progressing and progressing well that it would, it would emerge, it would
not take long to merge. The only issue would be money and and some
guidance is how to do this, some feeling amongst everybody, we can do this
now the other part was
trying to find
no vehicles that is institutional vehicles or organization vehicles which
will give us a lift and I knew we had that huge plot of land. How did
Warner Road, which was the old egg, which was the old egg college. So I
believe it was my suggestion that we turned that into a research mhm
Development research, practical and we did. I'm almost positive. I wrote
the original paper for that and that again was to give us a boost. Now how
do you get that boost? Well long term boost. First of all you got to get
people doing research out there and make a connection with the university
now that took a couple of decades or a decade and a half to get it done
well, but right now it's pumping money back to the institution and I knew
it wasn't an overnight but it does consolidate and interface the two
institutions and if you look in the last five or 10 years, what's going on
and you can see the fruits of that seed being formed back and when we did
that, the board gave us lots of hurdles, we had to do this and do that the
u of a kind of came up with another probably because they wanted and they
want to put on a mesa there and it was just, it just fell apart and it
didn't work. So that was that was it a piece that I have a lot to do.
There was another thing which is a wonderful guy told me about and he and
I agree. And it was Bill Seidman, I don't know if any of you remember Bill
Seaman would not take the Dean's job. I did not hire him, but he would not
take that Dean's job in business until he approved of me. So we were
approved by us at the same time. Now, about a year after Bill was here, we
had a long conversation and he said to me, well, Jack, the problem down
here is we simply don't have enough intellectual density and I think it
was hit the nail on the head. We have smart people, most of them retired.
We had the good people within the industry. You've got a lot of good
lawyers here and you had the Phoenix 40 which was running the show down
here. All mostly local. Where was the Nationals? Where was the
international? Well, phoenix was not a big fiscal town. It has not ever
had a big, big banks and big, big fiscal, not like not like the East coast
, not in Chicago, but now it's happened here. I mean it's happened
gradually here. one of the places. I think it happens in the arts, The
arts programs are very good here given size of city. And I think they're
excellent. I'm very pleased to come back to that. And if you think about
the other growth here, we didn't get into the heavy manufacturing. We got
into the next new fan fracture, which is electronics. And that period
built this institution.
I mean, this city now we don't know where we're going next. But I think
pro has an idea. I think he certainly has plans
as academic vice president.
Did you go out and begin to form the institution or did you wait to see
who would come to you, uh, with plans? Well, actually, it's both, both
things happen in a big institution like this. But I set out to quote,
bring the Dean's with me to keep the beans with me and I had a tough first
year. And the reason for that was they were getting arrested because they
could see changes coming and they were getting extremely restive about it.
And so I had to meet separately with them off campus and I did that. And
after we do
know as a group
and I said, look, here's what our issues are, here's what we have to do.
Here's what I have to do now. You're gonna have to work with me. I'll
work with you. We'll work together, we'll get this thing done. So I had
some very good ones. I had some mediocre ones, but I needed to get some
changes, especially in what you called style or for their own internal
politics. I wanted to try to push that out of the university. If I could
get it out. It's funny how that worked out. They settled down after that
and whatever moves I made I made early and after that they could see that
wouldn't happen furthermore. The new deals I brought in were immediately
recognized as a higher color. Mm hmm. They all recognize it now. Yes, we
are going to make some changes. It's an interesting feature of a issue, at
least in my experience is that I just watched us move up incrementally and
make appointments say At a given time period that we could not have made
10 years earlier or even you're absolutely right about institutions mature
and you can find people who fit into that slot. I fit into this slot and
this slot gave me a chance to mature to go to be a president. So I did
that as a matter of fact, we lost several people here who became president.
Al Qarni left, became a President nick Henry left and became a president
page. Mulholland left became a president and there must have been one or
two other ones. But so we were training those people, they're being
trained on this transition.
No, I did get a lot of opportunity to meet with the board here. And when I
met with the board, I would often ask the board, what is it you think you
do, what you tell me how you view your job. Well, they got it right, but
I'm not sure they did it right. The right answer to that is they're there
to represent the population of the state. They're there to make sure that
the university is giving to the state what the state needs, that is to the
students, to whatever development the state needs to the research or
whatever it is. That's what the universities do. Their big feeder system.
Often the politics gets engaged and that political struggle often then
retards the development university and in many ways the states. So that's
part of it, of our democratic system that inter intertwines with with the
education. So then the rest was legislature. And again, having known a few
of the legislatures and Russ are taking me with him quite often and well,
I have to tell you another story to which which surprised me coming when I
came here at that time, the universities were the sweethearts of the
political system and the sweethearts of the power structure in in phoenix.
We would hardly go a day without somebody inviting us out management of a
issue to some function. So we rubbed shoulders constantly with those
people. It was, it was something that I hadn't been used to any place and
something I don't think happens everywhere. But it was here, that was that
development stage of phoenix as a city and Arizona is a state and the
university. So we had this intermingling and I learned a lot from that. I
learned a lot of people, I used them for consulting when I came down to
open up the institutional on the west side, I brought them in there, I got
to know the the editor of the of the, of the republic. So all of that was
very helpful in dealing with the community. Now, the second thing was this
this constant underfunding. Yeah. And this is something you probably did
not know that the underfunding of the institution compared to U. Of a.
That was a problem in michigan has the problem was a problem in the state
to um and the fact that the board was overloaded with those who preferred
to
champion, Are you ready? And I finally undercover why? That was, and it
was as far as I could tell us that to win as a democrat here, You had to
have a 90% vote on it in Tucson. And so there was always this political
peace floating around in the board. In any case, you may not know it, but
the head of the Finance committee and the legislature when I came, I can't
remember his name well, but he was the head of was my teaching assistant
at michigan state University. He had gotten his PhD with me. Okay, so I
didn't even realize until I got here, but that gave me an opening for a
conversation. You know, I wouldn't use the word influence but conversation
, it's easy for me to be heard downtown or to help for us in. So that was
useful.
So you wandered around the campus who were some of the outstanding
individuals. Again, my my my day by day work was grounded in a number of
people, victor's offering victor and I got along extremely well. I liked
victor very much. I thought what he was doing on the campus was great. He
made the campus into a much more beautiful place and he and Russ together
, walked around every day, made those changes and I really supported them
all of it. When I came we had this disaster called the business building.
I mean that business building was was a terrible building. I don't think,
I think it was the last terrible building we had in the, in the sense that
it was not well constructed, so victor changed all of that. I didn't have
much interact with one with frank sector, but I admired frank for what he
could do because he was the greatest switch hitter in the world. I had a
very high regard for Roland, the Dean of Engineering. I had a very high
regard for the law school here. I just thought it could be a great school
. I brought paul bender in to do and I brought in a great person and it
turned out that he may not have been bested the head of that law school,
but he did a lot. And he did something I asked him to do which was to
bring native americans in and he did, he actually brought native americans
to law school and he became a judge in the Hopi try it.
There's a few other things I did. I created the I don't know if you know
there's the region's professorship. No, I didn't. I created that. I wrote
the thing got the three provinces and the campuses to approve it and then
took it to the board and created the whole thing. I thought again, what we
needed to do was to have a technique two
be proud of who it is within our institutions that have made great names
and research and then to give them some special privilege. I created the
first committee that studied question of if somebody gets a pattern and
there's income coming from that pen, how does the faculty get a piece of
it or not a piece of that. The committee was done and while I was here
because I I did that at msu Well that was a natural for you. It was a
natural. Yeah. So I got, I got that underway. There was a number of those
kinds of things which I did throughout the institution. They were more
what I would call university projects versus department or college
background library. I did. I was, I was the person who thought that up,
but I I don't know. But to me that's just not standing thing. It didn't
ruin our campus, which was the whole idea not to ruin the and it's a, it's
a nice place to be done. Uh The other thing I did was the Goldwater, but
we had the perfect thing. Cold water's gonna retire. You gotta have a
building named after Goldwater. Good Lord. Before you know, before we got
our claws on that
when students come into a classroom and professor standing up there giving
a lecture, what goes on between the student and the professor in that
period. It's not as important as it is when the students suddenly realizes
, but he's an M. R. She's an electrical. And what I'm really listening to
is how an intellectual lives, what's really exciting about being
intellectual because process tell stories. That's that's what I call the
invisible university. It's not there, it's not in the registrar said, but
you learn the excitement of learning you all about it. You know what it is
to inquire something new. You can see the surprises that you get and the
beauty of learning more about our environment about ourselves and
everything. So that's what I think a good university education is about.
It's about learning what happened to be in an election. I can tell you
two things I love about today's too. One is that they're they're into the
new communications there on top of it. Absolutely. And the second thing is
they actually love diversity. The diversity of society and the damage is
wonderful. They don't see it as a problem. They see it as a blessing
you've been actively and Vigorously in retirement for a while. I have
retired at age 70 and then I decided I should have retired in 60. So now I
can tell you that I'm in my the 15th year, About 13th year retirement and
I've never been happier. This is the great time of life. It's, it's, it's
marvelous. I can't tell you how much I love this life. I have a wonderful
place to live. I have a wonderful marriage. I have, I can do the things I
want to do. I go to the concerts of it finished simply I go to the opera.
We travel quite a bit. So for me it's a wonderful time of life that
families are in good shape and I'm healthy. But you know, we're here in
life for some period and you have to fit with period and it's been a good
fit for me. It's been a good fit for you. I guess too.