WEBVTT 00:00:07.139 --> 00:00:09.139 but what was a s you like uh when you first got here? 00:00:13.439 --> 00:00:19.407 Well, it was, if I don't remember what the enrollment was, but it was, 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:23.017 It was, it was still big for the time, but it was much, much smaller than 00:00:23.050 --> 00:00:29.666 it is now. It might have been 20,000, I don't know. Um It seemed like 00:00:29.699 --> 00:00:33.167 everybody knew everybody. One of the things that struck me about the 00:00:33.200 --> 00:00:41.200 campus was that it really was easy to meet people and um and faculty 00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:47.226 members, it seemed very welcoming to visit with you and that was helpful 00:00:47.259 --> 00:00:50.807 to me because one of the first things we started working on when I got 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:57.546 here was an interdisciplinary degree in exercise science and I went to 00:00:57.579 --> 00:01:05.579 chemistry and Biology to psychology. Um and at every stop found people 00:01:06.129 --> 00:01:12.607 that were interested and willing to participate. And then in a short time 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:18.997 we put together an interdisciplinary faculty that included, I think three 00:01:19.030 --> 00:01:23.727 people from chemistry and three from biology, uh two from psychology, 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:28.417 maybe one from nutrition and then a number of them from our department and 00:01:28.450 --> 00:01:32.906 and put together a first rate program. And it was to me it was just 00:01:32.939 --> 00:01:38.977 because there weren't barriers really departmental barriers. In fact, we 00:01:39.010 --> 00:01:45.406 collaborated with some people in engineering too. And so 00:01:45.439 --> 00:01:51.906 I felt part of a bigger campus family than just my department and 00:01:51.939 --> 00:01:54.706 and I guess maybe 00:01:54.739 --> 00:01:57.977 got to learn about the broader university sooner than a lot of people do. 00:01:58.010 --> 00:02:05.346 And that was awfully helpful. Um and I, I don't know if it's always good 00:02:05.379 --> 00:02:10.737 to know the history, but of all the administrators later on, I knew the 00:02:10.770 --> 00:02:16.506 history more than anybody. Uh, I'm not sure when chuck bacchus came, but 00:02:16.539 --> 00:02:21.606 ah, I don't think anybody else had been here anywhere near as long as I 00:02:21.639 --> 00:02:26.596 had. In fact, my case was pretty unusual. It's very seldom that a person 00:02:26.629 --> 00:02:31.316 starts out as an assistant professor and in the same university goes 00:02:31.349 --> 00:02:37.617 through all the steps that I was fortunate enough to go through. So 00:02:37.650 --> 00:02:42.427 I, I thought it was helpful. Uh, Now the other argument of course is if 00:02:42.460 --> 00:02:46.577 you've been other places, then you've seen how other places operate and 00:02:46.610 --> 00:02:54.610 you can bring those ideas back. Um, I guess I ah, 00:02:54.840 --> 00:03:02.397 when I became active later in my academic career, going to other campuses 00:03:02.430 --> 00:03:05.506 and giving talks, 00:03:05.539 --> 00:03:09.316 I guess I came away from all of that with the impression that we were 00:03:09.349 --> 00:03:14.726 doing things better than most places, that most places really were slower 00:03:14.759 --> 00:03:19.777 to change and adapt to what higher education needed than we had been. And 00:03:19.810 --> 00:03:23.427 so I felt like they had more to learn from us than we had to learn from 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:26.207 them. 00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:30.136 It was, it was the campus a pleasant place. Was it crowded? Did you have 00:03:30.169 --> 00:03:34.636 any sense of the sort of the hustle and bustle that we get more of 00:03:34.669 --> 00:03:41.406 nowadays? Well, the campus was, was strange, I guess in the sense that for 00:03:41.439 --> 00:03:44.577 us, for a campus as big as this one was, there weren't many students 00:03:44.610 --> 00:03:49.596 around and it was because there were so many commuting students and so few 00:03:49.629 --> 00:03:53.876 on campus students. And over the years, of course, that's changed 00:03:53.909 --> 00:04:00.136 enormously as they've added dorms. But um, the first week of campus it was 00:04:00.169 --> 00:04:07.237 always busy. Um, and then it seemed like as the semester progressed, 00:04:07.270 --> 00:04:12.617 there'd be fewer and fewer students around uh, compared to other campus as 00:04:12.650 --> 00:04:18.207 I was familiar with, um where they were largely residential. 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:25.007 What was your home department like when you first got here? 00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:31.806 It was thinking of it as a young person coming in. It, it had more old, 00:04:31.839 --> 00:04:38.366 older people than older than, than young people. Um, but like the rest of 00:04:38.399 --> 00:04:44.317 campus it was growing. And so every year we added new faculty and um, and 00:04:44.350 --> 00:04:48.906 every year the old members of the old, some of the older members retired. 00:04:48.939 --> 00:04:53.817 And so in fairly short order, the, the demographics of the department 00:04:53.850 --> 00:04:58.837 changed a lot among the older faculty, that the people were really nice 00:04:58.870 --> 00:05:02.346 individuals, they really cared about students, they did a good job 00:05:02.379 --> 00:05:09.277 teaching. Um, none, none of the older faculty really had any kind of 00:05:09.310 --> 00:05:14.236 research program at all. And most of them had really never published much 00:05:14.269 --> 00:05:20.937 of anything. And so the generation that came in with me reflected, I think 00:05:20.970 --> 00:05:24.947 changes in the broader university where the expectation was, and the thing 00:05:24.980 --> 00:05:30.377 we wanted to do was to, to do original work. And, and have it published in 00:05:30.410 --> 00:05:36.077 and develop a significant research program who who is chair of the 00:05:36.110 --> 00:05:40.116 department then and dean of the college you said was president, Who were 00:05:40.149 --> 00:05:44.166 the Dean? Richardson was the chairman of the department. He had been 00:05:44.199 --> 00:05:49.317 brought in from the university of Minnesota um to provide leadership for 00:05:49.350 --> 00:05:52.606 this new combined department 00:05:52.639 --> 00:06:00.306 and the Dean was George peak, that actually George peak interviewed me, 00:06:00.339 --> 00:06:07.116 but then he stepped down and George Wolf Was actually the dean when I 00:06:07.149 --> 00:06:13.507 started my position. Uh Wolf replaced dean that summer, the summer of 73. 00:06:13.540 --> 00:06:20.207 Carl Dannon felt was the vice president for academic affairs at that time. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:27.507 And then of course john swallow was present. 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:34.337 How did your career progress as you work through a yes, you are, what do 00:06:34.370 --> 00:06:37.337 you most remember about those things? Like what were the sort of, one of 00:06:37.370 --> 00:06:42.187 the things that I told people was um one of the nice things that happened 00:06:42.220 --> 00:06:48.796 to me is that about every five years I did something different. And so I 00:06:48.829 --> 00:06:51.306 came in 73 00:06:51.339 --> 00:06:55.767 now it wasn't five years, but in, in, in two years I became director of of 00:06:55.800 --> 00:07:00.236 the exercise and Support Research Institute. And so that gave me Something 00:07:00.269 --> 00:07:05.906 a little different to do. In 79 I was promoted to full professor and 00:07:05.939 --> 00:07:13.939 became department chair. Then in 84 I became associate Dean and served 00:07:14.569 --> 00:07:18.877 with Sam Kirkpatrick then for, I guess it was 4.5 years because he left 00:07:18.910 --> 00:07:26.910 midyear. So in 1990 I was named interim dean and then That was January one 00:07:27.870 --> 00:07:32.447 and then in December or January than in May. I mean in January I was named 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:36.406 interim dean and then in May I was appointed as Dean. 00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:44.439 And While I was deemed 11 years, um about five years into my deanship, 00:07:45.029 --> 00:07:50.017 a number of opportunities came to me too, do things on a national scale. 00:07:50.050 --> 00:07:54.306 And so I was, I was the president of the Council of Colleges of Arts and 00:07:54.339 --> 00:07:59.346 Sciences, which is the largest, most comprehensive organization of liberal 00:07:59.379 --> 00:08:03.957 arts and Sciences Dean's in the country. And I served as the president for 00:08:03.990 --> 00:08:10.546 four years actually, or five years of the, of the Urban University, Urban 00:08:10.579 --> 00:08:18.116 University Dean's group. Um and so that kind of gave me a new thing to 00:08:18.149 --> 00:08:22.286 work on and of course exposed me to lots of interesting things that were 00:08:22.319 --> 00:08:27.286 going on nationally that I could bring back here. And then in, at the end 00:08:27.319 --> 00:08:33.236 of 2000 Laddie Core asked me to come and and be the senior vice president 00:08:33.269 --> 00:08:39.886 in charge of trying to keep the various a sus entities from flying off in 00:08:39.919 --> 00:08:42.506 different directions. 00:08:42.539 --> 00:08:46.136 Each campus had its own notion of where it wanted to go and what it wanted 00:08:46.169 --> 00:08:51.886 to be and laddie worried that there wasn't anybody thinking about the 00:08:51.919 --> 00:08:56.736 whole. And so anyway, we had east, we had west, we had the downtown campus 00:08:56.769 --> 00:09:03.667 , we had the research park and the main campus and so it was, it was my 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:10.167 job to try to look for the ways that we could hold that all together and 00:09:10.200 --> 00:09:16.707 act as a ladder used to say one University geographically distributed. 00:09:16.740 --> 00:09:21.337 You know, it was hard to judge how much people thought about being part of 00:09:21.370 --> 00:09:26.457 one university I think at that time West really, I would have liked to 00:09:26.490 --> 00:09:31.006 maybe split off um, 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:35.126 you know, I don't, that's maybe not, I, I can't document that, but uh, 00:09:35.159 --> 00:09:37.457 there was a time when I think they would have liked to have split off, 00:09:37.490 --> 00:09:42.947 maybe, I don't believe East ever was inclined that way. The downtown 00:09:42.980 --> 00:09:45.856 campus was never inclined that way. They just wear the mask. The critical 00:09:45.889 --> 00:09:49.606 mass wasn't there for the downtown campus, 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:54.917 but west had been more independent from the start and uh, I think that 00:09:54.950 --> 00:09:58.417 hold back the drawback there was, they really wanted to be independent as 00:09:58.450 --> 00:10:06.407 a research entity and that probably was never going to, going to fly. So, 00:10:06.440 --> 00:10:09.197 but people, 00:10:09.230 --> 00:10:14.526 the leadership Elaine Maimon at the time chuck bacchus, they were very 00:10:14.559 --> 00:10:19.396 supportive of the broader university, tried to be good citizens. They were 00:10:19.429 --> 00:10:23.707 Elaine was in the toughest spot because I think 00:10:23.740 --> 00:10:28.506 there was, there was less support for that among the faculty at west and 00:10:28.539 --> 00:10:35.407 then uh, was expected or hoped for. And so she was in a tough spot there, 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:41.427 um chuck managed that I thought very effectively and but then he had an 00:10:41.460 --> 00:10:46.087 easier faculty to work with, many of them were from the main campus and I 00:10:46.120 --> 00:10:49.907 don't think particularly wanted to be separate from it 00:10:49.940 --> 00:10:54.797 because you talk a little bit about your sort of personal transition from 00:10:54.830 --> 00:11:02.029 being a full, like a regular faculty member to your administrative career. 00:11:02.039 --> 00:11:04.039 Well, it um, it was an evolution I guess is a fair way to describe it 00:11:07.179 --> 00:11:10.207 because 00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:15.587 probably my most productive years as a, as an academic, as a scientist 00:11:15.620 --> 00:11:21.197 were my years as department chair. And so I had just achieved the rank of 00:11:21.230 --> 00:11:26.087 full professor and really had my research program going strong. I had nice 00:11:26.120 --> 00:11:31.927 funding regular funding from the Air Force and uh I also got some from the 00:11:31.960 --> 00:11:39.960 Heart Association and um from a few other sources. Um 00:11:40.210 --> 00:11:42.866 and so 00:11:42.899 --> 00:11:50.157 The years when I was chair from six from 79 to 84, um you know, I was 00:11:50.190 --> 00:11:53.516 learning about administration because nobody is trained to be an 00:11:53.549 --> 00:11:57.827 administrator in higher education. You just, you get selected and then you 00:11:57.860 --> 00:12:04.947 try to figure it out. But um during those years I was figuring out how to 00:12:04.980 --> 00:12:12.327 be a chair. And uh and was really had good years in research and and 00:12:12.360 --> 00:12:18.087 publication. Then when I became associate dean, the thing that I 00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:23.376 discovered pretty soon was I really couldn't spend the amount of time that 00:12:23.409 --> 00:12:28.996 a person needs to spend with his doctoral students and do a good job in 00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:35.246 the associate deanship. And so I began to not to take any more doctoral 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:42.307 students just to finish the ones I had. And also cut back on my teaching. 00:12:42.340 --> 00:12:46.427 And and also cut back on my publication and research. Although I still 00:12:46.460 --> 00:12:53.776 continue to do some. Then when I became dean, I didn't take doctoral 00:12:53.809 --> 00:12:59.077 students at all anymore, but I actually changed my research and writing. 00:12:59.110 --> 00:13:04.896 Maybe research is too strong, too strong a term for it. But I began to 00:13:04.929 --> 00:13:11.907 think about and write about and give talks about. And 00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:16.157 actually I was invited around the country at many, many places to talk 00:13:16.190 --> 00:13:24.190 about um leadership and higher education. And so from The early 90s on, I 00:13:26.789 --> 00:13:33.876 the only the only publications that my name is listed in are things that 00:13:33.909 --> 00:13:38.276 were sort of left over and finished from when I was active with my grad 00:13:38.309 --> 00:13:42.797 students or other faculty members or new things that were more in the 00:13:42.830 --> 00:13:47.217 administrative academic realm. Was there a point at which you knew there 00:13:47.250 --> 00:13:53.707 was no going back? Oh, I think a couple of years into the deanship, right 00:13:53.740 --> 00:13:59.346 . I felt like, uh I mean I could have gone back, but I didn't have any 00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:05.476 particular interest in. I really enjoyed administration. And so I felt 00:14:05.509 --> 00:14:11.376 like my first choice would be to finish my career doing that. But I never 00:14:11.409 --> 00:14:16.736 , I never worried about, I never felt threatened about going back. I think 00:14:16.769 --> 00:14:20.947 I could have gone back and been productive, had that opportunity uh 00:14:20.980 --> 00:14:25.047 developed or that scenario unfolded. What would you, would you enjoy about 00:14:25.080 --> 00:14:29.327 administration? 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:34.307 Well, I think as a faculty member, um, 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:38.187 you know, one is pleased or frustrated by the administrator depending on 00:14:38.220 --> 00:14:43.106 whether you're happy or unhappy with the decisions. Um 00:14:43.139 --> 00:14:48.087 and I guess I felt like I could, I could do at least as well and perhaps 00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:54.207 better than the people that I had observed in those roles and 00:14:54.240 --> 00:15:00.677 I wanted an opportunity to try it. And the years as chair were frustrating 00:15:00.710 --> 00:15:08.710 because Guido wagon um, came in as dean and uh, Guido was a really nice 00:15:09.169 --> 00:15:16.407 man, but he, and he was sort of from the old school, um, 00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:20.096 and he really wasn't a good fit for the College of liberal arts and 00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:23.537 Sciences right then and he wasn't a good fit with the, with the page 00:15:23.570 --> 00:15:28.467 Mulholland who came in and replaced Carl dan Infeld. And so those were, 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:33.307 those were tough times. 00:15:33.340 --> 00:15:38.817 A point of contrast with Guido. And then Sam Kirkpatrick, who I than 00:15:38.850 --> 00:15:46.177 worked with and learned a great deal from um, with Guido as a department 00:15:46.210 --> 00:15:52.006 chair, you needed to go in and see him regularly and ask for things 00:15:52.039 --> 00:15:57.207 because Guido's method of operating was when people came in and asked, he 00:15:57.240 --> 00:16:02.927 would say yes or no and he'd say he'd say yes or no until the money was 00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:07.856 gone. And then, and then it was no for the rest of the year. And so The 00:16:07.889 --> 00:16:11.457 department chairs knew that July one, he had his new budget and you'd 00:16:11.490 --> 00:16:17.276 better go and see him once a week about something. Um The trouble was when 00:16:17.309 --> 00:16:23.256 you look back over what those decisions had produced and if and you ask 00:16:23.289 --> 00:16:27.337 your question, ask yourself, did they really move the college forward? I 00:16:27.370 --> 00:16:33.807 guess they did. But but not in any the way that related to any planning, 00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:38.136 it was just whatever each department wanted and what each department 00:16:38.169 --> 00:16:41.697 wanted might not have been what was best for the university, but it was 00:16:41.730 --> 00:16:49.437 what what what was on their agenda when SAM came, um he introduced a whole 00:16:49.470 --> 00:16:56.026 new way of planning and budgeting that I thought was just enlightened 00:16:56.059 --> 00:17:00.827 compared to what I was used to. And that was, he would start by saying, 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:07.016 what is it we're trying to accomplish as a college now, what what sorts of 00:17:07.049 --> 00:17:12.197 decisions do we have to make to move us in that direction? And so he would 00:17:12.230 --> 00:17:19.086 do a single comprehensive comparative collective exercise that brought all 00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:23.357 the ideas in at once from every department. And then he would look at that 00:17:23.390 --> 00:17:28.756 set of investment opportunities, he called them and he would and he would 00:17:28.789 --> 00:17:33.927 say, okay, this makes sense for what we're trying to accomplish. This 00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:37.687 doesn't this makes sense. This doesn't, this will help to programs, not 00:17:37.720 --> 00:17:41.367 just one, this will help this interdisciplinary program and this 00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:46.717 interdisciplinary program. And so by looking at everything it wants, then 00:17:46.750 --> 00:17:52.756 he could make a set of investment decisions that moved us forward And to 00:17:52.789 --> 00:17:59.246 me, I just thought that was that was really a good way to proceed. And 00:17:59.279 --> 00:18:04.806 then I used it from then on when I became dean, 00:18:04.839 --> 00:18:09.877 I don't know what your question was, but 00:18:09.910 --> 00:18:17.910 this seemed like a good answer. 00:18:18.339 --> 00:18:23.107 What what did you feel were the biggest challenges that s you collectively 00:18:23.140 --> 00:18:28.427 I was facing during the time that you were here? Well, the one that was 00:18:28.460 --> 00:18:33.326 just overwhelming when we first came was that we were too many years from 00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:40.076 achieving the university status and we've just been offering doctoral 00:18:40.109 --> 00:18:47.506 degrees about a decade. Um And the U. Of a 00:18:47.539 --> 00:18:50.496 the head of a faculty member from the U. Of A. Was the head of the 00:18:50.529 --> 00:18:55.207 appropriations committee and the legislature tom Goodwin. 00:18:55.240 --> 00:19:00.306 And so our poor presidents, 00:19:00.339 --> 00:19:04.947 I just had an awful uphill fight. The Board of Regents was stacked uh you 00:19:04.980 --> 00:19:10.486 know, with you of a people and they weren't quietly you of a people. They 00:19:10.519 --> 00:19:17.006 were they were overtly view of a people and they would tell the CSU 00:19:17.039 --> 00:19:22.286 presidents uh you know, you have a is the main university and that's the 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:26.907 one we're going to support and you and I know you will get what get what 00:19:26.940 --> 00:19:31.107 we can get you. But um 00:19:31.140 --> 00:19:37.407 so it was a struggle because we had the students, we had the growth. Um 00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:45.387 but in any kind of a funding comparison the U. Of a was so much better off. 00:19:45.420 --> 00:19:49.306 It was unbelievable now over the years, 00:19:49.339 --> 00:19:52.607 the board and the Legislature 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:58.336 fussed around with that and made a few adjustments, but I'll bet if you 00:19:58.369 --> 00:20:03.897 look today the funding for students in equivalent programs is still 00:20:03.930 --> 00:20:10.907 stacked in the vase direction so that that was always a problem. 00:20:10.940 --> 00:20:17.647 And it's been astonishing to me just to kind of wrap that topic up how how 00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:21.407 that has changed. Um 00:20:21.440 --> 00:20:28.086 Okay in terms of I think the legislature and the board um it's much more 00:20:28.119 --> 00:20:33.907 balanced and way more favorable to A. S. U. Than it ever was back in those 00:20:33.940 --> 00:20:38.476 days. It was it was incredible and it was a struggle because every time we 00:20:38.509 --> 00:20:42.526 went to introduce a new program um I would say we're already doing it so 00:20:42.559 --> 00:20:46.667 we don't need to in the state or we were just about to do it. Uh And so 00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:51.427 let us do it or we could do it better or the A. S. A. S. You really isn't 00:20:51.460 --> 00:20:55.137 staffed up to do that. In fact when we got our interdisciplinary PhD 00:20:55.170 --> 00:21:02.937 program chuck Wolfe worked with me um because he wanted it to be and 00:21:02.970 --> 00:21:08.516 unimpeachable proposal, he didn't want it coming back at us and having the 00:21:08.549 --> 00:21:16.197 U. Of a say it. And so he was really pleased. Uh and and and he should 00:21:16.230 --> 00:21:20.607 have been, I mean he encouraged it, but he felt like when we went forward 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:23.766 with the proposal with three people from chemistry, three from biology to 00:21:23.799 --> 00:21:27.407 from psychology to from engineering one from nutrition and then the dozen 00:21:27.440 --> 00:21:32.226 from our department, you they couldn't, they couldn't say we're about to 00:21:32.259 --> 00:21:36.266 do that or we can do it better and so on and they didn't and so it went 00:21:36.299 --> 00:21:42.417 through and you know, without a hitch. But but it was a struggle that is 00:21:42.450 --> 00:21:46.707 for all the things that we proposed and tried, 00:21:46.740 --> 00:21:51.836 we were always struggling for space. I mean that was always an issue. Um I 00:21:51.869 --> 00:21:58.177 know john swallow was president when I came and he he was I know he 00:21:58.210 --> 00:22:01.457 worried all the time and Russ nelson to, they were just overwhelmed with 00:22:01.490 --> 00:22:07.457 how do we, how do we handle this space needs of the campus? Um when I 00:22:07.490 --> 00:22:13.937 first came, none of the athletic complex that we know today was complete. 00:22:13.970 --> 00:22:19.986 Uh And so all the coaches were still in PE west and in fact the men and 00:22:20.019 --> 00:22:25.677 women physical education areas had just combined the year before and and 00:22:25.710 --> 00:22:30.867 it wasn't a happy marriage. Um They had like most campuses up to that time 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:36.697 , men's and women's physical education were separate and uh and didn't 00:22:36.730 --> 00:22:41.437 want to be merged, but anyway, they had merged and but all the coaches 00:22:41.470 --> 00:22:47.516 were there too, so it was quite a um it was quite a crowded set of 00:22:47.549 --> 00:22:53.187 buildings there. Then soon thereafter the activity center opened and the 00:22:53.220 --> 00:22:56.607 coaches moved up there and of course then they built the athletic complex 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:00.107 we know of today in the next few years 00:23:00.140 --> 00:23:04.647 and then like every campus we, everybody has budget issues. Everybody can 00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:08.266 think of more things they could do if they had more money. And the biggest 00:23:08.299 --> 00:23:13.407 problem we always had in liberal arts and sciences was we were never 00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:20.217 budgeted fully to do our what we had to do because the university operated 00:23:20.250 --> 00:23:24.667 on this principle that salary savings was recovered by the provost office 00:23:24.700 --> 00:23:27.687 and then you had to try to get it back. If we could have kept all those 00:23:27.720 --> 00:23:31.597 moneys, we'd have been fine. But that's just the way it works. It works, 00:23:31.630 --> 00:23:36.897 it works that way. And almost every university and so each year we would 00:23:36.930 --> 00:23:43.847 have to uh ask for money back from the vacancy savings that was collected 00:23:43.880 --> 00:23:47.266 by the provost, so we could staff all the freshman english, freshman math 00:23:47.299 --> 00:23:52.467 , freshman history, freshman this and that, that we had to offer. So that 00:23:52.500 --> 00:23:59.207 was always a struggle. 00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:04.357 What um, what kind of advice would you give young people nowadays in 00:24:04.390 --> 00:24:09.806 choosing their college and career? 00:24:09.839 --> 00:24:12.887 Well, I don't know if a person can choose their college, your college kind 00:24:12.920 --> 00:24:19.407 of chooses you. But um, 00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:24.506 I don't think there's any magic formula 00:24:24.539 --> 00:24:29.496 in higher education, You'd better be a strong academic because you're 00:24:29.529 --> 00:24:33.056 probably not gonna go anywhere if you, if you don't have a strong academic 00:24:33.089 --> 00:24:39.006 base. So the, you know, the, I guess the first rule would be 00:24:39.039 --> 00:24:44.556 become as good a faculty member as you can be. Um, and most people want to 00:24:44.589 --> 00:24:49.607 do that, but sometimes 00:24:49.640 --> 00:24:54.417 the reward systems or the feedback people get maybe cause them to become a 00:24:54.450 --> 00:24:59.796 little narrow or slanted eye. I always appreciated most the faculty 00:24:59.829 --> 00:25:06.147 members that were that that we're good at everything, they were good at at 00:25:06.180 --> 00:25:09.717 bringing in grant money if that was important, they were good at 00:25:09.750 --> 00:25:14.506 publishing their work, that was always important um that we're good with 00:25:14.539 --> 00:25:22.326 students, enjoyed students that that lifted and inspired students. Um and 00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:28.207 that we're good. Externally, we would we would have lots of events 00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:33.457 for the external public and I learned very quickly that I'd better here, 00:25:33.490 --> 00:25:37.607 this person make a presentation before I put them in front of the public. 00:25:37.640 --> 00:25:43.996 Um because we had some people that weren't very good with the lay audience 00:25:44.029 --> 00:25:47.607 , they might have been good with grad students, but they just really 00:25:47.640 --> 00:25:52.397 couldn't tell their story to the lay public and we had some great 00:25:52.430 --> 00:25:56.306 successes in that regard. Some of these people I'm talking about that 00:25:56.339 --> 00:26:00.786 we're good researchers that were good with students and good with the 00:26:00.819 --> 00:26:04.826 public did the first origin series. I don't know if you remember when we 00:26:04.859 --> 00:26:10.947 started that, but I had noticed in the college that we had this theme of 00:26:10.980 --> 00:26:14.006 origins, that 00:26:14.039 --> 00:26:19.066 where we had unusual strength. We had Laurie lesson, who could talk about 00:26:19.099 --> 00:26:22.167 the origins of life actually, we had Jeff hester, who could talk about the 00:26:22.200 --> 00:26:30.200 origins of the universe and then Lori the origins of life and then um Don 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:34.526 Johanson who could talk about human origins and then we had a number of 00:26:34.559 --> 00:26:38.887 people but I chose chuck Redmond because he was so good with external 00:26:38.920 --> 00:26:46.006 audiences to talk about the rise of civil origins of civilization. And 00:26:46.039 --> 00:26:52.437 anyway the first time we did that the nelsons up in, up in Scottsdale, 00:26:52.470 --> 00:26:57.607 opened their home to some of their neighbors and I want to say that they 00:26:57.640 --> 00:27:03.687 were set up for 80 and 130 showed up and it was just I mean the people 00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:08.367 just loved it and the university, I know at least I keep reading an 00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:13.927 insight that they've continued that notion of origins and brought in 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:18.226 external speakers and so on. But it's a great theme and and it's a great 00:27:18.259 --> 00:27:26.259 story to tell and a issue of course has interesting people to do that. 00:27:26.839 --> 00:27:30.597 I want I want to move to your sort of overall perceptions of the 00:27:30.630 --> 00:27:35.336 university but first of all is to perhaps um what do you think you were 00:27:35.369 --> 00:27:41.097 the your greatest accomplishments as Dean of local arts or the greatest 00:27:41.130 --> 00:27:49.130 accomplishments of college? However you'd like to think about it. Well 00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:51.887 I think the culture, 00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:56.907 the culture certainly changed a great deal over 00:27:56.940 --> 00:28:04.607 You know the 15 years that I was in the associate Dean and then Dean. Um 00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:09.147 and that was that was due to lots of things laddies, leadership was 00:28:09.180 --> 00:28:16.086 especially helpful in that regard I thought because where Russ? Ah And I 00:28:16.119 --> 00:28:22.607 think each of our presidents did a good job rush seemed to be um 00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:29.147 uh huh, focused so much on how things looked and he seemed less inclined 00:28:29.180 --> 00:28:35.996 to worry about how things were ah um 00:28:36.029 --> 00:28:39.127 You're saying that reputation is what people think you are and character 00:28:39.160 --> 00:28:43.697 is what you are when nobody's looking. And you know, while Laddie 00:28:43.730 --> 00:28:48.117 certainly one of the reputation to be good, I think he wanted it to be 00:28:48.150 --> 00:28:55.387 good because he wanted the character of the university to be um a place 00:28:55.420 --> 00:28:59.917 that cared about students and where where faculty and administrators cared 00:28:59.950 --> 00:29:05.167 about each other and acted that way. Uh And we're faculty cared about 00:29:05.200 --> 00:29:07.907 students. And 00:29:07.940 --> 00:29:10.986 when I used to talk about this and and my talks around the country, I 00:29:11.019 --> 00:29:16.976 would cite um Alexis de Toqueville who, in looking at early America said 00:29:17.009 --> 00:29:22.617 that America is great because she's good and if America ever ceases to be 00:29:22.650 --> 00:29:27.586 good, America will cease to be great. And he was talking about the habits 00:29:27.619 --> 00:29:32.576 of the heart that early americans had. And and I while Laddie never used 00:29:32.609 --> 00:29:37.207 those words or those phrases, I always felt like he was interested in the 00:29:37.240 --> 00:29:42.607 habits of the heart of the campus. And 00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:50.640 I've really felt um through all kinds of means that a sus habits of the 00:29:50.980 --> 00:29:55.826 heart became a lot better. I'll never forget when laddie first came, he 00:29:55.859 --> 00:30:02.137 had a meeting with the Dean's and he was astonished with one thing after 00:30:02.170 --> 00:30:04.207 another. 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:10.026 Just two, just two examples. I remember him saying, do you mean that when 00:30:10.059 --> 00:30:14.637 a student buys a parking permit it only gives them the right to look for a 00:30:14.670 --> 00:30:21.766 space. It doesn't mean they have a space. And the other one was he said, 00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:27.677 do you mean that, are you telling me that even though we expect every 00:30:27.710 --> 00:30:33.806 freshman to take freshman composition that we don't have classes spaces 00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:37.357 for all those students? And of course the answer to both of those was, 00:30:37.390 --> 00:30:43.407 well no we don't. He was just appalled really. And I think those of us 00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:47.546 that have been here through all those years of growth to be honest, our 00:30:47.579 --> 00:30:50.006 view was 00:30:50.039 --> 00:30:53.967 not so much trying to attract students, but how on earth do we handle all 00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:58.877 these students? And I think what happened over the years is 00:30:58.910 --> 00:31:03.786 the campus became much more concerned about the students and interested 00:31:03.819 --> 00:31:09.506 and did more things to that. 00:31:09.539 --> 00:31:13.306 Well, or maybe the opposite of when I went to school and when you went to 00:31:13.339 --> 00:31:17.506 school, I'm sure. And that was in the very first college class I sat in 00:31:17.539 --> 00:31:23.197 the professor said, look to your right look to your left by the end of 00:31:23.230 --> 00:31:26.816 next year two of you will be gone. You know. And so they thought the 00:31:26.849 --> 00:31:31.996 winnowing out process was one of the great things that happened in higher 00:31:32.029 --> 00:31:36.417 education. Well, of course universities believe now that if you admit 00:31:36.450 --> 00:31:41.516 somebody you'd better try to help them leave with a degree and not just 00:31:41.549 --> 00:31:46.867 debt. And I think we came a long way in that regard. We came a long way in 00:31:46.900 --> 00:31:51.687 our in our research capacity. We came a long way in our national 00:31:51.720 --> 00:31:53.907 visibility. 00:31:53.940 --> 00:32:01.006 Oh we you know faculty. Well one of the things that was an amazing 00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:06.566 opportunity here and really fueled all this change with the honors college 00:32:06.599 --> 00:32:11.576 and with the attraction of those high end students and so on was 00:32:11.609 --> 00:32:18.167 Starting in the 70s and through Well from the 70s forward. Much of higher 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:22.887 education was in a period of retrenchment. And so there wasn't a lot of 00:32:22.920 --> 00:32:28.167 hiring going on nationally. Where because we were growing and because the 00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:32.836 university was funded by formula and because in most years we did get some 00:32:32.869 --> 00:32:35.826 new money from the state 00:32:35.859 --> 00:32:41.417 in all the years I was in the Dean's office we hired 30 40 50 Faculty 00:32:41.450 --> 00:32:46.207 members a year. Some new positions, some from vacancies where people 00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:52.046 resigned or left. But When you can hire 30 or 40 or 50 new faculty members 00:32:52.079 --> 00:32:59.207 every year against not much competition. Huh? Um We assembled amazing 00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:03.836 talent and ended up with a way stronger faculty I think than we ever could 00:33:03.869 --> 00:33:08.887 have hoped to attract if Berkeley and U. C. L. A. And stanford and 00:33:08.920 --> 00:33:12.476 michigan and Illinois and everybody else had lots of openings but they 00:33:12.509 --> 00:33:17.857 didn't. And so people that really wouldn't have probably picked a S. U. As 00:33:17.890 --> 00:33:23.016 their first choice. I came here not because we were their first choice but 00:33:23.049 --> 00:33:27.157 maybe their only choice or at least the best of the ones they had and when 00:33:27.190 --> 00:33:32.927 they came they liked it and by and large they stayed and and had wonderful 00:33:32.960 --> 00:33:38.107 careers became very productive and and lifted the whole institution. 00:33:38.140 --> 00:33:42.347 So the quality changed, the character changed reputation changed. You know 00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:47.660 all the output measures that are important changed in in a good direction. 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:50.240 You know I think we had a very successful run and it's continued one of 00:33:54.150 --> 00:33:57.147 the one of the really 00:33:57.180 --> 00:34:01.276 one of the strong advantages I guess of being in a big colleges whenever 00:34:01.309 --> 00:34:05.207 the university was dealing with something 00:34:05.240 --> 00:34:09.267 we would discuss it in the administrative council. And so you'd have 00:34:09.300 --> 00:34:12.577 humanists talking about it, you'd have scientists talking about it, you'd 00:34:12.610 --> 00:34:17.907 have social scientists talking about it. You'd have some of the more 00:34:17.940 --> 00:34:22.066 vocational oriented areas talking about it. You get so many different 00:34:22.099 --> 00:34:25.706 perspectives and everybody would learn 00:34:25.739 --> 00:34:31.867 and everybody would modify their views a little bit. And we would come up 00:34:31.900 --> 00:34:37.077 then with things that then I would take to the to the d to the whatever we 00:34:37.110 --> 00:34:44.307 call the Dean's Council or whatever. And 00:34:44.340 --> 00:34:49.217 you know they'd already been thought through pretty well and so more often 00:34:49.250 --> 00:34:53.137 than not what the university ended up doing was largely what what we 00:34:53.170 --> 00:35:00.206 brought forward. Um And I think by and large those are good things. 00:35:00.239 --> 00:35:03.967 What's your do you have something you might think of your best memory of 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:08.506 your time at issue? Well, the years as Dean of Arts and Sciences were 00:35:08.539 --> 00:35:13.606 fantastic 00:35:13.639 --> 00:35:20.247 in a college that large and that varied. There's so much going on. Um, We 00:35:20.280 --> 00:35:26.836 had missions to MArs and we had people making discoveries and pyramids in 00:35:26.869 --> 00:35:29.706 Mexico and 00:35:29.739 --> 00:35:35.637 people studying that transitions in Egypt and china and around the world. 00:35:35.670 --> 00:35:39.887 We had political science is predicting, predicting the elections and we 00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:47.606 had historians doing interesting new interpretations of the past and 00:35:47.639 --> 00:35:51.717 creative writers that were just inspiring whenever you heard them speak or 00:35:51.750 --> 00:35:56.296 read their work. I mean it was just every day, it was something new and 00:35:56.329 --> 00:36:01.037 different and exciting and uplifting and uh, those were just great years 00:36:01.070 --> 00:36:07.717 and I always, I guess I felt very good about the fact that uh, in my 10th 00:36:07.750 --> 00:36:15.657 year MIlt had me evaluated and 300 and 12 people responded or something in 00:36:15.690 --> 00:36:23.177 the evaluation and 92% said that they thought the dean, the college would 00:36:23.210 --> 00:36:28.276 be well served by meek staying on his Dean. 4% I didn't have an opinion 00:36:28.309 --> 00:36:34.526 and 4% said throw the rascal out. So anyway, I felt like you know, if I'm 00:36:34.559 --> 00:36:40.267 having this much fun and people are that's supportive, then that's a 00:36:40.300 --> 00:36:44.586 pretty good deal. But no, those years were great years after we've gone 00:36:44.619 --> 00:36:49.106 through one of the periods that universities go through where the years 00:36:49.139 --> 00:36:53.657 have been leaner than most. 00:36:53.690 --> 00:36:58.896 I felt like we come out of it about as good as we could have hoped for. 00:36:58.929 --> 00:37:04.936 And I wrote a note to the faculty and I um I recounted a story that's been 00:37:04.969 --> 00:37:07.867 told to me and I mean a true story. It was something that happened to me. 00:37:07.900 --> 00:37:10.796 I was in, we were in china 00:37:10.829 --> 00:37:14.566 and we fell into conversation through our interpreter with a couple that 00:37:14.599 --> 00:37:20.537 sat across from us on the train and they were old, older chinese. And we 00:37:20.570 --> 00:37:27.776 said you've lived in china all your lives and you've seen a lot, what is, 00:37:27.809 --> 00:37:31.836 what, what do you think about life in china? And they said, well it 00:37:31.869 --> 00:37:36.157 depends on if you take the horizontal or the vertical view. It's 00:37:36.190 --> 00:37:42.936 interesting. What's that mean? He said, well, he said, we're old, we lived 00:37:42.969 --> 00:37:50.666 through the horrible war with Japan. We lived through the the takeover by 00:37:50.699 --> 00:37:55.046 the communists. We lived through the the upright of the Red guard 00:37:55.079 --> 00:37:59.097 insurrection. We've been through the all the transitions. We look at life 00:37:59.130 --> 00:38:05.217 vertically. We've got the long view and we say life in china has never 00:38:05.250 --> 00:38:07.586 been better. 00:38:07.619 --> 00:38:12.477 They said, the young people, I don't have that long view. And so all they 00:38:12.510 --> 00:38:15.477 have is the horizontal view. And so they look at life in china, life in 00:38:15.510 --> 00:38:19.787 Singapore, life in Japan, life in the United States 00:38:19.820 --> 00:38:23.586 and we don't look so good in those comparisons. And so they say, oh, life 00:38:23.619 --> 00:38:29.186 in china is horrible. Ah um, 00:38:29.219 --> 00:38:32.126 so bringing it back to what I was the letter I wrote, I wrote to the 00:38:32.159 --> 00:38:36.307 faculty and I said, you know, I don't think it matters if we take the 00:38:36.340 --> 00:38:43.686 horizontal or the vertical view. We're lucky to be at A. S. U. Uh huh. 00:38:43.719 --> 00:38:49.066 Sure. We've had tough times. We've had our problems, but we've improved 00:38:49.099 --> 00:38:53.727 dramatically. We've gotten through this down spell without any real 00:38:53.760 --> 00:38:59.677 hardship. We're getting better. There are very few places I'd rather be. I 00:38:59.710 --> 00:39:04.486 don't know about you. But uh, so, you know, in spite of the difficulties, 00:39:04.519 --> 00:39:07.760 this was an awfully good place to be.