Today is April 29th, 2009. And, uh, we're, uh, doing, uh, another
interview through the Living History video project, uh, sponsored by the A
su Retirees Association. Uh, my name is Elmer Gooding. And, uh, it's my
honor and privilege to interview, uh, Professor Emeritus Lou Weschler
today. And so as a beginning, good to see you. My pleasure as we begin, uh
, Lou, uh, maybe we'll start way back at the beginning and maybe tell us a
little bit about, uh, yourself and your early life and, uh, up through
your education and, uh, sure. And then we'll go from there. Ok. Um, it's
really, it's a little hard sometimes to know exactly when to start. I
suppose the most important thing you need to know is that I was about 11
or 12 until I was in my twenties. I was sure I was going to be a, a
practicing artist and when I started back to college in the 19 fifties, uh
, Joan, my spouse and I were sure that I would become an art major and I
would have to be a high school art teacher or a junior college arts
teacher. Well, that didn't happen. Um I met an uh an advisor and he made
me so angry that I decided on a spot that I would find something else to
do with my life and not be an artist. And that's how I became a social
scientist. And that's the deep background there. I got a degree in science
and art at Harvard College and Technical Community College in Los Angeles.
In 1953 I worked for a year or two. I was in the army during the Korean
War. But fortunately for me, I was in Alaska, not Korea, I learned to ski
uh and did a lot of painting. And when I got out of the army, I was gonna
go to California State College at Los Angeles one day and the smog
convinced me of the error of my way. I immediately went to Long Beach
State which is on the ocean. It doesn't have as much smog and I went to
two years there. Uh Because of faculty connections at Long Beach State, I
ended up in graduate college getting a master's degree first in, in uh
political philosophy and a phd. And what we would now call public economy
or our political economy. It was combined political science, economics
degree. Although at that time, you couldn't actually do that at UCL A, you
had to take one or the other and then you work around. So II, I finally
got my phd in 64 Before I came to a SU I was on the faculty at the
University of California Davis from 1964 to 1970. For one year, I was on
the faculty at the University of Washington where I had a joint
appointment in Fisheries Planning and Political Science. Uh And then I
came to us c for a decade was, was doing mostly research in coastal zone
management and natural resources. In 1980 I got the phone call. I
mentioned that from page and came to a SU in 1980 to stay 10 years. And
here I am ever since.
Tell us a little bit about your experience that uh you came here uh to uh
run the doctoral program. Yeah, the, the, the A SU did a very interesting
thing uh that created the College of Public Programs. And to this day, I
don't really understand why I call it. The college of residuals that is,
there were a lot of things around campus and Paige Mulholland was provost
and then put them all together. They were sort of step Children wherever
they were. And he put them together and page calls and said, we started
this new college, the college of Public uh program and your name has been
uh nominated as a, as a possible dean. And I say, you can take my name off
the list and he said, oh why? And I said I had been dean and associate
dean at us c for too many years and I just turned down a job at another
university not to be a dean. And I wasn't looking for a job as dean. And
he said, oh, ok. And we chat a little bit what he was trying to do in the
college. And I said to him, I can't see that the programs, anything have
anything in common, but it works fine. It's gonna work about a month later
, I get another phone call from Paige Mulholland. And he said, I think I
was talking to you about the wrong job probably. So he says, as part as
part of this reorganization of the college, the acting dean that Frank
Sancton at that time had just gotten information from the board of regions
that the new doctor program in public administration had been approved and
the same person nominated you as a possible dean, which happened to be
Dicker revs. I said I would really be a good director for the D program.
And uh he said that's what I want to talk to you about. And I said, well,
that sounds more interesting. And then later that spring, I met a number
of members of the faculty and
the dean of the graduate college Wolf in San Francisco and so forth. And
the rest is history. So that's how, that's a whole story. That's all gonna
story. Now you can't, well, you can do that under the current president,
but in the next 20 years when I came here you couldn't do that anymore. I
mean, the provost couldn't call someone and essentially offer them a job
without going through the whole. Right. So, that was, that, that was a
major change in a su and probably, um, I and a couple others were the last
people who are hired that way. That way,
this program actually didn't belong to the college. It belonged to the
graduate college. And although it was the child of the school,
it was actually owned by Charles Wolf. And the committee that administered
for the 1st 10 years existence was actually a graduate college committee
appointed by the graduate dean. And my role as director of that program
was as a faculty member of the School of Public Affairs. But my
administrative responsibilities was to a graduate. I see. So at the time
you came, there weren't any students in the program and you started from
ground zero, ground zero, the region had approved it the year before, but
there wasn't even an acting director. And um so I was brought in
specifically to do that and I did it, I think for six or seven years and
burned out doing it and they didn't do it after that. But it was nothing.
There was nothing and more important from the School of Public Affairs
and point of view, none of the sitting faculty had ever shared a
dissertation, not very single and very distinguished faculty. Even at that
time, Joe Care, a Carney were really well known nationally, but for
whatever reasons in their university, they had never shared a doctors food
, which that was one of the things I brought with me. By the time I showed
up at a SU I had shared 40 dissertations. So so at the time you gave up
that responsibility say some seven years later about how many students
were in the program. Now, in the doctor program, we try to keep it at zero
growth. And so the height was 20 the low was 10. So I would say 15, the
average, the idea was to keep at zero growth. What may not be well known
on the campus now because now a phd program, it was not designed to be a
phd program because no Political Science Department in Arizona would
support it being a phd or not possible to get a phd in public
administration, Dean Wolf and, and uh Frank S was smart enough to go to
the regions with a Doctor of Public administration, which is a lower level
in, in the in the hierarchy of university degree. A lower level degree is
like the EDD and the Doctor of Business, Doctor Business. The exact same
thing as a matter of fact, the first doctor of public administration ever
given was given in 1949 by us C So it was a fairly recent degree edd is a
very old degree. Doctor of Business is fairly new degree too from the 19
fifties. So that gives you an idea that it's not, has never been a well
established degree. Uh but they did it for political reasons, but it
turned out to be a good idea because it was a degree that could in fact
train people behind the members. But it also was designed in such a way
that practitioners could go to school and get a degree. And in the, in the
inter classes, when I was there, two thirds of the students were all who
was practitioners and one third where people wanted to go into academia
and that was by design. So
well, the question Eleanor just asked me is how about being sort of rent a
dean is the way I call the dean. Uh Remember that I had specific company
issue to avoid being a dean. And so this was a big surprise to everybody.
Um The pros at that time was Jack Kenser. And uh first he got a problem in
this college in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, the
city dean was chosen to be the first uh provost of the new West campus.
And he took the person who should have become acting Dean, Darrius with
him. And so that Jerry mcsherry mcchord, so that left the void. And so
Darrius and Jerry said, come over what come and have lunch with me? We
have a job. You can't turn down the job I couldn't turn down was to be
acting Associate dean of the College of Architecture and Environment
Design. And as a favor to them, I did that. But in order to do that, I had
to go back to my department and go back to the graduate dean and explain
to them, I was now changing my role and I no longer could be director of
the DP A program, which is ok because as I mentioned, I was pretty burned
down and, but I was now gonna do something. I swore I would never do again
in my life. And that is to be a higher level administrator at a college
level. But this was most interesting because you were called upon to be
dean of the college in a, in a discipline that you really hadn't uh has a
lot of background there. Is that correct? Uh None in architecture at all,
but as a planner, but nobody over here knew that nobody over here knew I
could actually draw or could use computers and I just played dumb. You
know, I just let them show me how good they were with everything. Right.
Uh And that's, that's the way you have to do it because you architects
especially, I'm going to p myself on to college. They really think they
run the world they really do and to try to tell them that you might be
able to draw or paint as well. As they could, would not go over very well
, trust me. So, I came over here first as an associate dean, the new, uh,
acting dean decided to stay in Seattle until the weather cooled down here.
He thought it would be cool by September. Of course, he was very shocked
to find out it was still 100 degrees in September. And, uh, by the end of
the fall semester he had enough of a su and head back home. Uh
Parenthetically, I actually knew him when I was in the faculty, University
of Washington for a year and he was the head of the urban design program
there for many years. Well, because he decided to cut and run, as we say,
I ended up one morning being asked to be now not acting associate dean,
but acting dean. Um and that was a surprise to everybody and I had to tell
everybody here that I wasn't really a spy for Jack Kinsinger that I was
actually doing friends a favor. And it was incidental the fact that Jack
Ken singer was a provost and so forth. I did do something that was
interesting. Those of you who are in architecture, who read this or hear
this and two of my colleagues in the room. No, that Russ Nelson was the
patron saint of the arts and architecture. And without him, architecture
wouldn't be what it is or had become and certainly fine arts wouldn't be
what had become, I mean, without the Nelson Benina and, and Russ doing
them. Um, I knew Russ Nelson when we were both graduate students at UCL A
just briefly. Yeah. Uh which was an interesting connection. So, after I
came over here, I said the problem and the problem with this place is that
it's too isolated from the rest of the campus. I mean, it might have been
, it might as well have been in Missouri as well as was integrated to the
campus life. So I went over to Russ and I sat down and I said I have my
first weekly report for you and my first weekly report is they don't know
, you are alive and without you, they're not alive, you need to come over
here and say hello. So the next week secretary comes running into my
office, which we're sitting in now and said, my God, the president in the
foe, what do I do? And I said, gee why don't you walk him him in and offer
him a glass of orange juice? And they did. And so Russ made it a point
during that year that I was here to come over and visit once in a while,
sometimes officially but frequently not officially just letting people
know that he was here showing the flag and so forth.
And, and as long as I'm telling stories about architecture, I decided that
I would get to know every member of the faculty of the three units here.
Personally, there was architecture, there was what passed for planning
was reading landscape architecture. And then there was design which is
industrial design and interiors. And so during my first month, I actually
went around to every office in the building was sitting in the new
building had been built and mo everybody's door and sometimes I got very
warm reception and sometimes I got the old foot blocking the door. What
are you doing here? What is the dean spying on me for? I said, no, no, I
want to find out what you mean. So John uh uh Macintosh was sitting on
this side. I can't remember. I started luncheons where faculty members and
staff members s around and told people what they did, told about their
work, told why they were here and you know, and so get them to know each
other. And I tell them another story. Part of this college was what used
to be part of agriculture when there were still agriculture and
agriculture here. Home economics, for example, and there was a design
program in home economics and some members of both architecture and design
had been in home economics on the day that two of them retired. I had the
pleasure of introducing them to each other to people who had been in the
same building for 10 years.
I want to tell the name but that was, that is literally true. And David
was there and John was, I actually introduced the two retirees to each
other and they had been in the same building, different floors, of course
, for a decade and never actually had been formally introduced to and
didn't even know each other at all. Amazing. So there's a lot of
insulation uh in the building and so forth,
mentioned that Nick Henry was Dean at the time and you mentioned Russ
Nelson was r president at that time. He came to you after that actually,
matter of fact, I served on the search committee
was the chair of that committee was the the College Act Capacity.
And then you went on to become uh acting dean in the college college Nick
, who, as I said, is a very ambitious person and not without cause, he's
very talented. He decided to go on the market and become a university
professor, which is, by the way, had always been a long, I mean university
president, which had always been his long term goal. I remember him
announcing that when he was acting assistant professor at the University
of Georgia in a public meeting. And so he interviewed Ashley and he went
to what used to be called Jordan Georgia Southern University
and became the president. Uh at that point, Kinsinger appointed me the
acting dean and I agreed to do it for one year. And then the search for
his successor didn't work out. And so then I did it for another year and
then the, the search did work out and Schneider became the dean stepped up.
As I remember when Nick went to that institution, he worked on getting
the name changed to the institution. It's part of his ambition, I'm sure.
Yes, he became a university, a college. Yeah. And they got doctoral
programs and then, and, and then Nick, you know, I don't, uh, he finally
retired there, uh, after a while he was still on the faculty there as
retired from the administration. But that was, that was his long term goal.
I, I don't know if you know enough about it. Nick was actually a
professional journalist before he was faculty member in academic. I didn't
know that. And uh and he could write extremely well and could speak very
well and he had a very aggressive, ambitious publication record and, but
he really did like being an administrator, he really thrived and for
whatever personal reasons, he, he had set the right tone for the College
of Public Improvement. It, it did the things that public affairs you have
to do and they did them well vic was very largely responsible for the fact
that Walter Cronkite became the godfather of, of journalism program. Uh He
was largely responsible for the fact that we got money from the Gold
Waters and others in the School of Public Affairs. So Nick was very good
in dealing with the external community. He was not a talented person as an
internal administrator, but he was very talented uh as dealing with ex
external local communities.
How would you compare the uh department from the time you came in 1980
until the time you retired? What uh what kind of evolution occurred during
that time period? Almost impossible to exaggerate. At the time I came,
there were two senior faculty members and as I said, uh Nick was one of
them and, and Al Carney was the other and neither of them had actually had
experience of doing the things that senior faculty members had. Uh Joe
Care who came in was the next one senior after me was an associate
professor who had, who had actually chaired a dissertation at Texas Tech,
but no one had the faculty was then allowed to hire four or five
additional senior faculty members, Dennis Palumbo and Rina Kelly and Ron
Perry. I'm probably missing one or two were brought in specifically
because they could deal in doctor programs and they were more up to date
in their research curriculum than the people who were here. And they also
had experience bringing research grants in which a big step forward. So
that was a big change. The the the the school as as those of you who have
been here a long time, actually started by three assistant professors,
Political Science, Brett Brown and John Hall and Larry Mankin were the
three kilometers of the school and they were all un tenured assistant
professors. Uh So that's unusual. So the, the, the both the size of the
faculty and the quality of the faculty radically increased in that decade.
The other thing that changed is that the school became an essential part
of the university rather than just the tag on to the university. And I
think that uh was important and then because of Nick's direction in the
college and because of a car, Nick's direction as director, it did become
a really important connection with uh cities and county and state
governments especially and some federal agency. But I would say municipal
and county are really a lot of connections with, with those groups and,
and made it possible for exchanges and internships and scholarships and
things to be developed. That wouldn't have happened otherwise. Uh to give
you an idea when I came here, not only was the campus shaking its
accreditation, it had been given provisional accreditation by North
Central. The five years before the School of Public Affairs was ranked
48th out of 68 national programs. But by the time 1980 came, we were
ranked in the top five. Did they have their own accreting? They do they
have their own credit? It's called NASA and it was ranked 48th of 64th.
And by 1990 it was ranked number five in the top 15. Now, it's about
number 10 or 12 now. But that's still spectacular change. That is it. And
that's mostly a tribute to the quality of faculty performance people
outside don't know your students, especially a new doctoral program, they
know your faculty. And so the quality of the junior faculty and the senior
faculty changed so radically during that period of time and they became so
active in national organization, the research and their public service
that they became famous. I mean, this was, this was held up along with
Syracuse and US C and Indiana as being at schools, other people should
emulate.
Speaking of students, you uh you said you chaired some 40 before you even
came here that it meant some additional ones here. Are there any uh
students that stand out in your mind that have gone on to uh various
successes that uh Yeah, II I share it in Yeah, I I'm sure something to you.
Um Chris Garcia who spend his entire academic career at the University of
New Mexico was uh proposes was dean of his college and was acting
president and ran his re uh research firm. And although I don't think his
research record in publication was very robust. He was a great teacher and
good in public service. I think he's one I would rec as well rounded dear
as I mentioned before, probably among my most successful our students. He
was Dean of Architecture, both the University of Mexico and the University
of Arizona. Uh He did have a distinguished publishing record and he also
was an outstanding teacher. Uh There are a couple Linda blessing. Do you
know Linda? Blessing? Yes, the blessing did agree with me and the blessing
is done very well for her. So, um Ann Marshall who is the assistant
director of the, her museum is another uh Marty Vanco who used to be city
manager of a mesa. Um a couple not so famous how Kendig that you've heard
of? He went, he left us c and went to Canberra University, the National
University and became the head of what we would call the legislative
analyst office here. And that's what he did for the state. So he's famous.
And then there are a couple whose names I can't remember. One used to be
the National Planning Director for Sao Paulo, the state and the city. But
I can't remember his first name is Carlos, but I forget his last name. And
then another one was the head of the secret police for the Shah of Iran.
You should mention his name because if he has any relatives left, they can
kill him. One.
Now, some of your research interests were in the environmental area. This
is probably before it really became a, a popular thing to uh uh to all the
politicians and others at that time. Yeah, it was, it was. And, and that's
the reason why Bruce Ba was interested in. According to the interim
committee you mentioned before the legislation, I was the only member of
the faculty in School of Public Affairs who actually did research in
environment. There was another one who claimed he did jump Becker, but he
really didn't do any research. And so I was a single person who did it.
And when I came here, I shifted away from doing cost phone management
because it's a little far uh to go down to rock and point to do research,
although it's done. Um and I shifted back to what I started in which was
water and water quality and air quality. And I, we have to tell you, I've
done very little to improve the air quality of the basin. I think I made
some contributions in my research and public service in improving the
water quality of Arizona's implication. Implementation of the Clean Water
Act has been very good. The implementation of the Clean Air Act has not
been good
back to the uh people that were at the college and students. Uh How does
Frank Sack come into play in college? Yeah, Frank Zac. And uh those of you
don't know him. He's in this series, Frank Sack and retired as Lieutenant
Colonel General, General General. And he had been the uh, uh auditor
General I controller general of the US Army before he came here. He then
went to work for the state, for the sitting governor, went for the state.
And then when he put his time in there, he showed up one day in the
school of public affairs knocking at the door and saying he would like to
get a master's degree in public administration, uh which was unusual
because he didn't have a college degree. He had graduated from the war
college while being very flexible. And Nick Henry admitted him and, and,
and, and then Dean of graduate college admitted him. And so, um Franks
became a senior faculty member, an administrator of the university, a
master's student and an intern all on the same day. And he was one of the
very few people that went directly to professor. That's his right. As I
recall, he was always a professor and that all happened one day. So as I
say, we don't do those things anymore, right? That, that doesn't happen.
Uh Frank Sac and didn't know me from the side of the hill. Uh But when I
came here, I'm not exactly the slowest person on the boat. And I knew
shortly after I came here that Paige Mahan and then shortly after that
Ross Nelson, really slight and bikes. Yes, both of them. Uh Again, not
being too slow. I said, OK, if he's an important person with the president
and a provost,
maybe I had to get to know him better. And so I did and although we're not
friends, he, I related to him if I had been in the military. Yeah, didn't
have the same career he did. We both started out the same way. Do you know
what Mustang means. I'll have to have you tell me, Mustang is a person who
goes from being an enlisted man to an officer without going to an academy
or being trained to do. It usually happens in a, in a combat situation.
Frank went from corporal to lieutenant because everybody else is wiped
out in his company. I went from
master sergeant to captain in the reserve because they didn't have anybody
else to do the job that uh but we both, we both became out of the service
and that's as far as I went, but he became general of the army.
Uh You also were a loan executive to the city of Phoenix. Tell me about
that experience. That's a mixed experience. Um When I took the job, I was
actually recruited by the university attorney at that time to apply for
the job because he didn't like the people who had applied. They weren't
seeing you nothing. It's why apply. And because I had done a similar job
with Tom Bradley when he was mayor of Los Angeles, despite the fact that I
actually wasn't living in the city of Los Angeles. Of course, I never
lived in the city of Phoenix either. Uh That was in my favor. So I went to
interview for the job. Well, the day I interviewed for the job, Terry
Goddard was still mayor of Phoenix and I interviewed for a job sitting in
the cabinet with the mayor and I accepted it. By the time I showed up,
Terry God was running for Governor Johnson was the mayor and had no desire
of having an old college professor in his cabinet, the new city manager
who's not still the city manager, Frank Fairbank didn't want anything to
do with the loan executive from a su and so I got shuttled off on the
corner with something called a Futures Forum. Now, for those of you who
don't know or don't care Futures Forum was an attempt by Terry Goddard, by
Ron England, by the planning director whose name I forget maybe John, you
remember who the planning director was in Phoenix then,
OK, when you do anyway, the three of them except the Futures Forum to
create a 25 year social political biophysical map design for the city of
Phoenix and doing it as a kind of community as a community-based project
by dividing the city up into units that are called villages now and then
planning from a, a citizens base and a participatory base. Neither the
governor nor the city mayor Johnson or uh Frankfurt Bank had any desire to
have anybody doing that in the city of Phoenix. And so Matt Decker and I,
a couple of interns and the ex budget director for the city of Phoenix
would put together an office about this size for the five of us and given
the task of running that program. So I said for the first six months, I
was the highest paid public affairs clerk in the city of Phoenix and
carried my university salary with me, Ron. Ron Short. Yes, those, the
three of them actually invented this. Um, the second six months was more
interesting because Fairbanks caught the strategic planning virus and
actually begin to believe in it. Not annoying for one minute what it
entail or what it was. And that same unit then was given the design to set
up a strategic planning process for the city of Phoenix, which we did
nicely. And that then got us all working with all the department heads and
the financial officers and so forth because you can't do strategic
planning. This involves budgeting and personnel and stuff like that. Now,
if we go back, that's the same time that the same virus infected this
university through Russ Nelson's office. So it is happening at the same
time. It's probably because the same literature is being read by everybody.
It never did really work very well in, in Phoenix, but it allowed Phoenix
to be called the best governed city in the United States and won a
national war from pre two prestigious organization, one headed by the Bank
of America, one headed by the, the International City Management
Association as the best governance.
So you made a contribution even though they started out as a clerk. Yeah,
II I, you know, you can imagine that being who I am. I wasn't really happy
being stuck in a closet when I thought I was gonna be sitting at the table
with the mayor. I mean, that was, that was shocking. Uh to be honest with
you, I made such an argument with Frank about in private that from then on.
And we had 11 other loan executives for 10 years after they all got
better positions. And I, I pride myself on that, but I said, I'm not gonna
recommend anybody coming over here if you do to them. What you did to me?
He said, well, I got you good parking space now. Yeah, you do better than
that. The president can do that. That didn't quite, that didn't quite do
everything I had in mind for now. And frankly, he said to me, if he'd
known me well, then he probably would have done that. But he didn't know
me from more, honey. And he was a little frightened and his ideas tame the
futures for him. Get those people out of my office. Right. And we did. But
the more important thing is that it really did change the way that
financial resources and human resources were distributed in city fin now,
those of you who have forgotten what 1980 were lying. This was the Reagan
recession. And the first thing Frank had to do is cut the city budget by
13% and not paled by. But what's happening now. But a 1513 to 14% hit it,
also hit this place too at the same time. That's a terrible smash. It was
terrible. So, that's what Frank walked into a really bad situation. He
couldn't hire anybody. I mean, it was impossible to hire anyone as it is
now. So he had, he had his plate full. But, uh, and he did turn, he did
turn around and, and the g planning stuff worked for, you know, three or
four years, which is not bad. And a lot of younger members of the
department learned how to do that, learn how to do numerically based
assessment, actually using real data and they learn how to argue over time
instead of just one fiscal year, they stretch the budget planning out to
more or less mirror the state and the federal planning into a five or six
year planning process uh which is not bad that that's a big jump forward
for a municipality.
You mentioned the uh in the 19 eighties and all the, the budget cuts and
things like that and the reverts that we had uh how, how did that all play
out in some of the challenges you had as an acting being in two different
colleges here? It was, it really brought tears in people's eyes. Now, John
and David, remember I went around taking phones out of people's offices
when I couldn't control the long dis the phone call and said they had to
come into my office to make long dis a phone call. I mean, I literally did
that. I, I got this list from the administrative assistant and I found out
that people are spending all the long-distance phone money and I went
around, took the, uh on the weekend, took the phone to her office and
stacked them up along this wall and I put a phone right outside my office.
Say you wanna make a long dis phone call, that's where you do it. Now,
what what other budget impacts did it have? Well, we cut down, we cut down
uh duplication that xerox and stuff like that. We didn't hire anybody for
a while. I mean, architecture was not allowed to fill unfilled senior
positions, but I did something I thought was very smart and, and to the
benefit of John sitting behind the camera, John was a part time faculty
member at that time and I turned him into a full time staff member. The
way I did that is I took the only line that I could fill, which was an
assistant professorship in architecture and converted it against
everybody's objection to a staff position, which is almost the reverse of
what everybody else is. Right? And I hired John full time and I said, John
, your job is to computerize this college as fast as you can. And I stole
every dime I quote from everywhere including huge amounts of money from
the computer and fusion funds. The Jack I got more than this college fair
share that. And John and I turned this place in from mildly computer
literate to total computer literacy in two years. Even after, like, this
was a time when we were trying to get a computer on everybody's desk.
That's right. And we did and we set up local networks before any other
place on campus had, you know, and so I consider that for this college
probably other than keeping it together under very strange time, my
probably my main contribution is to just literally will this place into
the 21st century ahead of time. What were some of the other challenges
that you faced during that time period? Well, when I was in college, I
faced a lot of problems. One is legitimacy, right? Because I was a member
of the college. And the first thing I did to my own department is to
increase their teaching mode which caused all kinds of hell. But it was
inequitable like the school of public affairs when I came, had a one
course this semester teaching them. And that's very nice. Uh But it
doesn't make much sense when you're having financial problems and when
your enrollments are not high enough to be depend on, right? And I didn't
have any desire to force them to have an undergraduate program. II, I
personally still believe we should not have undergraduate program in
public administration, although we have several now. Uh But I said, you
know, if you guys can't give me a really good strategic plan of how you're
gonna get resources. I'm gonna have to increase your teaching when they
thought, oh, well, they didn't do a good job of, of convincing me. And so
for the spring semester, I doubled the teaching and they said you can't do
that. I said no, no, read the fine print, I can do that and, and I, and I
tried to do it in consultation and it didn't work. So like taking one of
frank sacks wrote, do what needs to be done and then apologize afterwards.
And that's what I did. Well, you can imagine a faculty of 25 coming down
the hall in groups of five outraged because it did change their life. Sure.
Now, if they could buy it back, that is, they could buy the time back by
going out and getting research degrees or grants or, or telling me they
were doing something that was very useful that I could measure and defend
when I had to go to the council of things and go to you when you, when you
were acting pro host and defend it. Right. Right. And I, and I need a
number and I needed something other than magic to do it with. And I said,
if you can convince me that's true, then I will be glad to carry it
forward. But you can't convince me it's true. It's not gonna leave this
office and you can go, you can make an Enron, but I like to listen to you
and Russ Nelson is gonna listen to you and a successor. They're gonna
listen to you. They're gonna come to me and you're gonna be stuck with
that. Well, they didn't like that. The second thing is that I got
crosswise in a couple of personnel decisions. One was
promoting someone that probably shouldn't have been promoted, but I didn't
, couldn't control that. And one was denying tenure to a minority woman
who, who didn't do their own. And that reading caused all kinds of hell.
And so when my successor was chosen, the first question, two faculties
asked the two faculties which were affected by the decision was, would you
do as Dean Weschler done? And then they would lay out the dirty laundry,
right. Well, most of the people who interviewed for the job said, no, we
don't want to talk about that. Let's talk about what I can do to make this
a better place. We don't want to repair injustice of the path we want to
go forward. But uh that, that caused me a lot of problems because on the
one hand, I had to go to the faculty and do something, then I didn't
totally believe in. But sometimes you have to do that. And the other one,
I do something which I really believed in but wasn't going to win any
points with anybody. But my position was that you shouldn't carry
irresolvable issues upward unless you had to, don't give it to the
university committee to
when we, we've talked about your administrative roles and we talked about
your research and uh doctoral students and all that, but we haven't said
anything yet about your teaching and, uh you were in a position of uh
being a, a leader in that area as well with some of the honors and awards
that you received. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I'm gonna have
to go back and tell you a long boring story. But bear with me when I was
at Davis, when I first started, I wasn't a very good teacher and I don't
think many young, freshly minted phd S are very good teachers. There are
some, but they're very rare. Usually there are people who have taught a
lot before they get the doctor. And I had this young woman who was one of
my advises and Davis, you get them when they're freshmen and you keep them
for four years unless they decide to fire you. Well, I had the same young
woman as my adviser for six years, four years for a baccalaureate and two
years for a master's degree. And I learned a lot from her. And then after
she was working on her master's degree, she went to work for the State
Department of Water Resources with whom I was already consulting and she
hired me to come over and talk to the new interns and the new
administrators about how you get along with the legislators. Because a lot
of these people are engineers and business managers and you know,
technical people, field people and they had the slightest idea about
politics and they just as soon not have any politics on their plate. So
I'm giving them my standard song dance about lobbying legislators and the
role of public administrators being lobbyists and stuff like that. And I
notice she's back in the corner taking notes
and when God, she must have heard this conversation 30 times in the last
five years, this is impossible. So I invited her to lunch. Name is
Charlotte. And I said, Charlotte, what in the hell is going on here? And
she turned real red and says, lou it's the first time I ever understood
anything you ever said.
Well, was it not fine? You know, now, at this point, I thought that I was
just being brilliant and, you know, and I will tell you that I think I'm
pretty smart, but I quickly discovered that I wasn't really as good a
teacher as I thought I was. And so she and I had a number of lunches and
then I called back students who take classes for me because I, I was
actually a very popular teacher and I want to teach you a word to do it.
And it turned out that being glib was what they were in China.
And the fact that I could explain things even to the point, they couldn't
understand it. Uh and things like that. And it turned out I was a very
good public speaker, but I said, no, no. Come on. Did you actually learn
anything? And so we had a long discussion and at that point, I created for
myself, two or three rules and one rule. And, you know, many of you are
not gonna believe this is to always listen to the students first and talk
later.
And that's a hard rule for me. But it worked and uh sometimes it was
painful for me and the students because I would say something or I put
something on the board of discussion question and I wouldn't say a word
until the students started talking about it. And those minutes would take
away slowly. The second rule I had was I, I would now try to customize
every class so that the least capable student would actually learn
something.
And the third thing I would do is I would make them write and write and
write and write. Well, over the years I became
first a good teacher. And then I think a really a really good teacher or I
wouldn't have been on so many dissertations. I wouldn't, I won teaching
awards every place I've been at every level you can imagine including a
lifetime award as the best teacher in public administration nationally.
We're very proud of that or Yeah. Uh but I wouldn't have won it in 1968.
I, so this woman actually changed my life, but I'm smart enough to have
figured out that she changed my life. But I thanked her for it and so
forth. She was very embarrassed but it uh it worked out.
Ross was really important person to change this university,
as I said before, he was a patron saint of the arts and kept the arts at a
high level.
Although Lady K gets most of the credit now for creating this as a
research university was actually Russ Nelson and the three provost
including yourself who made a su into research agenda. That's right. And
you did it and, and uh it turned out, lady came here exactly the right
time to get credit for the recognition of the outside world. But it was
really those eight years um that made this a research university and it
was done very quietly, but it was done diligently. It showed up many
places and resource allocation. So I admire Russ Nelson, not because he
can hold his temper credit almost anybody else in the world, but because
he was a person who shared a vision of the university with talented people
around him and mobilize them in his quiet way to create the university, a
different university. Um So I think that I think Paige Mulholland who I
didn't know very well, it was a very, very important to me. Not only did
he get me here, but he's actually largely responsible. The fact that we
have a multi campus system. He inherited. Russell Nelson inherited this
from him, wasn't entirely happy about it, but page actually laid the
foundation for the west campus and east campus in his work. And so I
admire him for that. Although I did, I mention Nick Henry who has been
born in my side for years, I admire Nick Henry because he was the right
person at the right time doing the right thing for whatever reasons. And
so he created the School of public Affairs and he did something that's
very hard in a modern university. He got away with creating a unit where
you can actually balance public service research and teaching and get
credit for it. He always spoke as a three legs to. That's right. That was
his favorite term and three leg to a right. And Ron Perry is the only
person who ever won that. But the point is that's a major accomplishment.
I thought that two or three of the deans over here and this is like
be popular. Everybody. I think John mcaffrey, I mean, uh Jerry mcaffrey
was a good thing, but I think that John mcgee was an excellent dean. The
faculty generally don't agree with me on that, but mcsherry has to be, I
mean, um it has to be viewed the same way they can they're outside,
they're not really good administrators inside the university setting.
They're very good at connecting the unit with the world outside and they
both so I admire on that. Um, who else? Well, I actually think a couple of
our football coaches are pretty good, including my neighbor,
Kush Frank Frank's might be my neighbor. I lived here and Frank, you know
, is, is it, it is for good or bad, is, in fact, uh person, great
reputation. He certainly put a su on the map. And I think Schneider was an
underrated coach when he went Ks opposite of front koh, but Schneider was
a great coach and he, and he put a su back on the map. I didn't know the
basketball coaches as well and I did come to UCL A. So you can imagine the
comparisons I made here. Um I think Jack uh King was a good provost at
least for the first four or five years. He was here. He brought in
computer infusion. He brought in affirmative action with a vengeance here.
He was a little too much science oriented for me, but the science has
flourished under his, under his time here. Um I think Jack Fisher was an
important resource for this university, both when he was president of the
regions and then later when he became my colleague as a faculty member and
then confidant of higher administration. So I admire him, I admire him. He
can lie. But anybody I ever saw him the first time I ever saw Jack on
television, he was explaining that the Navajo generator didn't really
cause any pollution. I found that hard to believe and I still find it
harder. So I challenged on that once. He, it was my job to say that. And
that was his only explanation. I think that's kind of interesting. So,
Jack and I are really close friends. We see each other one time. I think I
, I considered Charles Wolf
as important as any administrator that a SU had in the last 40 years. Uh I
think he virtually is the greatest English scientist. But beyond that, he
was a lot more tolerant of diversity, academic diversity than he gets
credit for. And he fostered a lot of interesting experiments in the
university and he was a really good graduate dean. And I think Brian
Foster was a really good graduate dean. And so I count both of them as
being really important to a hu. And to me, certainly my job was a lot
easier to do as head of the DP A program with Chuck Wolf and Brian Foster
in the dean's office
out of all your accomplishments at a su uh what would you say? It gave you
the most satisfaction. You did so many different things, but I think
successful mentoring of Don for students. Um I mentioned in the little
resume I wrote recently that the hardest thing for an academic to judge
unless they are reading a genius in their uh in their contribution to
science is to judge the long lasting impacts of what they do. Um Very few
of us are such important sciences that we made the kind of contribution
that turns our field in our heads. And certainly I can make no claims of
that. I did some important things, but they tend to be an applied science
rather than basic science. Um But I think we can judge part of impact by
the students of our students. Now, in my case, about half of my students
were administrators, about half of academics. But as I explained to BJ
Tatro who is a consultant, we're all teaching all the time whether we know
it or not. And the question is, are we self conscious about it? I mean,
every human being, I mean, it's a cliche but it's true. Every human being
is teaching something, parents teaching something, a dog trainer is
teaching something even if they're not a dog. And the issue is not that
they're having impact on the people's lives. I'm learning with them. Are
they self conscious about that? And do they behave in such a way that they
account for the learning needs of the environment around them? So I take
greatest pride in the fact that both the academics who went on in, in a
clinic life and those who went to administrative positions or manage
positions are really good teachers. Ok. Not all of them. Not 100% but far
more than I had imagined. That would be true when I did my first doctoral
student at, uh, University of California Davis, who was older than I was.
How do you feel a su changed from the time you came here until the time
you retired or even down? Yeah, I think, I think a su has really changed
and I don't take much credit for it, but I think it's worthwhile thinking
about uh I think about it in terms of first of faculty resources, this is
a radically different faculty than it was 30 years in the. And one can
argue, one can think about the good old days when everybody was a good
teacher and they weren't, you know, and so forth and so on. There's a lot
of romanticism about that. But the major change is that the science that
this fact that produces is really almost immeasurable. I mean, this is
really a major fountain of science, both for Arizona and the world. I mean
, this is we produce at almost every college, cutting edge of applied and
basic research. That was not true 30 years ago. That's true. II I can
think of only one or two departments in which that's not true. I mean,
there are some departments that don't do research so we can't say that.
But even even in the arts, we have leading scholars and, and performers in
that. Uh certainly in the hard science and certainly in the bioscience and
certainly in the behavior science and certainly in management. Uh we do a
lot of tuning in our home locally. But if you actually look at the members
of the national academies, we have a member of people win awards every
year for their contribution to the knowledge of the world. This is now
this, this university in its own right is equal to the University of
Arizona. Nobody in the University of Arizona even admit that. That's true.
But it is true. We don't have a medical school, we don't have a cultural
school so we really can't compete with them. But if you take those two
pieces out in every other way possible, we are as equal to them and our
rankings show that that's true. Uh The second thing is that along with
that teaching is actually better than it was when I came here. Now,
remember I'm talking about teaching broadly defined, we still have too
many undergraduates not getting the full impact of full professors. We
have, our classes are too big largely because they're underfunded or we
make bad resource allocation. We don't actually, even though we go a lot
of space, we don't have enough teaching space. And so, but given those
constraints, I would say any average, the average teacher here is a more
proficient teacher than they were 30 years ago. I think we're not as good
at public service as we were 30 years ago. And that pains me somewhat
probably because it's not rewarded as much. It's not a formal reward
system. That's the one thing is declined. Um, certainly the overhead costs
in university are much higher than it used to be and being somewhat
financially conservative. That causes me a lot of discomfort because I
know you can do a lot better with less than, um, I, I, sometimes I try not
to be critical but sometimes when I go to the website and look at the
number of administrators it takes to do
the work of one person. It's bizarre
calling your retirement. I know that, uh, you've had a continued
involvement with a su and, uh, tell us about that through various
organizations. Yeah. Well, uh,
I, I joined, I think I might have joined the Arizona Retire Association
actually, before I retired. I think I joined the year before. I think
that's very important because it is a broadly based retirees association
so that the lowest member of whatever would go around or janitor can join
in as well as vice President Provost, I suppose. I don't think any of the
presidents bond. I don't think so. They should. Laddie and Russ should
join but they're not, uh, because I think it's an important organization
because it provides a home and a linkage in a community communication
system for people who otherwise would be cut completely off in place. They
might have spent 40 years of their life. I only spent 20 years here, but
you were here nearly 40 years and, you know, a lot of staff, people have
been here 40 years or more, you know. So, I think it's an important
organization. Uh, and I think it does a lot of good things. I think the
lobbying effort is astoundingly good. I think the service things we do. I
, I think keeping me both update on retiring and the medical care issue. I
think the travel things are kind of interesting, hard to do, but they tend
to work pretty well. And um I've actually heard people say they would know
, in fact, they learn more about the university through this organization
after retired than they knew before. So I think it's an important
organization,
my main love and I'm gonna go back to my previous life. I used to be a
very unsuccessful commercial artist and, and landscape painter uh for 20
years. And, and so when I retired from a su I decided to become a patron
of the arts and become a practicing artist. And I suddenly discovered one
day that I hadn't been the art museum for six months. And I said, oh my
God, this is crazy because I used to go every week. So I said, what am I
gonna do? I know I'll go work there, I'll make sure I get there. And so
that's what I did. I showed up at the store one day and the real iron who
had been running the store for now, 40 years, husband was a chem chemistry
class.
Uh, you know, that's all she did for 40 years back in the days when it was
on the first landing and Matthew's home. So I walked up and, and I
introduced myself and it turned up. But Nelson was sitting there too and I
said, can I go to work here? Benina says, how about Thursday? Well, this
is on Tuesday.
So I went to work on Thursday and then I went upstairs the next week and
introduced myself to the woman Michelle talk who is running the Doson
program. He said, well, you're not allowed to work in the store without
being trained in the General Nelson program. I said that will be news.
Everybody works in the store, but I'm gay. So in that spring, I went to
an informal training program for the Doson. There turned out to be 30 of
us being trained, which is the high point so far in the last decade. And
there were three men there including me and we were the first three, first
, three male, dozens all time and we all three are still there. Uh So
that's how that started. But it's largely because of my interest in the
arts that I went to the art Museum. Well, without a su of course, I
wouldn't, I've done something wonderful. And thank you. For taking time to
let us chat with you about uh your, your history at a su and all the, the
changes that you saw. My pleasure. Thank you once again, appreciate it.