Today is Thursday, April 17, 2014. We are conducting an interview for the
Arizona State University Retirees Association video history project. We
are located today in the ASU Community Services building. I'm Doctor
Marilyn Mason, now retired from ASU. The technical support staff today
include Roger Carter on camera, Dave Shatzley, director, and in attendance
is Linda Van Scooj, chair of the ASURA Video History Project.
Bob, please introduce yourself. State your name. I'm Robert Bob Francis.
Bob, can you let our viewers know a little bit about your early life?
Where were you born and raised? Sure, um. My, my parents, uh, were
veterans of World War II and met during the war. Uh, my dad was from
Buckeye, Arizona. My mom was from Southern Illinois, um, so I'm kind of a
baby baby boomer. I was born in 1946 in Phoenix, um. My parents moved to
Yuma around 1950, 1952, um, so I grew up in Yuma, Arizona and attended uh
Yuma High School and following that, Arizona Western College, I graduated
from Yuma High in '64 and Arizona Western in '66, came up to ASU in '66
and left with a uh bachelor of Arts degree in education. With a major in
journalism and minors in history and English in 1969, I taught high school
for a year at COA High School in Yuma, um, totally enjoyed that experience
, uh, at that point, um, Don Dotts came down to, um, the high school and
met with me and. Um, his assistant director for publications had was was
taking another position, and Don offered that position to me, and I
accepted, um, thinking I wanted to get out of Yuma, and I wanted to, uh.
Um, advance my career related to written publication and have the
opportunity to pursue higher education, um, and everything that Don was
offering me would, would let me do all those things.
Can you briefly describe your career here at ASU?
Briefly,
sure, yeah, we'll get into details right. I, I started in 1970, um, as the
editor of Alumni Publications. Um, later I became an assistant director
for alumni and editor of publications, um. At that, then I moved into
undergraduate admissions on a part-time basis as an administrative
assistant while still being the assistant director and editor of
publications for alumni, um. Undergraduate admissions had just been
separated from the registrar and admissions office and I moved into um
student affairs from academic affairs and so I was on the ground floor of
creating undergraduate admissions uh at that point, um. In undergraduate
admissions I held a number of titles, most of which related to coordinator
or assistant director titles for either school relations or orientation,
um.
Leaving that position as an executive coordinator in 1997.
Um, And I left to become the executive coordinator for Greek Life working
with fraternities and sororities and was in that position till I retired
in 2002.
Can you share a little bit about your experiences with um alumni
association, undergraduate admissions and student development?
How much time do we have? Um
The the alumni association really helped me personally, um, determine
where I was going to end up going with my career, um, and I, I failed to
recognize it kind of as I was getting into it. I, I came up to the alumni
association and uh. Uh, at that point, the alumni association had begun
working with student development or student relations around 1965-966
and um with um. A network of alumni counselors and teachers and created a
program called Devil's Advocates and also was giving campus tours and and
sending devil's advocates out to speak at high schools and so um the
alumni association was actually kind of the recruiting arm of the
university at that point um. So I found in addition to working with the
publications, the person that was working with school relations, um,
really kind of in uh saw the opportunity for me to enjoy what I enjoyed
doing and, and I got to accept more responsibility and work with students
and became adviser to devil's advocates and oversee the the tourist
program and speaking engagements and um the alumni network program. Um,
After about 3 years, as I mentioned before, there was a separation between
the registrar and the admissions office. Uh, uh, registrar stayed in the
academic affairs area. Uh, admissions moved into student affairs, and at
that point became undergraduate admissions. Uh, there was a team of about
3 to 4 people, um. That was brought together to create that office. Uh,
Joe Norton was the assistant director for admissions under, uh, Alfred
Thomas, and he moved over to be the director of admissions. Um, Christine
Wilkinson was moved over from the DM student's office where she was
employed as an assistant director for student activities. I was brought in
as an administrative assistant to help with school relations and to help
with publications, um. And then Dorothy Alexander came over as a secretary
from, from the uh student affairs area and so we were the primary. Um,
Staff for undergraduate admissions at that point.
Then it grew into um from there it just grew. I mean Roger became the dean
of admissions or dean of undergraduate admissions um Christine was the
coordinator of orientation um after one year, uh, I was offered the
opportunity to join the staff on a full-time basis, um, and after talking
with Don about opportunities and, and, um. I, I made the decision to move
over to undergraduate admissions and, and work with publications and
student relations, um, and I was in that area for about 3 or 4 years and
then Christine became more the director for school relations and I then
moved into the orientation area and remained the uh. In orientation for
about 25 years in undergraduate admissions with different titles as I said
earlier. Um, from Do I move into student development at this point? OK, uh
, and then in the student development, um.
Uh, that was also created with a reorganization in the student affairs
area, um, and so for trains and Shorties, um, they created the executive
coordinator title. I moved over into that position. Um
Working with fraternities and authorities as well as the staff of of
student development which included um student government and the EMU and
um.
Community service and some of the other student related activities and I
was in that position, as I said for 5 years.
So you were in undergraduate admissions for many years. What was so
special about admissions?
Um,
Admissions were special.
It, it just had special people and it did special things. I mean, we, what
we did was fun and what we did, um. Was positive and, and I think we did
it with good people. um, Christine and Roger hired. Very, um, somewhat
young individuals who were very energetic, very personable, um,
hardworking, um.
Intelligent.
Um And, and willing to do what needed the extra things that needed to be
done um when you do that kind of work because a lot of it's uh sometimes
almost 24 hours a day, um. But, but constant. I mean, you're sometimes you
, you leave early to go to high schools, you come back late, you have
evening events and you have weekend activities that that are held and um
for special activities and orientation programs and so there's just a high
demand um. I, I think we created a very positive image on the campus, um,
that we were respected on the campus as well as off the campus by by our
colleagues and, and high school and community college counselors, um.
It was just a tremendous experience with great positive people.
Can you tell us about an achievement of undergraduate admissions and how
it may have boosted ASU's ability to attract students?
Uh, at that point, I, I think undergraduate admissions, and I, I don't
want to give it the full credit, but, um, I, I do think it was at the
forefront of. Convincing the institution about the value of marketing to
the university, um. Up up up until That time the the university had kind
of seen. Itself as, you know, take us or leave us type of thing, um, if
you wanna come fill out the application, here it is, and that was it, um.
And I, I believe that with the founding of undergraduate admissions and
And the marketing that kind of came with that, the personal contacts, the
, um, the publications that were provided, the programs that that came to
be, um, working with offices across the campus to accomplish common goals
, um, recruiting of, of quality students, um, establishing programs to
recognize, um, outstanding. Characteristics of students, leadership, uh,
academics, um.
Special abilities in academic areas, um.
all these, I, I think.
Help to
Convinced people in the administration that the value of marketing um and
the image of the institution was was very valuable to. to recognizing the
issue as as people wanted it to be.
The admissions office, and I think that's what I understand you worked in
, not registrar but undergraduate admissions. was responsible for
recruiting now that it came away from alumni. Um, And in that job you had
, the big job was. Reaching out to high schools and places around the
country. And you'd put on orientations not only on campus but you'd go out
maybe to New Jersey or San Francisco did a lot of travel to connect with
prospective students, is that right? That is, is correct. Uh, you know, in
, in the beginning, the alumni association primarily did the things that
worked with school relations. The admissions and registrar's office
produced a catalog every year and produced admissions applications. And
that's about it, um, up until admissions were separated and went into
George Hamm, um, and George decided that we needed to compete more with
the University of Arizona, uh, to recruit quality students, and then, um,
the undergraduate admissions office was created and from there just kind
of blossomed, um, through its programming and, and publications. I mean,
not all this happened obviously overnight. It, it, it took a period to
develop and. And create the programs to where they are today. The and
things just seem to kind of tie together in a lot of ways and particularly
with admissions, um. And a lot of it made sense and and that's what. Kind
of created the family atmosphere and the fun part of the program. So I
mean when when you go out and visit all the high schools every year all
the colleges in the state line up and all these cars get in a row and they
go into the high schools and they try and sell the the high school
students on their institutions well, and then they get in their cars and
they go to the next high school two hours later. I mean it's just, um, but
that goes on for probably 6 to 8 weeks. You know, and we didn't have the
staff to do that, so we had to reach out to people in the university
community and, and some of them would take a week. The departments would
allow them to take a week and and travel and represent us and, and, um, so
we have kind of helped develop a family and collaboration through those
types of activities, um.
Don Dots allowing us to to take over the school relations program from his
office, um, so the people now came to our office for campus tours. Devil's
advocates were there. They would give the campus tours. Advocates went out
and spoke to the high schools and and tried to recruit students, um, in a
subtle way from that perspective, um. We started offering office
interviews so that students who came to our campus could actually sit down
with someone and and talk about what to do at at that point advisors
didn't want to meet with students till they were enrolled um or ready to
enroll and um there wasn't anyone else to meet with the students and so we
had parents and family and students just wandering our campus trying to
figure out what the issue is all about, um.
From there we moved into minority recruitment, you know, and, and
recognizing the need for diversity and to represent the university in, in
, in different ways to different populations and um. Orientation programs
was a natural fit, um, so that came over from student activities and
student life, um, with Christine and then, um later publications and. And
multimedia types of activities, the web and all that was developed and um.
The parent program was a uh uh once you get into orientation and work in
school relations, you, you really see that the university needs to also
meet the needs of parents because they are an important part of the
decision making process, um, so that became a part of the thing. So
everything has kind of organization you formed there was a parent
organization that was formed in uh in our office out of undergraduate
admissions correct.
With all the geographic changes ASU has undergone in the past several
years, it's kind of hard to imagine where did you do your, hold your
orientation programs. The orientation programs. That was probably one of
the biggest challenges, um, during orientation, uh, in that, um, we never
knew where we were going to be kind of from year to year. At that point we
, we had to make our reservations, um, anywhere from 9 months to a year
out, um, and in that case, uh, orientation wasn't necessarily a priority
to the university. Um, so we were always battling, um, other offices and
for campus space, be it space in the union or be it space in the academic
facilities. Um, We tried to be in the union as much as possible, um, and
later as I was leaving the institution, um, I, I we were able to schedule
um orientation functions pretty much before anyone else, um, just because
of the size of the programs we, we've grown so much that we, we just
needed almost orientation every day from April until practically mid July
to August.
Were there any particular challenges you encountered during your career?
Every day was a challenge, um, and that's what made my job fun, um, for my
job's fun, um.
Probably the the biggest challenge related to convincing the institution.
Um, about the value of orientation and um.
Providing entering new students with information that will help them be
successful and to navigate the university system during their time on our
campus, um.
That was probably an ongoing challenge, um, for the time that I was here,
uh, about the time I was leaving, I, I sense that, uh, well, Christine had
become the vice president at that point, and, uh, the value of orientation
I think was now being recognized around the campus. Um, the, the fact of
the matter is that orientation probably in the long run.
Changed but didn't change that much. I mean when I when I left the program
we still had 22 day programs, so there was overnight programs we
implemented 1 day programs for transfer students primarily but they became
popular um we implemented some out of state programs, um. And, and just
the size of of our programs and the number of students going through the
university and through our programs increased but. Um, But the philosophy
behind orientation and and what you're trying to provide for new students
, I don't think changed from day one to when I left in your career, uh,
emphasis came down from the upper administration on your activities, uh.
Who was most involved in directing. The activities of the admissions
office. George Hamm. was the vice president for student affairs and he was
the vice president that that. was in office when undergraduate admissions
began its functioning, um.
He definitely had a say in undergraduate admissions who was employed, um,
somewhat how the direction we were going, definitely budget, uh, obviously
facilities and things like that. uh, I don't think at that point too much
of that Doctor Schwater was involved too much except to be at occasional,
um, functions and, and to represent the university to speak it's junior
day, senior day, those types of things, um.
Uh,
Russ Nelson took a little bit of, of a role but not a lot. Um, he truly
believed in, um, Leadership from the bottom up and and um but but Laddie
Cos seemed to have a really different approach to things and a different,
a definite interest and a different vision of of where the institution
should be going and I, I think how undergraduate admissions could be a
part of that and um. And under Doctor K, I, I believe, um, the provost's
office came about and at that point there was more definitely more
definitely more collaboration. And more work with the uh provost office in
recruiting of new students, uh, particularly those that of high quality
and academic abilities, um, all along the lines, you know, the, for
instance, the dean of students was very supportive of, of us related to
student activities and programs providing people at orientation things
like that, as were the academic deans. They would always try and see that
someone was there to represent their college or. Or their majors uh during
orientation or during our special days.
And can you share a few special memories about working with the devil's
advocates?
Um,
Devil Devil's Advocates was the joy of my life in a lot of ways. Um, I, I
advised that group for close to 25 years, um, starting with the alumni
association. They already existed when I, uh, began my employment, um, so
I began advising them around 1971 and basically
left that position around 1996, 1997, somewhere in that time frame, um.
They were, they were a group of students that were just because of who
they were and how they were selected as an organization, they were just
truly outstanding, dynamic, personable, energetic.
Group of students that you could ever meet.
They themselves, I think, were responsible for recruiting thousands of
students to our university, and, and people may think I'm exaggerating,
but that's really not the case. Um, they, because of who they were and, um
, and how they were easily identified, they, they spoke at high schools
they gave tours of campus to prospective students and their parents. They
helped with special days on campus, junior days, senior days, all kinds of
VIP type of days, um, so, so they were totally very visible. They, they
served in the orientation program. Um, so this, this new students coming
in the university saw them from the day that they spoke in their classroom
to when they visited the campus to when they arrived on campus for
orientation and, and there was just an instant identification and, um, and
I think a positive experience. Uh The quality of the individuals, the, the
group was 25 when I started advising when I left, it was, uh, an
organization of 35 students, so it grew by 10 students over 25 years, but
, uh, um, they, they were just incredible.
In that um. Oh, they, they were total leaders. They were dynamic and
personable, as I said. How did you go about recruiting devil's advocates
and selecting them? What was that process?
Uh
It it's a complex process, but it's fairly simple. Um, nomination form
nominations were selected were asked by, uh, people from throughout the
campus to nominate quality students for the organization. They did have to
have a minimum GPA, not high, but I think it was like a C+ GPA something
like that, um.
The selection process itself was a little bit more intense in that all the
people that were nominated came to a reception and they met members of
advocates and, um, mixed and mingled in kind of a tea atmosphere and then
after the reception the advocates would get together and they would
determine, um, from that reception who would be invited back for
interviews. And then they would invite people back for um uh round one of
interviews and there would be um so approximately 60% of those that
attended the reception would be invited back for an interview, um, you'd
call it an audition it would be an audition and um, did they have to walk
backwards? They did not have to walk backwards at that point, but they,
they did. They walked into a room. Uh, fairly like this, uh, uh, probably
a small room. There would be 10 to 15 advocates there. Um, each of the
advocates would ask about 5 questions. The applicant would respond and
then, uh, leave, and, um, 5 minutes max, um, and then based on that 5
minutes. Um, about 20% would be invited back. Um, and then from that
usually about 10% would be selected to join the, the group itself, the
only, the only people who were replaced in the group were those that were
choosing to leave the group or, um, graduating from the institution. And
so if we had a group of 25 and and a graduating class of 10, we would only
be replacing 10 people, but we might start with 150 people at the T. And,
and so it, it was just a process of elimination, obviously the, the, the
cream comes to the top fairly quickly and it's all based on. A lot of it
is based on because of what they do, uh, first impression. Uh, what are
the benefits that they would have to stick with the organization, just
being in front of people and Performing and
I, I, I, uh, a lot of it, I, I think related to networking, um, amongst
themselves because they represented all parts of the campus and, and
therefore particularly younger advocates could be mentored by older
advocates going into student government, going into fraternities and
sororities, going into, uh, academic careers, um, going into whatever
directions they wanted to, there were people there that would. Um, be
willing to work with them and guide them along those ways. Definitely I
think there was an ego type of thing involved in there, but in defense of
that too, I, I think a lot of what they were doing, they already had the
skills and the personality, uh, to, to meet those qualifications. I mean
they were just they were truly outstanding and they. Their personalities
and their dynamic, uh, ability, high energy, um, alpha people all the way.