SRU ORAL HISTORY
"SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY IN THE SIXTIES"
INTERVIEWEE:
DR. ROBERT AEBERSOLD
DR. JOSEPH RIGGS AND LEAH M. BROWN
INTERVIEWERS:
28 MAY1991
R:

Our most common question is how did you get to Slippery Rock?

A:

That's kind of happenstance. I mean I knew about Slippery Rock. I was in
graduate school at the University of Maryland, and a very good friend of
mine who was an East Stroudsburg graduate, was in graduate school with
me. Fellow by the name of Mel Williams, and we got to the point where we were
looking for jobs and Mel was always the best student in the class. Mel was
coming to Slippery Rock for an interview and I said, gee, that sounds
interesting, and while he was gone Old Dominion

called and had a job open.

I called them . They said well they had already talked to Mel and he was coming
down, but if he didn't take the job then they'd talk to me about it. So Mel came
back and went down to Old Dominion and came back and said that he liked
the Old Dominion job. He liked Slippery Rock but he thought that job was more
to his liking in terms of research , and that he would call Bill Meise and tell him
that I was interested in the Slippery Rock job. Sure enough he did, and had me
call Bill and invited me for an interview and I was offered the job. That was the
spring of 1968. I think it was interesting to me because Slippery Rock with the
physical education reputation that it had and my interest in physical education
and coaching as well as teaching and being able to teach in something other
than a basic skills program. I knew of many jobs in higher education where
basically the people in physical education taught the skills courses only and I
didn't want to do that. The thing that was appealing about Slippery Rock and a
few other schools was that the program for majors was big enough that there

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could be a lot of discipline content area teaching even if you were to teach
some activity courses. Plus, the philosophy that teachers did the coaching was
important to me and that allowed me to do some coaching as an assistant
coach that I might not have been able to do some other places. So as I say, with
a little bit of luck, I guess, in getting here and part of that's because Mel Williams
wanted the other job.

R:

You were his backup.

A:

I guess so.

8:

What was Bill Meise's position?

A:

Bill was then , I think, at that time the department chairman of Physical
Education. It was about the time when a school was being created then ,
because it was about the same time that he hired Bill Shiner and Russ Whaley
and they were to become the department heads of the other two departments,
Health and Recreation. So it was around that time that transition was taking
place. Then Bill became the dean of that group and, I think, Bill Herman became
the first chairman of that department, as I recall. .

R:

You came as an assistant professor?

A:

Yes . There was a long time that I thought I came as an instructor but I went
back and checked that out a few years ago. I came in as an assistant professor.
It was an interesting time because there was a great deal of growth at that time
as you all are well aware and a lot of people being added in our department
alone. For about three years, there were probably five to eight people added
and that was going on , I think, in other departments around the University.

R:

You became chairman then of Physical Education in 1970?

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A:

About, let's see, about 1970 to 1971 , something like that, and I chaired it for
about five or six years in there . Must have been about 1971 or 1972, then about
that time I chaired the department. I had a sabbatical in the spring of 1977. I
came back and it was that following year that Larry Park decided he wanted an
acting vice-president. So it was about 1978 that I became an acting vicepresident. So I chaired it from about 1971 or 1972 up to that period.

R:

Perhaps you could say something about how Larry Park came to select you .

A:

Well, I don't know very much about how he came to select me. I know that
Larry had decided that he would replace Jim Roberts, who was then the
vice-president and that it would be a temporary situation, and I had not any
great interest in it, really, and as things went on in that time frame, I don't
remember now exactly the timing , but it must have been late in the spring
because I think the appointment was made for July or June. It would have been
made at the June meeting, but what I recall was that there were several people
applying and as I saw who was applying, I thought, well, I've been as active and
as involved as they have. And it would be kind of a one year thing, and it may
be a good thing to learn something about it because, I think, what I really had in
mind was that it would have been nice to have been dean. That was at the
same time that the dean's search, Bill Meise had gone on sabbatical and the
temporary dean's position was filled by Martha Haverstick, and so that chance
wasn't available. So I guess at the last minute I decided well, if all these other
people are going to apply for that, I may as well too. Turned in my application
and, lo and behold, became the successful candidate , and I really don't know
the process that Larry Park went through to select me. We've never talked

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A:

about it, and I was pleased that he did. I was thoroughly convinced , in fact, I
probably have in a letter somewhere to people that I fully intended to stay one
year on the job. When I got into the job, there were people saying well, you may
discover you like it and then you'll want to stay. I said, no, no, I don't think I
would want to do that and my mind changed as the year went on and it was kind
of exciting and challenging . Then Larry Park left and Herb Reinhard came and
asked me to stay while he got started, and I said, well , okay. I'll do it for a year.
Then the time came to decide whether to apply for the position, what do they
call it, permanent, whatever that means, right? So I again, applied for that, kind
of late after a lot of soul searching. I think the soul searching even with the
presidency comes from two different things. One is the lack of positive contact
with students, classroom teaching , and the idea being that there are no
permanent jobs and being in administration is much different than having
tenure. Particularly in those days prior to the beginning of the state system . So
there was a lot of soul searching to be done. But I had decided I did not want to
go back and be chairman of the Physical Education Department, with
discussion with family, etcetera, because that had all the difficult parts of
administration and kept you from doing all the fun parts of the teaching, I
think. It was more constraining than other roles, I think. So, you know, that just
kind of followed , and I don't know whether I was selected because I was from
one of the biggest programs on campus or because the nature of the
competition , people thought I could deal better. I don't know. But it was fun and
it was interesting and I'm glad I did it.

R:

What were some of the changes that took place in the early years in Physical

R:

-5Education? I know Martha Haverstick has talked a lot about that.

A:

She probably remembers it a lot better than I do. Slippery Rock is somewhat
unique in the way physical education has evolved here, and it's unique because
in most places physical education started out as two separate programs, one
for men and one for women. I don't think, well, I know that here it never was
divided that way officially, and for the most part, ir(v:,pinion, it's never operated
that way. There were times when Martha was kind of in charge of women's
programs, so to speak, whether that would have been W .R.A., the Women's
Recreation Association, but it's always been an integrated department, more so
than any other place I've ever seen. That separation that exists on a lot of
campuses about all kinds of issues. Space, schedules, hiring, all kinds of things .
On some campuses, only men would take certain courses taught by men and
women would take certain courses taught by women. There was a time when
that would have been the case here or the sexes might have been segregated a
little bit, but that changed pretty quickly, and one of the things we did early on
was to integrate activity courses. Gender integration. People wondered, for
example, in physical fitness whether or not we would, gee, would we get college
women to go into physical fitness classes where there were men there because,
you know, they get sweaty. Their hair would get messed up and things like that.
We discovered that that wasn't a problem. They didn't have to go into them .
They were scheduled in such a way they could go, and before long men and
women were in the same classes all through the program, and I think that was
healthy for the program. That was done before anybody suggested you should
do that or you better do that or you have to do that. I think it was because of
the nature of the people in the department that made that happen.

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Programmatically the department changed a great deal from a very, very
structured program when I got here, through a phase where it became less
structured. The structure was more, what should I say, there was more choice
within the structure. You might be required to take a certain number of courses
out of a certain group, not unlike the General Studies curriculum evolved a
little bit, I guess. You might be required to take certain team sports and certain
individual sports. Whereas before, you would have been required to take
everything. I think the program here has been unique and is still unique in its
science and strength. Physiology, kinesiology, anatomy, biomechanics. I know
that in the 1970's our undergraduate students had the equivalent of a master's
degree when they came out of here in regard to the sciences. Perhaps not in
regard to some other things. We were probably weak in areas of history and
philosophy and maybe some of the learning theory areas. Although , Dave
Auxter did such a phenomenal job of that over his tenure here. He's still doing
those kinds of things in his retirement. I think the program was unique for those
two things particularly. It was also unique in that it got terribly big, and there
were not a lot of programs that were terribly big like that. At one point when I
was chair, I don't recall the years it would have been, certainly mid-70's, we had
1400 majors. We had 44 faculty I think. A one point, one-third of every
freshman class that was coming in was coming into Physical Education. We
didn't like that. Although many people on campus thought we were thriving
on it, we didn't like that. I sat with President Watrel and at least one or two
vice-presidents and some other faculty members one day and said we simply
were not going to take any more students. They said, weH , you know, we need

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students, and I said, well , we're going to have to have some help with this
freshman program. We developed in those days a course called Dimensions
in Physical Education. It's still being taught, but it became really an introductory screening course. The deal was that first year or so we would be given
three to five thousand dollars for honoraria and I organized large lecture
sections that then broke down into discussion groups. We would bring in
leaders in the field to talk to these large lecture groups. I mean from all over the
country. They were outstanding. The fallacy was that all these were 18 year old
freshmen who didn't know they were outstanding and didn't know what they
were missing. Conceptually it worked okay, but it would have been better for
juniors and seniors. But we struggled then to handle those huge number of
freshmen students. The fact was that at least for a few years, I would guess,
that there was hardly a time when some of those classes averaged less than
a C average and most of them averaged very close to a C average. It was a
way for us to try to screen students out. I don't know historically what occurred
to change that. I think the changes began when the diminished enrollment in
teacher education, job market, etcetera, began to drop off and began to see
enrollments start to diminish in all of teacher education. Then a lot of those
students began to shift to Recreation. That was all about that same period of
time, but, I don't know, I think I've strayed far from the original question, but
there were a lot of very good things going on. There was a way of life that was
different then, I think. Not unusual. I liken this to the kind of coffeepot social
thing. It was not unusual in those earlier days, early 1970's for five or six or
eight or so people to wander out of the Field House up to the old El Gato in the

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A:

basement where Hon was running her cafeteria and have a cup of coffee and
talk for a half an hour, then go back down and go back to work. Then things
changed to where there was a coffeepot somewhere in the building and you
might find a few people hanging around a coffeepot. Then these doggone
little individual coffeepot brewers came about, and pretty soon people began
having their own and they would have coffee in their own office or you would
pass people on the way to the coffee pot. We lost a whole element of social
interaction and professional interaction over that. It's probably just a function of
change over time that would have occurred anyway, but I think that had a lot
to do with , I think, later in the department somewhat of a deterioration of the
social involvement that people had with each other, and I blame a lot of that on
that little coffeepot situation.

R:

For the lack of a nail, the war was lost?

A:

Yes, I think it could be.

R:

Well , there was some inevitability though , I suppose, because I came in 1971
and we socialized a great deal. The Art Department was always having a
gathering and we saw a lot of people in fairly large groups. The camaraderie
was nifty and it sort of deteriorated by I suppose size.

A:

I think size and living style and geography have changed so much. When I
came, when you came, and when you came, I'm sure you would have looked
first for a place to live that was fairly close by. I think people would expect to do
that. For someone to live in Youngstown in those days and drive here to work
was really outrageous, but there were a few people who did that. I think over the
years what's happened is that we see more and more people who have chosen

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A:

to live further away, and it's not just Slippery Rock. I think it's all higher
education and so now we have people living an hour, and an hour and
fifteen minutes, hour and a half away and we have a lot of them . It's not just
a matter of a few people, but I think that probably was related. Obviously, we
have many more people than we had then. I think that's a factor. But I
think it's also related . What were people doing when we got them? I think we
tend to find more people now who are already in the area somewhere, and
people don't want to move a little distance. Can't afford it, probably. Plus, I
think, in all higher education there's more of a separation of faculty and
personnel from their campus location than there used to be. I think we see
that in terms of faculty involvement with student activities. Because back in
the earlier days, when we went to a student activity you'd see an awful lot of
faculty there. You don't see that very much today. I'm not valuing that as being
bad or good. I think it is not as good for students as it could be. But, I think, it's
just a factor that when people go home and they've driven an hour to get home
they aren't about to drive an hour back unless it's a real command performance
of some type. So I guess those changes do occur and have occurred over the
102 years, and we've survived.

R:

What about the growth of the sports programs?

A:

We have 20 or 21 now. It changes periodically.

R:

And that was a natural evolution of size. The size of the program along with
intramurals and all that.

A:

Yes , I think that when Physical Education was such a large part of the
University, I think in 1968 when I arrived, teacher education itself was probably

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85 percent or more of the college and Physical Education was a large part of
that. You had people coming here for Physical Education because they
wanted to teach or coach . These were people who were active and they wanted
to be involved, and in fact being involved sometimes looked better on their
resumes. So the philosophy of the department and the college, at the time, was
to provide as much opportunity for involvement as was possible. Very early on,
we had large numbers of sports teams. While that number changed , it hasn't
changed dramatically. If anything, it's tended to increase rather than decrease
which is an interesting phenomenon in its own today. But the intramural
program had always been big, too. But in 1963, when the current Field House
was built, you had room to get an awful lot of the student body participating.
Today with the same facilities and the student body having increased probably
50 percent or more, maybe 100 percent since 1963, you don't have room for all
that participation. So it's really very crowded from that standpoint. The other
thing I alluded to, the tendency in colleges is to be cutting sports programs. Cost
is a serious factor and there is a tendency to cut sport programs that don't
bring in money. A tendency to cut sports programs that don't serve a lot of
students or that maybe are not spectator oriented. We've tried to keep that from
happening here. We've made adjustments here or there . We just are phasing
out women's lacrosse. That's partly a factor of not having anyone who would
coach. Because in the old days when you were adding faculty, you could say,
we need a faculty member who can teach Test and Measurement, Kinesiology, and

coach such and such a sport. Today, we can't do that. So one of the options
when a faculty member wants to give up coaching is whether we can find

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another coach. In the case of women's lacrosse, we're pretty much on the
western frontier of lacrosse, anyway. It's an eastern Pennsylvania sport.
Competition is difficult to find , numbers of students interested have declined,
and a coach is not available. So we use that kind of criteria. On the other hand,
we just added to varsity sport status women's water polo and men's water polo.
People wonder about that from the standpoint of competition . Well , they
compete all over the country and are ranked nationally and do some great
things and get the University's name seen positively. I mean, they compete in
the East against Navy and Yale and all the name academic schools in the East,
and I think that's valuable for us. So anyway, the numbers have changed but we
try very much to keep student interest and student demand. We will be seeing
women's soccer very soon. Soccer has hit the country in such a way now that
we have an awful lot of people of college age who began playing it when they
were tiny. They want to play. So I think probably by the fall of 1992, we will
see women's soccer as a varsity sport.

B:

But you're not allowed to require expertise in a sport when you're searching for
a faculty person?

A:

Oh, we could . Yes, we could . The problem would be that it dramatically limits
the pool in the terms of the expertise with teaching . We could do that, but the
difference has been that in the past, very often when someone gave up
coaching they probably left the college.

B:

But not now.

A:

Not since, oh, five, ten years after the contract went in. People want to give up
coaching because they are tired of it and it's understandable but there's no

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A:

vacancy now. So you can 't add a position. Fred Powell is just giving up
wrestling after 23 years and we have an assistant coach on staff who probably
will be able to take Fred's job. But if we didn't have someone already on staff
and with the budgetary problems we have, the question would be, do you
spend the money to hire a coach when you can't spend the money to hire an
English teacher or another position. So the situation has changed dramatically
over the years in terms of how we can staff those programs.

R:

How important have graduate assistants been to the overall picture in terms of
athletics?

A:

In terms of athletics and physical education , they have been very important,
because in those programs they can do things that they're allowed to do under
our contract without being assigned direct responsibilities that would be
considered faculty responsibilities. You have an extra hand in the teaching of
tennis where you may have students scattered over two sets of courts that are
two city blocks apart, and you have an extra hand who can help with that. In
coaching, sometimes, you have graduate assistants who are very expert in
what it is they're coaching, who are of great assistance to student athletes while
they're coaching and at the same time, they're getting their master's degrees
and moving on . So that's been a very, very important part of the program.

R:

And they have never been used as classroom teachers then?

A:

No.

R:

Nor in any other departments either that I know of.

A:

No, they're not permitted to be. That's been one of my concerns over the years.
I think we have had graduate students who would make very capable freshman

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A:

teachers. The fact is some of them are quite experienced in teaching, and even
if they were recent graduatl<ve would have turned them loose on the local
school district to teach maybe the same age student and maybe the same thing.
But I understand back in the history of this when the state colleges were given
the opportunity to offer master's degrees that something was put into it that
would prohibit graduate assistants from teaching. Then, I think, when the union
contract was negotiated that became part of it without people necessarily
understanding where it came from. I will say to faculty, didn't you do some sort
of teaching when you got your master's? And most of them will say yes. Or at
least they were involved in the learning process in some way, and yet we want
to carry ours on and not allow that opportunity. I think it's not best for the
graduate assistant. Now it might be okay in biology where we had them and
they did mostly research and they went on to doctoral programs which were
doing research . But I think in the areas where we have most of our graduate
students and assistants in teaching and counseling and places like that, it
was valuable experience that they were not getting as part of the assistantship.
Don't know if that can ever be changed again. I think probably the union
philosophy in general is that it takes work away. I can understand that although
I think it's a good part of it.

R:

Terribly outdated. Universities just use tens of thousands of graduate teaching
assistants. In communication, they are all sent in to the basic speech program
all over the place and some who are really crackerjacks can teach fundamentals
of radio and voice and diction.

A:

See, if we were to look at that from the standpoint of what's best, I think we

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could do both. I think we could take a master teacher, professor, and have that
professor work with one, two, three graduate assistants, who then could teach
these courses under the guidance of a master professor, and everybody
benefits from that. The master professor might even find some ways to do
some research and get some work that way out of it. But that's something we
just have to deal with in terms of our work situation down the road. Maybe
someday we can change that.

8:

That's interesting because there could be schemes where the master professor
is teaching the course, is paid for the course , but could still use the assistants
and not have it deduct from the master professor's load. I think there are
probably ways of doing that legitimately.

A:

I think, even legitimately now we could have a graduate assistant working with
a professor and from the standpoint of being part of a teaching team with, let's
say, a large group of students. Where a teaching team might be worked to
break students into small groups, give the professor a hand with grading or
doing certain types of the paperwork that can be so confining and backbreaking
to a faculty member that's got a large class. I think those things that can be
worked out but in negotiation, they're always part of some trade. And you never
know when you trade A and they trade B what the result's going to be
sometimes until it gets put into practice.

R:

I thought it was interesting when you said that after you went to the vicepresident's office that you had decided that you would not be chairman again.
Was that a particularly tough job there as opposed to other chairpersons'
position?

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I don't know what other people had to do, but I know that I spent literally
hours just arranging schedules because there were so many people with so
many difficult schedules. When you are talking about a faculty member's load
that a particular course might be two credits, another one might be 1.5 and
then you deal with the people and then you deal with the facilities. So it
wouldn't be unusual for me to spend several evenings prior to doing a
schedule in what had been the old conference room in the Field House with
those many conference tables with paper spread out. Probably a flaw in my
personality was that I normally got everything arranged for everybody else and
then it would end up with my own teaching schedule, and very often I would
teach something because it had to be taught and it was left over. Had I been
thinking properly, I would have taken care of myself first. But I didn't do that. It
was a challenge. It was like working a puzzle every time. It was probably a
department at the time that should have had an administrative chairperson as
opposed to a faculty chairperson , because there just were so many administrative things to do. While there was an assistant chair, Dr. Haverstick, with me
most of the time, I think all the time, there were still just too many administrative
things to do. That's the nature of it and so that's what we did. I did say I don't
think I would have gone back to it. But now, I think, maybe I would have. Maybe
I still will one of these days. Go back to the classroom where I can teach and do
some thinking about some things I've thought about a long time over the years,
and have some freedom to do some things that are more creative in terms of
the discipline. I don't know. I don't know what will happen there.

R:

You were happy being a classroom teacher I take it.

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Oh, I loved the classroom teaching. Loved it. I tried to continue it a little bit
as vice-president. But what I found was that I couldn't prepare well enough .
If I were to teach a Monday night class, and it was usually a night class that
I would teach, if I had a Monday night class I'd set aside Monday afternoon to
make sure I was ready. Make sure I had things, and invariably there would be
some emergency in the academic area. The president would want something or
the deans would need something or there would be something pop up and I
never ever wanted to walk into a classroom feeling as if I wasn't prepared and
every now and then I felt that way. So I decided I just wouldn't continue that. I
wonder sometimes as I read about the faculty who want a dean that teaches,
who want a president who teaches, I wonder if they really know what they're
talking about. I wonder. I think it would probably depend on the discipline and
what it was you were teaching. I think there are probably some things that you
could probably do with a few notes and not have to keep up on it too much. But
I think it would be awfully difficult to do something like I was doing in kinesiology
or some of those areas in having to keep up. You couldn't do it. So I think it's
not always the sign of a good president or a good administrator that they teach.
The question would be what are they teaching and how well are they doing it.
So I think we ought not to be looking at administrators on the basis of how well
are they going to teach. The job today is how well are we going to run the place
so people can do a good job teaching.

R:

How early were you involved in the AAC as a college official?

A:

Football officiating?

R:

Yes.

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E.A.I.F.O., first. Eastern Association of Intercollegiate Football Officials, there
we go. When I came here in 1968, I had officiated basketball and football quite
a bit and wanted to continue. Basketball , I had kind of given up on. The
weather is too bad and you have to stay up too late too many nights a week.
But I wanted to continue football, so I got started in high school football locally
and applied for the collegiate group and was accepted in that and worked local
collegiate football until 1978 when I was invited to join a major independent
group that served schools like Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia. Who else?
Rutgers was in there. South Carolina, East Carolina, Massachusetts. A number
of the independent schools. I worked that for five years during the time I was
vice-president. That was an interesting time period for me because it was a
situation with major colleges. It was fun working the others, too, but with major
college, I'd usually have to leave here late Friday afternoon, be somewhere
Friday night. Spend an evening with five or six fellows from all over the country.
Usually half of them I knew, half of them I didn't. Spend a couple of hours that
evening reviewing football and films and going over the next day's game.
Getting up early the next day and spending the whole day dealing with football
and sometimes not getting home till Sunday afternoon. It was a period of time in
the fall and in the week when you were totally removed from any other
problems. And nobody cared on the field that I was a vice-president for
Academic Affairs as long as I did on the field what I was supposed to do. It
didn't matter that the guy I was working with was a brakeman for a railroad or a
high paid insurance executive or a federal agent. There are all kinds of people
in this business but they didn't care about any of that as long as you did the

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job on the field and didn't get people in trouble out there . So it's a great relief
and a great way to kind of kick back and relax.

R:

Funny escape.

A:

Yes and you realize, I think, in the game that it is a game and most of these
things aren't all that important. You begin to realize that life goes on, and if you
make a bad call on Saturday, people can get mad and it can be nasty for a
little while, but by and large life goes on and nobody has lost their job over
that. But it got to the point where you begin to realize that some of the big
schools can lose big money over that because of the bowl game situation. But
anyway, that was a good time. It was a good relief and it helped put things in
perspective. I joked with faculty when I became president that I had been booed
by bigger groups. In some respects that attitude is one that I have tried to hold
on to because I know that everybody isn't going to like every decision. Some
people won't like any decision. I think in officiating you team to rely on other
people to make decisions as well and I think you learn that when you make the
right decisions things work out in the long run. Even now and then you make
some that are bad and still it's not the end of the world .

R:

What are some advantages to having known practically everybody on the
faculty when you moved into the vice-president's job and later the presidency?
Some advantages to that in terms of knowing who wasn't going to like
anything and so forth.

A:

I've been reading just recently again a fellow who periodically writes a book on
the presidency. He's had several so he's got some background from which to
write. But he talks about the difference between being an external president

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and an internal president. His view is that it's tough to be an internal president
because people know you too well and they're too close to you . His view is
that to be a successful president, you've got to be fairly aloof and removed from
people. The longer you are on the job and the more closely people get to know
you, the closer you are to ending the job. There are some exceptions to that and
I think I've been fortunate so far to be able to deal with that. Yes, I knew almost
everybody and it has dawned on me in recent years I knew more people then
than I know now. That makes me wonder a little bit about how those people
view me, because I know how peopleviewed me at the beginning because of
my involvement in so many things on campus. I don't know so much about how
people we've hired in the last four or five years view me. They haven't seen me
argue at a faculty senate or they haven't seen me work on this committee or
that committee where many people got to know me. But coming in with so
many people that knew me, the fact was that all of those people had some
expectations of me, and some of those expectations were more personal than
they were institutional. So in the first three or four years when some of the
things that some people might have wanted done weren't done, they felt it was
something personal rather than my view of the institution. I'vesaid to Nancy
often that you tend to lose close friends even though you know all these people
as you move from one job to another. Not so much in the chair. Although there
are some cases in the chair where it affects your relationship with people.
Vice-presidency? Yes , there were people. In the presidency probably similar.
They probably come in different categories . One category is the person who's a
good friend but is afraid to be a good friend after you are in that position

-20-

A:

because it might be viewed inappropriately by other people. It has nothing to
do with their friendship and nothing to do with the way they feel. There are
people who will continue their friendship and pay a price for it some place
or other among their peers. And there are people who become friends after
you get into those positions because they think it may be valuable to them
in one way or another. You can't tell that going in. I mean I didn't really know
that. I could have assumed that, I suppose, had I studied it. I certainly didn't
know who might fall into which categories and I still don't know for sure. But
I know there are some people, that our relationships became quite different
after the change in job, either one or the other. There was a comment about

Is

disappointment that I I have, but I understand. It isn't one that would prevent
me from doing that again, I guess.
B:

Backing up a little bit, how about some of your disappointments or
achievements or pleasures in coaching. The coaching that you did here.

A:

Yes, I think the greatest fun I had was coaching here. I was an assistant
freshman football coach. That was back when freshmen couldn't play the
varsity team. And I was an assistant baseball coach with Wally Rose there. Bob
DiSpirito was the football coach and Mike Pariseau for most of the time was the
freshman football coach . I think one of the interesting and exciting things with
freshman football was that Mike put me in charge of the defensive teams. We
had a lot of young men who came out for football in those days. Many of them
had no chance of playing, but because there was freshman football they got to
participate. I normally had three or four people deep at every position, and I
normally had would play them all during a ball game and it would just drive Mike

-21-

A:

nuts because Mike's the head coach and Mike's concerned about winning.
And I said, I am too, but I'm concerned about these young men getting
experience. The fact is that when they went to the Boardwalk Bowl and played
indoors in the Convention Hall in Atlantic City, the seniors that year, some of
those kids were starting seniors, had been about number three or number
four deep when they had played for me. They had played and been successful,
and people who had better skill were no longer on the team or were no longer
in school. So what it did for me was validate the idea that you need to give a
tot of people experience, a lot of people opportunity, because you don't know
later on who's still going to be around. That was fun. I think coaching baseball
was fun. Working with Wally Rose was fun. Wally was so intense in the game
and so intense at what he did. it's not the part of the country to coach baseball.
We would start baseball in January practicing from ten to midnight in the Field
House and maybe by March we would get outdoors and then it would snow in
April, and then the season would be about over by commencement and you'd
just wonder where it all went. I think, I enjoyed all those years doing that. I
enjoyed most, I guess, my relationship with sport with the officiating and the
chance to work for people like Joe Paterno and Jackie Sherrill. These weren't
all positive, understand, but they were fun and they were learning experiences.
Foge Fazio. I officiated with Marino at quarterback and I officiated with Jim
Kelly at quarterback and Tony Eason. I worked Bear Bryant's last ball game in
the Liberty Bowl in 1982. Those were just thrilling , thrilling experiences. The
very first game I worked at Penn State was at the first addition to their stadium
with 76,000 people, and I happened to look up and I saw Nancy and our two

-22A:

girls sitting in the seats up there which blew my mind that I would see them .
Shortly thereafter I got hit by Booker Moore and shoed up face down on the
AP photo across the country the next Sunday morning which was the first
time I discovered I was losing my hair because it showed up in that photo.
But, anyway, sports has been a lot of fun . It's done a lot of good for me. Again,
I think, Warren Johnson, who was a sports psychologist years ago, used to
say the good thing about sports is that it isn't real. That it's played in a time
frame. It's played in a time of start and end , and some of the best research
on emotion can be done in sports. He did some of that, and that was the thing
I was interested in for awhile So it's been good. I think it's been good for the
University. I think that having positive programs for students creates a positive
atmosphere within the student body and hopefully with people who follow that.
It goes beyond sports. I think the same thing is true with positive experiences
in music and in theater, the club activity. My expertise and involvement had
been mostly sport, but I think it's true in all of those other things. We came from
a history or heritage of sports , so it's important that we carry that on in a very
positive fashion

B:

Did the problems that the University, the college at that time, was suffering with
the administrative changes in the sixties, did that impact on the Athletic
Department or the sports program?

A:

I don't know for sure. I think the problems that surrounded Al Watrel's firing were
detrimental to the University in general for a period of time from the standpoint
of the public view o us and even our own internal view. We forget sometimes,
I guess, that one of our biggest resources is what we think of ourselves, and I

-23A:

think that that created some problems there. I don't know quite how to define
those or how they were resolved. I do have a feeling about how some of them
were resolved. But in terms of the athletic program , I think it was a time when
there was a desire to go from a nonscholarship program to a scholarship
program. I think there were some efforts at the time to go with some athletes
who weren't as highly qualified, academically, as perhaps the rest of the
student body and perhaps not as representative of the student body as the
athletes of the early 1960's and late 1950's might have been. I think that was
detrimental to us as we brought some athletes in who didn't stay, flunked out,
didn't go to class, did some of those things. That may have been part of that
change of going again from nonscholarship to scholarship. But we weren't
alone in that. The whole conference went that way. The whole Pennsylvania
Athletic Conference went that way, so we would have been pretty much out
on our own if we hadn't. I think the athletic program was supported then and I
think that that was positive. It allowed the athletic program maybe to do some
things later on but I think we may have swung a little bit too far in that brief
period. You said something about the resolving of the problems. I think that one
of the things that I've learned a little about presidents is that there are certain
things that are needed at certain times in presidencies. I think that when Herb
Reinhard came, I think we needed some sort of infusion of our own self worth,
and I think he attempted to do that. I think he succeeded to some extent. I don't
know how one measures that, but I think we began to feel better about ourselves as a University and I think we behaved differently. We behaved a little
more as if we were successful at some things. I think the aftermath of the

-24A:

Watrel firing, I think had people kind of withdrawing and not taking part and
kind of standing back to see what might happen. I think Larry Park played a
very important role in trying to allow things just to kind of calm down. He came
in very low key but kind of powerful, a low key person who could have done a
lot of things but I think let things settle. I think that set the stage for Herb to
come in with his cheerleader, perhaps, mentality or role, criticized by some,
but, l think, very needed at the time. So I think some of the things that were
created around the Watrel firing were improved then in terms of our own selfinterest, self-image with Herb. Particularly, in the first three of his five years.
Then, l think, people began to day, to think, he was maybe cheering too much.
You know, I used to joke with him. If I said there were 1200, he might announce
to people there were 1400. That was okay, but I think in the last couple of years
people began to be concerned about that.

R:

Did you hear Larry Park's first speech to the faculty when he came?

A:

You know l don't know as l did. I think I was out of town.

R:

It was a stunning speech. He opened up by saying, "Whatever happens in the
next few months, please don't tell me any Al Watrel stories" So then he kind of
told them why hew here, and it was really a lovely speech.

A:

That's good.

R:

An important speech.

A:

Well, as I say, I think people can go into certain jobs where certain things are
needed and not at other times. I think in part the reason that I'm in this job is
because I think an inside candidate probably was good for the University at
that time. Not that an outside candidate couldn't have been, but I have a sense

-25A:

that there are people at our kinds of institutions who feel somewhat put off when
they discover that their president is looking for another job. It happens all the
time, but I think the people are put off by that. And I think that my being in the
presidency was in part a feeling that I wasn't looking for something else to do.
Although I would have had to had I not gotten the job.

B:

You can't go home again.

R:

Well, are there some memorable people that you would like to mention from
your 23 years or so? People who maybe became sort of mentors to you in one
way or another.

A:

Well, I think the most incredible and significant being over that period of time
was Bob Macoskey. In terms of my feelings about the place and getting to know
him very closely, I guess, first as president of the union and I was vicepresident. I had known him some before then. But I think that he had a way of
dealing with all the flack that seems to come from different directions and to put
into some sort of perspective. Again going back to, I guess, my philosophy that
it's not the end of the world kind of thing. Let's find a solution to these problems.
And he was generally looking forward instead of back and I think he just had an
awful lot to do in his role as faculty leader. When he was leader of both the
faculty council and the union. I think he had a real influence on what occurred
in that period of time. Then certainly, I think a real influence on the curriculum
of the university and some of the ideas we had about where the university
should go. And certainly his vision with the ALTER Project. Who knows where
that will go? But certainly, it was something before it's time when he started it.
It just took a lot of us a long time to catch up with him. I think he was a very,

-26A:

very important person where this university has been, and maybe where we'll
be going because of that. A lot of characters over the period of time, you know.
I think one of the people I knew very early on who was quite a character, of
course, was Jim Unterwagner. When I came I got to know Jim quite a bit
because Jim would hang around baseball practice because he really enjoyed
sports. But it was also the time when there was some of this , do I call it student
unrest on our campus? Because I was never really cognizant that there was a
whole lot of student unrest on our campus, but for our campus I guess there
was some. And Jim always seemed to be kind of around that. I mean, he was
always around that. I don't know whether he was encouraging it or just letting,
I was always kind of a straight structured, rules oriented person, and getting
to know Jim anding round baseball practice was kind of contradictory for me
because I saw him as some wild-eyed radical from a distance. But up close he
didn't seem to be that way. It got me thinking an awful lot about people like that,
and what we tend to think from what we hear and read. You know, working with
Jim over the years, I just found that he had an incredible interest in students and
did an awful lot to help them that people knew about and a lot of people didn't
know about and you know, I just felt that he was always one of the characters.
It was Captain Jim and his green hair. He showed up this spring at basketball
game with green hair around St. Patty's Day. So you know it's great. I heard
Dick Wukich was quoted the other day as lamenting the question, "Where are
all the eccentric faculty gonna come from?" He's worried because he's looking
around and he's not seeing the new eccentric faculty. And you know there's
something to be said for that. There's something to be said for the people who

-27A:

have, I guess by my mind, the right mind-set about that. Of the University
being a place where differences need to be encouraged and tolerated and can
grow, and give students different points of view to think about without burning
the place down. It's interesting. Murray Shellgren was one of the early leaders
that I thought highly of because I saw him in some of my early days on faculty
council when faculty council had quite a bit of power. Saw him handle that
quite well, but kind of always wondered about it. You might know better than I
about this, but I've always had the feeling that most faculty who got into those
leadership roles, shortly thereafter kind of disappeared out of leadership roles.
They got in there, I think, and I don't know whether they were just beaten about
so badly by it, or decided they did their bit. But they kind of disappeared from
that out front leadership kind of thing over a period of time. Bill Meise was a
valuable person to me as was Bob Raymond. Both of them being older enough
that I probably sought counsel from them more as I would an uncle or a father.
Again , two guys who had seen the wars enough not to get terribly excited over
one shot. You know, the idea that you sit back and think about a response
rather than just responding . I learned over a period of time that most of what I
responded to quickly, my responses weren't very good and I was better off to
wait a day. I probably got that from Meise and from Bob Raymond . Over a lot
of conversations overcoffee that I talked about, lunch and places like that, in
terms of how to solve problems. However, Bob Raymond didn't like to talk about
problems. He talked about challenges and said these are challenges, these
aren't problems. So there's perspective there that I think supported me. So there
were a number of people. I think Larry Park was good for me. Obviously, he

-28A:

gave me the chance to move into administration and was very easy to talk with
and very easy to talk over serious problems with that were going on, and again
had a view that new people didn't have. I'm sure there's a bunch of others. Bob
DiSpirito still influences my life very much. When I came here, I couldn't find a
place to live and was going to be assistant football coach. He had just rented
or bought a house and insisted to the owner of the apartment that he rent the
apartment to me. I moved into his apartment. Bob DiSpirito has been through
a great deal of both positives and negatives, I think, in his career of coaching
here. I think, I was along for most of those. About three years ago, he kept
telling me I need to play golf. I had quit playing golf because I was too competitive and I hadn't played for about ten years , and he kept bugging me about
it. Showed up at the house one day with clubs, shoes and everything I needed
and had convinced Nancy that he was going to make me play golf. So we've
been playing golf for three years. I don't play as much as he does or as much
as I'd like to, but the conditions were that we not keep score. I made that
condition. And the other one was that if the ball wasn't were I wanted it, I was
going to move it because I was out there to have a good time. Because when
I'd quit, I'd come home so frustrated with it that I said, why am I doing this?
But, you know, Bob has kept after me for that, and I think he's been a very
important person in my life.

R:

He has wonderful stories about coaching and his students and their relationships and how those things have ripened , you know, since all those guys
graduated.

A:

Oh, he's had such an impact on the students he's taught and I sometimes think

-29-

A:

that that's probably the value of education. It's probably the personal relationships that develop. When I talk with alums most of them have one or two
faculty members they remember very fondly for one reason or another, but
it may or may not have had to do with that they taught them something specific.
It probably had more to do with the type of personal relationship or the way they
were treated , and I think it says so much for this idea that people need to treat
each other all right. And I think, DiSpirito is just an excellent example of that.
I don't know how much of the content of the courses he teaches in some of his
recreation classes are the things that cause these people to go on and be
successful, but I'm sure that the way he teaches it has a great deal to do with it.

R:

I find that with students all the time. They remember virtually nothing from
classrooms, nor do we, I suspect. I haven't the foggiest notion about all that,
but they do remember some human traits.

A:

I don't know if you remember Norm McBurney. Norm drove a trash pickup truck
among his other duties on campus. He retired maybe six, seven years ago.
Played an organ by ear. Once in a while at the bank at Christmas time they had
him playing the organ down there. Norm in his last six or seven years or so had
student workers who worked with him. Those student workers became so loyal
to him, and his wife had been quite ill for a while, that they would stay, somebody would be available to stay at his house if they needed it. They would
come back and see him on vacations after they graduated. He had developed
this cadre of people who were just very loyal to him. I've often said to support
staff at the university, non-faculty people, that they can have a critical impact
on students, because those who have a chance to interact with students are

-30A:

going to make some impression and that can be a very, very significant impact
on that student to have somebody who listens to them . Somebody who trusts
them , somebody they trust, you know, that kind of thing . Norm was a good
example of that out of Buildings and Grounds. He was a very fine person.

R:

There are so many people here who have been great advisors. If you want an
opportunity to be a caring kind of do-gooder, take your advising seriously.

A:

Sure.

R:

Because you make friends and as an advisor you have those folks four years
and you're with them . If it all works out, you 're with them a great deal of the
time solving this problem and that problem. The memories there are powerful
sometimes and sometimes not. We always told our students that if you get an
advisor where it didn't work out, make a change, and that's fairly common now.
Didn't used to be because people were afraid.

A:

Yes, people were afraid.

R:

I remember you were called on fifteen years ago or so to arbitrate. You know
the story?

A:

I think I know where you are going. Go ahead.

R:

The Communications Department and the English Department were having a
large war in a very small arena.

A:

Well, you know, I've thought about that at times, too. That was over the whole
question of mass communications, if I remember at the time. I don't know, when
I look around today as we ever got resolved. It still seems to be bouncing
around, but at the time there was this real battle going on and all I remember is
that I guess I was leaning back on some of my skills. At one point in graduate

-31 -

A:

school, I had a minor in what was then called human relations which was
primarily nondirective counseling. So I used that a great deal. I sat and
listened to a lot of people talk for quite a time, and we came to some
compromises that apparently satisfied people for a while. They were selfarrived. I had no agenda other than to try to bring some harmony to that. I was
surprised, kind of, that it worked out, but it was an interesting experience.

R:

It really was. Lot of tension and everyone had a shot at making their position
knoi ) I'm not sure what the upshot of all that was either.

A:

Well , there was some dual listing of some courses for a little while, I think.

R:

Oh, yes.

A:

Some of them were actually placed in places. I think a better understanding of
what everybody was doing, I think, was part of it. I've often thought of it in
terms of retirement, not that I'm interested in retiring immediately. But one of the
things I've been looking at is the possibility of getting into some arbitration work
and that type of thing, because I have an interest in rules. I find it's kind of a
throw back

ough to the old apprenticeship business. Apparently what you do

is you find somebody who will let you work with them. You work with them
awhile and then pretty soon you get one and then pretty soon you're getting
more. So I've thought about that a little bit because it is an interesting people
business and it also deals with elements of fairness which I'm considerably
interested in.

R:

We have a lot of internal machinery set up for grievances, so that most
anybody who's terribly unhappy about something does have access to a
decision making body, a process. Is that a big problem?

-32A:

I think it depends. Let me say yes and no because some are and some aren't.
I think the grievance process taken seriously is a very productive and useful
process. I think that there are things that are just unclear or they are clear in
different ways to different sides. Something is interpreted differently, and I
think that there are times when that process goes forward to clarify them . The
result of the grievance is that someone sits down, listens to both arguments
and says well this is the way I understand it to be. Then that becomes the
interpretation for some probably foreseeable future period of time , and that is
valuable. There are other cases where grievances are clearly not sustainable
but the people more and more in our society don't want to take a negative
answer. Don't want to no for an answer and so they pursue those. There are
some people who have utilized it to the point of pursuing everything , it seems,
through the grievance route and I think it demeans the procedure and makes
it not as valuable. It takes away from the valuable parts of that procedure even
though , certainly people have a right to be heard and they have a right for this
to be processed. But there is some place where as a human being you ought
to understand that what you are doing isn't really allowed by that policy or that
part of the contract. You need to come to that yourself rather than hoping that
some technicality down the road will somehow make your side of the coin come
up. I don't think that's the fault of the faculty as much as it is the nature of our
society. It's not unusual today for when we discipline a student to hear from a
lawyer. It's getting more common when a student doesn't get a grade that they
think they should have to hear from a lawyer, particularly as we enter this new
field of physical therapy which puts us more into what might be expected in the

-33-

A:

medical field. If somebody doesn't do well, they go out and get a lawyer. So, I
think, its part of a m
e r

litigious society. Maybe we've just educated too

many / lawyers, I don't know. That's possible. But I think the nature of our
contract generally has been good over the years and I was involved in the beginning
of
it. I was a member of one of the negotiating committees, statewide, early on.
Not the team that sat at the table, but the back-up group. The last contract as a
president I sat in a back room backup to the presidential or the management
side of that. I think the contract has been generally good. I think where we get
into the grievance situations and some of the problems is when we try to tinker
too much with the little things. Then they become problematic because you can't
do this little thing on fourteen campuses the same way, and the minute you
don't do it the same way on one of the campuses, then there is a grievance and you
get back into the policy thing. Best example is, I think, this year of the
off-campus teaching where anything beyond ten miles from campus has to be
voluntary. Well, it started out, I didn't even know it started out as five miles, but
they argued about from five to ten miles. I'm not sure what difference that
makes, but if you're going to have an off-campus program at Mansfield or even
at Slippery Rock, you're going to have to do some of it beyond ten miles. Now,
if you're at West Chester you might be able to do a lot that's within ten miles. /
It doesn't make sense when you get to be that picayune, but I think again what
happens is that we get bits and pieces of things the way we negotiate. So that
that may have been okay had it been put along side something else, but
something else got thrown off the table and so you get just the back wheel
instead of the two wheels. I think the contract though, I think on our campus,

-34-

A:

we've always had a very positive relationship even though there are
grievances, because as I said I don't see the grievances as meaning that
you're mismanaging. I think there are misunderstandings or different interpretations. I think that our relationship with the union has always been fairly
positive and always communicative and so I think that has been helpful.

B:

You feel that's been better here than in other place on other campuses?

A:

From what people say it's better than at some other places. I can't say that
it's the best of all. I think there are probably some places where it operates
as well, some where it operates better. But we haven't had on this campus what
I hear on some other campuses as being almost an antagonistic relationship
between union leadership and management. It may have to do with the history
or the nature of the values of the place, I don't know. Whether this was ever a
place where people where kind of at odds, I don't know. Historically, as I look at
it, it doesn't seem like it, except maybe the year before I came. With President
Carter, the faculty and the trustees had gotten into some tussles there. But that
didn't seem to be long-lived. Itmay be more of the nature, the values of this
particular organization than it is any of the particular people in it at any
particular time.

B:

Maybe we've been fortunate in the people on both sides of the table here?

A:

Yes, I would think that's part of it but I think also that people come to both
sides of the table with some sort of culture that's gone before them. There are
places where the President doesn't sit at the table. It's been suggested to mej
that that's not, that I shouldn't be there, because I might make a decision there ,
I said no. I think it's important to be there, and no, we don't make decisions

-35A:

there. I think it has to do with the culture of the organization . They're certainly
different among the 14 of us.

R:

Of course, when you talk about programs, the changes that have been taking
place here , does that come about as a result of our clientele, or as a result of

A:

analogies with what other institutions are doing, or regional demand?
If we can kind of capsulize maybe what I think has occurred briefly in a more
general way, and then come back to some specific things. As I said, in 1968,
we were probably 85 percent to 95 percent teacher education. One of the
things that we could see occur when the teaching job market started to go sour
was a real concern over what was going to happen to the University. I think
that's when we began to see some other programs begin to grow. I think the
communication program grew during some of that period of time. Business
program certainly growing out of economics. The computer science program
growing later out of math. In the teaching areas, some of the things began to
change. In physical education itself, people being interested in what I would
call commercial sport and activity, the sport management part of that which has
gotten fairly big today. The preparation of people to do things in fitness centers
outside of exercise physiology per se. Counseling that went into community
counseling from what had been totally a school based counseling program .
Then you look at some of the newer programs, but I think to go back on that a
moment, I think that what we saw was that the University is at risk with a large
proportion of its resources in one program, even though it's a little bit diversified. My objective as I leave here would be to try to leave with programs more
evenly spread around the campus so that we don't see a program that is 80

-36
A:

percent or 50 percent of the University. That education today is about 25
percent to 28 percent, which is probably where it might be a nice place for it to
be. Business is a little less than maybe where it ought to be. It's somewhere
around 14 or 15 percent. Maybe it ought to be 18 or 20 percent. I think that
without looking at programs specifically, we would be better off if we have some
diversity in terms of where the people are, both majors and faculty, resources.
I think we're better off to then withstand any variances that occur. If the jobs
go down in communication , they go down a little bit, but something else might
pick up. It doesn't cut the heart out of the University. So when you look at what
occurs, I think programs have occurred for different reasons, changes.The
newest one, the Master's of Science in Sustainable Systems occurred, I think,
because of the leadership of Bob Macoskey and a whole bunch of other people.
The volunteers and their program would just fill a book. But it occurred because
of a need. Not so much of a people need, but of a societal need, an enrionmental need, that these people saw, which , I think, people will see and are
seeing as the program is there. So I think that's kind of the way one developed.
The Physical Therapy program, the one newest to that, is quite frankly something that this University has been talking about doing since 1968 or 1970.
When I arrived here we had a whole bunch of pre-physical therapy majors.
People kept saying, where do they go to school? Well , some went to Mayo
in those days. There was a program with Mayo and then that kind of fell off
and some went to their service.Then later on, I remember as chairman saying,
why do we have pre-physical therapy? There's no place for them to go. Well ,
they were trying to go to schools like Pitt, and Pitt would take pretty much its

-37A:

homegrown students. So as we developed that interest and began to assess
what we could do, I think, we developed that program because, one, we were
interested in it and it's a natural to go with the background with sport and
physical education, and the training program had developed here and the
exercise physiology. It was a natural to go with those. There's a tremendous
need for physical therapists in our society and in western Pennsylvania.
Certainly those two things were critical in doing that. Different I think than the
MS3 program. Shortly before that we created a dance program. Not so much
because there was a crying need for a dance program. We haven't had our
walls beaten down by people who want to be dancers, but it's growing slowly.
However, my view was that it brings a different kind of student to campus. It
was at the same time that we were doing that that we were talking about
performing arts, talking about music, art and theater. There had been some
talk. Do we have people who will get together to make this thing, performing
arts someplace? We've not been able to do that yet. I don't know if we ever
will , don't know if we need to. But there was that interest. So the dance program
came along at a time when we were saying we need artistic, creative type
people in this student body. Dance is a place to get them. We also, I think,
have promoted while programs haven't changed a whole lot promoted through
music and they are

particularly more creative, artistic type folks to come.

Theater has lagged behind that a little bit but it's there. It can happen . So I
think that program came about for some other different reasons. We talk about
business administration. Came solely out of student demand. We had an
Economics Department. They weren't going to allow us to have any business.

-38A:

The first think you knew we had 400 to 500 economics majors who were all
saying they were business majors. Then the next thing you knew we said, well ,
we have this business minor in this economics program. Pretty soon we had a
department that carried that name with it and then created a college.

R:

That's all fairly recent isn't it?

A:

The creation of the college was an attempt to do something different as well.
It hasn't panned out totally. It was an attempt to bring computer science and
communication into this idea of business realizing that business has a great
need for both of those. We were not going to be a Carnegie-Mellon in computer
science. We're really more of an information science. How do you use the
computer and what it is you're going to do rather than the mathematics,
physics-oriented computer science program of a Carnegie-Mellon . And
communication that has so much to add to what I read as the problems that
were occurring in the business field. You know, the articles where the signs
were up saying , no MBA's please. People who had such a narrow education in
business that they couldn't communicate with people. They didn't anyway. So
the thought was if we could bring that together a little better, we might be able to
find a way that communication really could support those parts of business and
management and accounting that need it. You know, through public relations
and through even the mass media parts of it, etceteras. We haven't gotten that
all done yet, but that's there. It can be done. Depends on people. I think that
was done as a response to student need and I think, probably, societal need,
but also done with some of us thinking we need a little different mix. Program in
nursing came along to fill a need. We needed a B.S.N. in Nursing. There were

-39A:

all these diploma schools and the profession was saying, you're going to have
to have a B.S.N. in Nursing. They've been saying it for 25 to 30 years but
people were beginning to believe it. So that program came along as a need.
So now you have in the School of what had been Education and Human
Service Professions, you had such a diverse kind of program offering that I've
just divided that into two colleges now. We're just searching for a dean of
education. But you go all the way from the McKeever Environmental Center
where its primary function is to serve basic education with our people involved
as student teachers as interns etcetera, to physical therapy, to nursing, to
R.O.T.C. to sport management. Even in special ed. the prison education that
has been going on there has some real potential. Whether we can do any more
than we've done with it is another question , but I think we have tried to respond
to what we have seen as the needs. Gerontology is another example. We have
tried to respond to what we have seen as the needs. At the same time I think
we've done a pretty good job of trying to keep those things focused on at the
people oriented needs. Even physical therapy is people oriented needs. Now
the business may be less related to that, but we haven't gone toward engineering and some the more high tech programs. I think we are more of a people
oriented institution. The gerontology thing is interesting because I supported
that a long time ago as a minor. Then we talked about well maybe we should
have a major. We're convinced there isn't a decent undergraduate major in
gerontology because it doesn't lend itself to that. We're convinced you need to
have something that you can do, and then if you want gerontology, you learn
how to do it with a particular age group. In the meantime, a sister institution

-40A:

came along and put in a bachelor's in gerontololgy which I fought as much as
could politically fight it without getting into too many other problems. But, I
think, gerontology we've done the right way. It may well be one day that
should be a master's program. I think there is an evolution that would come with
that. I don't know. They all come about differently, I guess, for different reasons.
None of them are great money makers.

B:

It's nice to see the recognition in the Pittsburgh papers on the dance program
recently.

A:

Oh, that's been fantastic, yes.

B:

Excellent reviews of those performances, the choreography.

A:

We're the only public institution with a dance program in Pennsylvania.

B:
R:

Yes. That was obvious. That was important to see.
I know that when we in Communcations were talking to parents and students
who came for the orientation programs that one of the big selling points was
the internship. How broad is that at Slippery Rock?

A:

I don't know the numbers but it's used by an awful lot of programs. I don't know
how many students are going out right now, but it is an extremely important way
to get at the discipline and it's something that needs to continue and to grow.
The program in communication was one of the earlier ones and I think well
established and it does those people a good job. In fact, a lot of them get jobs
because of the internship program. No question about it. I think that is
phenomenal. It creates a number of problems. One of the newest things that's
happening is the Harrisburg internship program. It's a kind of coalition of all
fourteen . Larry Cobb, in fact, will be heading that this year in Harrisburg. Each

-41A:

institution has one student selected to go work in Harrisburg and they work in
governmental offices of all size and description. One student last year worked in
the office for Mrs. Casey. A lot of PR experience. Another one worked in one
of the financial offices down there. They are doing all kinds of things. Those
are extremely valuable. We're finding different ways to usethose. Accrediting
groups are wondering a little about some of that in terms of whether they should
be so long. Should there be a whole semester? Should there beso many
credits? I think that's probably so dependent upon what the internship is. You
can imagine one that would be very bad for the student as well as some that
can be very good . But the newest thing has been the two interns we had with
the World Trade Center in Paris this past spring. Phenomenal experience for
them . We've had interns in England for the last several years and we're going
to continue to do more of that. So I don't know the numbers, but it's increasing
and it's and outstanding program.

R:

Powerful attraction.
Absolutely.

R:

A romantic adventure or something. What about our international relations now.
We have faculty being exchanged.
I think it's important that we try to find some things where we can be somewhat
unique, probably not totally unique, and that's a misuse of the word I'm sure
but I think we don't want to be just like everybody else. Our international
program is something that sets us aside a little bit. There are other places
that have bigger programs, other places that probably send more students,
take more students, but I think that we've got a well balanced program. We're

-42A:

running programs at something like, potentially, something like 24 sites.
They're all different. They're sites like, well , they're programs like the
Shakespeare trip to Canada two or three times a summer, to Charlie Tichy's
trips to Russia that he's been taking for over 20 years, to the semester and
year-long programs and the internships that I've just talked about. What we've
tried to do in the last years is to slow down any expansion of that to make sure
that we have something going on where we say we have. There are institutions
that will list many international programs where they've never set foot. We don't
want that to happen. We have one program in China. It is possible to sign up
six or eight other universities in China at the drop of a hat. We have said that we
are not going to work with anybody else in China unless it might be a teacher
preparation institution. The one we're working with is a language institute but
we haven't moved forward to do that any further. We established one in the
Soviet Union and the intent is to make it go before we thing about doing anything else there. The students from China, Korea , and from Japan have had
immeasurable impact on us. Just to have native speakers, to have them
interact with our students in reasonably good English is valuable. Then the hope
is that we will begin to see greater interest in students into going in to those
countries. I've been interested because faculty have become more interested
in the exchanges. Faculty at the beginning weren't too interested. I don't know
why. Probably, well, it's a little different and risk taking . One of the things I was
concerned about in developing too many programs that would require faculty
was that we might not be able to get faculty. I think we're seeing now the
possibility of there being more faculty wanting to go than we can send and that's

-43A:

probably healthy. We've had some faculty who have asked to go back and to do
another one. So I think that's going to build. I think that's valuable. What we'd
like to do, we hope to start a major fundraising campaign . Technically we have
it under way, but if we don't raise some money, we won't announce it for a
while. We're looking at a goal of probably about four million dollars which isn't
very much. Some of that, I forget the number now, maybe a quarter of a million
dollars of that would be set aside for student support to travel abroad in these
programs. The
idea being that many of the programs we run. The only difference
in cost is airfare. If we could find in that campaign money where the interest
could be used to help offset airfare, then we think we would get a lot more
students going abroad. Frankly, it would be great to have 25 to 30 percent of
our students have an overseas experience. I don't think that is unrealistic. I
think it can be done. Even if it's three weeks , even if it's a summer experience.
My first real experience overseas , other than in Great Britain which has its own
characteristics, was a week in Cairo. It was only a week and it still has an effect
on me in terms of my thinking about how other people live. I think if we could get
students to be impacted similarly even for a week, it would make a difference. I
think that's what we're all about. Making a difference.

R:

That's what Mark Twain said about prejudice. He said, "The antidote is travel."

A:

Yes. Good point.

B:

Expand their horizons. It doesn't matter if they see America first or if they see a
foreign country first.

R:

Maybe a word about our non-traditional population. For years, well , I came
twenty years ago, and we had a lot of folks in night school. I think we had some

-44R:

Saturday classes, too, who were struggling mightily to get a degree and that
struggle went on and on and on for a very long period of time. Then we had to
do all kinds of waivers and this, that and the other to patch up that program for
them. We've moved out of that I gather with a very large non-traditional program
and our external campuses that are producing what we are saying we can
produce for them in terms of a degree program.

A:

We're doing pretty well at that but a lot of things have changed, I think.
Obviously, the numbers. Last numbers I remember, and I don't know, it was
probably a year ago, we had over 600 students who were over the age of 35
and we had about 2,000 who were over the age of 23. One of the changes is
that they're not night students or Saturday students necessarily anymore. They
come all hours of the day and they take the same schedule in many cases as
the traditional age student does. Someone said to me the other day that one of
the problems with our non-traditional students is that it's hard to identify them
anymore. You know, we've got a non-traditional student group but most of them
don't belong to it and most of them don't have any need to belong to it. They
are doing whatever it is they do. So that's been a significant change. Also, the
curriculum has become more flexible. The offerings have become more flexible.
We've been able to offer more things, as you say, off-campus somewhat to
help meet some of those problems. But it's been very interesting, the people
who have come back to finish a degree. Many women who interrupted their
education to work or raise a family. A number of men coming back, change in
careers. Women also, but in some cases men who have had work problems,
disabilities even, coming back and trying to pursue a career that doesn't take

-45A:

physical labor, for example. One of the picnics that Nancy and I have, we have
one in the fall for them, and we invite all 2,000, thank goodness they all don't
show up, usually we get 100 to 150, and at one of them, two ladies, age 70,
one of the women said to me, you know, I'm taking this history course and the
faculty member is so young. She said, I lived through this that we're studying.
She said, and I'm afraid to say anything about it sometimes because I'll
intimidate him. I said, no, no. I'm sure that they'd be very interested in hearing
what you said. You were there. But it's that kind of impact on the class. I had a
group of students one time approach me because they were concerned about
the non-traditional students in their class. They said, you know, you go into a
class and the professor grades on a curve and you know there are going to be
six A's and you look around and you see six old people there and you know
they're going to get all the A's. It's not fair, you know. Well , I said, work harder.
On the other hand , there have been some very significant relationships that
have developed between the older student and the traditional age student.
Brother-sister type relationships, even grandmother type. I mean it's just been
very, very positive for all of them. I think that number is probably going to
continue to grow. Maybe not as rapidly, but I think what happened was that
there were people who weren't sure about coming back and it took a few of
them to come back and then they began to talk to other people and say, hey,
it's not that bad. So the numbers began to increase kind of exponentially.
suppose there's someplace where there's some finite level where it will level
off but it's been generally good, and they're good students, and they're good to
have at the University.

-46-

8:

They really work hard in the Library.

A:

Yes.

R:

They're in the Library.

8:

They're here.

A:

They're here.

R:

We read kind of every year or so about the racial quotas in the state college
system and about the difficulty of attracting black students. Is that situation
getting any better?

A:

I think our ability to attract minority students in general is getting better. I'm
concerned about the pool of minority students to attract. That seems to be
becoming a problem and the willingness of, particularly urban black students,
their willingness to go on to college. That concerns me somewhat because
they're there and they are going to do something. I'm concerned that they are
going to get left out and I think this may be part of what people have described
as this growing class differentiation again. Particularly as it relates to the urban
populations. I think we've become much more educated about how to work with
minority populations as a campus . I think we've done a better job providing
services than we used to. I think we're finally realizing that we can't just bring
minority students to campus and try to educate them abut us. That we've got to
educate everybody about minority students on campus. I think we've been
trying to do more of that the last three years or so. So I think that has helped the
environment some. There's always the problem of where the population lives. In
Pennsylvania, the largest minority population, Black population, is in
Philadelphia. The Hispanic population is over in Allentown, Reading, that area.

-47-

A:

For many of them, coming to Slippery Rock is a real trip. Laughing with a
couple kids from Philadelphia one night, we were talking about that and they
said, well, you know, when you get out here and there's nothing but grass and
trees , some of them really love it and others just can't stand it because it's too
isolated. You get kind of one extreme or the other. So I think the situation's
improving . I don't know about the numbers they put out. They say these are
goals that should be met, not quotas, whether they make sense or not. What
we've tried to do is do the best we can and try to bring as many qualified
minority students as we can, and hope that we can help them be successful.
The next step is going to be the Hispanic population and how we are going to
deal with that group and whether we're going to deal with that group. How
we're going to get any to campus . We have very few Hispanic students. Of
course, I don't think there's much of a Hispanic population in all of western
Pennysylvania. It's mostly eastern, but I see that is going to be something in
the next few years. It's going to be an issue to be dealt with .

8:

Pressure from the state to do that?

A:

I think so. I think the Hispanic lobby is very tough and it's already put pressure
on to provide certain kinds of programs and incentives, etcetera, but it isn't
that those programs should be provided two hundred miles away. Basically,
the pressure, I think, will first come at Kutztown and West Chester and schools
around those areas where the populations are. But as that increases, it will be
the same kind of thing that the others, there will be other expectations that we
will find ways to bring the students here. I think it's great if we can get them to
come here. To bring them here when they don't want to be here is not going to

-48A:

be productive for anybody. So I think there's a lot of learning that has to go on
before we see much of an influx of Hispanic students.

B:

Similar problems with Black faculty and Hispanic faculty?

A:

Yes. Hispanic faculty are a little more available and are more mobile. The
problem is that very often in our institutions they are the teachers of Spanish.

B:

Sure.

A:

And the problem is to try and find Hispanic faculty who teach other things and
just as for so long the Black faculty were in the social service programs,
sociology, social work, education, finding them in the more technical areas or
the science areas is still an extremely difficult thing to do. It's extremely difficult
to find women in the sciences. So we still have a lot to do there. We're doing a
better job of recruiting . We're doing a better job of retaining . We're going to lose
some of the people we recruit. No question about it, and our numbers have
improved every year. I think the interesting thing we've done is we've been able
to improve minority hires in our support staff by taking a very proactive position ,
going into the areas where there tend to be minority populations, Sharon,
Farrell, New Castle. Hiring out of Butler for years doesn't find you many minority
candidates. So we have some support staff now we bring in on a training
position, and as they were successful we would be able to hire them as a job
became open , and that's been good for us. So we hope we can continue that.

R:

I think I've observed some lessening of the strain that we may or may not have
had between the town of Slippery Rock and the student population. We have a
Town-Gown committee that's operational.

A:

Yes. Given the events of the last few weeks in dating this , it would have been

-49A:

April 26, I guess, with the most recent Kiester Apartment problem. I begin to
wonder about that because it ebbs and flows. It can go perfectly well for a long

always talk about the things that are on their mind and it's more of a social gettogether with somebody presently a show and tell kind of thing. We probably
need to get that cranked up a little better so that it talks about real issues. I
think we have a concern about landlord-tenant relationships that we're going
to have to get more involved with because the community people think that
we're involved. they think that we can make students pay their rent and they
think that we can make students pay damages and we can't. But we need to do
a better job of that kind of involvement. I think a lot of other ways the relationships seems to be pretty good, but I guess a lot of that depends again on local
government too, and the local government during the past spring has been in
quite a case of chaos. Elections will see what happens to that come fall . But I
think the opportunity is there to improve those relationships still. We have an
awful lot of student organizations and students who do things for the community
and we don't do a very good job, I guess, of communicating that. I'm not sure
how we do it any better but I'm convinced that a lot of people don't know how
many of our students groups do thing for the elderly. Do volunteer things in town
or the country. We've got to do a better job of letting them know that and we
will be working on that this year. No question .
R:

How does Nancy like her job?

A:

You'd probably have to interview her to get the real scoop on that. I think the

-50-

A:

unfortunate thing about the position of presidential spouse is that there are
great expectations sometimes that are unrewarded and sometimes unappreciated in many ways but there are expectations. In most every job that a
man interviews for a presidency, they expect to interview the wife for whatever
reason. Obviously, It's a two-for-one deal and she does quite well at it. She's
been particularly good, I think, at dealing with the events at the house and her
support of the art program in particular, and then trying to support things around
campus to that extent. She's not a real public person, and she doesn't like to be
introduced to groups of people, and she doesn't like to be up front. When we do
things , we seldom have a head table because she doesn't like a head table and
there's a very practical point to that. At a head table you can't talk to anybody.
You can talk to the person on your left or your right, but I think generally she's
adjusted to it pretty well. Would she have married me if she thought I was going
to do this , I don't know. I mean I was a guidance counselor and a coach and she
liked that.

R:

What do you like most about your job?

A:

I like the parts where I can understand about the successes we've had. I
thoroughly enjoy visiting with alums because when I go out to visit with alums
anywhere those who show up are generally positive and they've got some neat
story or some good thing to say about the University. I enjoy getting letters once
in a while from alums who talk about things that went on here and wonder why
we ask them for money, you know, that kind of thing. I enjoy running into
students whom I don't remember but remember me and have something fun to
say about things. The successes. It's really a trip to get a letter from NCATE

-51A:

saying, hey, everything looks pretty good and we're going to go ahead. And to
find the success of getting accreditation or a physical therapy program, you
know, seeing those kinds of successes. The other kind is that every now and
then I still work with students. I haven't done this for some reason this past
year, but almost every semester I've had one or two students because of some
serious problem they were in had to report to me every week. You know most
of them are successful when they finish that. I remember a young lady from
New Jersey, just a quick story, but there were two of them. They were roommates and they had taken basically the same courses and had about the same
Q.P.A. , and one of them came in and was upset because she was being
suspended. I said, well , it looks like you should be and she said, well , her
roommate had virtually the same grades and wasn't. They were in different
majors. So her roommate came in to argue the case, and I said, well , sometimes what I do in these cases is that if I let somebody back in there's this
contract. Then I explained the contract. It included seeing me every week. I
said to the roommate , it seems to me you should have been suspended, too,
which you weren't. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. If both of you will agree to
this contract, then I'll let you back in but you both have to see me every week.
Well, they looked at each other a little bit and the young lady who wasn't
suspended said, okay. So I let them back in . Now they were going to transfer
at the end of the semester if they did well because they were from New Jersey.
To make a long story short, near the end of the semester they were both doing
well and they came in and the one girl who had been suspended asked if I
was going to be there a couple of minutes and I said yes. She said, well , my

-52A:

father wants to come up. So I'm sitting in the office and in came the father and
mother and her retarded brother, who must have been about 14. The mother
spoke virtually no English. The father spoke a little bit of English, and they were
coming in thanking me for helping this daughter make it through this semester.
He was carrying this bag and he came over and he handed this to me and he
wanted me to have this. Well, there were two half gallons of Canadian Club or
something like that and I started to say something and the girl was standing
behind him and said no, no, no, don't say anything. She's waving me off. So I
thanked him and we had a nice conversation as best we could have, considering I could hardly communicate with the family and they left. That was
fascinating . I brought the young lady back, and said, I can't accept that but
it's worth, I forget what it was worth. I said that you've got a credit at the
bookstore for that amount of money and so I put some money in the bookstore
for her to buy books. But to see some successes like that with people are the
fun things. I walked into San Francisco the morning of, we had an event out at
Fisherman's Wharf, that the 49er's were playing Chicago in a playoffs when it
was so foggy in Chicago. Well, it was on out there right in the middle of this
event, but anyway we had 25 people show up. I walked in and a young lady
walked up to me and said, you don't remember me, do you? I have a terrible
memory but I said, your name is Mary. Well, it was. And Mary was in the first
class I taught here and had had some real serious health problems. But she
said, you know what I remember? She said, I was in the health center at final
exam time at Christmas my first semester. Later they diagnosed it. It was a
type of leukemia. And she said, I was just feeling awful. I looked awful. Mary

-53A:

was a very, very pretty young lady. She said , I remember you came in and I was
embarrassed because I looked so bad . But I remember you came and you said
to me something about how was I doing and I said, well , okay but I was worried
about finals. She said, you told me not worry about the exams. To get better
and then come see me and we'll worry about the exams. She said I
remembered that all these years. Well , those are the things that are fun .

R:

Thank you very much.

A:

Thank you.

B:

Thanks for everything, Bob.

A:

Yes. That's fun.

-36A:

percent to 28 percent, which is probably where it might be a nice place for it to
be. Business is a little less than maybe where it ought to be. It's somewhere
around 14 or 15 percent. Maybe it ought to be 18 or 20 percent. I think that
without looking at programs specifically, we would be better off if we have some
diversity in terms of where the people are, both majors and faculty, resources.
I think we're better off to then withstand any variances that occur. If the jobs
go down in communication , they go down a little bit, but something else might
pick up. It doesn't cut the heart out of the University. So when you look at what
occurs, I think programs have occurred for different reason, changes. The
newest one, the Master's of Science in Sustainable Systems occurred , I think,
because of the leadership of Bob Macoskey and a whole bunch of other people.
The volunteers and their program would just fill a book. But it occurred because
of a need. Not so much of a people need, but of a societal need, an enrionmental need, that these people saw, which, I think, people will see and are
seeing as the program is there. So I think that's kind of the way one developed.
The Physical Therapy program, the one newest to that, is quite frankly something that this University has been talking about doing since 1968 or 1970.
When I arrived here we had a whole bunch of pre-physical therapy majors.
People kept saying, where do they go to school? Well, some went to Mayo
in those days. There was a program with Mayo and then that kind of fell off
and some went to their service. Then later on , I remember as chairman saying,
why do we have pre-physical therapy? There's no place for them to go. Well ,
they were trying to go to schools like Pitt, and Pitt would take pretty much its
homegrown students. So as we developed that interest and began to assess

-39A:

to have a B.S.N . in Nursing. They've been saying it for 25 to 30 years but
people were beginning to believe it. So that program came along as a need.
So now you have in the School of what had been Education and Human
Service Professions, you had such a diverse kind of program offering that I've
just divided that into two colleges now. We're just searching for a dean of
education. But you go all the way from the McKeever Environmental Center
where its primary function is to serve basic education with our people involved
as student teachers as interns etcetera, to physical therapy, to nursing, to
R.O.T.C. to sport management. Even in special ed. the prison education that
has been going on there has some real potential. Whether we can do any more
than we've done with it is another question, but I think we have tried to respond
to what we have seen as the needs. Gerontology is another example. We have
tried to respond to what we have seen as the needs. At the same time I think
we've done a pretty good job of trying to keep those things focused on at the
people oriented needs. Even physical therapy is people oriented needs. Now
the business may be less related to that, but we haven't gone toward engineering and some the more high tech programs. I think we are more of a people
oriented institution. The gerontology thing is interesting because I supported
that a long time ago as a minor. Then we talked about well maybe we should
have a major. We're convinced there isn't a decent undergraduate major in
gerontology because it doesn't lend itself to that. We're convinced you need to
have something that you can do, and then if you want gerontology, you learn
how to do it with a particular age group. In the meantime, a sister institution
came along and put in a bachelor's in gerontololgy which I fought as much as I j

-37A:

what we could do, I think, we developed that program because, one, we were
interested in it and it's a natural to go with the background with sport and
physical education, and the training program had developed here and the
exercise physiology. It was a natural to go with those. There's a tremendous
need for physical therapists in our society and In Western Pennsylvania.
Certainly those two things were critical in doing that. Different I think than the
MS3 program. Shortly before that we created a dance program. Not so much
because there was a crying need for a dance program. We haven't had our
walls beaten down by people who want to be dancers, but it's growing slowly.
However, my view was that it brings a different kind of student to campus. It
was at the same time that we were doing that that we were talking about
performing arts, talking about music, art and theater. There had been some
talk. Do we have people who will get together to make this thing , performing
arts someplace? We've not been able to do that yet. I don't know if we ever
will, don't know if we need to. But there was that interest. So the dance program
came along at a time when we were saying we need artistic, creative type
people in this student body. Dance is a place to get them. We also, I think,
have promoted while programs haven't changed a whole lot promoted through
music and through are particularly more creative, artistic type folks to come.
Theater has lagged behind that a little bit but it's there. It can happen. So I
think that program came about for some other different reasons. We talk about
business administration. Came solely out of student demand. We had an
Economics Department. They weren't going to allow us to have any business.
The first think you knew we had 400 to 500 economics majors who were all

-38-

A:

saying they were business majors. Then the next thing you knew we said, well ,
we have this business minor in this economics program. Pretty soon we had a
department that carried that name with it and then created a college.

R:

That's all fairly recent isn't it?

A:

The creation of the college was an attempt to do something different as well .
It hasn't panned out totally. It was an attempt to bring computer science and
communication into this idea of business realizing that business has a great
need for both of those. We were not going to be a Carnegie-Mellon in computer
science. We're really more of an information science. How do you use the
computer and what it is you're going to do rather than the mathematics,
physics-oriented computer science program of a Carnegie-Mellon. And
communication that has so much to add to what I read as the problems that
were occurring in the business field. You know, the articles where the signs
were up saying, no MBA's please. People who had such a narrow education in
business that they couldn't communicate with people. They didn't anyway. So
the thought was if we could bring that together a little better, we might be able to
find a way that communication really could support those parts of business and
management and accounting that need it. You know, through public relations
and through even the mass media parts of it, etceteras. We haven't gotten that
all done yet, but that's there. It can be done. Depends on people. I think that
was done as a response to student need and I think, probably, societal need,
but also done with some of us thinking we need a little different mix. Program in
nursing came along to fill a need. We needed a B.S.N . in Nursing. There were
all these diploma schools and the profession was saying, you're going to have

-41A:

the office for Mrs. Casey. A lot of PR experience. Another one worked in one
of the financial offices down there. They are doing all kinds of things. Those
are extremely valuable. We're finding different ways t use those. Accrediting
groups are wondering a little about some of that in terms of whether they should
be so long. Should there be a whole semester? Should there be so many
credits? I think that's probably so dependent upon what the internship is. You
can imagine one that would be very bad for the student as well as some that
can be very good. But the newest thing has been the two interns we had with
the World Trade Center in Paris this past spring. Phenomenal experience for
them . We've had interns in England for the last several years and we're going
to continue to do more of that. So I don't know the numbers, but it's increasing
and it's and outstanding program.

R:

Powerful attraction.

A;

Absolutely.

R:

A romantic adventure or something. What about our international relations now.
We have faculty being exchanged.

A;

I think it's important that we try to find some things where we can be somewhat
unique, probably not totally unique, and that's a misuse of the word I'm sure
but I think we don't want to be just like everybody else. Our international
program is something that sets us aside a little bit. There are other places
that have bigger programs, other places that probably send more students,
take more students, but I think that we've got a well balanced program. We're
running programs at something like, potentially, something like 24 sites.
They're all different. They're sites like, well, they're programs like the

-42A;

Shakespeare trip to Canada two or three times a summer, to Charlie Tichy's
trips to Russia that he's been taking for over 20 years, to the semester and
year-long programs and the internships that I've just talked about. What we've
tried to do in the last years is to slow down any expansion of that to make sure
that we have something going on where we say we have. There are institutions
that will list many international programs where they've never set foot. We don't
want that to happen. We have one program in China. It is possible to sign up
six or eight other universities in China at the drop of a hat. We have said that we
are not going to work with anybody else in China unless it might be a teacher
preparation institution. The one we're working with is a language institute but
we haven't moved forward to do that any further. We established one in the
Soviet Union and the intent is to make it go before we thing about doing anything else there. The students from China, Korea, and from Japan have had
immeasurable impact on us. Just to have native speakers, to have them
interact with our students in reasonably good English is valuable. Then the hope
is that we will begin to see greater interest in students into going in to those
countries. I've been interested because faculty have become more interested
in the exchanges. Faculty at the beginning weren't too interested. I don't know
why. Probably, well , it's a little different and risk taking. One of the things I was
concerned about in developing too many programs that would require faculty
was that we might not be able to get faculty. I think we're seeing now the
possibility of there being more faculty wanting to go than we can send and that's
probably healthy. We've had some faculty who have asked to go back and to do
another one. So I think that's going to build. I think that's valuable. What we'd

could politically fight it without getting into too many other problems. But, I
think, gerontology we've done the right way. It may well be one day that
should be a master's program. I think there is an evolution that would come with
that. I don't know. They all come about differently, I guess, for different reasons.
None of them are great money makers.
B:

It's nice to see the recognition in the Pittsburgh papers on the dance program
recently.

A:

Oh, that's been fantastic, yes.

B:

Excellent reviews of those performances, the choreography.

A:

We're the only public institution with a dance program in Pennsylvania.

B;

Yes. That was obvious. That was important to see.

R:

I know that when we in Communication were talking to parents and students
who came for the orientation programs that one of the big selling points was
the internship. How broad is that at Slippery Rock?

A:

I don't know the numbers but it's used by an awful lot of programs. I don't know
how many students are going out right now, but it is an extremely important way
to get at the discipline and it's something that needs to continue and to grow.
The program in communication was one of the earlier ones and I think well
established and it does those people a good job. In fact, a lot of them get jobs
because of the internship program. No question about it. I think that is
phenomenal. It creates a number of problems. One of the newest things that's
happening is the Harrisburg internship program. It's a kind of coalition of all
fourteen . Larry Cobb, in fact, will be heading that this year in Harrisburg. Each
institution has one student selected to go work in Harrisburg and they work in
governmental offices of all size and description. One student last year worked in

-43A:

like to do, we hope to start a major fundraising campaign. Technically we have
it under way, but if we don't raise some money, we won't announce it for a

while.
We're looking at a goal of probably about four million dollars which isn't very
much. Some of that, I forget the number now, maybe a quarter of a million
dollars of that would be set aside for student support to travel abroad in these
programs. the idea being that many of the programs we run the only difference
in cost is airfare. If we could find in that campaign money where the interest
could be used to help offset airfare, then we think we would get a lot more
students going abroad. Frankly, it would be great to have 25 to 30 percent of
our students have an overseas experience. I don't think that is unrealistic. I
think it can be done. Even if it's three weeks, even if it's a summer experience.
My first real experience overseas, other than in Great Britain which has its own
characteristics, was a week in Cairo. It was only a week and it still has an effect
on me in terms of my thinking about how other people live. I think if we could get
students to be impacted similarly even for a week, it would make a difference. I
think that's what we're all about. Making a difference.

R:

That's what Mark Twain said about prejudice. He said, "The antidote is travel. "

A:

Yes . Good point.

B:

Expand their horizons. It doesn't matter if they see America first or if they see a
foreign country first.

R:

Maybe a word about our non-traditional population. For years, well, I came
twenty years ago, and we had a lot of folks in night school. I think we had some
Saturday classes, too, who were struggling mightily to get a degree and that
struggle went on and on and on for a very long period of time. Then we had to

-44R:

do all kinds of waivers and this, that and the other to patch up that program for
them . We've moved out of that I gather with a very large non-traditional program
and our external campuses that are producing what we are saying we can
produce for them in terms of a degree program.

A:

We're doing pretty well at that but a lot of things have changed , I think.
Obviously, the numbers. Last numbers I remember, and I don't know, it was
probably a year ago, we had over 600 students who were over the age of 35
and we had about 2,000 who were over the age of 23. One of the changes is
that they're not night students or Saturday students necessarily anymore. They
come all hours of the day and they take the same schedule in many cases as
the traditional age student does. Someone said to me the other day that one of
the problems with our non-traditional students is that it's hard to identify them
anymore. You know, we've got a non-traditional student group but most of them
don't belong to it and most of them don't have any need to belong to it. They
are doing whatever it is they do. So that's been a significant change. Also, the
curriculum has become more flexible . The offerings have become more flexible.
We've been able to offer more things, as you say, off-campus somewhat to
help meet some of those problems. But it's been very interesting, the people
who have come back to finish a degree. Many women who interrupted their
education to work or raise a family. A number of men coming back, change in
careers. Women also, but in some cases men who have had work problems,
disabilities even, coming back and trying to pursue a career that doesn't take
physical labor, for example. One of the picnics that Nancy and I have, we have
one in the fall for them, and we invite all 2,000, thank goodness they all don't

-45A;

show up, usually we get 100 to 150, and at one of them , two ladies, age 70,
one of the women said to me, you know, I'm taking this history course and the
faculty member is so young. She said , I lived through this that we're studying.
She said, and I'm afraid to say anything about it sometimes because I'll
intimidate him. I said , no, no. I'm sure that they'd be very interested in hearing
what you said. You were there. But it's that kind of impact on the class. I had a
group of students one time approach me because they were concerned about
the non-traditional students in their class. They said, you know, you go into a
class and the professor grades on a curve and you know there are going to be
six A's and you look around and you see six old people there and you know
they're going to get all the A's. It's not fair, you know. Well , I said, work harder.
On the other hand, there have been some very significant relationships that
have developed between the older student and the traditional age student.
Brother-sister type relationships, even grandmother type. I mean it's just been
very, very positive for all of them. I think that number is probably going to
continue to grow. Maybe not as rapidly, but I think what happened was that
there were people who weren't sure about coming back and it took a few of
them to come back and then they began to talk to other people and say, hey,
it's not that bad. So the numbers began to increase kind of exponentially. I j
suppose there's someplace where there's some finite level where it will level
off but it's been generally good, and they're good students , and they're good to
have at the University.

B:

They really work hard in the Library.

A:

Yes .

-46-

R:

They're in the Library.

B:

They're here.

A:

They're here.

R:

We read kind of every year or so about the racial quotas in the state college
system and about the difficulty of attracting black students. Is that situation
getting any better?

A:

I think our ability to attract minority students in general is getting better. I'm
concerned about the pool of minority students to attract. That seems to be
becoming a problem and the willingness of, particularly urban black students,
their willingness to go on to college. That concerns me somewhat because
they're there and they are going to do something. I'm concerned that they are
going to get left out and I think this may be part of what people have described
as this growing class differentiation again. Particularly as it relates to the urban
populations. I think we've become much more educated about how to work with
minority populations as a campus. I think we've done a better job providing
services than we used to. I think we're finally realizing that we can't just bring
minority students to campus and try to educate them abut us. That we've got to
educate everybody about minority students on campus. I think we've been
trying to do more of that the last three years or so. So I think that has helped the
environment some. There's always the problem of where the population lives. In
Pennsylvania, the largest minority population, Black population, is in
Philadelphia. The Hispanic population is over in Allentown, Reading, that area.
For many of them, coming to Slippery Rock is a real trip . Laughing with a
couple kids from Philadelphia one night, we were talking about that and they

-47A:

said, well , you know, when you get out here and there's nothing but grass and
trees, some of them really love it and others just can't stand it because it's too
isolated. You get kind of one extreme or the other. So I think the situation's
improving. I don't know about the numbers they put out. They say these are
goals that should be met, not quotas, whether they make sense or not. What
we've tried to do is do the best we can and try to bring as many qualified
minority students as we can, and hope that we can help them be successful.
The next step is going to be the Hispanic population and how we are going to
deal with that group and whether we're going to deal with that group How
we're going to get any to campus. We have very few Hispanic students. Of
course, I don't think there's much of a Hispanic population in all of western
Pennysylvania. It's mostly eastern, but I see that is going to be something in
the next few years. It's going to be an issue to be dealt with.

B:

Pressure from the state to do that?

A:

I think so. I think the Hispanic lobby is very tough and it's already put pressure
on to provide certain kinds of programs and incentives, etcetera, but it isn't
that those programs should be provided two hundred miles away. Basically,
the pressure, I think, will first come at Kutztown and West Chester and schools
around those areas where the populations are. But as that increases, it will be
the same kind of thing that the others, there will be other expectations that we
will find ways to bring the students here. I think it's great if we can get them to
come here. To bring them here when they don't want to be here is not going to
be productive for anybody. So I think there's a lot of learning that has to go on
before we see much of an influx of Hispanic students.

-48B:

Similar problems with Black faculty and Hispanic faculty?

A:

Yes. Hispanic faculty are a little more available and are more mobile. The
problem is that very often in our institutions they are the teachers of Spanish.

B:

Sure.

A:

And the problem is to try and find Hispanic faculty who teach other things and
just as for so long the Black faculty were in the social service programs,
sociology, social work, education, finding them in the more technical areas or
the science areas is still an extremely difficult thing to do. It's extremely difficult
to find women in the sciences. So we still have a lot to do there. We're doing a
better job of recruiting. We're doing a better job of retaining . We're going to lose
some of the people we recruit. No question about it, and our numbers have
improved every year. I think the interesting thing we've done is we've been able
to improve minority hires in our support staff by taking a very proactive position,
going into the areas where there tend to be minority populations, Sharon,
Farrell, New Castle. Hiring out of Butler for years doesn't find you many minority
candidates . So we have some support staff now we bring in on a training
position, and as they were successful we would be able to hire them as a job
became open , and that's been good for us. So we hope we can continue that.

R:

I think I've observed some lessening of the strain that we may or may not have
had between the town of Slippery Rock and the student population. We have a
Town-Gown committee that's operational.

A:

Yes. Given the events of the last few weeks in dating this, it would have been
April 26, I guess, with the most recent Kiester Apartment problem. I begin to
wonder about that because it ebbs and flows. It can go perfectly well for a long

-49-

A:

time and one overnight occurrence can set you back at least seemingly
quite a few years and they meet monthly. I think, unfortunately, they don't
always talk about the things that are on their mind and it's more of a social get
together with somebody presently a show and tell kind of thing . We probably
need to get that cranked up a little better so that it talks about real issues. I
think we have a concern about landlord-tenant relationships that we're going
to have to get more involved with because the community people think that
we're involved. they think that we can make students pay their rent and they
think that we can make students pay damages and we can't. But we need to do
a better job of that kind of involvement. I think a lot of other ways the relationships seems to be pretty good, but I guess a lot of that depends again on local
government too, and the local government during the past spring has been in
quite a case of chaos. Elections will see what happens to that come fall. But I
think the opportunity is there to improve those relationships still. We have an
awful lot of student organizations and students who do things for the community
and we don't do a very good job, I guess, of communicating that. I'm not sure
how we do it any better but I'm convinced that a lot of people don't know how
many of our students groups do thing for the elderly. Do volunteer things in town
or the country. We've got to do a better job of letting them know that and we
will be working on that this year. No question.

R:

How does Nancy like her job?

A:

You'd probably have to interview her to get the real scoop on that. I think the
unfortunate thing about the position of presidential spouse is that there are
great expectations sometimes that are unrewarded and sometimes un-

-50A:

appreciated in many ways but there are expectations. In most every job that a
man interviews for a presidency, they expect to interview the wife for whatever
reason . Obviously, It's a two-for-one deal and she does quite well at it. She's
been particularly good, I think, at dealing with the events at the house and her
support of the art program in particular, and then trying to support things around
campus to that extent. She's not a real public person, and she doesn't like to be
introduced to groups of people, and she doesn't like to be up front. When we do
things, we seldom have a head table because she doesn't like a head table and
there's a very practical point to that. At a head table you can't talk to anybody.
You can talk to the person on your left or your right, but I think generally she's
adjusted to it pretty well. Would she have married me if she thought I was going
to do this, I don't know. I mean I was a guidance counselor and a coach and she
liked that.

R:

What do you like most about your job?

A:

I like the parts where I can understand about the successes we've had. I
thoroughly enjoy visiting with alums because when I go out to visit with alums
anywhere those who show up are generally positive and they've got some neat
story or some good thing to say about the University. I enjoy getting letters once
in a while from alums who talk about things that went on here and wonder why
we ask them for money, you know, that kind of thing. I enjoy running into
students whom I don't remember but remember me and have something fun to
say about things. The successes. It's really a trip to get a letter from NCATE
saying , hey, everything looks pretty good and we're going to go ahead. And to
find the success of getting accreditation or a physical therapy program, you

know, seeing those kinds of successes. The other kind is that every now and
then I still work with students. I haven't done this for some reason this past
year, but almost every semester I've had one or two students because of some
serious problem they were in had to report to me every week. You know most
of them are successful when they finish that. I remember a young lady from
New Jersey, just a quick story, but there were two of them . They were roommates and they had taken basically the same courses and had about the same
Q.P.A., and one of them came in and was upset because she was being
suspended. I said, well, it looks like you should be and she said, well , her
roommate had virtually the same grades and wasn't. They were in different
majors. So her roommate came in to argue the case, and I said, well , sometimes what I do in these cases is that if I let somebody back in there's this
contract. Then I explained the contract. It included seeing me every week. I
said to the roommate, it seems to me you should have been suspended, too,
which you weren't. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. If both of you will agree to
this contract, then I'll let you back in but you both have to see me every week.
Well , they looked at each other a little bit and the young lady who wasn't
suspended said, okay. So I let them back in. Now they were going to transfer
at the end of the semester if they did well because they were from New Jersey.
To make a long story short, near the end of the semester they were both doing
well and they came in and the one girl who had been suspended asked if I
was going to be there a couple of minutes and I said yes. She said, well , my
father wants to come up. So I'm sitting in the office and in came the father and
mother and her retarded brother, who must have been about 14. The mother
spoke virtually no English. The father spoke a little bit of English, and they were

-52A:

coming in thanking me for helping this daughter make it through this semester.
He was carrying this bag and he came over and he handed this to me and he
wanted me to have this. Well, there were two half gallons of Canadian Club or
something like that and I started to say something and the girl was standing
behind him and said no, no, no, don't say anything. She's waving me off. So I
thanked him and we had a nice conversation as best we could have, considering I could hardly communicate with the family and they left. That was
fascinating . I brought the young lady back, and said, I can't accept that but
it's worth , I forget what it was worth. I said that you've got a credit at the
bookstore for that amount of money and so I put some money in the bookstore
for her to buy books. But to see some successes like that with people are the
fun things. I walked into San Francisco the morning of, we had an event out at
Fisherman's Wharf, that the 49er's were playing Chicago in a playoffs when it
was so foggy in Chicago. Well, it was on out there right in the middle of this
event, but anyway we had 25 people show up. I walked in and a young lady
walked up to me and said, you don't remember me, do you? I have a terrible
memory but I said, your name is Mary. Well , it was. And Mary was in the first
class I taught here and had had some real serious health problems. But she
said, you know what I remember? She said, I was in the health center at final
exam time at Christmas my first semester. Later they diagnosed it. It was a
type of leukemia. And she said, I was just feeling awful. I looked awful. Mary
was a very, very pretty young lady. She said, I remember you came in and I was
embarrassed because I looked so bad. But I remember you came and you said
to me something about how was I doing and I said, well, okay but I was worried

-53A:

about finals . She said, you told me not worry about the exams. To get better
and then come see me and we'll worry about the exams. She said I
remembered that all these years. Well , those are the things that are fun.

R:

Thank you very much .

A:

Thank you.

B:

Thanks for everything, Bob.

A:

Yes. That's fun.