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Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University
Robert Aebersold Interview
October 21, 2008
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Sarah Meleski
Transcribed by Teresa DeBacco
Proofread and edited by Angela Rimmel, Rebecca Cunningham and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Robert Aebersold
SM: I’m Sarah Meleski and as part of the Rock Voices Oral History Project, we have Dr. Robert
Aebersold here with us today. How are you today?
RA: Fine, thank you, Sarah. I hope you are as well.
SM: I am. Well, why don’t we start off—why don’t you tell us a little about yourself? Some
background information. You can start off with your childhood and then just kind of go up from
there.
RA: Right, right: “At an early age I was a child” [laughs]. I was born in central Ohio and lived
with my mother and my grandparents on a truck farm. My grandfather ran a greenhouse with my
grandmother and grew a lot of vegetables. He processed beef and lamb and things like that for
customers.
So I grew up there, about a mile and a half from town; went to school through the Granville,
Ohio school system. No one else in my family had ever gone to college, so I went to college. I
was fortunate enough to go to Ohio Wesleyan University, which was not too far away, and did
my undergraduate work there. While I was there I was interested in physical education and
athletics. [I] was not much of a participant from the standpoint of skill, but eventually decided I
wanted to go into coaching. I also was interested in student personnel work because of a dean of
men that I got to like very much.
I went to Ohio University to major in physical education and what was then called Human
Relations, but basically it was student personnel work. [I] finished a master’s degree there and
went to Oberlin, Ohio, to teach in the public schools. I taught mostly junior high school science
and coached football and baseball, and for a while some junior high school basketball. I guess I
was there four or five years and decided I really wanted to work at college. So I left there, getting
married to Nancy at the same time and going to Hanover College in Indiana. Hanover College
was then a school of about twelve hundred students: a small liberal arts college. I coached, again,
baseball and football there, and my wife and I ran a men’s residence hall for the year we were
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there. That was my first real experience with student affairs, and it was an interesting one
[laughter]. But while doing that, again, in order to teach in college I knew I had to get a
doctorate. So we left there and went to College Park, to the University of Maryland, where my
wife taught and I went to graduate school for three years, finishing my doctorate about 1968,
technically ’69.
We came here the summer of ’68. I was hired here to teach in the science areas of physical
education and as assistant football—actually freshmen football, freshmen baseball coach,
because freshmen weren’t playing varsity sports in those days. In the Physical Education
Department I taught anatomy, exercise physiology, and sports psychology and kinesiology and
those things, and I did that—I’ve really kind of forgotten how many years I did that. Before too
long I became coordinator of the graduate programs in Health and Physical Education and then
department chair for several years.
At the time I was department chair there was a temporary vacancy in the vice president’s office
for a year or so while they were going through a vice presidential search. And so, through a
search process, I was appointed to that position. A new president was hired and asked me to stay
on in that position for a year. Then a search was run and I was a successful candidate in that
search and I became vice president under Herb Reinhard. Herb Reinhard left after about five
years. I was asked by the chancellor and the Board of Governors to become interim president,
which I did. [I] was a candidate in that search and was a successful candidate there, becoming
president about 1985. That’s what I did until I retired in 1997. So . . . and since I’ve retired I’m
doing other things. I’ve done some other jobs, just to keep busy. [I served as president of
Springfield College and Central Connecticut State University. Also, I served two years in the
Connecticut State University system as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.]
SM: What Slippery Rock eras have you been here for? Like state college and stuff like that.
RA: When I arrived Slippery Rock was a state college, and then transitioned into Slippery Rock
University at that point. That’s where we are today.
SM: What changes did you see in the department that you were hired into?
RA: Well, in those days the primary programs at Slippery Rock were education and health and
physical education. The physical education side was probably the biggest of all: at one point
during that period of time we were at fourteen hundred majors and about forty-five or so faculty
members. Way too [many] more students than made sense, but that’s why students were coming
here and that’s what Admissions will do to admit them. The department—I came into a structure
that had a Department of Health and Physical Education in the School of Education. In a short
time after that there was a reorganization. In the reorganization it was taken from the School of
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Education, and its own school was created as the School of Health and Physical Education, and
then a number of years later “Recreation” was added to that title. Since then there have been
other changes [to] which I wasn’t party.
SM: What buildings have you worked in?
RA: I spent most of my [working] life in Morrow Field House, before it was remodeled. And
then the rest of the time in Old Main.
SM: What were some of your first impressions when you got here? How did you feel about the
campus and how it looked?
RA: Well, the campus . . . I think one of the things that people realize when they’ve been some
place for a while—and I realized it after a number of years as president talking to alums—that
the campus, the state college or the university, changes over time and it’s a different thing at
different times depending on what the various emphases are in terms of the needs of graduates,
etcetera. I think that what was important to me was that Morrow Field House then was pretty
much state of the art; it was pretty much on the forefront of those kinds of buildings in the [state]
system. The old East [and] West Gyms are more typical of what schools had in the system. The
penalty we paid for being in the forefront of that was probably that we still have it, and other
places have added many more facilities to serve physical activities.
But I think it was clear from the beginning that Slippery Rock was a place that [was] small
enough that people were interested in the students; people got to know you. People—faculty,
administrators—knew students very well. In fact, most administrators taught. Many faculty
members and all coaches taught, as a matter of fact. It was before the era of allowing coaches to
coach and not teach. So people had very heavy teaching loads and at the same time made plenty
of time for interaction with students in and out of class, and I think that was extremely important.
The other thing was that it was clear that given the physical facilities available, the land
available, that there would be great opportunities in the future for growth. The institution was
highly thought of; the physical education program itself was probably among the top five, at
least, in the country and sought after. A person who graduated from here with an undergraduate
degree had as much of an education as a master’s degree from many institutions. So it was very
good to be part of something that I think was that accomplished.
SM: What changes did you see the university undergo? Were they for the better or for the
worse, or both?
RA: Well, as I said there were a whole lot of changes. Obviously there were physical changes.
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SM: That’s the one thing people mostly talk about.
RA: Yeah, the physical changes ebb and flow. Physical changes only occur after someone in
Harrisburg decides there’s going to be money. And after they decide there’s going to be money
there has to be a long time and an effort put in to trying to spend the money. The best example of
that is the music building that was approved as a fine arts building with enough money to build a
building three times the size it is. By the time they got it built, it was one third the building. So
there were those kinds of problems. There were a lot of changes and generally speaking for the
good in terms of physical plant, there’s no question about that.
I think probably the biggest change was—I can’t tell you the exact year, but it was the
movement on the part of the faculty to unionize. I know that well because I was a member of the
faculty at the time. We had campaigns by two or three different potential partner unions, and we
selected one and then began to work as a unionized faculty, which was new to all of us. That was
quite a different situation. The faculty governing structure changed when we went to the union
and the arrangements that we have today. I would say by large and by far, the institution is better
for the establishment of the union when it was done. And I think that, with probably some
arguable exceptions that occur periodically throughout the normal lifespan of administrations
and unions, that it has been a positive thing. I think that it’s been good for the academic program,
it’s been good for students, and I think ultimately it is a change for the better.
I think the nature of the student body has changed significantly because in those days almost
everybody who was here was considering teaching. That began to change for a number of
reasons. One, of course, was that teaching jobs began to get less plentiful, but also people began
to have interest in other things, and the university began to have interest in other things. So I
think that what occurred then was a growth of academic programs, the hiring of faculty with
excellent credentials in things other than education, and it was a valuable time in the growth of
university in terms of programs.
We were able to do some things that I think were quite valuable. For one thing, we began the
first dance program in the state system institutions. I always kind of joke that with dance and art
we helped to bring a different kind of student to campus. And that was true: these were students
who tended to function a little differently sometimes than a math major or an education major,
and it’s just great to have a more diverse student group.
So diversity comes about in many ways. I don’t think we’ve been able, in my period of time, to
deal with diversity in terms of race as well as I would like to have seen it done, but there’s been
progress. So things have changed dramatically in many different areas, no question about it.
SM: What were some of your activities on campus, both while you were a teacher and while you
were president?
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RA: Well, as a faculty member I was involved for a lot of years in the university-wide
Curriculum Committee, [which was] a function of the Faculty Council, the governing body of
the faculty before the union. It remained then as a faculty assembly group after the union, but it
was a critical group in terms of developing curriculum and those kinds of questions. I was
involved in that.
I was involved for quite a number of years with [Cooperative Activities]. I was interested in that
because a lot of what they funded had to do with Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and
I felt that I could be helpful to them in terms of making some of those decisions. So I was
involved with that.
Of course, I was coaching in the years before I became department chair. So I was involved in
those things. You know as president it’s kind of hard to pick out anything particular because
basically . . . .
SM: You kind of do a little bit of everything.
RA: Yeah, you’re kind of involved in everything that goes on whether you want you be or not.
But on the other hand, you need to be. As president I tried to be involved in a lot of things that
had student involvement. I was trying to show, and I believe that what we do is serve students;
what we do is provide education for students. When decisions are being made, people need to
think about, “How does that decision impact the education available for students? How does it
affect students?” So I was involved in a lot of things there. Well, I guess that pretty well covers
it, Sarah.
SM: What were some of your biggest accomplishments while you were here?
RA: That’s probably something that somebody else will figure out at some point. Things that I’m
most pleased about, I mentioned a couple situations. The development of the dance program I
think was something that wasn’t expected and I think it was something that got us some very
positive notoriety across the education realm here.
I had been involved with others in trying to develop the physical therapy program for years,
probably ten years before it came about it 1988 [with the master’s degree, and in 1995 adding the
doctorate]. An awful lot of time and effort were spent in developing that program. And again I
think it was another one of those things that changed the nature of the university dramatically at
the time. [It] still is an outstanding program. One of the differences is we had to fight so hard to
get the program [and] a few years later the state was giving the program to almost anybody who
wanted it, so there were very few programs [and] all the sudden there were a lot of programs. At
one point, I would not be off to say that we had three hundred plus applications for a class that
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might have twenty-four or twenty-five seats in it. That continued for a while. I think those things
were important.
Trying to promote student involvement in things was important to me. I think we were successful
in some ways. Sometimes students are too busy to be involved, there’s just no question about it.
But in order for education to function the way it should there needs to be student involvement in
various activities.
We had two different occasions when students were very much involved in funding and moving
forward with facilities. One was an addition of the racquetball courts to the field house, which at
the time was an amazing undertaking. The other was the student funding and development of—a
lot through the work of Bob DiSpirito—the student recreation center*, which took a lot of work
and effort and time, and students were involved in it to the nth degree. There was always some
flak around the students’ work involvement. They were always involved; they were involved in
the final decision-making of it.
I think another thing that was very helpful to us, and some outsiders may not notice but, the little
art facility that we have was a building that had been a student union and Lord knows how many
other things. It had burned down once in its history and been rebuilt. We had the Art Department
in what was the old lab school, it’s now Carruth-Rizza Hall. And we had been given money to do
some work—not enough—in that old lab school that was going to make it more useable. It was a
mess; it was falling apart. And some of us made such a case to the chancellor, in terms of health
and safety, that we were permitted to take the money that was designated for rehabbing that
building and use it to—for all practical purposes—rebuild what is now the art building . . . which
is probably smaller than it ought to be and probably doesn’t have everything it needs to have, but
it gave the art faculty and the art students a place that was theirs, a place they could do the things
they needed to do. I think it was extremely helpful to help people see that the university was
growing and changing.
In the president’s residence, at my wife Nancy’s encouragement, all of the artwork in the public
rooms was artwork of our faculty or our students. And my purpose for that, as we had a number
of occasions at the residence, was to be able to show people that we were a liberal arts
institution; we weren’t any longer an institution that educated solely teachers: we did a lot of
other things.
So, the addition of that art building and the addition of the dance program and the PT [physical
therapy] program and there are probably some others—environmental education and others—we
had ten or twelve new programs that we started in that period of time. [These] were things that
*the building was named Aebersold Recreation Center in his honor.
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helped show that Slippery Rock University was in fact evolving; it was changing, and improving.
So those are things that I think are pretty significant in the long run in the history of the
university.
SM: While you were a teacher, what were some of your best and worst teaching moments?
RA: [Laughs] I said to someone, “The problem with oral history is, it’s a good idea but you’re
always asking old people; it depends too much on memory.” [Laughter] Best and worst moments
. . . I don’t know. I enjoyed almost everything I taught. I had very few occasions or any particular
problems or issues in class. It was a period of time when I had just attended graduate school. I
taught a research methods course and every graduate student of HPER [Health, Physical
Education and Recreation] had to take it. We had one graduate program in health that involved
school nurses—school nurses would have to take that course—and usually it was in the first two
or three courses in the program, depending on when they started. It was an interesting example
because school nurses were generally a little bit older than the rest of the student body, and it
was really an eye opener, it’s not a major story, but it was an eye opener to the difference
between the typical student and the mature student.
One day it was snowing, it was getting pretty bad. I hardly ever called classes for snow. I figured
people can get there, and the three nurses in the class always seemed to get there, coming from
around Meadville somewhere. And that night they came in and only about half of the class was
there, probably a class of sixteen or so. And one of the students, not the nurses, said, “Well, you
know, looks like a lot of people can’t get here. Should we call off the class?” And I didn’t have
to say anything; the three nurses immediately said, “No. We came all this way, we’re going to
have class.” So we had class.
I say that’s not an interesting story, but it showed a difference in the attitude of students which
began to appear more and more as there were more non-traditional, as we would call them,
students in the undergraduate and graduate class. I don’t know the percentages today. I was
president of a university a few years ago where about thirty-three percent of undergraduate
students were older than the normal age of students. So it’s a growing phenomenon, and I think
that that’s a major change. I don’t know, there weren’t any protests in my class . . . .
SM: I know it’s kind of a general question, but . . .
RA: Yeah, I don’t know. I enjoy teaching and that was one of the things I missed about
becoming an administrator, was teaching. One of the things when I was president: I used to visit
a couple of classes. Coach DiSpirito had a class he taught on recreation administration, and I
used to go there every semester to talk about leadership and talk about management, but always
leaving about half the time or so, depending on the class size, to answer questions. That was
probably the most exciting thing because those were always the questions like, “Why can’t I find
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a place to park? How come the lights aren’t on long enough? Why can’t we stay in the library
until two in the morning?” You know, all those kinds of questions. Anyway, I can’t do much
better than that.
SM: Who were some people that influenced you or were very significant to you during your time
here?
RA: They go back, mostly go back a ways. Bob Lowry, who was the director of admissions for
years before I got here, just did a fantastic job. And Bob Lowry was, in fact, acting president
when I was hired. When I interviewed in the spring, the president was President Carter, who was
actually in the process of being let go. When I got here in the summer, Bob Lowry was the
president who signed my letter. So I’ve always told people that I wasn’t hired, I was admitted by
the Director of Admissions. Bob was a guy that I learned an awful lot [from] in terms of just kind
of keeping your cool: the importance of not flying off the handle at things.
And there were some others: Wayne Walker was a Texan who came here as dean of the School
of Education. He used to say he was here on missionary work from Texas. He was another guy
like that.
He had lots of stories to tell. I think the one that struck me most in terms of the way I viewed
things for years was that shortly after I became president, early in the fall, he and I had been at a
meeting some place and he said, “Drive over to the stadium.” Of course by that time the leaves
were changing—they were beautiful—and we pulled over. He said, “Look out there. Isn’t that
beautiful?” I said, “It really is.” The hillside was just full of all the colors; it was one of those
beautiful fall days. “Yeah,” I said, “It’s really beautiful.” And Wayne turned to me in his Texas
way and said to me, “Well you know, if you begin to think it’s yours, you’re in trouble.”
And I’ve taken that with me in terms of the real privilege that it is to be a manager, an
administrator and how that privilege can’t be wasted, can’t be hijacked the way it has been
hijacked more recently [in government and business], at least in some of the things we read
about in the paper, with some leaders. Just take the university: the university doesn’t belong to
anybody but the people who are there at the time using it, and the job of the president or any
other administrator is one of stewardship and it’s one of seeing that the institution is better when
you leave it than it was when you got there. And so I just thought that was good advice.
There were others: Bill Meise was the long-time dean of HPER [Health, Physical Education and
Recreation], just a guy with a million stories. And Bob DiSpirito, long time coach, who was one
of the guys that hired me and got me here; he’s just retired a few years ago. And there were
others, Martha Haverstick in Health [and] Physical Education, who’s just been honored recently
with a scholarship, I think for women’s leadership. And Ann Griffiths, who’s retired not long
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ago, were two of the women that I learned from very early on in my career here. There were lots
of people.
SM: Do you remember any major events or activities that happened while you were here? Any
that really stick out in your mind?
RA: You know I was trying to think about that, I was looking at the question and I was thinking,
“Gee, what was that?” I was so focused on what was happening on campus . . . . One, of course,
was the passing of the bill creating the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. People
don’t realize generally today, have no reason to, what a difference that made. Because before that
there were 508 school districts, and there were fourteen of us [state universities] and we were all
administered by the same people through the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and
everything we did was treated as if we were another public school district. It was a real problem
in terms of getting anything done.
The creation of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education freed us from all of that. It
gave us our own board, it gave us a lot of autonomy to do things, it gave us our own entrée into
the budget process. But as some of us said at the time, it eliminated a whole lot a bureaucracy but
it put us in the position of creating our own. Unfortunately, that’s what organizations do over
time. So unfortunately, we began to create our own bureaucracy.
I think that there were a number of issues around the country and on the campus in terms of
some racial unrest. We had a couple of incidents that I think we worked through pretty well and
got some favorable note for. So other than that I don’t know. That’s the only thing I can relate to
you.
SM: Do you miss anything about being here? Teaching? Administration?
RA: Well, as I said, basically what I miss is the interaction with people. And when I went, after I
retired, to two other presidencies and some other higher education work, it was primarily because
of the interaction with people and the ability to work with people and with students and to try to
make some things happen on some campuses that I found to be very interesting. And I miss that.
I never really developed a golfing hobby like a lot of people who say “I could spend half the day
on the golf course.” But that’s kind of what I’ve been doing until just recently. I think I’m finally
finished with that, but that’s been important to me.
SM: Well, do you have any words of wisdom for us or for any future or current Rock
[community] members, students, that they should know?
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RA: [Laughs]. Go to class and graduate. That’s what a lot of students forget that they’re here for.
I mean, there’s one job. There may be other jobs you’ll be paid for, but there’s one job [here] and
that’s go to class, study, and graduate.
I’ve used a quote at times; I have no idea where this came from. I’ve used this a lot, “Plant a tree
in whose shade you shall never sit.” It speaks [to] doing the things you can do today which will
improve things for the future. I think that’s what all of us do as we move through organizations.
You know how successful you are in the organization of education, probably years later, by what
your students are doing. Too often we measure how successful we are by how many students
graduate in four and a half, five and a half, six years. [That] has nothing to do with the success of
what you’ve done as a faculty member. That success has to do with what people are doing later
on. And I think one of the most pleasing things that can happen to anybody who has been in
education for a while is when a former student approaches them and thanks them for whatever it
was they did to help them through whatever it was—that class, however many years ago that
was. And I think that’s important.
I think we need to focus on what’s important for students, what’s important for the educational
process, and spend less time on minor issues. There are these cyclical problems, Sarah. I’m sure
that perhaps in your time there will be at least one discussion of parking, there will be some other
discussion about library hours, there will be some discussion about why money isn’t spent for
this or that or another thing instead of what is being [done]. Why are we doing intramural fields
when we could be giving students more scholarships? I mean, there are all kinds—but those
things are cyclical and being here twenty-nine years, as I was, every now and then I would
discover a problem sitting on my desk and I’d say, “Didn’t we solve that?”
So, I guess my point is that there are things that are extremely important to get the job done [and]
there are things which are ancillary to that and can be a little bit of a pain in the neck and we
have to be careful where we focus our time. We have to be careful that we don’t spend ninety
percent of our time on ten percent of the problems, and that’s easy to do in an institution of
higher education where the spoken word is valued so highly and exercised so often. Okay?
SM: How do you want to be remembered here at Slippery Rock?
RA: Well, I think I always fancy myself as a person who is a facilitator who tries to identify
those people and those things which are important to some objective and to try to help people get
their part of that done. To try to manage in a way that people can accomplish what they need to
accomplish to get our major objectives [done]. I’d like to have people feel that I listened to them.
If they don’t, then I’ve wasted a lot of time because I spent a lot of time listening. I think that to
be a good teacher, to be a good administrator you have to listen. You have to pay attention to
what people are saying.
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I think with my background, people would say that I played by the rules. The rules aren’t always
the things that we like, but you can’t have a successful organization if the rules aren’t the same
for everybody, or if there are favorites and if there are people using what is commonly known as
the “old boy system.” I’ve experienced that; I’ve been in circumstances where that was rampant.
But I would hope that no one saw that in me and I would hope I guess, that finally people would
think that the things we did and the things that we accomplished, we did so with thought and
they were fair. You know if that’s the case, that’s fine.
SM: Well, I don’t think I have any other questions for you. Do you have last comments or
anything like that . . . ?
RA: I don’t know, I think you pretty well covered most everything I had gone over with the
questions. I think of one thing I didn’t mention and it was on the top of my list: one of the things
that I was most pleased about during the time I was here was the International Studies program
and where it was going. The International Studies program was under the leadership of Stan
Kendziorski. At one point we were sending overseas more than three hundred U.S. students a
year, and many of us felt that one of the main purposes of International Student programs was to
benefit our students, not necessarily to bring students from over there here but to get our students
over there. I believe that any time a student spends in a different culture, even if it’s as close as
Great Britain in terms of culture, can be a life changing experience for them, and I’ve seen that.
So I think that was a critical issue. We were trying to reach one hundred countries, with students
from that many countries. I don’t think we made it; we came pretty close: probably seventy,
eighty or so. But we were not trying to bring in what I call ghetto group recruiting of
international students. Meaning, not to bring in one hundred students from one country and then
say we’ve got a lot of international students. We had an excellent diversity.
The benefit here was that our international students also had an international experience when
they were here. One election, the election when the Republicans under Newt Gingrich took over
Washington D.C., that week I had a lunch with I think seventeen or eighteen international
students from twelve or thirteen different countries and we had probably a two hour discussion
about elections here and in their countries. I mean there were students there from all over the
world, from the southern hemisphere into Asia and Europe; [it was] kind of a nice fall day,
sitting in the dining hall, the University Club, in Slippery Rock talking about elections from all
over the world. It was fascinating. So I think that was important.
I think that it hurt us when the Board of Governors decided international students were too
expensive to support. We had always charged international students a fee. We showed that the
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international students that we brought here, even though we “technically” waived tuition,
brought with them more money than we spent on them.
Same thing with out-of-state students and that’s one of the changes I didn’t mention earlier.
When I came here we probably had, I’ll bet a third of our student body was from out of state.
When the Board of Governors decided they would crank the out-of-state tuition up in a hurry, we
lost the biggest percentage of that number over two years. So I think that changed the student
body again. I used to laugh that having students from New Jersey was as good as having
international students. My wife was from New Jersey so I can say that. So those were a couple
things that I didn’t mention.
The new student apartments, we got that set of student apartments built really over the objections
of the powers-that-be in Harrisburg and one very strong local landlord who did everything he
could to shoot them down.
SM: Do you know why he tried to shoot them down? Was there any particular reason?
RA: He had an interest in building student apartments—
SM: Oh, okay.
RA: —and we were building these on campus. So it was competitive, I believe. And that’s
alright; it’s no problem being competitive. But we had to go through a struggle to get them, and I
think that was important to the institution. It was very helpful in terms of then moving forward
and to do what’s been done now in terms of student apartments.
The Alumni House, I think, was also an important thing that we did. So anyway, those are some
of things and I appreciate, Sarah, your conversation. If you have any questions that you need
answered from me or to fill things in, let me know.
SM: Okay. Thank you.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Robert Aebersold Interview
October 21, 2008
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Sarah Meleski
Transcribed by Teresa DeBacco
Proofread and edited by Angela Rimmel, Rebecca Cunningham and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Robert Aebersold
SM: I’m Sarah Meleski and as part of the Rock Voices Oral History Project, we have Dr. Robert
Aebersold here with us today. How are you today?
RA: Fine, thank you, Sarah. I hope you are as well.
SM: I am. Well, why don’t we start off—why don’t you tell us a little about yourself? Some
background information. You can start off with your childhood and then just kind of go up from
there.
RA: Right, right: “At an early age I was a child” [laughs]. I was born in central Ohio and lived
with my mother and my grandparents on a truck farm. My grandfather ran a greenhouse with my
grandmother and grew a lot of vegetables. He processed beef and lamb and things like that for
customers.
So I grew up there, about a mile and a half from town; went to school through the Granville,
Ohio school system. No one else in my family had ever gone to college, so I went to college. I
was fortunate enough to go to Ohio Wesleyan University, which was not too far away, and did
my undergraduate work there. While I was there I was interested in physical education and
athletics. [I] was not much of a participant from the standpoint of skill, but eventually decided I
wanted to go into coaching. I also was interested in student personnel work because of a dean of
men that I got to like very much.
I went to Ohio University to major in physical education and what was then called Human
Relations, but basically it was student personnel work. [I] finished a master’s degree there and
went to Oberlin, Ohio, to teach in the public schools. I taught mostly junior high school science
and coached football and baseball, and for a while some junior high school basketball. I guess I
was there four or five years and decided I really wanted to work at college. So I left there, getting
married to Nancy at the same time and going to Hanover College in Indiana. Hanover College
was then a school of about twelve hundred students: a small liberal arts college. I coached, again,
baseball and football there, and my wife and I ran a men’s residence hall for the year we were
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there. That was my first real experience with student affairs, and it was an interesting one
[laughter]. But while doing that, again, in order to teach in college I knew I had to get a
doctorate. So we left there and went to College Park, to the University of Maryland, where my
wife taught and I went to graduate school for three years, finishing my doctorate about 1968,
technically ’69.
We came here the summer of ’68. I was hired here to teach in the science areas of physical
education and as assistant football—actually freshmen football, freshmen baseball coach,
because freshmen weren’t playing varsity sports in those days. In the Physical Education
Department I taught anatomy, exercise physiology, and sports psychology and kinesiology and
those things, and I did that—I’ve really kind of forgotten how many years I did that. Before too
long I became coordinator of the graduate programs in Health and Physical Education and then
department chair for several years.
At the time I was department chair there was a temporary vacancy in the vice president’s office
for a year or so while they were going through a vice presidential search. And so, through a
search process, I was appointed to that position. A new president was hired and asked me to stay
on in that position for a year. Then a search was run and I was a successful candidate in that
search and I became vice president under Herb Reinhard. Herb Reinhard left after about five
years. I was asked by the chancellor and the Board of Governors to become interim president,
which I did. [I] was a candidate in that search and was a successful candidate there, becoming
president about 1985. That’s what I did until I retired in 1997. So . . . and since I’ve retired I’m
doing other things. I’ve done some other jobs, just to keep busy. [I served as president of
Springfield College and Central Connecticut State University. Also, I served two years in the
Connecticut State University system as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.]
SM: What Slippery Rock eras have you been here for? Like state college and stuff like that.
RA: When I arrived Slippery Rock was a state college, and then transitioned into Slippery Rock
University at that point. That’s where we are today.
SM: What changes did you see in the department that you were hired into?
RA: Well, in those days the primary programs at Slippery Rock were education and health and
physical education. The physical education side was probably the biggest of all: at one point
during that period of time we were at fourteen hundred majors and about forty-five or so faculty
members. Way too [many] more students than made sense, but that’s why students were coming
here and that’s what Admissions will do to admit them. The department—I came into a structure
that had a Department of Health and Physical Education in the School of Education. In a short
time after that there was a reorganization. In the reorganization it was taken from the School of
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Education, and its own school was created as the School of Health and Physical Education, and
then a number of years later “Recreation” was added to that title. Since then there have been
other changes [to] which I wasn’t party.
SM: What buildings have you worked in?
RA: I spent most of my [working] life in Morrow Field House, before it was remodeled. And
then the rest of the time in Old Main.
SM: What were some of your first impressions when you got here? How did you feel about the
campus and how it looked?
RA: Well, the campus . . . I think one of the things that people realize when they’ve been some
place for a while—and I realized it after a number of years as president talking to alums—that
the campus, the state college or the university, changes over time and it’s a different thing at
different times depending on what the various emphases are in terms of the needs of graduates,
etcetera. I think that what was important to me was that Morrow Field House then was pretty
much state of the art; it was pretty much on the forefront of those kinds of buildings in the [state]
system. The old East [and] West Gyms are more typical of what schools had in the system. The
penalty we paid for being in the forefront of that was probably that we still have it, and other
places have added many more facilities to serve physical activities.
But I think it was clear from the beginning that Slippery Rock was a place that [was] small
enough that people were interested in the students; people got to know you. People—faculty,
administrators—knew students very well. In fact, most administrators taught. Many faculty
members and all coaches taught, as a matter of fact. It was before the era of allowing coaches to
coach and not teach. So people had very heavy teaching loads and at the same time made plenty
of time for interaction with students in and out of class, and I think that was extremely important.
The other thing was that it was clear that given the physical facilities available, the land
available, that there would be great opportunities in the future for growth. The institution was
highly thought of; the physical education program itself was probably among the top five, at
least, in the country and sought after. A person who graduated from here with an undergraduate
degree had as much of an education as a master’s degree from many institutions. So it was very
good to be part of something that I think was that accomplished.
SM: What changes did you see the university undergo? Were they for the better or for the
worse, or both?
RA: Well, as I said there were a whole lot of changes. Obviously there were physical changes.
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SM: That’s the one thing people mostly talk about.
RA: Yeah, the physical changes ebb and flow. Physical changes only occur after someone in
Harrisburg decides there’s going to be money. And after they decide there’s going to be money
there has to be a long time and an effort put in to trying to spend the money. The best example of
that is the music building that was approved as a fine arts building with enough money to build a
building three times the size it is. By the time they got it built, it was one third the building. So
there were those kinds of problems. There were a lot of changes and generally speaking for the
good in terms of physical plant, there’s no question about that.
I think probably the biggest change was—I can’t tell you the exact year, but it was the
movement on the part of the faculty to unionize. I know that well because I was a member of the
faculty at the time. We had campaigns by two or three different potential partner unions, and we
selected one and then began to work as a unionized faculty, which was new to all of us. That was
quite a different situation. The faculty governing structure changed when we went to the union
and the arrangements that we have today. I would say by large and by far, the institution is better
for the establishment of the union when it was done. And I think that, with probably some
arguable exceptions that occur periodically throughout the normal lifespan of administrations
and unions, that it has been a positive thing. I think that it’s been good for the academic program,
it’s been good for students, and I think ultimately it is a change for the better.
I think the nature of the student body has changed significantly because in those days almost
everybody who was here was considering teaching. That began to change for a number of
reasons. One, of course, was that teaching jobs began to get less plentiful, but also people began
to have interest in other things, and the university began to have interest in other things. So I
think that what occurred then was a growth of academic programs, the hiring of faculty with
excellent credentials in things other than education, and it was a valuable time in the growth of
university in terms of programs.
We were able to do some things that I think were quite valuable. For one thing, we began the
first dance program in the state system institutions. I always kind of joke that with dance and art
we helped to bring a different kind of student to campus. And that was true: these were students
who tended to function a little differently sometimes than a math major or an education major,
and it’s just great to have a more diverse student group.
So diversity comes about in many ways. I don’t think we’ve been able, in my period of time, to
deal with diversity in terms of race as well as I would like to have seen it done, but there’s been
progress. So things have changed dramatically in many different areas, no question about it.
SM: What were some of your activities on campus, both while you were a teacher and while you
were president?
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RA: Well, as a faculty member I was involved for a lot of years in the university-wide
Curriculum Committee, [which was] a function of the Faculty Council, the governing body of
the faculty before the union. It remained then as a faculty assembly group after the union, but it
was a critical group in terms of developing curriculum and those kinds of questions. I was
involved in that.
I was involved for quite a number of years with [Cooperative Activities]. I was interested in that
because a lot of what they funded had to do with Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and
I felt that I could be helpful to them in terms of making some of those decisions. So I was
involved with that.
Of course, I was coaching in the years before I became department chair. So I was involved in
those things. You know as president it’s kind of hard to pick out anything particular because
basically . . . .
SM: You kind of do a little bit of everything.
RA: Yeah, you’re kind of involved in everything that goes on whether you want you be or not.
But on the other hand, you need to be. As president I tried to be involved in a lot of things that
had student involvement. I was trying to show, and I believe that what we do is serve students;
what we do is provide education for students. When decisions are being made, people need to
think about, “How does that decision impact the education available for students? How does it
affect students?” So I was involved in a lot of things there. Well, I guess that pretty well covers
it, Sarah.
SM: What were some of your biggest accomplishments while you were here?
RA: That’s probably something that somebody else will figure out at some point. Things that I’m
most pleased about, I mentioned a couple situations. The development of the dance program I
think was something that wasn’t expected and I think it was something that got us some very
positive notoriety across the education realm here.
I had been involved with others in trying to develop the physical therapy program for years,
probably ten years before it came about it 1988 [with the master’s degree, and in 1995 adding the
doctorate]. An awful lot of time and effort were spent in developing that program. And again I
think it was another one of those things that changed the nature of the university dramatically at
the time. [It] still is an outstanding program. One of the differences is we had to fight so hard to
get the program [and] a few years later the state was giving the program to almost anybody who
wanted it, so there were very few programs [and] all the sudden there were a lot of programs. At
one point, I would not be off to say that we had three hundred plus applications for a class that
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might have twenty-four or twenty-five seats in it. That continued for a while. I think those things
were important.
Trying to promote student involvement in things was important to me. I think we were successful
in some ways. Sometimes students are too busy to be involved, there’s just no question about it.
But in order for education to function the way it should there needs to be student involvement in
various activities.
We had two different occasions when students were very much involved in funding and moving
forward with facilities. One was an addition of the racquetball courts to the field house, which at
the time was an amazing undertaking. The other was the student funding and development of—a
lot through the work of Bob DiSpirito—the student recreation center*, which took a lot of work
and effort and time, and students were involved in it to the nth degree. There was always some
flak around the students’ work involvement. They were always involved; they were involved in
the final decision-making of it.
I think another thing that was very helpful to us, and some outsiders may not notice but, the little
art facility that we have was a building that had been a student union and Lord knows how many
other things. It had burned down once in its history and been rebuilt. We had the Art Department
in what was the old lab school, it’s now Carruth-Rizza Hall. And we had been given money to do
some work—not enough—in that old lab school that was going to make it more useable. It was a
mess; it was falling apart. And some of us made such a case to the chancellor, in terms of health
and safety, that we were permitted to take the money that was designated for rehabbing that
building and use it to—for all practical purposes—rebuild what is now the art building . . . which
is probably smaller than it ought to be and probably doesn’t have everything it needs to have, but
it gave the art faculty and the art students a place that was theirs, a place they could do the things
they needed to do. I think it was extremely helpful to help people see that the university was
growing and changing.
In the president’s residence, at my wife Nancy’s encouragement, all of the artwork in the public
rooms was artwork of our faculty or our students. And my purpose for that, as we had a number
of occasions at the residence, was to be able to show people that we were a liberal arts
institution; we weren’t any longer an institution that educated solely teachers: we did a lot of
other things.
So, the addition of that art building and the addition of the dance program and the PT [physical
therapy] program and there are probably some others—environmental education and others—we
had ten or twelve new programs that we started in that period of time. [These] were things that
*the building was named Aebersold Recreation Center in his honor.
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helped show that Slippery Rock University was in fact evolving; it was changing, and improving.
So those are things that I think are pretty significant in the long run in the history of the
university.
SM: While you were a teacher, what were some of your best and worst teaching moments?
RA: [Laughs] I said to someone, “The problem with oral history is, it’s a good idea but you’re
always asking old people; it depends too much on memory.” [Laughter] Best and worst moments
. . . I don’t know. I enjoyed almost everything I taught. I had very few occasions or any particular
problems or issues in class. It was a period of time when I had just attended graduate school. I
taught a research methods course and every graduate student of HPER [Health, Physical
Education and Recreation] had to take it. We had one graduate program in health that involved
school nurses—school nurses would have to take that course—and usually it was in the first two
or three courses in the program, depending on when they started. It was an interesting example
because school nurses were generally a little bit older than the rest of the student body, and it
was really an eye opener, it’s not a major story, but it was an eye opener to the difference
between the typical student and the mature student.
One day it was snowing, it was getting pretty bad. I hardly ever called classes for snow. I figured
people can get there, and the three nurses in the class always seemed to get there, coming from
around Meadville somewhere. And that night they came in and only about half of the class was
there, probably a class of sixteen or so. And one of the students, not the nurses, said, “Well, you
know, looks like a lot of people can’t get here. Should we call off the class?” And I didn’t have
to say anything; the three nurses immediately said, “No. We came all this way, we’re going to
have class.” So we had class.
I say that’s not an interesting story, but it showed a difference in the attitude of students which
began to appear more and more as there were more non-traditional, as we would call them,
students in the undergraduate and graduate class. I don’t know the percentages today. I was
president of a university a few years ago where about thirty-three percent of undergraduate
students were older than the normal age of students. So it’s a growing phenomenon, and I think
that that’s a major change. I don’t know, there weren’t any protests in my class . . . .
SM: I know it’s kind of a general question, but . . .
RA: Yeah, I don’t know. I enjoy teaching and that was one of the things I missed about
becoming an administrator, was teaching. One of the things when I was president: I used to visit
a couple of classes. Coach DiSpirito had a class he taught on recreation administration, and I
used to go there every semester to talk about leadership and talk about management, but always
leaving about half the time or so, depending on the class size, to answer questions. That was
probably the most exciting thing because those were always the questions like, “Why can’t I find
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a place to park? How come the lights aren’t on long enough? Why can’t we stay in the library
until two in the morning?” You know, all those kinds of questions. Anyway, I can’t do much
better than that.
SM: Who were some people that influenced you or were very significant to you during your time
here?
RA: They go back, mostly go back a ways. Bob Lowry, who was the director of admissions for
years before I got here, just did a fantastic job. And Bob Lowry was, in fact, acting president
when I was hired. When I interviewed in the spring, the president was President Carter, who was
actually in the process of being let go. When I got here in the summer, Bob Lowry was the
president who signed my letter. So I’ve always told people that I wasn’t hired, I was admitted by
the Director of Admissions. Bob was a guy that I learned an awful lot [from] in terms of just kind
of keeping your cool: the importance of not flying off the handle at things.
And there were some others: Wayne Walker was a Texan who came here as dean of the School
of Education. He used to say he was here on missionary work from Texas. He was another guy
like that.
He had lots of stories to tell. I think the one that struck me most in terms of the way I viewed
things for years was that shortly after I became president, early in the fall, he and I had been at a
meeting some place and he said, “Drive over to the stadium.” Of course by that time the leaves
were changing—they were beautiful—and we pulled over. He said, “Look out there. Isn’t that
beautiful?” I said, “It really is.” The hillside was just full of all the colors; it was one of those
beautiful fall days. “Yeah,” I said, “It’s really beautiful.” And Wayne turned to me in his Texas
way and said to me, “Well you know, if you begin to think it’s yours, you’re in trouble.”
And I’ve taken that with me in terms of the real privilege that it is to be a manager, an
administrator and how that privilege can’t be wasted, can’t be hijacked the way it has been
hijacked more recently [in government and business], at least in some of the things we read
about in the paper, with some leaders. Just take the university: the university doesn’t belong to
anybody but the people who are there at the time using it, and the job of the president or any
other administrator is one of stewardship and it’s one of seeing that the institution is better when
you leave it than it was when you got there. And so I just thought that was good advice.
There were others: Bill Meise was the long-time dean of HPER [Health, Physical Education and
Recreation], just a guy with a million stories. And Bob DiSpirito, long time coach, who was one
of the guys that hired me and got me here; he’s just retired a few years ago. And there were
others, Martha Haverstick in Health [and] Physical Education, who’s just been honored recently
with a scholarship, I think for women’s leadership. And Ann Griffiths, who’s retired not long
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ago, were two of the women that I learned from very early on in my career here. There were lots
of people.
SM: Do you remember any major events or activities that happened while you were here? Any
that really stick out in your mind?
RA: You know I was trying to think about that, I was looking at the question and I was thinking,
“Gee, what was that?” I was so focused on what was happening on campus . . . . One, of course,
was the passing of the bill creating the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. People
don’t realize generally today, have no reason to, what a difference that made. Because before that
there were 508 school districts, and there were fourteen of us [state universities] and we were all
administered by the same people through the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and
everything we did was treated as if we were another public school district. It was a real problem
in terms of getting anything done.
The creation of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education freed us from all of that. It
gave us our own board, it gave us a lot of autonomy to do things, it gave us our own entrée into
the budget process. But as some of us said at the time, it eliminated a whole lot a bureaucracy but
it put us in the position of creating our own. Unfortunately, that’s what organizations do over
time. So unfortunately, we began to create our own bureaucracy.
I think that there were a number of issues around the country and on the campus in terms of
some racial unrest. We had a couple of incidents that I think we worked through pretty well and
got some favorable note for. So other than that I don’t know. That’s the only thing I can relate to
you.
SM: Do you miss anything about being here? Teaching? Administration?
RA: Well, as I said, basically what I miss is the interaction with people. And when I went, after I
retired, to two other presidencies and some other higher education work, it was primarily because
of the interaction with people and the ability to work with people and with students and to try to
make some things happen on some campuses that I found to be very interesting. And I miss that.
I never really developed a golfing hobby like a lot of people who say “I could spend half the day
on the golf course.” But that’s kind of what I’ve been doing until just recently. I think I’m finally
finished with that, but that’s been important to me.
SM: Well, do you have any words of wisdom for us or for any future or current Rock
[community] members, students, that they should know?
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RA: [Laughs]. Go to class and graduate. That’s what a lot of students forget that they’re here for.
I mean, there’s one job. There may be other jobs you’ll be paid for, but there’s one job [here] and
that’s go to class, study, and graduate.
I’ve used a quote at times; I have no idea where this came from. I’ve used this a lot, “Plant a tree
in whose shade you shall never sit.” It speaks [to] doing the things you can do today which will
improve things for the future. I think that’s what all of us do as we move through organizations.
You know how successful you are in the organization of education, probably years later, by what
your students are doing. Too often we measure how successful we are by how many students
graduate in four and a half, five and a half, six years. [That] has nothing to do with the success of
what you’ve done as a faculty member. That success has to do with what people are doing later
on. And I think one of the most pleasing things that can happen to anybody who has been in
education for a while is when a former student approaches them and thanks them for whatever it
was they did to help them through whatever it was—that class, however many years ago that
was. And I think that’s important.
I think we need to focus on what’s important for students, what’s important for the educational
process, and spend less time on minor issues. There are these cyclical problems, Sarah. I’m sure
that perhaps in your time there will be at least one discussion of parking, there will be some other
discussion about library hours, there will be some discussion about why money isn’t spent for
this or that or another thing instead of what is being [done]. Why are we doing intramural fields
when we could be giving students more scholarships? I mean, there are all kinds—but those
things are cyclical and being here twenty-nine years, as I was, every now and then I would
discover a problem sitting on my desk and I’d say, “Didn’t we solve that?”
So, I guess my point is that there are things that are extremely important to get the job done [and]
there are things which are ancillary to that and can be a little bit of a pain in the neck and we
have to be careful where we focus our time. We have to be careful that we don’t spend ninety
percent of our time on ten percent of the problems, and that’s easy to do in an institution of
higher education where the spoken word is valued so highly and exercised so often. Okay?
SM: How do you want to be remembered here at Slippery Rock?
RA: Well, I think I always fancy myself as a person who is a facilitator who tries to identify
those people and those things which are important to some objective and to try to help people get
their part of that done. To try to manage in a way that people can accomplish what they need to
accomplish to get our major objectives [done]. I’d like to have people feel that I listened to them.
If they don’t, then I’ve wasted a lot of time because I spent a lot of time listening. I think that to
be a good teacher, to be a good administrator you have to listen. You have to pay attention to
what people are saying.
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I think with my background, people would say that I played by the rules. The rules aren’t always
the things that we like, but you can’t have a successful organization if the rules aren’t the same
for everybody, or if there are favorites and if there are people using what is commonly known as
the “old boy system.” I’ve experienced that; I’ve been in circumstances where that was rampant.
But I would hope that no one saw that in me and I would hope I guess, that finally people would
think that the things we did and the things that we accomplished, we did so with thought and
they were fair. You know if that’s the case, that’s fine.
SM: Well, I don’t think I have any other questions for you. Do you have last comments or
anything like that . . . ?
RA: I don’t know, I think you pretty well covered most everything I had gone over with the
questions. I think of one thing I didn’t mention and it was on the top of my list: one of the things
that I was most pleased about during the time I was here was the International Studies program
and where it was going. The International Studies program was under the leadership of Stan
Kendziorski. At one point we were sending overseas more than three hundred U.S. students a
year, and many of us felt that one of the main purposes of International Student programs was to
benefit our students, not necessarily to bring students from over there here but to get our students
over there. I believe that any time a student spends in a different culture, even if it’s as close as
Great Britain in terms of culture, can be a life changing experience for them, and I’ve seen that.
So I think that was a critical issue. We were trying to reach one hundred countries, with students
from that many countries. I don’t think we made it; we came pretty close: probably seventy,
eighty or so. But we were not trying to bring in what I call ghetto group recruiting of
international students. Meaning, not to bring in one hundred students from one country and then
say we’ve got a lot of international students. We had an excellent diversity.
The benefit here was that our international students also had an international experience when
they were here. One election, the election when the Republicans under Newt Gingrich took over
Washington D.C., that week I had a lunch with I think seventeen or eighteen international
students from twelve or thirteen different countries and we had probably a two hour discussion
about elections here and in their countries. I mean there were students there from all over the
world, from the southern hemisphere into Asia and Europe; [it was] kind of a nice fall day,
sitting in the dining hall, the University Club, in Slippery Rock talking about elections from all
over the world. It was fascinating. So I think that was important.
I think that it hurt us when the Board of Governors decided international students were too
expensive to support. We had always charged international students a fee. We showed that the
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Aebersold, Robert
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international students that we brought here, even though we “technically” waived tuition,
brought with them more money than we spent on them.
Same thing with out-of-state students and that’s one of the changes I didn’t mention earlier.
When I came here we probably had, I’ll bet a third of our student body was from out of state.
When the Board of Governors decided they would crank the out-of-state tuition up in a hurry, we
lost the biggest percentage of that number over two years. So I think that changed the student
body again. I used to laugh that having students from New Jersey was as good as having
international students. My wife was from New Jersey so I can say that. So those were a couple
things that I didn’t mention.
The new student apartments, we got that set of student apartments built really over the objections
of the powers-that-be in Harrisburg and one very strong local landlord who did everything he
could to shoot them down.
SM: Do you know why he tried to shoot them down? Was there any particular reason?
RA: He had an interest in building student apartments—
SM: Oh, okay.
RA: —and we were building these on campus. So it was competitive, I believe. And that’s
alright; it’s no problem being competitive. But we had to go through a struggle to get them, and I
think that was important to the institution. It was very helpful in terms of then moving forward
and to do what’s been done now in terms of student apartments.
The Alumni House, I think, was also an important thing that we did. So anyway, those are some
of things and I appreciate, Sarah, your conversation. If you have any questions that you need
answered from me or to fill things in, let me know.
SM: Okay. Thank you.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania