Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of SRU
William F. Williams Interview
June 25, 2013
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Judy Silva
Transcribed by Kara Constantine
Proofread and edited by Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by William F. Williams

JS: Today is Tuesday, June 25, 2013. It is about 10:10 in the morning. I am Judy Silva
and I am here at Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania with Dr. Bill
Williams. This is an oral history interview for Rock Voices. Good morning, Bill.
WW: Good morning, Judy. It‟s so nice to see you today.
JS: Thank you. I will be asking you some questions about yourself and your time at
Slippery Rock University. We are going to start with some biographical information:
your full name and date of birth.
WW: William Frederick Williams. I was born May 4, 1945 in Mercer County Hospital in
Mercer, Pennsylvania. I grew up on a farm outside of Greenville, Pennsylvania, three
miles south of town. I went to Greenville High School and I graduated in 1963. I played
football and wrestled. I had a scholarship to Thiel College for sports for a year and
decided that I didn‟t like that.
JS: For sports . . . for football?
WW: For football and wrestling. Then I went to Youngstown where I didn‟t have to do
sports and could have fun.
JS: That was the „sixties.
WW: It was the „sixties and the city. Yeah, so I started at Youngstown in ‟65 and stayed
there until I got my master‟s degree. I got my master‟s degree in ‟70. I got a BA and an
MA in English.
JS: In English Literature?
WW: Yep. Then I went to Kent [State University] for several years . . . I was in their
Ph.D. in English program and this is bizarre: I started at Kent in 1970, and May 4th of
1970, my twenty-fifth birthday, they celebrated by shooting four students, which was
kind of exciting [said sarcastically].
JS: You were there?

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WW: I was . . . I had applied for an assistantship at Kent to do graduate work and I had a
friend that lived in Kent. So the night before, May 3rd, I went up. On May 4th I was going
to see what the status of everything was and meet some people. On the night of May 3rd is
when they brought the tanks in. So I left. I thought, “Tanks are coming to town. It‟s 1970.
This is not a sign of tranquility . . . .” So I just left. I was living in Youngstown at the
time.
JS: Peaceful Youngstown [laughter].
WW: Peaceful Youngstown.
JS: Where people got shot just walking in the streets. No tanks.
WW: Yea, no tanks and at least in Youngstown you knew why you were getting shot and
you knew who was doing it. They only shot you if they had a reason, you may not have
liked the reason but they had one. Youngstown was much safer in terms of quirkiness at
that moment in time because the National Guard didn‟t apparently have a lot of reasons,
they were just out having a good time. They were just out practicing their marksmanship
[laughter].
JS: Too dangerous for them. So where did you do your Ph.D. then?
WW: I spent three or four years at Kent and then I did my doctorate at IUP [Indiana
University of Pennsylvania]; eventually I finished it there.
JS: So you started it at Kent and finished it at IUP?
WW: At IUP, yeah. That was good. It was good for me because . . . what I got at Kent
was a fairly new critical Ph.D. program in literature. I had gone through all the
coursework and I couldn‟t decide why or what. I didn‟t want to spend the rest of my life
writing about the minutia of Wordsworth‟s life or something like that. Not that it wasn‟t
totally fascinating, probably his sister thought so anyway. But I didn‟t want to do that. I
kind of took a break from all that. I taught at a community college in West Virginia for
three years. I think it was the end of my second or third year while I was there that a
woman [who] was there also suggested IUP [Indiana University of Pennsylvania]. The
two of us were the whole English Department. I had seniority though [laughter].
So they have this program at IUP where you can do coursework in the summer, so if you
are teaching you can still finish that out. It was way more interesting because they had
these other options rather than just minutia of Wordsworth between ages twelve and
fourteen [laughter]. With a Ph.D. you have to get down in the weeds—it‟s a long ways.
So I said, “Well, maybe I‟ll try this.” I checked into it and I said, “This looks like some
fun,” so I went up there and I did a summer and at the end of that summer there I started
my first summer here and I decided—my wife at the time was working here, Barbara
Williams was her name at the time—I was commuting from New Castle to West Virginia
Northern Community College, five days a week. Well four days a week; the fifth day

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[Fridays] I went to Wheeling.
West Virginia Northern has a branch in Weirton, West Virginia. The main campus is in
Wheeling and it has another branch in New Martinsville.
JS: So the panhandle?
WW: Yes, the panhandle. Then once a month I went to Charleston: I was the college‟s
state rep. It was like they have [APSCUF] Legislative Assembly and stuff here but they
had something like that there.
JS: You got into that early then?
WW: I did. I don‟t know how that happened. They liked me so they elected me or they
didn‟t like me, I was never sure which way that went [laughter]. So anyway I thought,
“Well that‟s just crazy. I am not going to continue that commute for the rest of my life.”
So there was a temporary opening here so I took it. I taught—I started fall of 1981 here as
a part-time temporary faculty member in the English Department. Then they did a search
that year for a tenure track position in English and I was hired for that. So the following
fall I started the tenure track.
JS: Who was here then? Who where your colleagues in English?
WW: Well everybody that was still alive at the time [laughter]. Clara Toman, Kay Quick,
Jerry O‟Malley. The English Department has already established itself as the couples‟
department. There was Steve and Elizabeth Curry, Joe and Joan Egan, Tom and Sue
Mullen, Mike and Penny Kelly.
JS: Oh wow.
WW: Yea, exactly, see! And then there was Bill and Barb Williams. If you weren‟t
married to someone in the department you didn‟t count. We were the last couple [who]
were hired into the English Department. She was hired three years before me as a temp.
She taught three years as a temp and her third year as a temp was my first year on a
tenure track and they converted hers to a tenure track. But when she was hired you only
needed three years to get tenure. So my first year on the tenure track they had already
changed it so you needed five. She got grandparented, grandfathered in I guess? Maybe
that would be “grandmothered.”
JS: [Laughter] I think that term is politically correct: grandfathered.
WW: Yeah we aren‟t sure but we‟ll try it [laughter]; we‟ll run with it. That was the
quirky part because . . . our first years on a tenure track position she got her temp years
to count toward her tenure. So her third year tenure track position—three years then she
could apply for tenure. That was my first year. That was her first tenure track year. So the
computer would generate who had seniority randomly and according to the computer I

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had more seniority than she did and I didn‟t get tenure until five years after she did. But I
had seniority because of the [computer], which was a quirky thing.
JS: Did that cause a rift in your marriage?
WW: No, we had other rifts but we‟ll not go into that.
JS: No, no, I didn‟t want to get that personal. So at IUP you studied Shakespeare?
WW: Well, I studied whatever I wanted because I‟d done the coursework at Kent for a
doctorate. They had blocks that you had to satisfy but I satisfied all of them. So a lot of
what I did—I had Shakespeare courses at IUP—I always had Shakespeare courses, I like
Shakespeare. But I did a lot of literary criticism. I did some stuff in social linguistics,
psycholinguistics and composition theory. I had an opportunity to look at doctoral work
in English Studies in a more generalized way because of that. They had created their
program not to be a new critical approach to doctoral work in English. They had more
slightly updated versions of literary criticism and less of what was basically the „sixties
doctoral school stuff. It was good; it was a good change.
JS: Sounds like better preparation for teaching.
WW: Yeah, it is much better because they had already figured out that‟s what happened:
when you got a doctorate in English you actually taught [laughter]. Not everyone went
out and published and sat with their doctorate.
JS: Well, good. We benefited from that, I‟d say. Alright, and what was your first job—as
a child?
WW: My first job . . . .
JS: You worked on the farm as a kid right?
WW: Yeah, I grew up on the farm. We worked on the farm. That‟s not a job it‟s just what
you have to do. My first job as a kid was at a gas station in Greenville. I was probably
twelve or thirteen. I pumped gas and washed cars. It was okay; I made a little money.
Then because of the farm life, which was really why I‟m into athletics, because if I
played football and wrestled that meant from August when school started—even before
school started right?—I got excused from farm duties and I didn‟t have to go back to
farm duties until after all the sports were done, which was in the spring time [laughter].
So that worked pretty well.
JS: Why not baseball too, Bill?
WW: I did. I did track one year, the first year. I said, “I‟ll do track too and that will just
take me right to the end of the year.”

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JS: Who picked up the slack at home?
WW: Well they figured out how to do that, right? So then I didn‟t have to. That‟s kind of
why I got into athletics. That‟s okay, it was good for me.
JS: It made you strong.
WW: I am strong; I am very physically impatient. I want to be in motion, I want to do
things, I want to be active. School‟s not very good for that but athletics is: it gave me a
place out and then I got a scholarship to Thiel which was fine except I was like, “Whoo,
sports and academics.” The kids . . . I was good at football in high school but I was the
same size I am now.
JS: So what did you play?
WW: I was a lineman believe it or not. I was fast and strong. When I went to college I
was fast and strong and they were fast and strong and big [laughter]. So that didn‟t work
real well. But I said, “This isn‟t really going to work for me. I am going to get harmed out
here if I keep this up.” So I decided to go elsewhere. It was expensive enough that it was
way easier to go to Youngstown cost-wise than stay at Thiel so I just moved over to
Youngstown. I did my undergraduate work there and at the end of that I spent a year and
got my master‟s and moved on. My dad was a foreman at the Greenville Steel Car
Company so when I finished high school I worked there in the summers to earn money to
pay for college.
JS: Was that a union job?
WW: Yes, they have unions there. They were . . . it was interesting.
JS: Did that get you interested in unions?
WW: Well, you know, you grow up in western Pennsylvania and you know about unions.
It was important in this area because of what happened in the steel industry: strike
busting in Pittsburgh, that whole deal. You‟ve probably been to the Frick Museum down
there where he made sure they shot people . . . .
JS: What did you dad think of all that?
WW: Dad was pretty ambivalent about it. He worked at the Steel Car Company: he was
management. He was okay with the unions but he sometimes wondered about their
sanity. It was interesting . . . almost all the guys that worked up there had farms too that
they kept going. So, you know, they didn‟t want to work twelve months a year, year in
and year out at the Steel Car Company. If they had a contract run out and go on strike
they didn‟t mind being on strike for four or five months. They caught up with their farm
work [laughter], stuff like that. Even when the Steel Car was running well it was still not
a twelve month a year job for the guys on the line because they would run out of orders

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and then they would be laid off. Which is why everybody had a farm: the mill itself
didn‟t create enough revenue for a twelve months existence. So they had farms that kind
of filled in behind that. Things were economically a lot poorer than they are now in this
area and probably lots of other places too. The „fifties were not notoriously wealthy.
JS: Did your family have a car?
WW: Yeah, we had a car. We lived out of town—we lived three miles out of town. We
always had cars. I remember growing up we had a coal furnace. And the coal furnace
came with a unit that heated the water in the winter.
JS: I‟ve never seen that. Like next to it?
WW: No, it was integrated. So the coal heat coming off would heat the water so you
would have hot water which was kind of an efficient use. Except in the summer when we
didn‟t have hot water [laughter]. You could have hot water but you had to figure out
some place to make it that way because it wasn‟t there, right? So we didn‟t have hot
water in the summer until I was ten or twelve years old. We had an acre of garden we got
to take care of. My mother made bread all the time; I was probably close to twelve before
they started buying bread in the store.
JS: Was it that horrible white bread that they started making?
WW: I thought it was wonderful. It was sliced. “This isn‟t that stuff that they make at
home.” You could make dough balls out of it [laughter].
JS: Not so good for you. Maybe contributed to your heart attack later.
WW: Well you never know. So that was growing up. I don‟t know, I liked school so I did
well in school.
JS: Yeah somebody said you were smart—Diana Dreyer said you were smart.
WW: Yeah I know, people claim.
JS: Alright well, let‟s jump forward to Slippery Rock. You said you were hired here in
‟81?
WW: Fall of ‟81.
JS: In the English Department . . . .
WW: As part time temp.
JS: And then eventually moved up . . . .

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WW: The next year I became tenure track.
JS: Later became chair . . . .
WW: Yeah, I started as an instructor and three years later I was an assistant professor,
then three after that I got promoted to associate [professor] and five after that I got
promoted to full [professor]. And in ‟95 I think I became chair of the department. Spring,
I started May of ‟95, and I did that until ‟03 at the same time I quit being president of the
union.
JS: You were both chair and . . . ?
WW: At the same time for almost ten years—the two of them—nine years. So I didn‟t
teach: that was full reassigned workload because English is a big department. So that is
when I quit teaching. I was actually management then, although it was management in
the union way. You know, what‟s a union president? That job‟s not teaching. You‟re
reassigned to do what‟s basically a managerial kind of job and the same with chair
person. It‟s the bottom level of management in the academic system.
JS: Right. But you kept your faculty status?
WW: Right. Yeah, still faculty until 2003.
JS: Till you “crossed over” . . . .
WW: Yes until I did. I was even a faculty member after I crossed over for a while.
JS: Hmm. I wondered about that.
WW: I was an interim for a couple years before they did the search and then I became the
real provost. So during the interim I was still faculty and if I had decided not to pursue
the permanent position as provost I would have gone back to my faculty job. But I said,
“Well I think I‟ll just do this; it‟s more entertaining.” I hadn‟t taught for ten or twelve
years by then anyway. I had no real urge to go back to the classroom to do that. I never
minded: I enjoyed teaching, it was a good experience but I‟d moved on to something else.
It just seemed like the right thing to do. If I hadn‟t been picked in that position I would
have probably gone elsewhere. I had a lot of opportunities to do that. But I didn‟t really
want to leave . . . once you . . . I decided that position matched me in many ways.
JS: What ways? The provost position you‟re talking about . . . .
WW: Well…I don‟t know. It allowed me to interact with the university in a way that I
saw was appropriate. I enjoyed working with faculty, so that gave me the opportunity to
do that at a different level, to try to help shape the way that the university was moving. It
allowed me to take my vision of the academic world and kind of use that to mold how the

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programming parts and pieces were playing out around here. No position gets to do
anything that he or she wants but it had more influence.
JS: Even if you leapfrogged up to president you would have had less hands-on for that
kind of thing. So that was probably ideal for you.
WW: Yes, it‟s the perfect place if you really want to work in any academic milieu and
have the maximum influence over the academic part. That‟s it.
JS: That‟s the big picture right there. So do you want to talk about some of the things you
accomplished as provost or that happened while you were provost?
WW: Good things… it was all good things.
JS: Just the good things [laughter].
WW: That was all there was [laughter]. It was all good. It was all roses, sunshine, birds
were tweeting. Yeah, you know how that went, exactly.
JS: I was here, don‟t forget.
WW: Yeah but you have a very limited view, so you only heard the whiners.
JS: No, as far as I know everything was good . . . .
WW: It was pretty good, actually it was. I think Bob Smith and I were a pretty good team
because he learned after a little bit not to bother me, that I‟d take care of it—that I really
would take care—he didn‟t have to micromanage what I was doing, which he liked to do
because he always was worried someone else wasn‟t getting it right. And I learned to
trust him to be there when I needed him.
JS: Well that had been his job [provost], so I can see why he had a tendency to want to do
that.
WW: He had that tendency even if it wasn‟t. He just liked to be in control [laughter]. I
remember a Cabinet meeting one day and he said, “Well why didn‟t you bring this here?”
And I said, “I could have, but you have a lot of stuff on your plate. And if I‟m taking care
of it and it‟s going to work the way you want to I didn‟t see why I would want to bother
you with it.” And he got it then: he suddenly understood that I wasn‟t trying to subvert
him; I wasn‟t trying to do things that he didn‟t want done. I was trying to protect him
from having to engage in things that he didn‟t need to. Once we got there it was good.
Then enrollments went up, right? Quality of students went up. Accreditations: everything
that we tried to get accredited we got accredited. We got the best Middle States review
ever at the university. That was a pretty spectacular moment in time.
JS: I read that. That‟s a big deal.

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WW: That is a big deal, and I was here when it happened and I was in a position of
leadership when it happened; I didn‟t do it though. I mean what I did was look at the
institution in a performance model rather than an historical model without losing sight of
the importance of the historical part of an academic community. The whole point, as near
as I can tell, of an academic institution is the preservation of knowledge, right? That‟s
how you institutionalize it. You can‟t pretend the history doesn‟t exist. It‟s amazingly
important.
JS: I‟m pretty big on our history.
WW: Yeah, but the other half of that is it has to be preserved in a way that is
economically sustainable or it won‟t be preserved anyway. They close the doors, they
burn the books and now everybody goes and plants corn or something. I don‟t know what
they do then but, it is a very necessary component also. So I put those two pieces
together: my deep respect for the history of the humanities and the academic traditions
with the necessity of a functional business model. I think that is what I brought to that
position.
JS: Wasn‟t that the first time in your career that you had to focus in that way on the
business model? I mean in the classroom it was different and APSCUF . . . .
WW: I [did] contract negotiations as APSCUF president for almost nine years. You can‟t
look at those from the position of leadership at a university without understanding that
there is an economic cost that has to be taken care of. Whether that‟s covered by an
allocation from the state or tuition dollars from students, there is still a cost that has to be
accounted for. Any raise in the faculty salary is going to be paid for somewhere. It‟s not
that it‟s wrong it‟s just that it‟s always . . . probably if they recorded those little blurbs at
the [Faculty] Assemblies, I used to say that to the faculty. There is an economic
necessity. Here‟s where we are; here‟s the constraints. We are going to get as much as we
can with the understanding that we can only get enough that it doesn‟t harm the
institution because the institution‟s viability is what makes all our jobs possible. It‟s what
makes it possible for the community also.
This institution, I think, is the center of the Slippery Rock area. I mean, this is it. If it
went down, all these jobs went away, all this money coming in: millions and millions of
dollars. There has to always be a balance between what the individual needs to have a
good life and what the institution can afford and still remain viable. Because once the
institution stops being viable the individuals get nothing.
JS: I think there is an impression of union leadership as being, “Just give us everything
we want,” and not cognizant of the other side. So that‟s good to hear.
WW: We were. And most of the other local union presidents were also. State APSCUF
presidents tend to be less so but they‟re looking at an organization that‟s the state
APSCUF organization, not the campus. So what they want . . . .

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JS: They‟re not working with the presidents.
WW: Right, so it‟s all about how they can get the most for their members. Whereas I
think the local presidents are, yes, taking care of the members, but also taking care of the
members means maintaining the viability of the institution where they‟re working.
JS: A place to work.
WW: So yes, I did think about that long before I became provost. In fact one of the
reasons I believe that Bob Smith asked me to do that when Warren [Smith] found other
ways to entertain himself was that I had spent—when he came I was the union president
and I spent a lot of time explaining to him how the unions worked, why they worked and
why it wasn‟t harmful. Because he was really nervous about unions when he came. He
hadn‟t worked in that environment and he brought in kind of naive view of, “It‟s us and
them,” that the unions were harmful rather than helpful.
JS: Right: that stereotype.
WW: Yeah, and I said to him one day, “so no union and you‟re going to individually
negotiate with each one of four hundred faculty members about what their salaries and
benefits are?”
JS: That‟s all you‟ll ever do [laughter].
WW: That‟s it, that‟s your job then [laughter]. If you want other things to happen maybe
you should figure out a way to organize that—oh we already have, never mind [laughter].
“The beauty of APSCUF is,” I said, “we will negotiate a contract that is not unreasonable
and it won‟t be on you. It‟ll be on Harrisburg.” The local people don‟t have to get beat up
on that. So he came to appreciate . . . he never was as comfortable with unions as a lot of
people that had grown up in that environment but he came to understand the value of it.
JS: But the threat of a strike every three or four years . . . .
WW: Yeah, that made him nervous [laughter]. I said, “It‟s a dance; it‟s a dance. They are
going to take this step and then we are going to take this step.” I said, “As long as nobody
steps on each other‟s toes [laughter] it‟s going to be okay at the end of the day. But I said
don‟t step on toes; it won‟t help you.”
JS: And he didn‟t need to.
WW: No, there was no reason to.
JS: Keep your head down and . . .
WW: Yep, let it go by. It‟s not going to hurt anybody. You don‟t have to go out and
shoot the strikers, the demonstrators. It just happens. Let it be. No one wanted a strike; no

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one ever does. It‟s always—because the nature of negotiations it has to be a real
possibility or else it can‟t function. If it isn‟t a real possibility then unionism‟s dead
because that is all they have to say: they can withhold their services if they are not
adequately compensated.
JS: That‟s our side of the bargain.
WW: That‟s it, that‟s the only bullet in the gun.
JS: So when you were APSCUF president you went through probably at least three or
four . . . ?
WW: Yeah, several contracts.
JS: Did any of them get really sticky?
WW: Oh we always had fun [laughter]. The one that was kind of the most fun was, Bill
Fulmer was state president then and we had gone on for quite a while on that one. The
Board of Governors was meeting at East Stroudsburg‟s campus and we were close but we
weren‟t getting there, you know? This was when they hired an outside negotiator and
they were going to gut the contract, which didn‟t work. They thought sure they could, but
state APSCUF got together with the East Stroud people so when the Board of Governors
showed up on campus the faculty members had wheelbarrows with all their office stuff
and they wheeled them out. It‟s kind of a funny . . . it was drama, right? It was drama but
it worked.
JS: Part of the dance . . . .
WW: The dance happened and McCormick said, “We are going to settle this,” and they
did. What happened in that negotiation was when we went . . . prior to that there were
five service steps [counts off on fingers] one, two, three, four, five. That was it. There
was a five percent raise on each one. But then they‟d started adding—they‟d added some.
What happened was the speed from which the faculty member went from new to top of
the scale was out of sync with the national model and so what the System decided was
that they had to fix that. And they did: we ended up with the first five steps are 5% now
but then after that they are 2.5% raises.
JS: So they did add on to that?
WW: They stretched it out and they added a little bit at the top. Which is how they get a
buy in: you get a little more money but you are going to wait significantly longer before
you get there. But they‟d been trying to do that for quite a while. They had a G step at
one time. Then to get to G1, I think it was called, you had to be a G for three or four
years. So they were stretching the top one out. Then they called that a Z step. [Laughter].
They figured out that numbers were infinite but once you got to Z you were done
[laughter]!

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It was an interesting . . . but each one of the contracts are interesting negotiations because
it is always a different group of people with different dynamics, a different point in time
in the economy, in the state and in the nation, so they are all kind of strange mixes. I
mean this last one: by the time they sign that—we sign that—in July it will almost be
three years of constant negotiation.
JS: It‟s time to start the next one.
WW: Yep, I know, it is.
JS: When they started back in the „seventies didn‟t they start pretty strong even though
the national economy wasn‟t very good in the „seventies?
WW: The early contract was developed around a public school teacher‟s contract, so the
union . . . . Parts of it were very good; the salaries weren‟t. When McCormick (he was the
first chancellor) took over, one of the things he said we needed to do was to start creating
a stronger [State] System [of Higher Education], stronger institutions, by paying better
and requiring better credentials. That‟s sort of where that happened and at that time the
contracts were internally negotiated.
JS: At each school?
WW: No, in the [State] System office. So APSCUF had always had—they pre-existed the
System—they had had the legal people help them or the APSCUF state president would
negotiate. And they negotiated against the HR person at the State System, who at least for
quite a few years was Ed Kelly. When they were doing that they were actually trying to
build better salaries for faculty. The System understood the need for that; McCormick
did. But the other thing, the benefits packages were good and it was the earlier-referenced
negotiation where the System brought in Whiteside—I can‟t remember his first name
now—to straighten things out. Because the Board of Governors had figured out that by
having the negotiations work that way, everyone at the negotiations table would have the
same benefit package at the end of it. So there wasn‟t a lot of motivation [laughter]. Hard
ball didn‟t happen too often, they‟d pretend . . . . So bringing in that external body was
how that they got around [that]. And in some ways they were right: there was no way to
move anything anywhere in that model. They brought in the external negotiator and
they‟ve done that ever since. It depends who the governor is whether the external
negotiator is a Democrat or a Republican but they are all legals and connected to the
governor‟s office somehow.
JS: Is this the first time that APSCUF brought in an external negotiator?
WW: They hired Cowden, I think was their first one as far as I can remember.
JS: So before this time, before Davidson.

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WW: Yep, Cowden did it for years and years. He made his career out of representing
APSCUF in some way. I kind of like Cowden. He‟s kind of an interesting guy. I‟ve
known him—because I was for twenty or twenty-five years—that‟s a long time to know
someone in that position and not have some kind of relationship with them, right? So it
was good. What other excitement?
JS: Well let‟s come back to Slippery Rock and maybe when you were the new kid on the
block or whatever. Who were the movers and shakers? Let‟s go back to this (refers to list
of questions); on campus in ‟81, who was the union president?
WW: I think it was [Bob] Macoskey.
JS: So Wilma [Cavill] had already been?
WW: Yeah. Wilma has been a significant player for a long time. She still has a role on
campus that is significant. Yes, so in terms of the union: Bob [Macoskey] was important.
Steve Gagliardo was there. William Taylor—Bill Taylor was around. Kate [Brennan] was
here but not so much in the union earlier. She kind of jumped into that a little later. In
some ways from what I could get—and I was Kate‟s vice president, okay? So from „92‟94 I was vice president of the Union. And she thought—because she didn‟t have a
terminal degree she couldn‟t get promoted, but I think that she thought that if she did
enough service that they would make an exception and they didn‟t. So then she said to
me, “Well, I don‟t want to do this again.” She said, “Would you do it?” I said, “I guess
so.” So I became the union president for the next nine years.
It‟s strange if you look: up until when I did this there weren‟t a lot of long term union
presidents. Which . . . I don‟t know why. This allowed me to create an executive
committee that was more responsive to the campus needs. When I started it was . . . Steve
[Gagliardo] was on it and Bill Taylor was on it. Bill Barnett who was in Communication
and he is retired now. And some other old timers who were pretty much entrenched in a
militant “us versus them” attitude which, I mean, okay but it didn‟t do any good. You can
be that way if you want but it‟s not helping anything. But by being the president for as
long as I was I had the opportunity to reform some of that committee so that it was still
very strong in terms of union rights but it was more understanding of the relationships we
had to have [with] management in order to have a strong functioning institution.
JS: So Jace Condravy was your VP?
WW: Yep, Jace was my VP the whole time I was president. Wilma was on the
committee. She has always been there.
JS: Okay…who else?
WW: Sharon Sykora was the Grievance [Committee] chair then; she replaced Irv Kuhr.
He did that up until she did it. That was a big part of who that was.

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JS: Well, that persisted then „cause Wilma‟s still on and Sharon‟s still on and Jace just
stepped down.
WW: Yeah. They were good people.
JS: Deb Cohen? I don‟t know if she was on then?
WW: She wasn‟t on then. She is a newer person [laughter].
JS: Yeah [laughter].
WW: Yeah right exactly. You know how that works once you have been here long
enough.
JS: Yeah I do actually. It starts to get a little scary. So other old timers . . . I was thinking
of Hunter [Davis].
WW: Hunter was here, yes. He was here.
JS: He was in your department too.
WW: Yes, Hunter was definitely a colorful character. I actually helped Hunter retire.
JS: [Laughter] you encouraged him to retire?
WW: Oh yes. His wife didn‟t want him to retire because she didn‟t want him at home
[laughter].
JS: [laughter] we‟ll have to cut that out.
WW: He was in his 70s and he was tired. He was worn out.
JS: I remember seeing him at Commencement.
WW: He was worn out and he wasn‟t getting the job done, so we had a long talk and he
decided he would retire. I liked Hunter; he was a smart guy. He had drifted a bit far from
the center. He was an interesting dude. Bob McIlvaine was in the department. Mike
Kelly, Penny Kelly. The Egans were characters: Joe and Joan Egan. He had been a boxer
in college; he was a big guy. When he got mad you could see these veins pulsate and
stuff.
JS: Scary.
WW: He was a scary guy. People were afraid of him. He was pretty harmless. He
wouldn‟t do anything. He just . . . [Hulk noises].

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15

When I redid the master‟s program in English, he taught Victorian Lit at the graduate
level. All of the graduate lit courses are taught at night and he wouldn‟t teach at night. So
I took the Victorian Lit course out because it never got taught because he would insist
that he was the only one who could teach it then he wouldn‟t teach at night. So the
meeting, the department meeting, where I explained these curricular changes: he went
ballistic. He was screaming, “How dare you take out Victorian Lit?” And I finally said,
“Joe, do you teach Victorian Lit?” “Yes.” “Will you teach at night?” “No.” And I said,
“Well what are we arguing about? If it‟s in there and it doesn‟t get taught is it any
different than not being in there? Let‟s think through this for a minute. We don‟t offer it.”
What my point was that we should have a program that every two years everything in it
got taught. If not, what are we doing? We can have a special topics course where if you
want to teach something every once in a while and in the area that probably doesn‟t
warrant regular teaching we can do that, but why have twenty courses that never get
taught sitting there just in case?
JS: Right. If prospective students look at that they think that they are going to get to take
Victorian Literature.
WW: Yeah, and they couldn‟t and they were probably happy after the fact whether they
knew it or not [laughter]. So he was one of the characters in the department. There were a
lot—English was very good at characters, very good at characters. So Jerry O‟Malley
was in the English Department. He‟s still alive, he‟s 88 maybe now. I see Jerry once in a
while. Hassel Sledd.
JS: I knew Hassel.
WW: Yea, you knew Hassel. Hassel was a better person off campus than in the
department. He was a problem at times, but anyway. I had a very turbulent several years
in the English department but of course, when I got there they were dysfunctional in
some ways. They didn‟t want to do anything. And without my knowing it at the time—it
took me awhile to figure out all the rules—when I started as a tenure track faculty in the
fall of ‟82 they made me in charge of the evaluation committee which . . . you can‟t do
that „til your tenured [laughter].
JS: No, right!
WW: By contract, but they didn‟t care. In fact the third year . . . .
JS: They made you the bad guy.
WW: Yeah. The third year I was doing it I figured it out and I pointed that out to them at
the department meeting, that I really wasn‟t eligible to be on the committee much less
chair it because you couldn‟t be on your own evaluation committee. There was only one
evaluation committee and I was being evaluated all the time. And they said, “Oh, okay.”

Williams, William F.

16

And then Steve Curry says, “Well I recommend that we vote to violate that part of the
contract.”
JS: Oh no [laughter]!
WW: They voted to do it [laughter], so I was still the chair of the committee.
JS: Yikes!
WW: I didn‟t care. I didn‟t mind doing it, I just didn‟t want to be in violation of the
contract.
JS: Well that, plus it puts you in a bad position because everyone hates you and then they
are evaluating you.
WW: Well I learned how to figure that problem out too, you know. So when they
complained about somebody I [told] that person, “Well you go observe them this year
and then you can say how bad they are.” And no one ever would so they would just say,
“Oh yeah, she‟s wonderful or he‟s wonderful.” So that was kind of a strange world too.
So we did that. I was on the hiring committee every year until one year they voted me off.
Because I had a vision for what should happen and I knew how to make it work on a
hiring process to get people that would . . . match that.
JS: Perform?
WW: Yeah, match that vision better and they figured out that I was controlling it and
they decided that they didn‟t like it so they voted me off the committee. Then they didn‟t
like how that worked so they quit doing that too: I was allowed back on again. But then I
became chair, and I didn‟t get on the hiring committee after that, I had a separate role in
the process. It was an interesting time.
Jace was only part time in the department initially; she started in Academic Support
Services until she got promoted to full professor, which was the same year I did which
must have been around, I don‟t know, ‟95 maybe. Then she transferred over. But she
figured because she did all of her work in academic support—her scholarly work—rather
than English she figured she would have had difficulty demonstrating that she had what
was appropriate in English to be promoted to full [professor]. So she stayed in Academic
Support until that got done and then transferred over. She was fine; she was good in
English. She had good credentials. It was fine; it was just how she worked it out at the
time . . . and cranked up one of her friends on campus who never liked that idea so well.
We‟ll not mention him . . . .
JS: We need not go there. What about—who were the administrators as you were coming
up?

Williams, William F.

17

WW: When I started here Herb Reinhard was the president, [who] we referred to as
“Herb period” [laughter].
JS: I‟ve heard that [laughter].
WW: Yeah it was kind of funny. But he didn‟t have much impact at the faculty level.
Apparently other managers didn‟t find him very much fun but he didn‟t bother faculty, so
faculty didn‟t care.
JS: Then who was provost? Faust?
WW: No, Aebersold.
JS: Oh he was provost first. Okay.
WW: Actually I think that Aebersold was the first provost who was at Slippery Rock.
Before that they had vice presidents for academic affairs but no provosts. It wasn‟t until
Slippery Rock and the other schools became a system in 1983 that they had the provost
position.
JS: What‟s the difference? „Cause now it is a slash.
WW: Yeah, its provost / vice president for academic affairs. The provost is the on
campus leader if the president‟s off campus. Theoretically at least the provost is not then
just in charge of academic affairs because if the president is off campus, then the other
VP‟s fall beneath that. That clarified that in a way for everyone, so Aebersold was the
first then Faust, Griffiths, and then Smith and me.
JS: Wow, just a handful.
WW: So far I‟m the only one to . . . I claim that I am the only provost emeritus that we
have ever had at Slippery Rock. I‟m actually the only provost that ever retired as a
provost as Slippery Rock. All the others had other options.
JS: What did Anne do?
WW: She was only interim so she did that for a year while they did the search. Then she
retired as a dean. So that was an amusement.
JS: Alright, any other people you want to talk about who are significant in your time
here?
WW: It‟s an interesting group. People that you don‟t always . . . on campus in faculty
positions, there are people that you know and don‟t know and you see and don‟t see. But
one of the people I had known the whole time I was here—I kind of understood what he
did in some ways [but] did not have total respect for until I became provost and really

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18

saw what he did—was Bob Watson. Bob just did amazing work for this institution in
Student Life; it really was significant. I think the difficulty someone had following him
might not have been as obvious had he not been here because he really did do an amazing
job with that. When he was doing that and I was new in the provost position he was very
helpful in getting me to look at a bigger picture of how Academic Affairs and Student
Life could work together as a unit and recalibrate a little bit my academic bias: I tend to
prefer for faculty, you know; I just do.
JS: But it‟s true we don‟t know what they do over there.
WW: Exactly, yeah. That‟s sort of invisible. So he was very helpful in helping me see
that and bringing me into that role in a different way than I probably would have gone
had he not been here. He was very helpful in that regard. Hardworking, smart guy.
Endless hours.
JS: I know him more for his history side but that was his real role: how you know him in
Student Life.
WW: Yeah, and before that he was in charge of Academic Services for years too and they
all reported to him including Amanda [Yale] who . . . he shaped Amanda in many, many
ways. If that‟s possible because she‟s not easily shaped [laughter]. But she used to be
easier.
JS: Okay, well you mentioned when we became a state system. I don‟t know if I‟d put
that together that that‟s when we became a university too. That was that same year, so
that‟s why we became a university?
WW: Yeah. We all became . . . . A guy I knew, Pat Hartwell at IUP—at that time they
were the only university in the system—he used to tell me, “Yesterday you couldn‟t even
spell university and now you are one.”
JS: Ouch [laughter]. Did everybody take on graduate programs at that time?
WW: No, we had graduate programs before that; it had nothing to do with that.
Universities are organizational structures compared with colleges and so a university is a
collection of colleges. So up until then at least, we were all colleges. So we didn‟t
identify . . . .
JS: Really? So within Slippery Rock State College there weren‟t the Colleges of . . . .
WW: We had at the time, when I started there was Arts and Science, and then in Arts and
Science there‟s Natural Science and Math, Humanities and Fine Arts and Behavioral
Sciences. So they had all the pieces there but they didn‟t organize it in the same way they
did when we became a university, although it was very invisible in some ways. That‟s
when they made the provost overseeing all that. But the change was structural on paper

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19

more than in reality. I mean the next day you didn‟t know the difference. I was here in
‟81, „82‟, ‟83 and I couldn‟t tell the difference. It just looked all the same to me.
JS: We changed the signs at the road.
WW: Yeah exactly [laughter]. They changed the name on the stationary. It wasn‟t until
Bob Smith came that they kind of reshuffled the colleges. They created new colleges that
had different names, but that wasn‟t because we were a university. That change had
already been made. It was just a structural change and a name change. It‟s interesting
though.
JS: So we didn‟t call ourselves “. . . of Pennsylvania” at that point yet, did we?
WW: We were Slippery Rock [State] College.
JS: Right but when we became a university . . . .
WW: We became Slippery Rock University.
JS: When did that “of Pennsylvania” get added on? It‟s fairly recent it seems to me.
WW: Yeah somewhere in there. But no one has ever liked it. The System has never liked
what their name is because it can‟t be “Penn State,” right? “Penn State” has been taken.
Unlike Ohio State which also has OSU and Ohio State; we have Penn State and the
University of Pennsylvania, neither one of which are state owned schools, which is kind
of a strange system. No one likes “the SSHE, the State System of Higher Ed[ucation].”
They didn‟t like that; they always thought it didn‟t look right. They decided to go to “the
Pennsylvania State System of Higher Ed.” They got the name “Pennsylvania” in that
way.
JS: Well that makes sense [laughter].
WW: Exactly. And that‟s when they decided they‟d add the . . . .
JS: Oh I see, we became PASSHE, with the “of Pennsylvania.”
WW: If Harrisburg central had its way we would be Pennsylvania System School at
Slippery Rock.
JS: Oh no [laughter]! That‟s catchy. Yeah, that makes sense though.
WW: See how easily those things slip in? That‟s the trunk and limb model. Penn State
has that. They have Penn State and then “at Clarion” or wherever . . . Coudersport.
JS: But we didn‟t evolve that way.

Williams, William F.

20

WW: No, exactly. We started out as totally separate institutions and created a central
office to cover some of the issues that were readily done there, like negotiating contracts.
JS: Do you think that that was a good thing and we will always have that centralized
model?
WW: I think it will probably be there. I don‟t know; things can change. I mean there‟s a
lot of political jostling in higher ed right now. It‟s hard to guess how it‟s all going to fall
out. It probably never all falls out. Higher ed institutions are very resilient and resistant to
change. You can make change on paper and the next day you can‟t tell it ever happened
or the next month or the next year or the next decade [laughter].
JS: Everyone just ignores it [laughter].
WW: If they don‟t like it they don‟t do it.
JS: Do you think we‟ll keep all of our fourteen campuses?
WW: I can‟t see politically how they‟re going to not do that. I mean, it‟s a political
choice. It‟s not a business choice, it‟s not a rational choice, it‟s political. If you were
going to close this down what would you be saying? The university is gone and . . . ?
What about the community?
JS: Right. And you don‟t merge two towns like Lock Haven and Mansfield.
WW: Exactly. They are how far apart and why would you bother? There would be ways
to consolidate some of the back office work probably that would reduce some of the cost
but that would be invisible anyway. No one who was really part of generating the
educational nature of the institution would even notice it happened.
JS: They tried to do that with libraries, with the Keystone Library Network, which you
were involved with.
WW: Yes, for six years I was on that insanity, listening to people talk in acronyms
[laughter].
JS: [Laughter] that‟s our stock in trade.
WW: Yes, you guys are good at it. Who would have guessed? How many acronyms are
there? More than you can ever remember.
JS: Was it your sense that that was a useful move?
WW: I think KLN was useful for the digital component of the library. Other than that, no.
You need people in libraries helping people who are coming into libraries. I was never
willing to say books weren‟t fun. I love books. I love to look at them.

Williams, William F.

21

JS: You like to wander in the stacks.
WW: Yeah, exactly, that‟s where it‟s happening. For me research in some ways . . . when
I was working on my dissertation, I‟d go get a book and I‟d be poking around its
neighborhood and find things that I didn‟t even know existed yet were suddenly just
sitting there. So there is a serendipity that gets involved in that, that you don‟t get if
you‟re refining a search online.
JS: Right, or even in the card catalog: that didn‟t make that work all that much better
necessarily. You still have to go in the stacks and see the neighborhood.
WW: You have to see what the neighborhood is like [laughter]. Who are they living next
to?
JS: Well yeah „cause not everything gets cataloged correctly to make them collocate. I
was glad you were on that because it seemed like it really helped you understand what we
do.
WW: Yea it did. I think the library is in some ways the critical center of the university.
No matter how you define it, I still have books in my library. That requires a building and
the kind of space you need to get to them and stuff like that. I am very comfortable with
the concept that a library is a learning center too. They‟re both; they‟re not just one or the
other. It‟s not just book storage or digital retrieval. It‟s also a place where people go and
come together and learn, either with the materials or with other people.
JS: Hopefully interacting with us.
WW: Definitionally almost, historically the library‟s been the heart of the institution.
That‟s why they used to rate institutions on how many books they had. It mattered.
JS: We still report on that.
WW: I know you still report on that. You‟re probably not as institutionally important as it
used to be but it was a significant part of accreditation.
JS: Well, when we do the accreditation we also have to say—when we help our different
departments—what schools we are sharing things with, what consortial groups we are
part of for shared borrowing.
WW: Yeah, because everyone has to have access to the core knowledge that we have as a
society or else there is an educational gap.
JS: And I agree it does need to be at your fingertips, it does need to be in a building on
campus where you can walk in and grab it. Maybe there is something at Bloomsburg I
could use but I‟m not at Bloomsburg.

Williams, William F.

22

WW: Then by the time I get it here . . . .
JS: I needed it yesterday. [Pause] Well, let‟s see if we can wrap this up.
WW: You‟ve had enough of me [laughter].
JS: No, but I think we have answered most of the questions. If you have other campus
activities you want to talk about, any committees you were involved in? Anything you
were involved in before you became . . . ?
WW: I was on every academic committee except Promotion at some time or another.
That was the only one I avoided. I was doing other things. I was on the University
Curriculum Committee from 1992 until 2003. I did it for Kate [Brennan]—she was the
president of the union. I went because she didn‟t want to. Then I did it for myself when I
was president.
JS: Did you think that was important as union president to have a representative at least?
WW: The year I got promoted to full professor I was the head of the English Department
Curriculum Committee, the Chair of the Humanities and Fine Arts Curriculum
Committee, the Liberal Studies Curriculum Committee, and on the university-wide
Curriculum Committee. I always thought that library and curriculum . . . it‟s how you end
up with a university. I always thought curriculum was an incredibly important part of
what defined the institution.
JS: And if you know what‟s going on there then you know what‟s going on.
WW: Yep, you have to know what‟s going on. You can see how it works. You can see
why were doing it, modify it, and work with it. I know that people didn‟t like particularly
the dropping of one of the required English courses. Not everyone was equally thrilled by
that, although I would point out that two-thirds of the votes were in favor and one-third
opposed. So in terms of the referendum on it, it was a campus-wide thing. It was only
because of my ceaseless meddling in curriculum that that happened [laughter]. But it was
also a way to balance out how I viewed what I think is going to ultimately become the
model for institutions: where curriculum isn‟t based on tradition but based on meeting
competencies. That‟s not easy to do because faculty aren‟t used to thinking of it that way.
I saw this opportunity as a way to try to start getting everyone to start thinking this way,
not just English (we don‟t think about things anyways from my past experience)
[laughter], but to get the rest of the campus departments to think about, “Well here‟s
something we want our students to be able to do. That‟s a competence we want them to
have; how are we going to get them to have that now?” The point was to try to get that to
be a competence initiator because mostly people don‟t think about curriculum in terms of,
“Here‟s a competence, how you will meet it?” and then design something to meet it. I
know for years as chair of English when we had the research writing component, people
complained that, “You guys taught „em this and they don‟t know anything.” Well yeah,

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they don‟t know anything about what you wanted.
JS: In your discipline, right. Theoretically College Writing I should teach them the basics,
right? And then they get the subject specific . . . .
WW: Then the subject matter itself should decide what they want their students to have
in terms of research. There is really no generic research.
JS: Right, but how do they teach that with what they‟re already teaching and not add
additional credit hours? Seems like that‟s the trick.
WW: By reducing the required liberal studies credits by three you then have an
opportunity to add it to get the competency. You can get your competency by adding
three more credit hours anywhere you want. So it wasn‟t adding credit hours it was
shifting it from a generic definition of what research was, which was being covered by
one department to having each department have the opportunity, in fact the requirement.
It‟s an opportunity they can‟t resist [laughter] to define what they want and how they
want it met.
JS: But not to have to add the three credit hours within their major requirement?
WW: Well they could if they wanted to, if they could afford to, yeah. If they weren‟t
already bumped up against the limit and if they were they could figure out other ways of
managing that. There are ways around things like limits.
JS: But people like to hear those ideas from you.
WW: I tried to tell people those things a lot [laughter]. Anyone that would listen I told
this to, okay? But they hear what they want to hear. Academe‟s so wonderfully resistant
to change because if they don‟t have to they don‟t. “Oh yeah right, blah blah blah
[laughter]. What did he just say? Oh never mind it won‟t matter.” Right?
JS: “I don‟t want to have to change my course.”
WW: They don‟t or they don‟t think about it until it‟s necessary. But it was actually, I
thought, beneficial to their departments to take control of something that they believed
was important, define it, and help their students be better at it.
JS: I see the sense in that.
WW: Some of the things people griped about the most that I did, I thought made more
sense than things that I did that they never said anything about [laughter]. That‟s okay
right?
JS: What were some of those [laughter]?

Williams, William F.

24

WW: I‟m not going to tell you about those, but we did fine. In terms of the ten years that
I was in that position the institution did well. Like I said, I‟m not taking credit for it, but it
did happen. Because people have worked real hard in times when there‟s demographic
down turns and stuff like that . . . it doesn‟t matter how good they are they can‟t make
students appear who weren‟t born [laughter]. The unborn aren‟t very good students
[laughter].
JS: But you have to broaden out and accommodate non-traditionals and all that, right?
WW: Yeah, there are ways of doing that. This area‟s not been good at bringing nontraditionals to campus. The other part of that is online but online is a bizarre world. We
don‟t do badly in terms of things like Special Ed[ucation] where we‟ve had a wellrecognized Special Ed Department for a long time. When I first started as provost it was
obvious to me that Harrisburg was going to change the world and you couldn‟t major in
Special Ed as a standalone major. And you can‟t. So when I understood that was going to
take place, I talked to the people in Special Ed. I said, “What are you going to do? What
are you going to do?” We talked about it and that‟s when we talked about getting their
master‟s degree online as a way of compensating for the student issues they would have
if they were no longer a stand-alone major. And they did and it was, and is, very
successful in terms of generating revenue. I don‟t want to speculate beyond that; it‟s very
hard to speculate beyond that even if it‟s in person. They either have students in classes
or they don‟t, that‟s about all you can tell.
I saw that as a way of helping the department sustain itself. I didn‟t see it as a way of
replacing what I see as a critical face to face experience that undergraduate students need.
Non-traditional students: my sense is there tends to be very few of them living out on
farms around here and the ones who are trying to enhance their education tend not to
want to come live on a campus. It‟s expensive, they have jobs, they have families, there is
the local community college, there is Youngstown [State] University right next door to
them, and they live in the city, Pittsburgh . . . . That need‟s being met at other institutions
besides Slippery Rock and for most students that‟s a hard commute. If they‟re up in the
Sharon area they can go to Penn State or there‟s a Butler County Community College up
there somehow. I‟m not sure how that works, as near as I can tell that‟s not Butler County
anymore but Butler County Community College has expanded beyond its borders.
So there‟s lots of ways that those non-traditional students get met in a place that they
already exist without having to come here to live or commute an hour or so to get here. I
have never seen us as having a real good shot at making up loss in undergraduate students
with non-traditional undergraduate students.
JS: . . . coming to campus.
WW: Yes, but we can make up the enrollments in some ways with online experiences at
the graduate level. And I think that‟s been fairly helpful.
JS: And undergraduate.

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25

WW: And undergraduate; we don‟t have a lot of undergraduate online but we have some.
We have our RN [Registered Nurse] to BSN [Bachelor of Science in Nursing] but that‟s
in fact not so much different from a graduate program in some ways. Our RN students are
locked into here and our RN students are locked into a job. And then because it‟s online
they can do our BSN without living here or even coming here, which helps the Nursing
people. And that‟s what they do. Now they are getting the MSN [Master of Science in
Nursing] online. They wanted a master‟s because they believe that their BSN students
would like to get a master‟s. Once you‟ve got the Slippery Rock brand it‟s easier to
continue it. We got that approved; whether or not that‟ll be vibrant enough to survive I
don‟t know. That‟s a five year trial. If you can‟t get enrollment in five years to sustain it,
don‟t keep it.
JS: Won‟t they have to hire more teaching faculty to support it?
WW: And those will be a problem. But Nursing turns over fast— faculty—because we
tend to get terminally degree qualified faculty who have burned out at the profession and
have five or ten years left in their careers and then they retire. So that‟s not a big problem.
So anyway I don‟t know where Slippery Rock is going to be in a few years because it is
hard to look at the demographics we are bouncing through and seeing. I tried to get in
motion before I left some degrees that would try to help compensate, like an MBA, a
Physician Assistant, a Master of Science in Nursing because one of the other things I did
was get rid of master‟s degrees that weren‟t functioning.
JS: Like English?
WW: People didn‟t necessarily like that so well either. Yeah, like Exercise Science. Does
anybody ever mention they use to have a master‟s degree? So one of the first meetings I
had with them as provost, I went down there and they said they needed more staff
because they said they couldn‟t meet all their needs. Now when I looked at what they
were doing, they were putting staff into graduate programs that had ten, eleven, eight
students in the class and they were bursting at the seams in the undergraduate and they
wanted staff. I said, “Why not put your master‟s on moratorium, meet this need, see how
it works, try to make your undergraduate degree as strong as possible and if you still want
to do that master‟s degree once we get this problem under control we‟ll look at it again.
We‟re not throwing it out but we‟ll look.” In three years they were so engaged in creating
the undergraduate program that they didn‟t want the master‟s. The master‟s wasn‟t
helping them it was just distracting them.
English had a master‟s degree for a long time but it never had an identity. Master‟s
degree students went on to get Ph.Ds. Local school teachers were just trying to get the
added credential so they could make more money, or somebody who got a bachelor‟s
degree in English and didn‟t know what to do [laughter]. But it was never structured out
and saying, “Here is what we are going to do and here is why we are going to do it, and
here‟s where these kids are going. This is what it‟s for.”

Williams, William F.

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JS: A clear mission.
WW: There was no mission. No one would do it. I kept saying, “We got to do this. I‟m
not going to let this continue.” They always had just enough: eight, ten, twelve students.
But if you‟re putting resources in there and then making it up having large undergraduate
classes. Why are you doing that? Why not get rid of this, take the resource and reduce
your big class sizes at the undergraduate level and give the students who are really paying
for this the benefit of it. They didn‟t like that so well.
JS: Same with History?
WW: Yeah, History. See I always thought History and English could create a master‟s
degree. I think it would be a wonderful experience for the students. They could study the
two in conjunction. They could look at Renaissance history and Shakespeare together but
History and English don‟t like one another so well [laugher]. Well, Jack [John Nichols]
and Alison [Barbara McNeal] maybe but they‟re both retired now. It‟s always been a
strange relationship. History tends to be more male focused and English more female
focused. It‟s kind of strange.
JS: It could be a good mix though: look at that married model [laughter].
WW: I thought so [laughter]. Act on that married model exactly. Oh well, so there we
are.
JS: (Alright, well I don‟t know how our tape is doing, I hope it‟s still running.) Do you
want to jump down the list? What do you miss, if anything, about being here? You
haven‟t been gone that long so . . . .
WW: I don‟t. I was done before I left [laughter], okay? I was tired. I didn‟t want to do
this anymore. It was a wonderful job, a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed my thirty
plus years at Slippery Rock. I‟d done what I could do: I‟d seen it, and I‟d changed it and
I‟d modified it where I could and I was done. I didn‟t have any brilliant solutions to any
problems and I didn‟t have any more interest in the kind of stress that comes with getting
sued and defending the institution, hearing people whine and carry on. It overwhelms you
after a while. People don‟t line up and tell you how good it is. They don‟t. That‟s okay. I
understood that when I started. And I understand it now, but I don‟t miss it.
I like Bob Smith. I‟m going to go visit him sometime in August in Tennessee. I enjoyed
working with him. He quit and we hired Cheryl [Norton]. I love Cheryl; she is a great
person. I would have liked to have spent ten years working with Cheryl but they were ten
I had already spent; I couldn‟t re-spend them. I said even before we hired her I said, “I‟m
retiring as soon as we get a president here. I‟ll have a little orientation time with that
person so they get some sense of what we‟re doing and then I‟m retiring.” I did and she
wanted me to stay longer and I wanted to leave earlier. We got a date and I went out and I
have not missed it.

Williams, William F.

27

I‟m busy and I enjoy what I do. I got up this morning and ran five miles on the treadmill.
I‟m working on a garage project. I painted the garage, now I‟m building shelving in and
getting those done today. Right? So I can get my car back in the garage. Things are
important right now [laughter]. So I don‟t miss the institutional problems and they‟re
always there.
JS: I was glad you stayed on. Maybe even longer than you wanted to but for the
transition; I think that was important for the institution.
WW: I thought so too. She would have liked for me to have stayed longer, I didn‟t see
that that would help. I figured we got to where we got and she saw how it worked and it
wasn‟t going to change. That was it. The institution needs to get used to a different
leadership team. That‟s easier done without me popping around every so often, offering
helpful hints to new provosts and things. He just doesn‟t need that and other people don‟t
need to think that they can call me and I‟ll intercede. I said, “When I retire I am going to
spend a year not engaged in anything here.” So I have months to go yet before I get that
year completed but I don‟t miss it. I do not miss it.
JS: People get called back you know?
WW: I saw that. That was scary. I called Diana [Dreyer] back. I got Kathleen [Strickland]
convinced to be a dean for a while. She never minded that; she was good with that. She
was good at it. I‟m not looking at that as an option particularly. I‟m 68 now. How old do
you want to work? That‟s what I figure.
JS: Sixty-seven and a half is the cut off now.
WW: That‟s about it for me. I made that, didn‟t I? Just barely. I‟m a little over 67½. Not
much after that. It‟s good.
JS: Good. I‟m glad you‟re happy in your retired life.
WW: Yep, doin‟ fine.
JS: Gonna learn to cook?
WW: Nope. I got a cook, Lee‟s really a good cook. You don‟t want to get in her way. She
won‟t eat what I cook.
JS: She does say you clean up though.
WW: I do clean up. You saw the picture of the sink on Facebook; she just posted it on
there. After she had trashed it cooking a wonderful meal [laughter]. We can put that
sound bite in, in case she checks it out.
JS: Alright. Are we good? Any words of wisdom?

Williams, William F.
WW: Nope, no words of wisdom.

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