Oral History Program Spencer L. Seager Interviewed by Ruby Licona 15 July 2011 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Spencer L. Seager Interviewed by Ruby Licona 15 July 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Seager, Spencer L., an oral history by Ruby Licona, 15 July 2011, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Spencer L. Seager circa 1960s Spencer L. Seager circa 1990s 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Spencer L. Seager (born 1935). Dr. Seager has taught in the Weber State University Chemistry Department for more than fifty years. The interview was conducted by Ruby Licona on July 15, 2011, in order to gather Dr. Seager’s recollections and experiences from his time at Weber State University. RL: This is Ruby Licona. Today is July 15, 2011. I am in the Waterstradt Room of the Stewart Library at Weber State University with Spence Seager, who, this fall, is beginning his fifty-first year on campus. He should have some very interesting stories and things to talk to us about today. Let’s start, Spence, with a little bit about your background: where you were born, where you went to school, how you ended up spending fifty-one years at Weber State. SS: Okay. I was born in Ogden, Utah in 1935. I was raised in Ogden. I attended public school there. I went to Weber High School and I began my college career in 1953. I enrolled at what was Weber College then. I was in the last group to attend Weber College on the old campus on 25th Street. I remember the old chemistry laboratories in the basement of the Moench Building. I loved it; that was my idea of chem. labs: dark and kind of dreary, but me and my friends, we loved it. That was what chemistry was like. RL: Something like a science fiction, Igor and Frankenstein and that kind of thing. SS: Yes. My teacher down there was Ralph Gray. He was a long-time teacher here at Weber. I had the opportunity to attend my first year there and then that summer is when we moved up to the new campus. So me and a friend of mine named 2 Harold Higgenbottom and another fellow whose name I can’t remember, we moved the Chem. Department from the lower campus up to the upper campus in Building Four. There were just the four academic buildings up here. So we would load the pickup truck, haul all the stuff up, and unload it up here in the laboratories. We spent all summer moving the Chem. Department up here. Then, in the fall of ’54, I was in the first group that attended Weber College on the new campus. RL: Weber College was still a two-year? SS: It was a junior college. We didn’t put the “junior” in there, so it was just called Weber College. So, we came up here in ’53—’54 actually. I finished that year and then I transferred to the University of Utah. There’s where I completed my undergraduate degree. When I began at the University of Utah, I had no aspirations of going further than a Bachelor’s degree. In fact, my ideal job was—I was kind of an introverted kid—my ideal job was to get my degree in chemistry and find some company or somebody who would pay me to work in a laboratory, preferably located in some dark cave where I didn’t have to interact with people. When I got to the University of Utah, they’d only had a graduate program for a little over ten years. It hadn’t developed much yet, so they were looking for graduate students. They were recruiting, so all of their majors—the chem. majors—we immediately were drafted in. They didn’t have enough grad students to fill all their TA positions. So all of their majors above the junior level were drafted to serve as teaching assistants in their laboratories and in their recitations. I got drafted—one of the horrible things that could happen to me, I 3 was not a people-person, I did not relate well to students or do well with talking to people. It petrified me. RL: Changed your life, though, didn’t it? SS: That it did. [Laughter] They paid us to be TAs. When I was a senior the same sort of thing occurred. They needed TAs and so I was drafted again. Again, it just scared the heck out of me. I did that. They also recruited as many of their majors as possible to go to grad school because they wanted to build a graduate program. In a way, I was surprised. I passed my classes and had a grade point average that qualified me for graduate school. I hadn’t planned on it, so they talked to me and I agreed. RL: Did they give you a fellowship? SS: Not at that point, but they made us TAs, so they were giving us income and that. They needed the TAs and I got into grad school. I surprised myself and passed my first year. RL: It’s always a surprise when you pass chemistry. SS: An interesting thing was happening to me, though. That was my third year as a TA and a lab assistant, and something was changing. I was beginning to feel that it was kind of interesting. Well, second year of grad school I was a TA again. Now, I was really beginning to feel, “Hey, this is not a bad thing. It’s kind of fun to get in front of students and help them and teach them and so-forth.” So, the third year most of the grad students—I passed the second year, too—in our third year we had to begin doing research and start getting ready to write a thesis or dissertation and all that. But in that third year, most of the grad students went 4 through what was called an RA, a research associate. You get a research director who had money and would pay you a salary to work in research. Well, I requested of the chair that I be a TA rather than an RA, because now I was beginning to get this feeling that this was kind of fun. So, I asked to be a TA in the third year. They granted my request and I was the TA again. During the fourth year, again, I wasn’t an RA. They had a fellowship at the university sponsored by the DuPont Corporation. I don’t remember what they called it, but we called it the Super TA. What this did, was pay a salary to somebody and they were over all the TAs. They had to assign them, make assignments for them in the labs, listen to the students’ complaints; they were kind of an administrator. RL: A team leader. SS: Yes. And I won. They awarded that to me. So I was the Super TA during my fourth year of graduate school. It was during that third year, and solidified during the fourth year, that I decided I wanted to have a career as a teacher, not as a typical Ph.D., going to a university and doing research and all that. I wanted to go to a place, really, where I could teach. That’s what I wanted. But I didn’t apply to many places—I think only three or four. One of them was Weber and I got out and got my degree, officially in ’62, but I was finished in ’61 and missed the graduation date. So, I was available in ’61. Weber had just gotten its four-year degree from the Legislature in 1960. Weber was looking for staff like crazy. It was a slam dunk. They hired me and I came here in 1961. They were hiring and looking for graduate people because they didn’t have any on faculty in 5 those days. So I came in ’61 and I’ve been here through the entire four-year history of the school. I went through all the name changes from Weber College to Weber State College. That lasted for quite a while; then it was Weber State University. RL: That was 1990. SS: So I’ve been here through all the name changes, and, as we indicated, through all the presidents: President Miller, President Brady, Nadauld, Thompson, and Millner. RL: Okay, we can talk about those in a minute and your experiences with each of them. SS: Also the deans. RL: We’ll get to those. So, you came to Weber and then were you one of the initial founders of the department as it exists? SS: I was the first hire beyond the faculty they had. At the time I was hired, they had Ralph Gray. He had been here for a long, long time. They had Alva Johanson; he had also been here for a long time. Both of them were up in their later years. They had a guy named Smith Murphy, who was also a long-timer. I don’t know quite what his position was, but he had been…I guess in today’s terminology he would be called an adjunct, but he had been teaching for quite a while. All three of them had been there a long time. RL: What was their background? They had Master’s degrees? SS: Ralph Gray had a Master’s degree. Alva Johanson had a Ph.D.; I can’t remember which school. And Smith Murphy…I think he had a Master’s degree. It 6 was interesting that I was the new kid on the block—they were the three oldtimers and I came as the brand-new guy—and they assigned me when I came to develop the upper-division program for the chem. major. All we had, up to that point, was the first two years, which was pretty traditional. So that’s what I spent the first year or two doing—I was creating the upper-division program. Basically, I emulated what I’d had at the University of Utah. My major, officially, was physical chemistry. That’s a junior-level class for a chem. major. It’s considered the Mt. Everest for the chem. majors. That’s the highest and toughest class you take. Beyond that, you took advanced analytical and advanced inorganic and advanced organic; so I set those classes up. I didn’t teach them because I didn’t have the expertise to teach organic, certainly. So I set all those courses up and we offered our first junior-level courses. I believe they were offered in ’62. We had majors in there, too. After, I’d been…I don’t know how long it was, Alva Johanson was made the chairman shortly after I came. Ralph Gray hit sixty-five and in those days they had a policy that said you couldn’t have an administrative position after age sixtyfive. You could still be employed, but not an administrator. I don’t know how that rule is now. But Alva was made the chairman. I think he was chairman for…I’m not sure how long, three or four years, and then when he hit that time, I was the heir-apparent, so I became chair. I’m not sure what year that was, whether it was ’64 or ’65 or ’66…somewhere in there. I served as chair for twenty-three years. RL: Good heavens. 7 SS: Yes. It was either twenty-three or twenty-five. I think it was twenty-three because I had just been appointed to another three-year term and I served about half of that three-year term and I decided I was tired of it— RL: You’d had enough. SS: I was tired of being a bureaucrat and working with the paperwork and all this. I told the faculty I was going to step down after the first year of that last term. They didn’t believe me at first. Later, they realized I was serious. When I stepped down, Helen James was made the chair. She was one of our hires. RL: And she was actually one of the first hires in the College of Science. Wasn’t she? SS: She was. RL: Was she the first female hire? SS: She was the first female, yeah. She came from the University of Nebraska with a Ph.D. She and I had a tremendous association with each other. We got along extremely well. We saw eye-to-eye and we had similar philosophies. She was a terrific faculty member. Terrific person. RL: She served in that position for quite a while. SS: She did, yes. RL: Now, as far as when you came to Weber, I’m sure the atmosphere on campus was one of excitement over the new status and so forth— SS: It was. RL: And a lot of energy in trying to develop a four-year curriculum. You’ve indicated that the people in your department were getting along in years. As far as the rest of the campus, how would you compare the intellectual climate on campus? You 8 had just been at a major university, but you had come to a place where the major thrust was going to be students—the emphasis was going to be students and teaching. How did that fit in with you? SS: Well, it fit my feelings. Like I said, I was one of the first Ph.D. hires—I don’t know if I was the first one or not, but I was one of the first, they were recruiting like crazy trying to get them—but in addition to what I was doing in the department, I became very politically active on campus. RL: And that’s never stopped, has it? SS: Well, it has of late. I’ve kind of pulled back from that. But there was me and a geology guy named Dallas Peterson, and we were pretty contemporary, we came roughly at the same time. We were instrumental in getting the first chapter of the AAUP, American Association of University Professors, on campus. That wasn’t extraordinarily well-received by the powers that be. RL: That would have been in the late-sixties? SS: Yes. He and I and a couple of others. I think Don Mormon was one of them; he was also a Ph.D. That was down in…I can’t remember which department. But there were three or four or five of us relatively new faculty and we were instrumental in getting that AAUP chapter on campus. Like I say, that was considered a faculty union in those days. Also, we and others on campus—I don’t remember the dates—we got the Faculty Senate. RL: That shows up in…the first chair shows up in ’69 and ’70. SS: Okay. We were part of that and elected members of that first Faculty Senate. Me and Dallas Peterson, we were both elected members. And we kicked up some 9 dust on campus because in the original Faculty Senate there was a significant representation by the administration. In other words, there were administrators who were also on the Faculty Senate. RL: Helmut Hoffman was the first Faculty Senate president. Was he— SS: He was an administrator and I got to know Helmut quite well. Well, Dallas and I— I remember Dallas Peterson because he was a geology guy and we were around—but the two of us and others on the Faculty Senate kicked up some dust, like I say. We felt it was not appropriate for administrators to be on the Faculty Senate as voting members. RL: I did have a question about that. Looking at the list of Faculty Senate chairs…Helmut Hoffman was in there for the first three years, and then in ’72 and ’73 it shows up as Joseph Bishop, who also was president from ’72-’78. So, did he serve as president of the university at the same time as president of the Senate? SS: Yes. As I recall, he was hired as president. He came in as the president of the university. RL: I mean, he did not come in from a department or anything? SS: No, no. Up to the time we kicked up enough dust to get some changes made, there were certain administrators that were on the Faculty Senate and the president was one of them. RL: The first president of the Faculty Senate that I saw on the list, who was from the faculty, was Tom Burton, who was out of the English Department. Was he also serving as an administrator at the time? 10 SS: No, he was English faculty. RL: Then he was president various times over the years. SS: Like I said, those of us faculty—and it was mostly the new people on campus, the folks they’d hired, the new ones that were kicking up the dust. It was politic and not necessarily a popular thing with the administration. But there were enough of us that we did raise the issue and the first thing we did was we got the voting rights taken away from administrators. They could be members of the Senate, but could not vote. Then, I don’t know how long, again, I don’t know the chronology, but a little later, a few years, not too long later, we finally got it so the administration couldn’t be members. RL: They’re ex-officio kind of. SS: Yes, they could be ex-officio. They could sit, in but they were not members of the Faculty Senate. It was strictly faculty. RL: I know that, currently, you have administrators who serve in advisory positions in Faculty Senate standing committees. They’re usually present at the meetings. SS: The Faculty Senate is an open meeting; any faculty can attend. But I was a part of that group, that newly-hired—under ten or fifteen years—faculty and we were very active politically on campus trying to get things, as we saw it, shaped up. RL: Well, you had to change it from what at the time was called Harrison High or something. You had to create a different ambiance. SS: And we knew what was common on the other campuses. RL: Especially if you’d been away at others. 11 SS: There were minor things that we did…I can still remember Dallas Peterson and I in buildings one through four—they had a lot of high school characteristics. For example, in the morning they would come on and have announcements. There were speakers in all the buildings and people would come on and have announcements like in high school. Sometimes those cock-eyed things would take fifteen minutes. RL: If you’re trying to do a class— SS: Yes, and Dallas and I were the two who were really upset about that. I think we were probably the main ones. We talked to the administration a number of times about stopping that because we had a fifty minute class and on occasion these announcements would take ten or fifteen minutes. They were very high-schoolish: “There's going to be an assembly—” RL: And a pep rally. SS: And a football game and all of this. So Dallas and I went down and I don't know who the administrators were that we dealt with—well, Wally Badley, of course. Wally Badley was infamous on campus and I’ll talk about him along the way, as well. You may have heard of him. He was the superintendent of buildings and grounds. RL: Ok. SS: He was one of the most powerful people on campus. RL: They always are. [Laughter] SS: Wally was quoted once as saying, “If it wasn’t for the blankety-blank students and the blankety-blank faculty in this place, this would be a pretty good place to 12 work.” Anyway, we went down, Dallas and I, and I don’t remember who we went to but we requested that the speakers be shut off because we felt that it was a waste of time. Well, we didn’t get anywhere. This went on and finally we went down with a pair of wire cutters and we went in to either Wally’s office or some administrator’s office, and we said, “We’ve asked that the speakers be shut off so that we don’t have our classes interrupted.” Then we showed the wire cutters and said, “If they’re not, we’re going to do it.” That was how Dallas and I approached some problems. And they were shut off. And they didn’t come back on again until Kennedy’s assassination. When that happened, they were back on, but they were just on for that announcement and then they were off again. I don’t remember how many buildings had speakers when they built them, but they quit doing it in the buildings. So, like I say, some of us newbies—us new people on campus—we had some interesting issues, and we did quite a bit of what we felt like was bringing Weber into the four-year university setting. That’s the way we looked at it. RL: You said that you became very politically active on campus, other than the AAUP and the Faculty Senate, were there other groups? SS: There was the AAUP, and the Faculty Senate I was on. I chaired the first Faculty Board of Review on campus. As for the Faculty Board of Review… I don’t remember the year it was set up, but it was the final board of appeal that a faculty member could have as far as getting terminated for cause or whatever. I chaired that twice; I don’t remember whether it was the first two terms, or what, but I remember I was the first chair of it. 13 RL: Was that the precursor of the Faculty Senate APAFT Committee? SS: I’m not sure what it is today. But it was a final recourse for faculty who were being canned for whatever. RL: Did you review promotions and tenures? SS: No, well…I believe they could bring those up, but in those days it wasn’t those as often as it was termination issues. I remember that I was the first chair because we had our first meeting, our first case, and it turned out that this meeting was going to be on the same day as the faculty picnic. They had a campus picnic, I don’t remember whether it was Homecoming or what it was, but the families came and my family looked forward to this thing. But I remember I was the first board chair because it was that picnic day and I told my wife, “Well, we’re starting our meeting about one o’clock, so I’ll be over and meet you at the picnic at about three o’clock.” Well, no way. I didn’t make that picnic. We were there that whole day until the evening hours and then the next day and the case went on and on. That’s why I remember. That was the first case of the Faculty Board of Review. So, I was on that, like I say. We new ones on campus, especially the doctorate people and so on, we got on just about everything. I was elected to all kinds of committees and things of that sort. RL: You were administrator in the Chemistry Department. Did you do other things within in the college? Was the college split up into the different colleges that it is now, or was it more centrally organized? 14 SS: When I first came, the sciences were part of the Arts, Letters, and Sciences College. Dello Dayton was the dean over ALS. I’m not sure how long that went on. It wasn’t too long until the ALS College was split up into the College of Science, the College of Humanities, and the College of Social Sciences and so on. Garth Welch was the first dean of the College of Science. He was a chemist and one of the people we had hired. He may have been the first hire on campus. I think the first two that we hired after I came were Garth Welch, who was a colleague of mine at the University of Utah, and Bryant Miner, who was also a colleague of mine at the University of Utah. When we advertised, they applied. We didn’t get a lot of applicants in those days. RL: Garth Welch was dean of the College of Science for quite a long time, I think. SS: Yes, he was. I was looking at the dates today, though now I can’t remember. It was at least two four-year terms. He resigned and went back to full-time faculty on his own. There were no problems like there was with the next guy. RL: And the next guy was? SS: The next guy was Dennis Travis. RL: Was he brought in as dean or did he come up from a department? SS: He was an outside hire. He came in and served one term while I was the chair of the Chem. Department, and we really locked horns. We almost had a rebellion in the College of Science. He had some characteristics that just about drove us nuts. He was constantly requiring the chairs to collect all kinds of data for him and turn it in to him. I was somewhat of a rebel in my earlier years, I will admit it, and I haven’t changed much. I’ve been a rebel even in my later years. 15 I remember that probably the big turning point with Travis came when he was in his third or fourth year, I think, and we chairs met with the dean. He came up with one of these off-the-wall assignments. He wanted us to collect all of this data. So I raised my hand and said, “Dean Travis, what are you going to do with this data?” There was just silence. He couldn’t tell us. I gave him about ten seconds to answer and I said, “Well, if you can’t tell us what you’re going to do with it then I am not going to take the time to collect it.” Then all the other chairs said, “Neither am I, neither am I, neither am I.” And that was it. Open rebellion and the chairs just decided, “No, we’ve had it.” RL: Well, there’s always room for data, but if it was just busy work then there were other places you could spend your energy. SS: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly how we interpreted it. So, that was the open rebellion of the chairs. From there, it was just all downhill for Travis. He ended after that four-year term, if I remember right. So, I’ve had my differences with administrators and I’ve never had aspirations of being an administrator beyond a chair. Being a chair was okay, but when I came here, I specifically chose Weber because I wanted to come to a place that was teaching—mainly teaching. We all bootlegged research; in other words, we’d come up at night and we’d do some research. I looked at my publications not too long ago and I had one bona fide academic publication from Weber State when I was a faculty member. It took us about three or four years to collect enough date to get a publication. This has been one of my hang-ups in the last decade and has been one of my primary issues with Dean Ostlie, who’s now gone. He really was, in my mind, 16 attempting to make this into a typical research university. He wanted the emphasis to be research and, boy, if you didn’t get in and do that research, you didn’t get tenure. As a matter of fact, he terminated one of our faculty a year ago and didn’t replace him. It put us under terrific pressure in the Chem. Department. It was obviously a difference in philosophy, but I came here because I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to play in the research a little, but not have it as a required expectation. RL: But it’s moving more and more in that direction. SS: And it will probably—I tell my wife—maybe in thirty years Weber might be something like the U and USU, but I question whether it will or not. I don’t think our state or our legislators will support another research university in this state. RL: Not unless the economy changes a lot because it takes a lot of money to support research. SS: Yes, it’s costly. It costs a lot to pay faculty primarily to do research and pay all the TAs and all the adjuncts to do the teaching. RL: And when you have the TAs, you lose the one-on-one, don’t you? SS: As I tell people, I’ve spent fifty years learning how to teach these undergraduate courses and I’m still learning. There’s no question that my teaching has changed significantly over those fifty years. When I first came, probably the first decade or so, I was what I call a typical teacher. I didn’t do a very good job. If you compared the way I do my classes now to what I did the first ten years…I’ve got all my records and grade books from day one. I went over to have a colonoscopy from Dr. Lowe six or seven years ago. I was laying on the gurney and he was talking 17 to the woman helping him as they were getting me prepped. He told his partner, “I took my undergraduate chemistry from Dr. Seager.” And I said, “I checked your grades before I came over here.” [Laughter] The helper got quite a kick out of that. But I look back and I know I’ve changed. I think I’m a much better teacher now than I was when I began; I’m a much better teacher now than I was ten years ago. That’s my opinion. RL: It’s the old “Practice makes perfect.” SS: There’s only one way to gain experience. RL: And if you’re constantly reviewing what you do, you can only get better. SS: I hope so. But anyways, that’s why I came here; I wanted to be a teacher. RL: You went from Garth Welch to Travis. SS: Dennis Travis. He lasted one term. Helen James, when Travis was basically terminated, she was drafted and only served one year. She didn’t want to be an administrator. She was a great teacher; the students loved her. She was an analytical chemist. She was very active on campus. She came from Nebraska; she was Big Red all the way. She was a sports fan; she knew football inside out. We had very few women in our classes; you’d get a smattering, maybe twenty percent, but they avoided chemistry. Except the nurses, of course, they had to take chemistry. Our nursing courses had significant percentages. But Helen was a tremendous asset to the department. I remember we had a tennis player from Sweden; she and Helen got along really well. And the women’s soccer team—Helen went to all of their matches. She was on the campus-wide athletic committee. When Weber was put on NCAA probation, Helen chaired the 18 committee that was required to go through the hoops in order to get that off our record. She was a terrific asset to the department and she was a darn good teacher. RL: And she was one of the first female administrators on campus. SS: Yes, she was, and she was the first female, if I recall correctly, to be hired in the College of Science. RL: But if she loved the teaching then it was good for her to be able to go back to that. SS: She just served the one year, then she came back to the department, then Cyrus McKell was hired. He was a life scientist. He was a very good dean. He served two terms. I drew very close to Cy. After, there was Bob Smith, who was the equivalent of the Provost for a while. RL: Vice President for Academic Affairs. SS: Bob Smith was a chemist by training. I got to know him while I was the chair and he taught a class for us occasionally. He wasn’t interested that much in teaching. RL: He came in the early ‘80s as an administrator. SS: And he did have tenure in the Chem. Department and taught Gen-Ed classes. I had a very interesting experience because of my relationship with Bob Smith. He got contacted by the United Arab Emirates; they wanted a team to come over from the United States and evaluate the College of Science at their university. Bob Smith ended up being the contact person and rounded up a team. He wanted Helen to go over as chemist. She wasn’t available. I was his next choice. 19 I agreed, but I had no idea what I was getting into. The furthest I’d been was Hawaii. RL: That was before it was a state, right? [Laughter] SS: Yes. Anyway, Cy McKell was the biology person Smith lined up. I think it was a team of six of us. There was a mathematician and a physicist and one other. Anyway, they flew us over to the U.A.E. It was a wild experience. It was the first time I’d ever been on international flights and the U.A.E. was a totally different environment. I remember we came down off the plane and there were paramilitary folks with guns walking around. RL: Startling, isn’t it? SS: Yes, but I got to know the U.A.E. and actually got to visit twice. We were over there three or four days then they shipped us back. We wrote a report and shipped it to them. I think it was two or three years later that they wanted the same team to come back and see them again. RL: To see if they’d progressed? SS: So we visited them twice. Anyway, it was Cy McKell. I got to know him really well. He was a terrific person and a terrific dean. It was a shame the way he met his demise. He was working in his yard when somebody lost control of their car and took him out. Anyway, McKell was dean and then after him was Galli. He served a couple of terms and he was an okay dean. I rank them and I’m not going to give you that ranking. I know who I think was the best dean we’d ever had. I look at our best dean as Cy McKell. He was really terrific. Not too far behind him was Welch. 20 RL: And Ron Galli. SS: Ron Galli. After Galli, there was Dale Ostlie. He finished up his second term and he’s been replaced. It’s been an interesting ride. RL: Well, not ranking them certainly, but what changes do you feel each of them brought to the college in terms of strengths or replacing weaknesses? SS: Garth, of course, was the first one. We’d all been under Dello Dayton and he was a good administrator, but Welch had to really get us together as a College of Science. He worked with the chairs and he built the departments. He really appreciated people and I’m not a person who has to have a pat on the back every time they do something worthwhile, but on the other hand, I hate to see it when people aren’t recognized. You can appreciate people in subtle ways without being stupid; Garth did a good job of that. I’d known him since graduate school; we were lab mates and worked in the old military barracks research labs. Perhaps I’m biased, but he was a smart man, very intelligent. Travis was a disaster right from the get-go. It was his way or the highway. In my view, he didn’t do a good job of administrating. He didn’t support the departments. He was at odds with the chairs almost immediately. He just drove us nuts. I can’t remember specifics, there were too many of them, I think. Helen was good but she was only in there a year. Cy McKell was very, very good. He supported the departments and the chairs. It was basically the chairs that were running the college. He asked their opinions and we worked things out. Not only that, but he did it outside of the college as well. I was the chair, I think, while he was there. He contacted the chair on a one-on-one basis and invited the chair 21 and his wife to come down to Salt Lake and go to the Symphony with him. He knew I liked music. My wife still remembers that; she says that was really neat. And it was. We just had a night out, he and his wife, and me and my wife. I’m sure he did it with all the chairs. He was a people person both in and out of the university. Just a good person. Galli I can’t really complain about, but every dean gets this complaint. Galli was a physicist, “Well, the Physics Department was getting all the favors.” Welch was a chemist, “Well, the Chemistry Department gets all the favors.” McKell was a life scientist…So, that always comes up. Sometimes I would agree with it but not nearly to the extent at which it gets going. RL: A lot of the times it’s just a bone to gnaw. Now, how did these individuals interact with the faculty in the colleges? SS: Quite good, with the exception of Travis and Ostlie. I’m not going to kid…I made my feelings very known during the stuff that went on that ended Ostlie’s career up here. I was a part of that. The chairs used to say—and I think they’re right— that they never, ever saw Dean Ostlie on their floor. He’d get on the elevator on floor one and go to six and that was it. He never wandered around to see what was going on in departments. The extreme contrast of this was Rod Brady. RL: Who knew everything about everybody. SS: And he would have his secretary call and ask permission to come visit your class. He was that kind of a guy. I can remember times while I was teaching in Lind Lecture Hall, the back door opening about fifteen minutes after class started and he just came in and sat down. I made eye contact with him and nodded and 22 he sat and watched what was going on. Then he left. Afterward, a couple of students came and asked, “Was that the president?” “Yeah, that was him.” “What was he doing here?” I said, “Oh, just visiting class.” And, of course, Rod set up the Distinguished Faculty Award that’s given to several people every year. Me and—I can’t remember his name—he and I were the first two awardees. Brady still funds it. It’s still given on campus. I wish I could think of his name. RL: Do you remember the department he was in? SS: Sociology, I think. RL: Oh, it’s Dan. He was surely well-loved by his students. SS: Yes, that’s it. Dan Gallegos. Dan and I got talking about it and we were both extremely proud to be given that award, partly because we were the first two to be given it on campus, but especially because that was what Dan and I wanted to be…if you’re going to get recognized, get recognized for your teaching. RL: Dan used to do a taco night for his students. That was a big thing. SS: Oh really? I ran into…I think it was his daughter. I don’t remember how but somehow she mentioned she was Dan Gallegos’ daughter. I told her I liked Dan, that we got along very well. RL: He was such a jolly guy. But he pulled something out of the students, too. SS: He used to give seminars on how he taught. He’d have a circle of chairs. Dan was well-liked, no question. RL: It sounds like the two of you deserved that award. SS: He did, certainly. Anyway, Rod would go around the campus and that’s what the good deans did, too. They would go around and see what was going on in the 23 classes and laboratories. That was one of the lacks that Travis had and it was certainly one that Ostlie had. He just never got out of that office. It’s too bad. But I’m happy—proud, perhaps, even—to have been part of kicking up dust when dust needed to be kicked up. In other words, if the administrators—bureaucrats, I call them—I think they ought to be called to task on it. They’re not perfect. They don’t do things perfectly all the time, just like faculty don’t and chairs don’t. We all make mistakes. Over the years, I think I’ve had a bit of an influence in getting things taken care of. We’re not completely through. But I know as a result of that, I haven’t been the best-liked chair or faculty member by some of the higher administration. With Rod Brady and Steven Nadauld, of course, I was very close to them. They both had sons that were high school age and I helped all kinds of kids through science fair over the years. I became the de facto science fair advisor for both Rod’s boys and Steve’s boys. Rod was a runner—he’d run races. I’d run regularly, too; and at the time Brady was there, we both had a son who was in that age group—fifteen or sixteen. So, there was a race in Salt Lake that went from the Brigham Monument up the canyon, ran 10k, and ended up on Main Street where the Brigham Monument was. On one occasion, me, Rod Brady, his two sons, and my son, we took two cars down. We only did that one race, but we used to chat about it. So, I had a lot of good, positive interaction with those two administrators and with some of the deans. I haven’t totally been anti-administration. Some of them have done terrific things in terms of developing the campus and establishing its reputation. Some have done some damage. 24 RL: You mentioned Brady and Nadauld. Bill Miller was also in place when you came. How did you interact with him? SS: I didn’t have a lot of one-on-one interaction with him. I think he was in for part of the time I was the chair. Overall, he came in a very critical time. That was a hairy transition. RL: Besides the physical move, there was the change from a two-year to a four-year, and the hiring and the building. SS: Oh yes. Exactly. And I think with the way the university moved along in those critical years, you have to say he did a good job. I don’t think you can argue that. I’m sure it was a very tough time for administrators. They were having to go down to the Legislature and battle for funding. RL: You have to be a bit of a visionary to take an institution through that kind of a sequence. SS: During his time, a lot of building went on. When I was a student, we had the four buildings and the maintenance building. I think the Union Building was being constructed. The Fine Arts building was under construction. I think early on…I think the Union Building was being built while I was a student here. I think there were just the four buildings. But I could be wrong. Most of the parking was south of those four buildings. That was our parking lot. RL: It was just pasture around here, wasn’t it? SS: Oh yeah. Weeds and wildlife. RL: I remember talking to someone about cattle or something south of the campus where the Dee Events Center is. 25 SS: Oh yeah. They were letting them graze. I don’t know whether the state owned the land or not, or whether they acquired it later. But yeah, this campus was basically the four buildings, the services building, and that was about it. The heating plant was all down where the maintenance building was. RL: So you were around when they built the library. SS: Oh yes. I remember the library. I remember the pile driver over there. We’d be in our labs and we could feel it: boom, boom as they drove those piles in. RL: Trying to build the basement. SS: That’s right. Well, when I came, the stadium up there…all we had to sit on was the bleachers on the west side. So, four buildings, a football field, and the heating plant and maintenance building, and maybe one of those buildings—the Union or the Fine Arts—under construction when I came up here as a student. I’ve been around here for quite a bit of the development. It’s been exciting. RL: You were here when Joseph Bishop was president. What was that like? SS: It was interesting. RL: As in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times?” SS: Yeah, I thought it was Chinese, too. May your life be interesting. Well, I remember sitting in my office on the fifth floor there. Remember, there used to be a big frame building the president lived in over there. Do you remember that? RL: I do not. SS: It was a large building. It was located over there a ways…it was a very large, very nice, white frame building. Well, I remember watching it burn down as a 26 result of his boys. That was just one of my memories about Joe Bishop’s tenure here. RL: Were they fireworks? SS: They were messing around with fireworks or firecrackers or something. The drapes caught on fire and the whole building burnt to the ground. It was a frame building. It was very nice. I remember sitting up in my office watching that thing go. I think…I think I maybe have advised his kids a little on science fair. I used to help a lot of youngsters and that included the presidents when they were here. I think most of Bishop’s problems were…by that time, I wasn’t in the politics as much as I had been earlier on. I wasn’t in the Faculty Senate, I don’t think. There was Tom Burton and the others who have always been pretty politically active on campus. RL: Sadler, Seshachari. SS: Yeah. Sadler and Seshachari. What’s the other one? RL: Sessions? SS: Yes, Gene Sessions. Those guys are all still pretty active. I knew all of them through my political activity but I’ve pretty much pulled back. Like I said, in those early days, you got elected to every committee you were put up for. Mostly these were the people who had doctorate degrees. The university was trying to get up that ladder and so we got elected to just about everything we wanted to be on. But Bishop, like I said, I didn’t know too much other than just hearsay. He had some real political issues on campus apparently. RL: Did the environment on campus change while he was here? 27 SS: Not for me or in ours. Once I got through that initial decade when I was elected to everything—once I got out of that stuff—I mainly became College of Science, Department of Chemistry-oriented. I can tell you the whole history of that stuff— the building of our department and all that, I can give you details on those. RL: You have the Lind Lecture Hall and the Science building. SS: I hate to admit it, but I was one of the members of the building committee that designed that building—both of those buildings. RL: Why do you hate to admit it? Do you feel they weren’t well done? SS: Oh, absolutely. The Science Lab building is a lousy building. The budget for that building was about four and a quarter million dollars for the two…that might have been just for the lab building. We’d meet as a committee and come up with ideas and plans and so on. We’d meet in the next meeting—every two or three weeks—and holy smoke, all kinds of things had been changed from the last meeting. Every time the plans were changed, the quality of the building went downhill. RL: Who was president when the building was put up? SS: I think…I think it was Brady, but I’m not sure. The dates are on the building. But the president didn’t have a lot to do with it. RL: A lot of it is facilities. SS: And then we had Bob—he was the Academic VP too. Bob Clark. He was the chair of the committee and he was a physicist. I’ve often told people the building was designed by an amateur and built by crooks. The reason I say that is the architect that was given that charge…at the time that building was built it was the 28 most technically demanding building to be built on the campus. It had more technical stuff in it in terms of things like drainage and gas lines and air lines and electrical and all of this stuff. They gave the architect the bid on it and it was Art Mueller. Well, Art Mueller had designed the church building that I attended prior to moving over to South Ogden over in the Terrace. Mueller had designed that church and as I tell people, the roof on that church leaked— RL: From the get-go? SS: From the get-go. Mueller was an Austrian and he maintained that they built flatroofed buildings in Austria all the time. I happened to go through Austria on a tour and I didn’t see many flat-roofed buildings. Anyway, the roof on that church leaked all the time. The roof on that Science building leaked from day one. I think they just barely got it…they put three or four roofs on that thing since it was built. That’s why I say it was designed by an amateur. The biggest thing he had designed was a church. Well, I was in Building Four and I was the chair, still. In the evening hours, after about three or four the workers would go home, and I’d wander up to see how things were going. Just wander around. I know how that thing was built, how it was put together. Boy, I’d hate to be in that sucker if there’s ever an earthquake, I’ll tell ya. RL: You think they were taking shortcuts? SS: Just the way it was built. I’m sure it met earthquake code at the time. It met all the building codes, presumably. But the chemistry lab—the Chem. Department— was put on the fifth floor. Today’s building code will not allow a chemistry lab to be any higher than the third floor of a building. Can you imagine building 29 chemistry laboratories and not putting in a sprinkling system for fires? There isn’t one in that building. There isn’t one anywhere in the building. Certainly in the chem. labs you would expect that. Well, the reason I say it was built by crooks: they laid the foundation and then they put what looked like Ts, the letter T, in pre-stress concrete. There are four walls, the outer walls and then the inner walls that make the hallway, and then the floors were made by putting concrete Ts from the inner wall to the outer wall, and you set those on there. Then they would put the next layer of concrete block up to the next floor, and then lay the Ts across. So, essentially it’s been built so there are four walls supporting the whole thing, and then the T-beams of pre-stressed concrete laid across there. RL: But there’s no load-bearing…? SS: That’s the T-beams. The outer walls and the inner walls are the load-bearing ones. But my view…if that thing shakes, those blocks are going to fall and that whole thing is going to pancake down. Anyway, I’d go up there and wander around seeing how things were going. What they did after they laid those concrete T-beams, was they would cut holes in them where drain lines had to go and things like that. After they’d done that, then they poured concrete on top of those T-beams to make a nice, complete, smooth floor. Well, where they cut holes in the floor, the code called for them to put a lead lining in there. It looks like a pipe cut in half and it would sit down in these holes— RL: A conduit. 30 SS: Yes, to cover the corrosion or resistance, I don’t know what. But these lead liners were supposed to go in all of them. I went up there…often I would go up there and the building inspector, the guy who was over the building, he’d be wandering around. We got to know each other on a “How you doing” basis. Anyway, I went up there one day and they were going to pour concrete the next day on one of these floors and he said, “Let me show you something.” I said, “Okay,” and we went over in the corner and there was a big pile that—being a chemist—I could recognize as lead. It was a big pile of these lead half-circles. He’s the one who explained to me, “They’re going to pour concrete tomorrow and these things are supposed to go in all of these holes that are drilled around for drain lines and gas lines and all that.” He said, “If I hadn’t come up here and caught this, the next day when the concrete guys came, that pile would be gone and they’d pour the concrete and those things would not have been put around those pipes.” RL: And then they’d put the pile back for the next floor. SS: That was just one example. The electrical system is another. The subcontractor who did the electrical system went under—he went bankrupt. Well, when they got the building finished—to check things out you go and check the lights on the fifth floor and every floor, you know, you flip on the switch for the hoods that suck out gases to check and make sure they all run. Everything was fine. Okay. We moved in. We went up there and the first day, I think—certainly it was in the first week—we powered everything up and the whole building shut down. The electrical power just—fwoom—went to crap. 31 RL: They didn’t have it wired right? SS: What had happened was the subcontractor—to save money, I guess—he had put in…you know they have these big switch boxes with the breakers? Well, he had put in all these switch boxes, but he hadn’t put in all the breakers. Where the breaker was supposed to have…say, two circuits on it, he wired in three or four so every circuit worked when we checked them one-by-one. But when you put all of them on at the same time, the whole system shut down. So they had to hire a contractor to come in and get that fixed. They had to rewire and get that thing with the correct number of circuits in there so that it would work. So, like I said, the building itself…I’m not too excited about that building. And, like I said, I hate to admit I was on the planning committee. Time and again we’d say, “This wasn’t how it was when we approved it.” “Oh, well, we had to do this…” and every time it was a downgrade. [Tape stops] RL: You were talking about the building of the science lab. If you were to get involved with something like that again, would you do it differently? SS: I’d have a lot of opinion on it. RL: Other than the safety issues and the earthquake problems? SS: I’d certainly push for some things that they didn’t. They low-balled everything budget-wise. For the tabletops in our laboratories they brought in twelve materials for us to look at. Well, the number twelve, the worst on our category list, was a linoleum-like material which would have melted. In one of our experiments, we had the students heat up a ceramic thing, get it very hot, and 32 they inevitably put it on the desk top. Well, it would have gone through that linoleum. So we vetoed that, but we got number eleven. They went clear down to the lowest one, which was a solid tabletop. It was low-bid and locally made. It came in slabs that had to be put on tabletops and epoxied together. I was in the PChem lab one day and we had water baths, which are big tanks that are heated up and kept at a constant temperature for experiments and so on. Well, we were in there and all of a sudden I heard a great big bang—just a huge bang. I could tell what direction it came from so I wandered over to this bench where this bang had come from. I realized there was a seam where some of these pieces had been epoxied and it ran right under this water bath that we heated up to forty-five degrees Celsius, and that thing had got hot and expanded enough that it slit that whole seam. It just bang and split right across. That was just one example. But it was really built on a low budget. That’s all there was to it. RL: Well, we’ve talked about different presidents that you served under. We talked about Brady and Nadauld. When we became a university, Paul Thompson came. He was here for about twelve years. What were your interactions with him? SS: Not a lot. We didn’t have any kids of the same age and I wasn’t the department chair. Most of my interactions with him were just as a faculty member. Once again, like I say, I didn’t hear a lot of bad stuff. I felt like during those years… RL: It moved along. SS: Yes, the university moved along. That was, again, probably not as challenging as moving from a junior college to a four-year college. But certainly there was some 33 acclimation that had occurred relative to the university stuff. Like I said, from my perspective, he was fine as a president. I didn’t have a lot of…dust to kick up, let’s put it that way. RL: When we got the university status, one of the arguments made was that we would be a metropolitan university. SS: That was how the Legislature passed it, I know that. RL: And that was with the intention of keeping the teaching emphasis here on campus, but at that time, I believe we had two graduate programs. We had a Masters of Accountancy and then a Masters in Education. SS: Right. Accounting was the first that we had on campus. RL: Yes, and we’ve now got about seven different programs. SS: When they came in—whoever was president—I had no argument with the accounting. I’d interacted a lot politically and so on and I could see that the accounting people did a good job. There was a legitimate demand and it was almost as if a Bachelor’s degree in accounting didn’t really cut it. You almost had to have a Master’s degree. It had a personal impact later, because all four of our children have gotten their Bachelor’s degrees from Weber State. They didn’t go elsewhere. Our older son got his Bachelor’s degree in accounting and a Master’s degree in accounting, both from Weber State. I got a lot of feedback from him about that graduate program. My impression was that it was done extremely well. The Masters of Education…I had a little heartburn about that one because it seemed to be just guessing to indicate a direction we were going. I really, again, my heart is in teaching. And if you have teachers—at the University 34 of Utah for example, I was there when Lloyd Maughn was there, he’s a pretty famous guy, and Parmley was in physics. These people were known for their teaching. At those kinds of schools, the teaching folks are kind of second-class citizens in their way. Although Parmley and Maughn were know all over the country. That’s why I hated that direction; I hated to see teaching become a lower-class, secondary thing. So, the Masters of Education gave me a little heartburn and the others were sort of an “I told you so.” You know, we’ve added more and more in. I’m not thrilled with it. This was part of our problem with Dean Ostlie. He was moving in the direction of the research grants and the teaching was becoming a low-class thing to do. RL: A second thought. SS: Yes, a second-class thing. Some of the things he was proposing were doing that in terms of getting time available. The Master’s degree in chemistry or other sciences cropped up in a few meetings. I’m absolutely dead-set against that idea. I’m not a fan of our graduate programs. From my personal perspective, I’d much rather see us become a Reed College, totally undergraduate and excellent. I’ve heard people say that Reed offers graduate programs now; I don’t know. But that was what I was looking for. RL: One of the things that has happened over the last few years is we’ve become nationally recognized as far as undergraduate research. SS: I have no problem with that. 35 RL: You’re still having that one-on-one interaction, starting students in case they do want to go on to graduate school and keeping a personal hand in the shaping of those minds. SS: Like I say, the one academic research paper that I have solely from here—I have quite a few from the U—but that one involved a student as the second author. I have other publications here but they’ve been pedagogical type. They were published in the Journal of Chemical Education and they’ve been dealing with how to teach. RL: The how-to’s rather than “what we found.” SS: Resources for teaching and so on. I’m all for undergraduate research and so on. Ed Walker in our department—he involves a lot of them. Tim Herzog is one of our newest faculty members; he’s getting a pretty good research program going and he is working with undergraduate students. I applaud that behavior. RL: Another thing that we’ve seen in the last fifteen years or so is the semester conversion. Did that have an effect on your approach to teaching? SS: Let me say that every problem I’ve come to classroom-wise I’ve blamed on semesters. One of my big gripes is that the folks who make the decisions about scheduling and so on are not classroom people. They don’t go in and see what’s really happening, like Rod Brady and some others did. They make decisions and they totally screw you up. I’ve got two or three that resulted from the semester. Semester conversion was one thing, but the trimester thing…when they tried to make the three terms equal—that one I hate. It’s been a mess. The original semester wasn’t too bad. It brought us congruent with what most schools do. But 36 quarters were great—from a chemistry point of view it worked beautifully. Quarters were a nice length for our one-term classes. RL: It was good length for the students. At about ten weeks they get tired and so do you. SS: Exactly. The trimester…that one we really had heartburn about. Lengthwise, I could live with it, but then they had to have the two different kinds of days. They had the Monday, Wednesday, Friday; and then the Tuesday, Thursday. You could teach three hours in the Monday, Wednesday, Friday; or two classes of an hour and a half on Tuesday and Thursday. Well, that created an immediate problem because the way we taught our classes was that we had three lecture periods a week where you go in and lecture or discuss with students. Then we had one period a week that was scheduled as a recitation; basically, we’d have problem assignments and we’d go and work problems with the students. They could ask questions and we could demonstrate problem-solving. Well, they go on this trimester and Monday, Wednesday, Friday are on an hourly schedule but Tuesday, and Thursday are on the half-hour schedule. I was teaching a class when they had just gone to this and I had an 8:00 lecture on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Tuesday was the recitation; it met from 7:30 to 9:00. So, I went in to my recitation and I told the students, “Well, we’re going to not start a recitation until 8:00, that way it would be four days at 8:00.” About two or three days later, I got called on the carpet by the dean, who had been called on the carpet by the provost. Some student had gone and complained to the provost that I wasn’t following the schedule. I said to the dean, “You’re kidding me!” He 37 said, “No, that’s what we got. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to start that recitation at 7:30.” I went into my class at 7:30 the next day and told them what had happened and said, “Officially, the recitation starts at 7:30; however, I won’t show up until 8:00. You can come and do your thing, but I’ll be here at 8:00.” It’s an example of what I think is just nonsensical and it completely disrupted our teaching. For the first time in many years, I’m teaching a summer class— accelerated during the second half of summer. We teach it in the summer so students can pick up a whole year of chemistry in one summer semester. We teach the first half in the first course and the second half in the second course. Well, it’s accelerated; in other words, we lecture for about a hundred minutes every day and then we have lab every day and so on. They set the schedule up and it turns out that they scheduled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Lab, however, is scheduled for Monday and Wednesday and it’s right after recitation. So far so good. However, whoever set the schedule up…I told the students, “You’re going to get the same class I taught in the spring.” But when I got in to see the schedule, it turned out that three Mondays were gone because of holidays—you know, the Fourth of July on Sunday so we take Monday off. Well that totally fouled me up. That meant three Mondays when they’re supposed to do lab are gone. That’s the kind of problem I had. Normally, I give my exams during class time. I couldn’t because they wiped out three of my lecture periods with those 38 Mondays. I had to tell my students we would have regular classes but the exams would have to be outside of class. That’s the kind of thing that bugs me: when the bureaucrats make decisions and don’t look at the ramifications for the faculty or look at it from the point of view of the troops in the trenches. RL: That gets to my question about the strategic planning issue. In the early ‘90s there was a strategic planning thing set up and then I went away to school and came back. Something had happened while I was gone and it had all blown up while I was gone. Were you involved in any of the dust-raising? SS: I didn’t get involved. I wasn’t in on any of the committees. I knew it was going on but all we got, as faculty members, was what you did: “Here’s what it’s going to be.” In my opinion, there was very little input from the troops in the trenches. The thing is, when you’re going to do things like that, in my opinion, you need to involve all of the aspects of the campus. The sciences are different from the social sciences, which, in turn, are different than the arts. I think there ought to be input from all of those kinds of areas because whenever you’re going to make these kinds of changes, you’re impacting all of them, and there are differences, that’s why there are all these different colleges. So, I think there’s been less faculty input over the years. It has evolved in that way. Maybe it’s the nature of the critter; as the university has gotten bigger, maybe size itself impacts that. You can’t conveniently get enough input to do things so everybody has had a shot at expressing themselves. A lot of things have been done…they remodeled the Lind Lecture Hall. You probably saw it, originally, when it had the individual seats that were bolted 39 to the risers. They remodeled it after the Smith Lecture Hall in the Business Building with the continuous writing desk. The trouble was that our risers are only about seventy percent as wide as those in the lecture hall in the Business building. That one works fine. But for ours…I walked in there the first day of class and the students can hardly move. I’m on the Risk Management Committee; I’ve been on that thing for years, and the fire marshal’s on there. After a class at the Lind, I went to a Risk Management meeting and turned to him and said, “Does that new seating arrangement in Lind meet the fire code? With those students in those chairs, they couldn’t get out of those quickly to save their soul.” He got kind of a funny look on his face and said, “Yeah, yeah it meets the fire code.” “That’s interesting.” In the Chem. Department, we had collected furniture over the years to put in the halls of the building, especially on the fifth floor where the Chemistry Department was, and there’d been an ongoing battle about that—about the fire code and the ability to move. I’d made measurements of the spacing between the wall and the seats because they’d told us that the people couldn’t get access out. Anyway, they finally got us with the idea that in an earthquake the seats that were there could jiggle out into the running space. I said, “Attach them to the wall.” But they finally got all those chairs out. That final battle was going on at about the time that they remodeled Lind. RL: So that was the reason for the funny look. SS: It might have been. Anyway, I don’t always agree with what goes on. I think sometimes decisions are made by an administrator and they haven’t really done their homework on it to find out why this is the way it is and if it’s good or bad. I 40 think back in the early days, you know, fifteen or twenty years ago, we all knew each other—maybe not personally, we didn’t all go to dinner together, but all the staff we knew. I knew when I first got up here that one of the people you got on the good side of was the custodian because he or she had a key that would go anywhere. There were times, in those early days, when I had to get into things to get things going. The guys that were here, Alva and Gray especially, they were a little possessive. I was the new guy and so I didn’t have a key to where this stuff was stored; I’d go to teach a class or a lab and I needed stuff. So I learned: you get on the good side of the custodians. I knew all the custodians by name, and within our building, all the secretaries. All over the campus it was like that; we knew each other. RL: It’s changed even in just the twenty years that I’ve been here. Now, another push that took place when Paul Thompson was here was the big issue of diversity and having more females and hiring more minorities and so forth. What were your views of that? Were you involved in it? SS: I think early on, when we hired Helen, we showed our feelings as a department. I have always, as long as I can remember…when I realized the kind of nonsense that was going on in our country, I did not agree. I have two brothers, I have one sister, and my mother had worked almost all her life. Then my wife and I had two daughters and two sons. So, I was pretty sensitive about women having an equal shot. Then the race issue…I look back at the history of this country and I’m appalled, especially in regards to what went on in the South. RL: What’s going on as far as attitudes and immigration. 41 SS: Yeah, but I was absolutely one hundred percent behind that aspect of Paul’s administration. I remember there was a lot of attention being paid to that. We had a secretary—she had been a secretary to Ralph Gray as a student—and when I came here she was made the full-time secretary for the department. When I was the chair, she was still secretary. She was a talented woman. Then we had a stock room manager who ran our stock room and laboratory. Initially, we had one of those who did the laboratories and got all the stock done and also managed the store room with all our materials. Well, we managed to get that divided into two positions so we had what we called the store manager, who ran the science store, as it’s now called on campus; and we had the stock room lab manager. Well, the guy who was the store manager, he decided he was going to retire. We’d know about it for a while, and Karen Miller, who was our secretary, she didn’t tell me but she took some chemistry classes. When the guy retired from the science store, she came and talked to me and said, “What would you think of me applying for the science store job?” I said, “Why not? You’ve certainly got a lot of experience with the department and you’ve taken these classes. Yeah, why don’t you do it?” So she did. We went through the procedure and advertised it through HR and she applied. Out of the applicants that we got, it was the committee’s decision that she ought to get the job. As the chair, I went down and talked to HR about the decision. I said we wanted to give it to Karen Miller because she could do fine. They stumbled about it. The interesting thing was that it was women down in HR that I was talking to. 42 We finally got things down to the point of the salary negotiation and I was talking to the women in HR while I was working on the salary thing. One of them said, “That’s an awfully big salary increase for a secretary; are you sure that’s appropriate?” I said, “This isn’t the secretary’s job; it’s a different job.” So they were kind of doubtful. I came back up the hill to mention this to the dean and I’d just walked into his office when the phone rang. He answered and said, “Yeah, he’s here,” and handed it to me. I took it and it was HR—one of the women I’d been talking to. She said, “Everything’s fine as far as that hire and salary.” I thought to myself: after I’d left, they’d realized that was inappropriate because there was eerie implication that she’s a woman and she’s a secretary, how come we can pay her that kind of a salary? Anyway, so that was an interesting experience and it reflected this diversity issue. But I, personally, have always been all for the idea of diversity and that women ought to have every opportunity that males have. There’s no reason whatsoever to discriminate in any way. RL: I know there were some pushes as far as salary equity in the ‘80s and it still comes up every so often. It was interesting, at the time that all these changes were being made, there was some objection to the diversity on campus. SS: I was absolutely congruent with it. Like I say, we have daughters and one majored in psych and chemistry. She works in Salt Lake; she’s a cytogenetic. Our other daughter went through education, which is pretty traditional. She’s been an elementary school teacher for all these years. 43 RL: You hate to see them getting paid less just because they’re female. You know they have the qualifications. SS: Chemistry is not a traditional field for women, you certainly don’t see many of them in there, but we hired Helen James and she was terrific. Then we hired Michelle More. RL: She’s a little spit-fire, isn’t she? SS: Oh yes, she’s a character. RL: She and I have worked together with the Women’s Studies program. She’s funny because she’ll get in there and spar with the best of them. SS: Oh yeah, she’ll tell you where the bear sits. But at the same time, she considers herself a girl-girl. She was working out at one of the mineral companies as a chemist. I first ran into her while she was there and she had to do some work on a GC Mass Spec. We had been fortunate enough to get a grant and get the machine; she found out and contacted us and asked if she could work on it. So, I ran into Michelle when she came to do that GC-MS work. I chatted with her and the opportunity came to hire somebody and she applied. We were glad for the chance to hire her. She’s had industrial experience and she knows what she’s doing. RL: And it’s always good to have a female in a male-oriented environment. It draws more students, just as having the diversity issues on campus has brought more females and more minorities. It’s changed our recruiting and the face of our student body. 44 SS: I’ve taught the professional undergraduate chemistry—the one that the pre-meds and engineers take—and I know that on campus we actually have a bigger percentage of women than men overall, as I understand it. But in our chem. classes, I’ll sometimes do a tally and we get about thirty-five or forty percent women in that professional class. Well, the nursing is about seventy-five or eighty percent women. I’m glad to see women are…well, that movement put an idea in their mind that they can go out on a date and, “Hey, what are you studying?” “Well, I’m studying nuclear physics.” I think there was a time when women felt that men would be put off by that, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. And if I were to look at the statistics of women’s achievements in my classes, versus the men, I’m certain that I’d have a curve and the women would do better. They’re talented and they’re motivated to get into these programs. Most students come in—and women are more vocal about it—and say, “I’m scared to death of chemistry,” or “I hate chemistry.” I say, “Well, how much have you had?” “Well, not any, really.” [Laughter] I encourage the students…I try to have an open-office policy. If the door’s open, you’re welcome; and it’s always open if I’m there. The women tend to be the ones who will come to get help quicker than the guys. I don’t know if that’s a pride issue with men—they don’t want to have to admit they don’t know something. RL: Let’s face it, women stop and ask for directions, too. [Laughter] I think it’s related to that gene. SS: Maybe it’s a feminine characteristic. But the guys…it takes me just about all semester to convince them that when they’ve got questions or when they’re in 45 trouble, they’ve got to get their bodies into the office to get help or ask questions in class. I begin all my classes…to get around the half-hour schedule and recitation, we now do a schedule that’s four lectures, and what I do in my fiftyminute class is begin by asking if there are any questions and I give them ten to fifteen minutes to ask questions in order to make up for the recitation. The women are more inclined than the guys to ask questions—initially. I finally get them convinced they’d better find out what’s going on. I’d never thought about it much, but the women really are more inclined. I think it’s good. RL: Possibly with the males it’s a matter of saving face. SS: Yeah, I wonder if that’s part of it. Admitting they don’t know something. RL: Getting back to your thoughts about the different presidents. We’ve got Ann Millner, our first female president. What changes do you think she’s brought about? SS: Unfortunately, most of my interactions with Millner have been as a result of—in the last year or two—have been as a result of the dust that I’ve been stirring up. However, when I met with her—and I’ve met with her face to face and with other people—and, unfortunately, we were usually discussing these issues, many of which circulated around our dean. They have not been unpleasant, don’t get me wrong. She’s always very cordial, very receptive. In terms of the…many times, I’ve not been agreeing with the decisions that have been coming down from the higher administration. How involved she is with those, I don’t know. I think, overall, I would have to say she’s done a decent job as president. Where I’ve seen her publicly at some of these campus events, where she presents herself, 46 she does fine. I’m not privy to how she deals with the Legislature and those kinds of people. RL: I’ve heard comments that she’s very well respected and liked. SS: I’d agree. RL: As far as fundraising, she had experience prior to going into that office that has certainly helped a lot. Now, we’ve gone around your dust-raising and so forth; I know that in the last couple of years you have circulated letters to everyone. One of them had to do with suspension of a PPM that had to do with pay for adjuncts. SS: It had to do with primarily supplemental pay. This all came about…[Laughter] I don’t know whether I ought to put this on tape or not but I’ve heard many people say, “No success at Weber goes unpunished.” I’ve said it, too. Basically, the issue…they were primarily between me and Mike Slabaugh and the dean, who were colleagues. What it boiled down to, was that about eleven or twelve years ago Mike Slabaugh wanted to teach some online chemistry courses. After he’d been doing it about a year, he contacted me. I’m a lab rat and that’s where I spend most of my time. Mike and I are colleagues and co-authors of some texts and lab manuals and that; we got along well. So, he had just started this thing up and came to me and said, “What about hooking up on this?” The lab was a big issue with him: How do you teach chemistry lab to online students? We tried numerous approaches. We contacted a company of programmers to see if they could write a program that would simulate a lab. We knew there were those kinds of programs out there. The company sent us the little program they had. We knew that some people had worked with what were called Lab Kits. Students 47 could take them home and you could have things in them like some peroxide and some yeast and other things that they could put together. Charles Davidson, he does some at-home labs with his 1010 class. We looked at those kinds of things, but could not hit on a way to give a bona fide lab program like we were using in our other—it was for three courses: the Nursing Chem. 1050, 1110, 1120. The company sent us the program and I gave it to our youngest son, who’s a computer geek, and told him to look at it and tell me what he thought. He went and played with it and came back and said the magic words. He said, “Well, it was like a game, Dad.” I thought, “We don’t want to have courses where their lab experience is like a game.” The University of Utah had a program with Ron Ragsdale, who I knew well and worked with every summer with some of his summer kids. Their program was like a tool kit and people could rent it and it was full of chemical equipment. I asked Ron how that worked. He said it was okay, but his enthusiasm wasn’t very good. We were really at a loss and this went on for a year or two. So Mike and I kept talking about it and jokingly, as we were kicking ideas around, I said, “Maybe we ought to do a photo album.” We laughed about it. Well, long story short, what we decided to try was to take our published lab manual and take the experiments in the manual, and I took my son—who’s a photography guy and takes good pictures—and I went through every experiment. Our manual is a cook-book manual. It says, “Weigh a coin on a centigram balance, then record the mass in table x.” Well, when it gives instructions, we made a photograph. If it told them to do something, we did it and took pictures of everything they needed 48 to do. We went through every experiment that we use in those three classes. My son used Acrobat and under my direction they were all labeled so they matched exactly with the lab manual. So what the students now did, they got a CD free and it had every experiment they had to do in photos; they had to use the lab manual, read the instructions and when they came to something that required they use lab equipment, they look at the CD. The CD includes over 300 photographs that are labeled and organized by experiment and page number. It tells them how many photos for each table. They point and click and fill in the table. When they’ve collected all of the data, our manual has a section called “Calculations and Reports.” They go through that and it tells them what to do with the data. When they finish that, they have done everything a lab student does except handle the equipment. They answer all of the questions, they do everything. Well, that was our approach and we tried it out. We’re on our third CD now. That allowed us to start accepting students from all over the country. RL: Distance students. SS: Well, that was about eight or nine years ago. Our enrollments just went crazy. Initially, people would ask us how we were doing it. When students contacted us and said they wanted to take our course, we would advise them—we’d find out what they wanted to do with it, and we would advise them to contact the school where they were trying to meet their requirements—and it was often nursing science people. We’d tell them to contact the school, tell them what they want to do, and if the school had any questions about what we were doing, give us a fax 49 number and we would send them a packet. In the packet, we send them the texts we’ve published, the syllabus, the table of contents showing what we’re going to cover, and we explain how we’re going to do it. Initially, we had interest from all over the country. When students contacted us we said, “Contact your school and make sure they’ll accept this course.” Now, nearly ninety-percent of those students say, “They are the ones who told me to contact you.” What it boils down to, is that our course is known all over the country. RL: So you have high enrollment. SS: Yes, our enrollments went up. My supplemental pay…Slabaugh is an adjunct so there was no problem there, but about six or seven years ago my supplemental pay started hitting the thirty percentile. It says in the PPM you can’t make more than thirty percent of your contract salary. That got the dean’s attention. He started…talking with us. I’ll put it that way. That’s when he started questioning us and what we were doing. The first question it raised was whether or not summer school supplemental pay could count against that thirty percent. That went through several levels. Finally, an opinion was issued that no, it cannot count against that thirty percent. That gave us our solution to our problem because Mike and I and another colleague share the income from this. So this gave us a legal way around it. During the fall semester I would take my share and it would get me awfully close to the thirty percent. Then in the spring semester, I would take just enough to get me the thirty percent but no higher. Then in the summer—the fact 50 that we taught it all three semesters bailed it out. In the summer, I’d earn a higher portion and it was kosher; I didn’t officially go beyond what the PPM said. Well, the dean really got into the PPM and he raised all kinds of issues with it. One example—this was the final one and he quit after this—he sent me a memo and it said, “You undoubtedly used Chemistry Department facilities, resources, etc., when you made your lab CD photos.” Absolutely; he was absolutely correct. We did them in the lab. Yes, we used them. When I was department chair, I learned that you keep copies of everything where you’re dealing with the bureaucracy. I sent him a memo saying, “You’re absolutely correct; I did use lab facilities and materials. See below for the two copies of the receipts for the thousand dollars I paid to the Chemistry Department for the use of those facilities.” I had the two receipts. I sent them to him. That was the last time he sent us anything threatening to try to curtail us. Up to that point, he used the PPM like a club. He used it to beat on us. As a result of that, our colleague started reading the PPM; it’s online, you know. She was looking at one of the things having to do with salary, and she saw 351, which said that the pay level for adjuncts, etc., with overload and all this, “Shall be raised each year by the same percentage as the contract salary is raised for that year.” They had obviously not been following it. In other words, the administration had been in violation of that for years. We had records. We raised the issue about it. Well, the Board of Trustees suspended that PPM, which was a foolish thing to do, because anybody who looked it up saw it said, “Suspended” in big red letters. 51 Later on, the Faculty Senate—I’m sure they got prodded—they changed that 351 and disconnected it from the annual contract increases. So that’s the story behind what really raised that issue and the legality of it. The administration was not following the PPM, and yet our dean was beating us over the head with it, in our opinion, because he couldn’t handle the fact that our enrollments just took off. Through Continuing Ed, he started capping our enrollments and all kinds of things. He’s just given us nothing but flack. We estimated that our enrollments—we did an extrapolation about five or six years ago and we estimated that we could be up to about fifteen hundred. But the dean and Continuing Education capped us and did all kinds of things to prevent us. We’re now—I’m not boasting—but our online chemistry is certainly the most successful online chemistry program in the country. It may very well be the most successful online program in the country. I don’t know. But we always get capped and we have to put up with a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. What they finally ended up doing, was capping each of our courses at about a hundred students. Then we hit that in some of them. Up until last year, we could contact Betty Truman in Continuing Education. Our most popular course is our 1050, I think, and when that would get filled, we’d contact Betty and say, “Will you transfer twenty of our 1120 slots over to our 1050?” Up until last year, she’d pretty much do it. Then last year, when we started having all the problems with the dean, she’d contact him and he wouldn’t do it. They have seriously curtailed our enrollment. It’s one of the things I never could understand and we’ve had some personal visits about this with Ann and so on. We couldn’t 52 understand their thinking. They used to use the argument that they had to schedule our students in the online courses; in other words, they had to set up a budget for them at the beginning of the year. That was a problem for them; they couldn’t go and register 150 students in 1050 if they’d only set up a budget for a hundred. Presumably, they could shuffle the budgets but they didn’t like to and we could understand. What we couldn’t understand was if…this covered the regular campus students who were taking the course as part of their regular online load, and I could see their argument that there was double-dipping going on, because if I was teaching 1050 on campus and I had students taking 1050 online that were regularly registered students who were paying tuition, in a sense, I was getting paid for these online students…you could see the argument there and I could understand the budgeting issues. What we couldn’t understand was the out-of-area students, the ones that aren’t taking courses at Weber, those were pure profit for Weber State. They paid $1,100 to take our course. You subtract our salary out of that and they were making roughly $800 a student for the out-of-area students. For the online students, we had all of them register our CD with us because we learned after our second CD that you don’t make the CDs all identical. There’s a number and a code so we know how to grade their lab and which data they have. On the basis of the registrations, we could tell where they were located—we had them tell us their name and location—and we found that typically between thirty-five and forty-percent of our enrollment was out-of-area. 53 At a minimum. Say we get a thousand students a year; take forty percent of that, that’s four hundred students; multiply that by… RL: Seven or eight hundred dollars. SS: Yeah, seven or eight hundred dollars, and you’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of income. And we could never understand why that was not acknowledged by any of the administrators. They still don’t acknowledge it. After our success, it got so hairy that it created all these problems. We went to the dean—this was during that nursing shortage you were hearing about, and we went to the dean and said, “You know, the way we’re doing our chemistry, this lab idea could be used to teach anatomy and physiology and microbiology. All of the courses that are nursing prerequisites.” We said, “We’d be willing to help anybody who wants to develop some of those courses—photography, manuals, and how to set up these courses. We could then set up pre-nursing and prescience prerequisites online. Weber could offer them and have a tremendous publicity thing.” This was right in the teeth of the nursing shortage. Absolutely no interest. So, we tried. Then, finally, we started publicizing what we found out about what was going on. The big one was that 351 that the university had not been following their own policy manual. There’s still a cloud over the whole thing. Eventually, we talked to legal—Mike and I—we got legal advice fairly early. The fact that they had not been living up to that presented potential for class action law suits for lost wages. That’s still out there. Mike and I haven’t seriously considered kicking dust up about that. All we really wanted was to be given the 54 opportunity to develop this program without being constantly hammered by the PPM, which was what our dean was doing. Everything he could find in that PPM that would throw a road block in our way, he launched at us. We were able to counter all of them until that 351 came into view. That was a biggie; it involved the whole campus, not just us. RL: Now, did that then have an effect on the no-confidence vote? SS: Absolutely. RL: There must have been other things— SS: There were lots of these…when we started looking at what was going on—Mike and I—we met with Ann and Vaughn about our issues. We talked around with others in the college and found there were other things the dean was doing that were irritating them. It didn’t take too long before the two of us became a group of six. There were six of us, including three department chairs, who had issues with what was going on in the dean’s office. We worked together and we didn’t violate any rules or laws that we could figure and we brought about that vote in the College of Science, which I think probably upset and absolutely surprised the administration—that we could do it. That bothered them; those kinds of things are supposed to originate higher up, but that originated at the faculty level. RL: The grass roots. SS: In that vote, fifty percent in the College of Science voted no-confidence. Twentyfive percent voted “Okay.” Twenty-five percent abstained; they refused to vote. I think they were worried that it would leak out. But when that thing came out, I 55 think that was pretty much what sealed Dale’s demise: the fact that half of his faulty didn’t support him. I…I’m not proud in the sense of having a significant part of that. I don’t like to bring people down, although I’ve been involved in that sometimes, unfortunately. But I was happy that I think it empowered the faculty—at least, in the College of Science—to know that if you’ve got an administrator and the majority of people don’t support that administrator, that you can do something about it. I think it happened across campus. We put out three publications to let people know what was going on. It’s not the thing I’m most proud of during my tenure here. RL: When it comes right down to it, you have to stand up and be counted. SS: I agree. I think when a group is being taken advantage of or being demeaned, if that group can do something about it, then they should. I think we did a service to the College of Science and to the campus by doing what we did. Mike and I still got some issues, but we’re both busier than heck right now so we haven’t taken the time to type them. We may put out one more epistle to the campus. It’s been an interesting experience because we learned about how some administrators will respond. You know, we ask for permission…we try absolutely to do everything above-board. We’ve never hidden who we are; we’ve never done anything anonymously. We’ve not done that. Mainly because we felt bulletproof. Mike was an adjunct; the dean couldn’t do a heck of a lot to him; and I felt bullet-proof because I was the longest-employed faculty member here—I was a full professor, I had tenure, I had all the degree requirements. I felt like there was 56 no way he could try to can me; I could put myself all out there in the interest of the faculty and taking care of problems. So…I don’t know, I may go down in infamy on this campus but we felt like we were doing what was right and we had a lot of support from the faculty. And still do. It wasn’t unanimous support. My salary, of course, is public record, and obviously, after being here for as long as I have—even with yearly increases as small as three or four percent—my salary is undoubtedly the highest because I’ve been here the longest. My total salary, when you count the supplemental pay, which is also public record, is up there. I don’t know how it compares; I’ve never looked at the records. Well, I had a faculty member from another department stop me on my way into the building about a year ago and said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I just don’t think it’s right—” Or, no, he didn’t even say “I think.” He said, “It’s not right that a faculty member can get a salary that’s higher than a dean.” RL: Why not? SS: That’s exactly what I said: “Why not?” “Well, it’s just not right.” Then I used the example of Pitzer—Pitzer is a chemist. He was the president of Stanford University for a while. We heard all about him because we get a weekly news magazine—a chemical and engineering news magazine from the American Chemical Society. When he was made president of Stanford, one of the interviewers said, “Dr. Pitzer, do you realize that on this campus, as president of this campus, there are a number of faculty who earn a higher salary than yours?” 57 Pitzer said, “Yes, I’m aware of that. That’s the way it ought to be.” I told this guy that and he just grumbled. That was his attitude. RL: He probably thought that men should make more money than women, too. SS: I wouldn’t be surprised. But anyway, these last few years have not been the happiest I’ve had on campus, but I’ve felt like—from the point of view of teaching—I’ve become a much better teacher and I’ve done a good job. RL: You mentioned that you felt that over the years you’ve become a better teacher. How has that affected your relationship with your students? Or has that been fairly much the same? SS: I’ve always had…as I went through that University of Utah experience—they called it introverted in those days—and I was forced out of that introverted shell in those six years when I was heavily involved in being a TA. It really changed me. I became a better people person. Sometimes it drives my wife nuts. We’ll be standing in a group and someone comes up and I’ll say, “How are you doing?” But my wife is the other way, she is very personal—very much her own person. Sometimes I embarrass her by talking to other people. When I came to Weber, I still had a little of a carry-over, but I’ve had the inclination to get to know my students. I refer to my students commonly in class as “crew” or “group” or “gang” or something like that. I’m not afraid to laugh at myself in class if I make a mistake. If I screw up and it influences my students— RL: You go back and change it. SS: I sure do. I have no big ego there. So I think that it has changed over the years and it’s gotten better there. In the later years, I took up the practice of allowing 58 the students to have what is called a cue sheet on examinations. In the old days, it was called a cheat sheet. It was an 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper and they could put anything they want on it. That’s because I have evolved in what I consider to be teaching. My approach to chemistry is to teach concepts and teach students how to apply them—not factoids, not facts. On the cheat sheet, they can put facts. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some, on occasion…in some chapters I warn the students, “This chapter has quite a bit of factoid in it. Get it on your cue sheets.” If students will really do that cue sheet carefully, it’s one of the best reviews they’ll ever do for an exam. And that’s what I tell them. If you do a fact sheet, you’re going to be reviewing for the exam. I had a social occasion a few years ago and there was a dentist there that I knew socially. I was talking with him and I told him about my cue sheets. He’d taken freshman chemistry from me in his pre-dental years, and he turned to his wife and said, “Man, when I was taking the class, we felt like we were lucky if he let us bring a pencil into the exam.” [Laughter] He really broke me up. He’s pretty right. It’s been thirty—maybe longer—years ago that I came up with this cue sheet idea and I’m firmly convinced—I’ve even seriously considered writing a paper to J. Chem. Ed. about it. I really firmly believe that it’s an effective way of teaching. RL: I ran into that when I took statistics at Wisconsin. I was entering the Doctoral program and you have to take a stats class. I thought it was Stats 101 and I was wrong—it was Stats 800 or something. He allowed one sheet, but some of us got 59 smart and we would take our things and shrink them down on the copier and make one eight-by-ten sheet. SS: Oh yeah. I tell the students when I explain the cue sheet on the first day, “I will not give you any equations on an exam. In other words, PV=nRT, D=m/v. I won’t give you those. You got to have them on your cue sheet if you need them.” Well, the thing is, when they start writing those down, it helps them know what the heck is going on. RL: You’re right. Putting those together makes a big difference in, not only, getting down the formulas, but it’s a wonderful review. SS: And I tell them, “You can put anything you want, but I don’t think you want to do what one guy did. I think he put the smallest print and it was so small he couldn’t read it. It was two pages just absolutely full and he came to ask me for a magnifying glass. He basically outlined the book.” I tell students not to do that. It’s too much. Some of the hardest tests I took were open book— RL: You spend so much time looking and waste the time. SS: I tell them exactly that. I say, “You do a good fact sheet. Get your formulas, get your factoids, whatever you want. If you want a little example, get it on there.” I tell them, “I will give you all of the information and the tables, but I will not give you formulas.” Then I tell them, “A good cue sheet is one of the best ways to review for an exam.” And I still have students—at least the first time—who are upstairs trying to write out a cue sheet right before the exam. I say, “That’s up to them.” Usually, by the end of the course, they’ve learned. 60 So, I’ve changed over the years. But I really am convinced that I’m a better teacher now than I was in the past. I think I do a better job. RL: Other than running into a doctor at a colonoscopy or a dentist at a dinner, do other students come back to visit? SS: Oh yeah. It’s really exciting. They’ll say, “Remember me?” and I say, “No, you’re going to have to tell me.” Sometimes, depending on how long it’s been, I can usually recognize the face even if I can’t remember the name. They’ll tell me. Up to a few years ago, it was a little shocking…when I first came back, within about five or six years, I had a few students who came in and said, “My dad took classes from you.” I’d only been here maybe ten years and these were eighteenyear olds. I said, “How could your dad have had classes?” Then it dawned on me. RL: Vietnam vets? SS: In the early days, when we were a two-year school, we had students who took coursework, then they quit, then they came back. Oh, wait, let me go back. These are kids saying, “I had a grandfather that took classes from you.” That was a kicker. A twenty-year old kid, and if it’s his grandfather, let’s say he’s sixty. Okay, so when could he have taken classes? Well, what I remembered is that we had a lot of people who took classes during those first ten years, then they dropped out. Then they came back after I came back as a teacher, when they were mature. The kicker was I had one guy who came in while I was in a lab and said, “My aunt said she dated you.” RL: Oh! 61 SS: I said, “That really limits the field because I certainly didn’t go on many dates when I was younger.” And I didn’t. You can imagine. Women scared me to death when I was a young guy. That was one thing that was wonderful about the TA program because we had some women in class and they came to me to get help. That helped me get over that barrier because women…I was scared to death of girls. Like I say, I had maybe two or three dates when I was in high school. So when this kid said his aunt, I had a hunch who it was and I was right. I said, “What’s her name?” He told me. I said, “Yeah, I remember.” RL: And others of your students that have come back to visit with you? SS: I’ve received letters and short notes. Sometimes I’ve run into them in stores. “Remember me?” “Well, no,” but it’s always nice. RL: Are there any that you’ve inspired to go on to graduate school and become chemistry professors? SS: There have been. I can’t remember names, but I’ve had some who’ve said, “It was in that freshman class I decided to do this instead of something else.” That’s a pleasant part of this. RL: What would you consider your crowning achievement in terms of teaching? Not necessarily as an individual, but something you’ve developed—like the photographs for the chemistry kit—is there anything that stands out in your mind? SS: As far as accomplishments, I think I’ve had some tremendous opportunities. RL: That you might not have had in a bigger institution. SS: Yes. Like I told you, when Steve Stoker came here we hit it off pretty well. This was during the seventies and the environment issue was big. Steve and I both 62 didn’t like the books to teach the Gen Ed class—what would be called today the 1010 class. Together we wrote up a syllabus and in that we basically wrote a book. It was the topics we felt we wanted to teach the kids in the Gen Ed class. We included a chapter on environmental chemistry. The book publisher reps that would come around would go over to the bookstore and look at what faculty would use. I’m convinced that what happened—it was the seventies and the environment was an issue—and they looked at our syllabus over at the bookstore and saw there was an environmental chapter. Long story short, they saw that chapter and came over to talk to me and Steve and said, “I’m going to talk to an editor about this; would you be interested in writing a book?” He implied a Gen Ed book. Scott Foresman contacted us and we were interested in writing a Gen Ed book. What they wanted us to publish was a paperback called Environmental Chemistry and it was published in ’72 and Steve and I were coauthors. It went through two editions. It was a bestseller—because it was the only book in the field, I think. It was good and it kind of whet our appetite. It got us into the writing mode, and I think it was kind of one of the biggest opportunities we had. From that time on, we both got involved. I got a new partner—Mike Slabaugh. But Stoker was writing, too. And now it’s gone through seven editions and they publish it in hardback and in what we call splits—a paper back for general chemistry and a paperback that’s organic and bio. They sell reasonably well. Stokers’ have done really well. 63 The company was taken over by another company. Then that company was taken over by another in the publishing business. The publishing company has become Pearson Publishing and they own our book and Stoker’s book and we’re all publishing with the same publisher almost. We’ve been through seven editions. The big thing I like about it, is when we wrote our nursing book, we wrote a lab manual with it and that’s the manual we use in our online class. If it hadn’t been for that, I don’t think we could have come up with the online approach. The publisher wants to do an eighth edition of the book and manual. We also did a paperback about energy from source to use. This was during the energy crisis of the seventies. I don’t know how you count them, but if you count every unique edition, we’ve got probably five or six books we’ve written. I don’t know how to count all the editions. RL: And they’re being used in all different places. SS: Yeah, all over the country and in some foreign countries. We did an Italian version of the environment book. We call it the spaghetti edition. RL: Profesore, lei parla italiano? SS: You speak Italian? RL: I studied it in school. SS: I could probably say “Si,” but I’d be lying. In graduate school, I did German and French for my two languages. But anyway, the books have been a real opportunity over the years. They’ve been successful, especially Stoker’s. He became a lone-wolf after he did the Gen Ed with us and he took off on his own, 64 but he hasn’t got any online. Our online has compensated for a lot. So, the books…that’s one achievement, I guess. I’m not sure it’s the biggest one. RL: I was just asking in terms of teaching. We could jump from there: what do you think has been your greatest achievement at Weber State other than outliving everybody else? SS: It’s like I told…somebody wrote me about being honored for the fifty years or something and I wrote back and said, “It’s interesting how many accolades you get just by hanging around and growing old.” And it’s true…I guess you could call it survival. I don’t know. The success of the online class has absolutely flabbergasted me. It created all these problems because of the way it was dealt with by the administration. That has really amazed me. One of the problems Dale raised was that it hadn’t been peer reviewed. I said, “We’ve contacted literally scores of schools that have written us to get information about our program and they’ve accepted it. To me that’s a peer review.” Probably our most notable one was the University of Wisconsin. They were having a…they had a guy at Wisconsin at Green Bay who was looking at our program to see if they wanted to accept it. The guy contacted me and said they had a committee and he represented the committee. He wanted to know about the course and I told him I had this packet I would send him. I explained over the phone how we do our lab. I sent it off to him and a couple weeks later he called back and said the committee had decided to accept the course. But he said, “Every year at one of the campuses in Wisconsin, we have a meeting of chemistry faculty from all of the campuses. This year the meeting’s at Green Bay 65 and we wondered—” speaking of me and Slabaugh, “—we wondered if you would come out and explain to that group of chem. faculty your program.” They were paying the tab to fly us out and the whole bit. I won’t tell you about the trip through Chicago. RL: Did you go in the winter? SS: No, it was in the fall, but you know how Chicago is a crossroads for everything. They had a horrendous rain storm and it totally screwed up O’Hare. I flew United and they were terrible. Anyway, I did eventually get to Green Bay. Mike drove out and we met there and went into this meeting. We’d prepared a lab experiment and we took them through the CD and program. They gave us a whole hour and they grilled us about the program. Once in a while, one guy would raise his hand and say, “Well that’s been enhanced.” And I said, “No, that’s it.” One of the advantages of the photos—when we produced them, they were about twenty percent bigger than real life. I said, “So the students actually have a little easier job of reading.” “Ah, well, I guess that might help them.” Anyway, they grilled us for an hour and we came out with the rubber stamp. That’s why I said to the dean that it’s been peer reviewed. RL: That is peer reviewing. SS: That’s about as peer reviewed as you can get. But anyway, that online program…I told Mike, “I would not recommend this for any of our mainstream chemistry students.” But that’s ten or twelve years ago. Online has advanced so much and they are doing so many things now, I think our online program is much superior. We have a colleague over here who teaches his lab online but they do 66 what is called Midnight Labs. There’s been a number of these programs developed. Some guys at BYU developed one. They’re okay, but the beauty of ours—if I ever write this thing up— RL: I was going to say, have you ever published a paper on it? SS: No. I’ve thought Mike and I ought to do it. The beauty of it, as I see it, is that students actually have to see the data. They collect real data off of equipment and off of observed reactions. If we have something that takes place over time, my son had the idea to try to incorporate some video. An example is if you put something in and something starts bubbling and you want to show that. We couldn’t do that; the trouble is that on a CD people have to have special programs. So my son came up with the idea so that when he would shoot it, he would shoot it in video mode on the camera, then we would pick out four photos that showed the progress. RL: Time lapse. SS: Yeah, time lapse photos. And then we’d number them. That solved that problem. My son has been a big help in this program. He was an integral part. Anyway, maybe that one, in terms of what’s been accomplished, would be up there. Of course, there’s the Bradys…I don’t know how many years they’ve been doing this, maybe a dozen or so, but I got word through the chair that the Bradys were going to give me a Distinguished Teaching Award at the end of the year. I got a plaque and a check. Then they dropped the blockbuster: they made that an annual event and every year since that time there has been a faculty member in the College of Science nominated. I actually chaired the committee for a few 67 years. There’s a plaque and it’s named after me. I’m not all that excited about those kinds of things. But in the Chem. Department, Helen got it and Ed Walker got it. I was sitting in Ed’s office the other day and I glanced up and he has a wall of fame for himself and there’s that plaque hanging there. That was certainly one of the kindest things that have happened to me— the Bradys doing that kind of honorific. I’m not sure it was all that deserved. RL: It feels good. It’s good to be recognized. SS: It is, even if it isn’t recognized as dramatically and as physically as that. That was one of the problems that I think, unconsciously, got to me in terms of the online course and the way that Mike and I were treated. Instead of at least— RL: A thank you. SS: Yeah, a thank you. We’ve calculated the hundreds of thousands of dollars of income that came in. and it’s still coming in. And never even an acknowledgement that they knew it was happening. RL: Instead of a pat on the back, you got a kick in the pants. SS: Yes…but I have absolutely no regrets of the choice of career I made fifty years ago. Absolutely none. I considered myself mightily lucky, extremely fortunate. I practice a religion and I consider myself blessed over these fifty years. I can’t think of anything I could have done that would be more rewarding, more satisfying, than what’s gone on during these fifty years. Even with the ups and downs. And my family has benefited from it…not so much during the early years. My wife reminds me of when I was writing the books— RL: You took time away. 68 SS: There’s only so much time. But they have all come up fine. My wife feels the same way I do: it’s been a good ride. RL: And all four of your children got that tuition benefit. SS: They sure did. RL: One daughter minored in chemistry; did any of the others do chemistry? SS: No, none of the others. I think…did Doug take a course from me? RL: Not if he was smart. SS: [Laughter] I think maybe he’s the only one who didn’t take a course from me. The other three all took them. In fact, our daughter, who minored in chemistry…she was taking our 1210-1220 series when it was on quarters. She had Stoker for a course one quarter; she had Miner for one quarter; she had me for the last quarter. I came home from work one night and my wife met me at the door with flame in her eyes: “What the heck did you do to Wendy?” I said, “What do you mean, what did I do?” “She came home in tears today!” I said, “She took an exam.” Poor Wendy had thought she’d done terrible on the exam and my wife thought I’d done something drastic. Our youngest son took a 1010 class from me and did fine. Then our other daughter, the education major, I think she took a Gen Ed class from me. Wendy is the only one who took a major class from me. I don’t think our oldest son, the accountant, took anything from me. Anyway, it’s been a great ride. RL: That’s good. That’s the way it ought to be. You don’t want to look back and have a lot of regrets. Now, you came in with a cheat sheet; what topics have we not covered? 69 SS: Actually, all I had down was the list of the deans and presidents. RL: Oh, okay. I did one of these where the gentleman came in with four singlespaced pages of notes, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to touch on any topic. SS: No, you’ve done a good job of bringing up issues. Some of these things are probably going to shock the folks who might read it because I’ve gone very candid. RL: That’s the way it ought to be. SS: I think if you’re doing a true history, that’s what you should do. RL: Well, I’ve been here on campus and I’ve seen the things you and Mike Slabaugh have sent out. Of course, I knew the outcome of the dean being relieved. But frankly, it’s hard to bring it all together, and you’ve done that. SS: I appreciate…I don’t know how widely this gets read, but I appreciate the opportunity because a lot of people know the same things you do—the snippets of what went on—and I’m sure that there are some people that probably have the opinion that Mike and I are pains in the butt. RL: That might have been the case whether you’d done this or not. [Laughter] SS: Yeah, but maybe some think we’re really bad guys and maybe this is an opportunity for this to be recorded someplace and for people to get our side of it. I appreciate the opportunity, I really do. RL: At some point…I don’t know, how long do you intend to keep working? SS: I’ve committed to next year. I had to do it ahead of time because we’re shorthanded because of the guy that was fired. I’m teaching the summer and then one 70 course in the fall, then a full schedule—two lectures and a lab—in the spring. Depending on how quickly we can get a hire approved for us, I’m thinking I might keep on for another year. I don’t know; this might be it. Some nights I go home and…You know, I’m co-authoring with Helen James the lab manual we use in our professional program, the 1210 and 1220. She and I wrote that years ago and it’s been only minorly revised. I’m in the process of doing a complete revision of it and I promised the faculty that I would…well, we’ve been using it for at least thirty-five years, and I told the faculty I would get that revision done. I’m hoping to get it done before this next academic year. I’ve got a little more than half of it done. I’ve got to take it up to be printed. For the first sixteen experiments, they’re going to say, “Oh yeah, that looks nice.” Then, when I tell them what I want done with the rest of it, it’ll be all screwed up, but I’m hoping to get it done so it can be printed and distributed. They’re really depending on that thing. That may be one of the bigger accomplishments. We’ve used it, like I say, probably thirty-five or more years. And it’s…the department does depend on that cock-eyed lab manual. Without it, they’d be hard-pressed. Our whole program has been built up…we have a whole stock room that’s based on that manual. So, this year might be it. There are days when, physically, I feel like it is. I don’t have any real health issues. RL: Sometimes you just go home tired. SS: I do. I don’t have the energy. RL: And if you’re in good health and your wife is in good health; you’ve reached an age when you should have some time together. 71 SS: That’s true. We’re empty nesters now. Our last one got married in October. He was thirty-one, so he’d been with us a long time. It’s an adjustment getting used to being empty-nesters. But I know when I finish this course in summer, the next day we’re flying out to San Diego. My wife’s lined up an eight- or nine-day tour. We’ve never been to some of the places around the coast. RL: If you go up Highway 1, there’s a little town called Solvang. It’s built to imitate a Danish village. They’ve got a lot of little shops. It’s on the way up to the Hearst Castle. SS: Those bus tours stop all kinds of places. RL: Then, San Simeon is also wonderful. There’s Monterey and San Francisco. SS: We end up flying out of San Francisco. Anyways, my wife likes to travel and we’ve done a bit. We’ve been to Europe and we’ve done a number of state-side tours over the years. Given the latitude of time, there may be a number of things she’d like to have a shot at. RL: That’s great. So, in trying to wrap things up a little bit, what advice would you care to offer to faculty colleagues in terms of staying interesting and involved? SS: Those are probably the two verbs I’d use. I’d say enjoy yourself. If you can enjoy yourself, that means you’re probably doing a pretty good job. My priorities are— get the right priorities—my priorities are number one on campus: the students; number two is the faculty. The students and the faculty are where the action takes place on a campus. RL: They’re the purpose for being here. 72 SS: I’m perhaps naïve enough to think that the dust that we kicked up has been in trying to support the students and the faculty. One of the things I’ve been disappointed in, is that Weber has established itself as being a very studentfriendly campus. I think it has been, for the majority of time I’ve been here, but I’ve seen in the last decade significant changes in all kinds of things that, in my mind, are not following that idea of the students being most important. We’re getting much less student-friendly, and perhaps that’s a result of size, I don’t know. But I can see a lot more run-around, a lot more bureaucratic hoops to jump. I hear many more complaints from students about they were trying to do this and they ran into this. They were trying to do that and ran into that. RL: Some of it may be size, but one of the things we see is a feeling of entitlement on the part of the students. A lack of effort, in that maybe they’re trying to do this, but they haven’t done steps one, two, or three that were required. SS: That’s another thing I’ve seen. I’ve seen a dramatic change in the students over the years. The saddest one for me is that their reading ability has gone to pot. It’s not that they can’t read words, but they can’t read for content. Having been involved in writing lab manuals where you’re giving them directions, it really comes to the front that they can’t read them. Like I say, we’ve gone through seven editions of this lab manual for the nursing class, and I’ve looked back as we’ve done revisions. There haven’t been too many changes over the years in terms of the actual experiments, but one thing I detected is that we’re dumbing it down. While I was looking at the fourth edition and the sixth—I was looking at some specific experiment and then I saw 73 this phenomenon. In the earlier edition, there’s a complex sentence; in this edition, there’s two simple sentences. They have no idea what a semi-colon means. RL: Or a compound sentence. SS: Yeah, no kidding. I went back and looked at some other stuff and noticed I’ve been dumbing it down. RL: One of the things we see, is students trying to turn in assignments using textspeak. SS: Oh really? No way. RL: Abbreviations they would use in text messaging. I just hand it back and say, “When you can write in English, I’ll accept this.” SS: No. Anyway, that’s the down-side as far as the students. Some of them are very smart, but their skills have severely eroded over the years. And it’s accelerated in the last decade. It really has. RL: Is there anything you want to finish with? SS: Oh, no. Like I say, it’s been a great ride. There aren’t many things I would change. RL: It’s been a great ride and let’s hope for a smooth landing. SS: Yes, that’s a good way to put it. You know, my colleagues…Dix Cloward, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard his name; he was over in Business School. He was a buddy of mine; he lives up the street from me. Earl Ericksen was in music and a good friend. They were contemporaries of mine but older. I’m seventy-six and 74 Earl, I think is eleven years older than me. He’s in really bad shape. I’m afraid I’m looking at a crystal ball. It’s not a fun thing to contemplate. RL: Using your brain keeps you young. SS: I think that’s right. And I may begin some of that pile of books that my wife is yelling at me to read. RL: We appreciate you taking the time to record your thoughts. Certainly your fifty years on campus are an achievement to be inspired by. SS: Like I say, all you got to do is hang around and get old. RL: It’s alright as long as you’re having fun. SS: That’s a good summary. RL: Well thank you so much. SS: It’s good to meet you.