Weber State Comment, Winter 1990 Clockwise from below: WSC President Stephen D. Nadauld; working in his office; fishing; meeting with Diane Cook, his secretary. walks to the parking lot (no special parking place), gets into his car and heads downtown. “Most of my days are fairly busy, but some nights I manage not to be working, but | it does wear you down, no question about it. Sometimes you just have to get away,” Pres. | Nadauld explained. Fishing, tennis, and basketball are all Directing WSC’s future: Stephen Nadauld at the helm | he sun had not, as yet, risen over the tall mountains immediately behind the campus as WSC’s President Stephen Nadauld stood surveying construction work on a new amphitheater. Most of the campus still had not awakened for the day’s efforts, but cement workers were putting the finishing touches on a new Veterans Memorial Grove as Weber State’s president watched. “This is going to be a beautiful area,” Pres. Nadauld said. He had come early to the site to get a visual report on the work before his long, but regular day began. “Today is less hectic than normal,” Pres. Nadauld explained in anticipation of a day full of meetings, conferences, open houses and a luncheon. “Some days are more chopped up.” Leaving the amphitheater, the president hurried to a meeting with his vice presidents. Administering a college entails much more than simply having enough faculty to teach classes, explained William C. Loos, vice president for college advancement, prior to the meeting of the president’s staff. The budget of Weber State is upwards of $40 million annually, and besides the allimportant teaching mission, officials deal with construction, maintenance, personnel and financial matters, work with industries that have a partnership with Weber State, and handle a hundred other things relative to students, faculty, staff, alumni, community members, business leaders, Institutional Council, state legislators and Utah’s Board of Regents. “There has been a lot of stress at times, especially during my first two or three years when budgets were so tight,” he said. “Lately that stress has declined some. Maybe it’s because I’m beginning to realize what you can and can’t do. I’ve learned that you don’t worry about some things because you can’t affect them,” he added. The president and his staff met this particular day for two hours to discuss topics ranging from admission standards to enrollment. “Some days we consider more lofty things, but most of the time we work on making the infrastructure work,” Pres. Nadauld said. At midmorning the meeting took a short recess while the president ran, combing his hair as he went, to greet members of the National Logistics Board of Governors who were meeting on campus. Along the way he greeted faculty by name, and stopped to talk ' with a student who sat in the hall, eating ice cream preparing for an exam in finance. A short speech later he was back to his reconvened meeting for more discussion, the last item of which was a planned fishing trip. “Steve loves to fish, and he loves Ogden because he can be up on the river in five or ten minutes,” said Margaret Nadauld. “One day he got home at 5 p.m. and had to be at the campus by 7 p.m. He hurried and got his waders, went up on the river, caught eight fish and still made his 7 p.m. appointment,” the president's wife said. At the end of his staff meeting the president stepped into his office and spread papers out on his table and couch. “T tend to work on several things at a time. Some things solve themselves simultaneously,” he said. His schedule is light enough this day to attend Rotary, so slightly before noon he ways to handle the tension, Mrs. Nadauld said, and “often he sits in the living room in the evening and plays his guitar to unwind.” Using his car phone he catches up on phone messages before going into the Rotary luncheon, where he mingles and shakes a great many hands. ‘Public exposure is a mixed blessing. We like to have a private life, but Ogden is a very mature, sensitive community. We try to be involved in as much as possible, but when we can’t it’s understood,” he said. Their family of seven sons are the Nadaulds’ top priority, they both said. Work keeps Pres. Nadauld away much of the time, but whenever possible the family is included in the president’s activities. “We knew it would be busy when we came here,” Mrs. Nadauld said. “But I think it’s been nothing but a plus for the children.” “The children are having opportunities they would not get any other way. I don’t think we’ve ever looked on this as a hardship,” Pres. Nadauld added. ‘Margaret is really an extraordinary person. If it was not for her ability this would be a hardship. She’s an amazing person in her own right,” he said. The afternoon brought another two-hour meeting, a visit to an open house honoring a community member, and a greeting to honors students gathered for a special evening program. Along the way he stopped to fix a jammed campus sprinkler, coordinated a presentation to the Board of Regents, dictated letters, talked with staff and had a Tootsie Roll Pop-- “A late afternoon pick me up.” = “This position has been alotofhard work, but it has been enjoyable. My time here at Weber State is going real fast,” the fifth-year president said. “These years have been the happiest of our lives,” Mrs. Nadauld added later. “It would be wonderful to spend the rest of our lives here, but the Regents made it very clear when we first started that it was not a life-time position.” “We have a real loyalty to Weber State,” Mrs. Nadauld said. “The students here are in an enviable position. For undergraduate | education, Weber State is the best in the {fe | United States.” Pres. Nadauld added, “I believe that Weber State is now what other institutions will want to be in 20 years. We are really ahead of our times.”