Oral History Program Charles Wight Interviewed by Jamie Weeks & Allison Hess 16 April 2018 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Charles Wight Interviewed by Jamie Weeks & Allison Hess 16 April 2018 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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: Wight, Charles, an oral history by Jamie Weeks and Allison Hess, 16 April 2018, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with President Charles Wight conducted on April 16, 2018, in the Weber State University Administration Building with Jamie Weeks and Allison Hess. President Wight talks about earning his pilot’s license and his academic career which led him to Weber State University. He also shares his memories of his time at Weber State and the things that his administration accomplished. Also present is Chelsee Boehm. JW: Today is April 16, 2018, we are here with Charles Wight, the current president of Weber State University, in the Weber State University Administration Building. Today we are going to discuss Chuck’s time here at Weber State in regards to his role as president of the University. His perspectives concerning changes during his time here and maybe some of his ideas for the future of Weber. I am Jamie Weeks, the university archivist, and I am here with Allison Hess, the director of public relations along with my assistant and videographer today is Chelsee Boehm. It’s good to be here with you and we really appreciate you taking this time. CW: Thank you. JW: I know you have a short time. Fifteen days or something left. CW: Yeah and there is a commencement and a few other ceremonies in there. JW: So many things that still have to happen. I know last week was a long week also. Would you start with, just talking a little bit about your early life and some of your historical background? CW: Sure. My family is from New York and Connecticut all around the East Coast and I grew up in Northern Virginia in Fairfax. My father and my mother were both 1 school teachers, and they were both later principals of schools. And so, I was the product of an educational family and that kind of rubbed off on me a little bit. After high school, I went to Woodson High School, in Fairfax Virginia. I went to college at the University of Virginia and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry there. Then, went on to graduate school at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. I spent a couple of years at the University of Colorado as a post-doctoral research associate in chemistry, before I took my first real job at the University of Utah. JW: I know you like to fly, so with your busy educational schedule, how did you get into flying and fit it in? And, do you still have time to fly? CW: A little bit. So, a long time ago, probably around 1991 or ’92, my youngest brother gave me a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I was captivated. I spent hours and hours and hours trying to master that flight simulator and in 1994—early part of ’94, a friend of mine, Rich McKelvey, who is a pilot, said, “If you’re interested in flying, there’s a ground school at Cottonwood High School.” I think it was only $150. He said, “Why don’t you go ahead and take the book learning part of it and if you’re still interested then I can recommend a flight instructor who can teach you how to fly.” I did the book learning part of it and I found it to be a challenge. Because flying is something which is almost impossible to do absolutely perfectly, and so you can always get a little bit better at it. That is something that I need in my life, a challenge, something that I can always improve on. I liked the book learning part of it and I got in touch with this flight instructor and got my pilot’s certificate. As soon as I got the pilot’s certificate—he was a crusty old guy who was a math teacher in high school—and he said, “Congratulations, now 2 you’re an airplane driver. In order to be a pilot you have to get an instrument rating.” I got an instrument rating so I could fly in clouds and in weather and then I got a commercial rating and was in a shared ownership with other pilots for many, many years. When we came up to Ogden, I had an opportunity to own my plane. JW: Well, we have that nice little airport that you can hop in and out of anytime. CW: Yep. It’s a 15-minute drive down to the Ogden Airport and I can just pull my plane out of the hanger, go burn holes in the sky, or go on an Angel Flight mission, or whatever I want to do. JW: Right. I heard you were able to take your airplane and go up to Idaho for the best possible eclipse experience. Is that true? CW: Yes, that’s true. JW: I was there, it was amazing! I kept thinking, “It would be nice to just hop up here on a plane and then jump out and not get in the traffic.” CW: There’s kind of an interesting story. There’s a tower at the Ogden Airport, but I think they, for some reason, hadn’t anticipated that they would be particularly busy, and it was. It was crazy busy. There was only one person in the tower and he was handling both the approach and the ground frequencies. And so there were all of these people who were trying to fly North. So, they were trying to get clearances to take off and at one point he became frustrated and he said, “One at a time. One at a time. Everybody and their dog is going to Idaho today.” 3 We got our clearance and we were taxiing out to the runway to take off and as I got my take off clearance, I had to read it back to him and so I said, “Blanco 9516 Echo ready for take-off, runway 2-1 and the dog is on board.” He goes, “Ha!” That day, there was an ocean of airplanes flying North to Driggs, Rexburg, Idaho Falls, and a couple of other places in Idaho. I have a display in the cockpit that shows the locations and speeds of all of the planes in the neighborhood around me, as long as they are on radar. It was a little bit scary because I have never seen the skies so crowded as they were that morning. We got to Rexburg and there were several planes trying to land at one time. But, everybody knew what to do and we all went out to the Northwest side of the airport and formed, sort of a conga line and came into the pattern. And everybody landed, screeched on the breaks and got off the runway because they knew the next person was right behind them. It all worked. It was great. On the way back, the same thing, we all took off right after the eclipse and there was this ocean of airplanes going south and it was a pretty amazing day. We flew over all of the people who were still waiting in long lines on the freeway and we were really glad we had an airplane. AH: Is there any other pinnacle moment of flying or is that the one? CW: You know that was one of the most memorable. I had a moment many years ago, where I had an emergency in an airplane. That was kind of gut wrenching, but you know, all of the training kicks in, that voice of my instructor was in the back of my head, “Fly the airplane!” So, they tell you, “Aviate, Navigate, and 4 Communicate in that order.” Fly the airplane, then point it in the direction you want to go, and then talk to somebody. It turned out fine. JW: Do you have a favorite Angel mission that you have completed? CW: I do. It was a long time ago. I was taking some teenagers from a cancer camp in Montana back to three different towns in Utah. It was a bumpy summer day and the plane was bouncing around a lot. The woman who was in the copilot seat was kind of sick and she threw up several times on the way to Ephraim, where I left her off. We got to Ephraim and she got out of the plane and I apologized for all of the bumps and she looked at my sort of quizzically and she said, “It beats the heck out of chemo.” It just gives you a perspective that these people have been through a lot in their lives. A little bit of bumpiness in the airplane is just nothing compared to the adversity that they have overcome. You meet amazing people like that flying for Angel Flight and that was one of my moments. AH: Are there any comparisons or helps you have drawn from your flying that you have been able to apply as president of the university? Have some of those lessons that are in the back of your mind from your old teacher helped guide you? CW: You know, nothing that’s terribly direct. But, as I mentioned before, with flying you can never get it perfect. There is always one or two little things that you could have done better during a flight. It’s a matter of doing your best and then reflecting on what you did, deciding what you could have done better, and then the next time going out and doing that. So, indirectly, maybe you know, just 5 focusing on the learning experience. The sort of, lifelong learning experience. But, I would say probably that’s the best influence. JW: That’s a pretty good lifelong lesson anyway, right? AH: I think that’s a quote right there. JW: You’ve already talked a little bit about your professional career before you came to Weber. So, you got your first job—real job. I shouldn’t say first job. But, your first job as a PhD at a university. CW: Yes, my first job, I was cooking steaks at the Buckaroo Steak Ranch. JW: See, those are good stories. CW: $1.40 an hour. JW: Your first faculty position was at the University of Utah? CW: Yes. I was teaching Chemistry there as an assistant professor and rose through the academic ranks and became engaged with the academic senate there. Which is their faculty senate. After serving as president of the academic senate, I got involved in administration and had several different jobs in administration. The last of which was the Dean of the Graduate School from 2009-2012 and then I had the opportunity to come up to Weber. AH: The faculty has just appreciated you so much and your academic credentials that I think it would be well to pause for a moment and talk about your career…or your specific academic interests and your real successes and your passion for academics in Chemistry. 6 CW: Sure. I’m a physical chemist and a working definition of physical chemist is a person who worries about what the molecules are doing. That’s not just making stuff or analyzing stuff. JW: It’s not just blowing things up? CW: It’s not just blowing stuff up. AH: Although, that’s fun too apparently. CW: A couple of times I got to do that. I was interested in molecular energy transfer and chemistry at very low temperatures and we ran across a phenomenon which my Russian colleagues called, “Microexplosions.” They aren’t loud things, they were just sort of puffs that happened in materials at extremely low temperatures. A friend of mine who worked at the Air Force office of Scientific Research said, “You know, if you were interested in real explosions. There’s real money to support it.” He got me interested in a program at the Air Force which funded me for many years, and after that we had funding from ATK and a few other sources. Then I got involved in a very large center for Simulations of Accidental Fires and Explosions at the University of Utah, and I was the deputy director for almost ten years or something like that. So, you know, one thing lead to another but over the course of almost thirty years at the University of Utah, I had a research group with always several graduate students and usually a couple of post docs, and I was able to make a large impact on the lives of a pretty small number of people. But, as I got more and more involved in administration, I realized that I could make a larger impact in a larger number of people. That was 7 the main attraction for me, and that’s why I walked through that one-way door from research to administration. JW: Which is exactly what that is, isn’t it? CW: It is a one-way door, you just can’t go back. People who do that have to realize that it’s a one-way door. I’ve never regretted it. AH: Wasn’t one of your formative experiences in life take place in Russia, and there was a change in government? CW: Yes. I started going to Russia in 1990 and the impetus for that was, my mother called me up and just out of the blue said, “I’m going to go run a marathon in Moscow. Do you want to come?” I said, “Well, yeah.” And so, my brother Bill and I went with my mother to Moscow. My mother didn’t actually run the marathon. She ran the 10k instead. But, Bill and I ran the marathon and while I was there—or just shortly before I went, I was contacted just by email by a student in Russia who wanted to come to the University of Utah and work in my research crew. This guy’s last name was Ovchinnikov. I knew that there had been a professor of Chemical Physics named Alexander Ovchinnikov, and this was Mikhail Alexandrovich Ovchinnikov. So, it was the right name and I think he was the son of this guy. I said, “You know, I don’t know anything about admitting students from Russia. But, why don’t we met while I’m there for the marathon and we’ll see.” We met and he introduced me to his father and his father introduced me to the guy named Victor Benderskii who worked in areas that were very close to mine. One thing lead to another and suddenly we were in a 8 collaboration and I made several trips to Russia between 1991 and about 2007 I think was my last trip. Almost every time staying for a month or six weeks to do a research project with a collaborator named Eugenii Misochko. We published a lot of papers together over the years and early on while I was in the country, it was just when Gorbachev was stepping down and Yeltsin had come in. They were forming the Duma and a government and they were trying to figure out this democracy thing. I remember I was in the country one time when—I believe the name of the country changed three times. I don’t know. Nobody ever remembers the Confederation of Independent States but that was a short-lived name while I was there. It was a very exciting time. Speaking with scientists and trying to tell them about democracy. Some of my friends later on said—they told me they weren’t going to vote and I said, “Well, why aren’t you going to vote?” They said, “Well, none of the candidates is really perfect.” I said, “You don’t understand. This is about the lesser of two evils.” I said, “If you don’t vote then you are just allowing other people to make this decision for you.” So, they kind of got that. I think they were able to figure out this democracy thing. AH: Just one more. It seems to me that you had that sense, for a time at least, of being a stranger in a strange land and that has helped, among many other things, to give you much empathy for those students who’ve been here in the same situation. 9 CW: Yes. I was in this little town called Chernogolovka. It’s about 80 kilometers northeast of Moscow, just on the edge of the Moscow region and until about 1989, Chernogolovka was a closed town. So, no foreigners were allowed in there. They did classified research. When I started going to Chernogolovka in 1991, I wasn’t the first westerner in the town. But, for my first couple of trips I was the only westerner in the town. And so, I was a curiosity. There were some people who were afraid of me. Other people who were just curious about me and mostly, my scientific friends were eager to have somebody to practice their English with. I had a lot of different really valuable experiences being the “only one” in the town. One of my frustrations was that I had gone to some trouble to learn some Russian here before making the second trip. The first trip I did with the marathon, I didn’t know a word of Russian and I immediately realized that was a huge mistake. Before my second trip, I’d made an effort to learn some Russian and to my disappointment I found that none of my scientific friends was the least bit interested in struggling with my Russian, and they all insisted that I speak English and help them with their English. Okay. So, I get that. But, in the market, of course, nobody spoke English. All of my language skills in Russian consists of handling money and knowing the names of the things that I like to eat. JW: Street skills. CW: I had very engaging conversations with very small children and dogs. JW: You came to Weber State University in 2013, what was the campus political atmosphere like by the time you arrived here? CW: This campus was in great shape. You know, I knew about Weber because I lived 10 for almost 30 years just 35 miles down the road. I didn’t know a lot of people. I knew Laine Berghout professionally, he was the chair of chemistry. I knew Mike Vaughn, and I had met Ann Millner and there might have been one or two other people who I knew here. But, I knew the reputation of the place, and I knew that it was in great shape. So, I wasn’t worried at all about the situation that Weber State was in. I was not sent in to fix a bunch of stuff, I was not sent in to fire a bunch of people. And, I viewed my job, early on, as changing myself to fit in with the institution, rather than changing the institution to fit me. When an institution is in good shape, I think that’s the way that a new president should approach the job initially. You know, over the course of several months, I knew that I should select some priorities, things that I was going to pay attention to. I did that, and I think I chose five good ones because I stayed with them for my entire time here. But, yeah, I had a clear sense that things were going really well here. JW: I often think it is a secret how amazing Weber really is and what a great community we have here. And so, I wondered if that was a surprise to you— coming from the University of Utah, if you realized, you know, really what kind of a community we have here. CW: It is true that Weber State doesn’t get the respect that it deserves and I think that’s largely because we’re pretty modest about marketing ourselves and the huge job that the team here does. Other institutions are better at marketing—and I would say even over-marketing themselves. So, it’s difficult to get people to realize how good of a place this is without spending a huge amount of time and resources on it. Because it is a challenge. 11 JW: Oh absolutely. As you came in, that was a big year for us, we were on the verge of our 125th year anniversary. Maybe talk about just your immersion into the 2014 year. Did you feel like you were attending ribbon cuttings every week? CW: Well, I did a lot of ribbon cuttings and I went to a lot of funerals. I was engaged in a lot of different things. But, the most important thing was the start of the comprehensive fundraising campaign. The Dream 125 campaign. So that did occupy a lot of my time and attention that year. And January 7—the official 125th anniversary was a big date and we had a big party and we introduced a lot of people to the idea of steam punk and we had a lot of fun. You remember, we had this party down at the Ogden Eccles Conference Center, and we invited everybody. We invited them to dress in steam punk. JW: Yes, I remember your costumes. You and Victoria were “it”. CW: Well, we had a lot of fun dressing up. About half of the people dressed up and the other half wished that they had. It was really a great kick-off to the campaign. It raised awareness of what we were trying to do and opened the door to us asking a lot of people for a lot of money. The campaign was hugely successful and then on the back end, we closed the campaign with another party and this one had a Hollywood theme and I dressed up as Charlie Chaplin. Some of the people in the theater department helped me with a costume. Victoria dressed up as Louise Brooks and when we arrived at the party, I said hello to a lot of people who were very polite and they said hello, but obviously didn’t recognize who I was. It was only after Alan Hall and I came out on the stage that they suddenly realized who they had been talking to. They came up to me afterward and 12 apologized profusely for not recognizing me initially. So, that was also a lot of fun. JW: That was just a magical year. For, I think the entire campus and the campaign was a huge success. CW: People were very, very generous and I have to give the whole Development team a huge amount of credit for contacting a lot of perspective donors, for broadening our donor base, and getting more and more people engaged in the campaign. More than half of our own faculty and staff were donors to the campaign, which is huge. You know, when you get people who are working here to buy in and give of their own money. You know, we don’t overpay people here. People were very involved and very generous and I’m very grateful. JW: I was looking at your inauguration address and I know that one of the things you talked about as one of your missions, was access, learning, and community. So, maybe talk about how you’ve been able to accomplish what you were hoping in that inauguration. CW: So access, learning, and community are the three core themes of the university. I didn’t make them up. I think that was the brainchild of Mike Vaughn and Ann Millner before I arrived. But, they have been core themes that have worked really, really well for this institution. Access, because we are an open admissions institution and we welcome anybody who has a high school diploma or equivalent to come and try their hand at college and we provide the support for them to succeed in that endeavor. Then we have a list price tuition that’s about 40% below the national average still. So 13 we are more accessible financially than almost any of our peer institutions. I think there is only one of our 60 peer institutions that has a slightly lower tuition and fees—actually; UVU has us beat on fees by a dollar or two. But, being accessible is a really important part of this university’s dedication—or commitment to its community. It’s very important, and people here get that. That’s something that we do very well. And then there’s Dream Weber, which helps low the income students be able to afford even that low tuition. And so, it just works on so many levels. Learning, you know the thing that made me acutely aware of how well we do the learning part of our mission is meeting with alumni. I go around the United States—mostly western United States, meeting with alumni asking them for donations and so forth. But, almost every one of those alumni has a story and the story has the same arch, but different characters. And it goes something like, “You know, when I was back at Weber State a long, long time ago, paying $70 a quarter tuition, this person (usually a faculty member or sometimes a staff member or sometimes a coach) took a special interest in me and took the time to get to know me. They taught me something about myself that I didn’t realize before, which helped launch me in a completely new direction that helped me become successful.” I’ve heard that story hundreds of times with different characters. I realized that that personal interaction, that personal relationship that our faculty and staff have with students makes all of the difference in their lives. We have the usual sort of book learning in classes and credit hours and exams 14 and stuff, but it’s that personal interaction where the special type of learning helps to make people really successful. And then community, I knew that Ann Millner had set a pretty high bar in terms of connecting the university with community. I was going to have to work really hard just to keep up with the pace that she had set. I came in here willing to do that and the work has paid off gangbusters. There are all sorts of people in our community who are completely engaged with the university and support the university with their time, with their gifts, and with all sorts of partnerships with the university. We have gone a long way toward transforming Ogden into a college town as a result. JW: Right. Which, I think, is one of your great successes, that Ogden is being recognized more as a college town. AH: You mentioned previously your five areas that you wanted to emphasize, how did they weave into learning, access, and community? Can you articulate those five and evaluate? CW: Sure. The first one was keep college affordable and we didn’t actually lower tuition while I was here, but we kept the raises in tuition pretty modest and we are still 40% below the national average tuition. With the combination of that and the expansion of the Dream Weber program, I’m really happy with where we are in terms of affordability. The second one was diversity. The goal was to build a level of diversity at the institution that reflects the diversity of our community. That was a really high bar to set, and I knew that. We are not there yet, but we’ve made a lot of 15 progress in creating an atmosphere, a culture of inclusion at this university, where people in the community, especially pre-college students, but also adults who either haven’t graduated from college or haven’t been to college—have a real sense that if they come to Weber State they are not only welcome, but they can have a sense of belonging. They can be part of a team here. Even though we aren’t where we really need to be in terms of the diversity of the institution, we’re making great progress. I’m very proud of the group that Adrienne and Andrew assist on, and Enrique Romo and lots and lots of other people in bringing us to where we are now. I just know that they will continue that good work and will make further progress in the future. The third one was building beautiful and sustainable campuses. Well, that was kind of a no-brainer actually. I knew that we were doing some great things. It turned out over the course of my 5 ½ years that we turned into a national leader in sustainability and it’s because we did it backwards. We started in facilities management and then moved it into academic affairs where, as in most institutions, it starts in academic affairs and then eventually makes its way into FM. But, you know, I brag all the time that this institution saves about $2 million a year on its fuel, power, and water bills because of fairly simple and easy things that FM did in the beginning. Now we are going onto some of the more challenging things that are working, and we are going to meet our commitment to make this campus carbon neutral, and we are going to make that commitment about ten years early. 16 Ann Millner had committed us to doing it by 2050 and we are kind of on track to maybe do it by 2040. So, we are making great progress there. The fourth one was leveraging technology for innovative teaching. We’ve made good progress on that, but again, we are not really where we need to be. That particular goal I decided very early on had to be faculty driven. We could provide the financial resources to help people, but there are different kinds of learners and there are different kinds of teachers, and the goal is to get to mesh the right kinds of learners with the right kinds of teachers. I think overall, on average, some combination of traditional face-to-face classroom experience, whether its didactic lecture or discussion, combined with an online technology learning experience is the sweet spot in higher education for most students. I think you’re seeing now, more and more hybrid courses being created at the university. Teachers, professors utilizing technology to a greater degree to meet the needs of their students. And one of the things that we had just completed is the Presidential Outstanding Teaching endowment. An endowment which will generate funds not just for teaching awards each year, but also funds creating teaching grants. Just like the Hemingway Grants provide money for scholarship and research, the Presidential Outstanding Teaching endowment will provide funds for faculty who want to experiment with their teaching. Try something new, buy some software, develop a new course in a different way. Whatever it is, they can get some seed funding to try that experiment. To measure things and decide what works and what doesn’t work. Really move forward in the scholarship of teaching. Teaching is what we do first, what we put first here. I’m very pleased 17 that Bob and Marsha Harris and many other generous donors have contributed money to create this endowment that really helps us improve teaching and elevate the visibility of teaching excellence here at Weber State. And the fifth one, before I forget, is community. I knew that—I have always had a sense that an important part of the mission of any university is to be a leader in its community. To do that you have to have those community partnerships. You have to have people working together for the benefit of the community and Weber State had done a lot of that before I came. The community involvement center was up and running. We had the Carnegie classification very early. We had a lot of people very interested in that. But we kind of doubled down on it afterward and changed the name of CIL to CCEL. And created more partnerships and the college town initiative and all sorts of things to help really cement the relationships between the campus and the community. JW: One of my questions was diversity, which you’ve kind of touched on. But, you’ve also added some things that the campus needed like supporting an LGBTQ Center which really, from our perspective, we’re quite excited about because we now have the ability to join in with the rest of state for a Pride center exhibit. CW: It’s really important that every student be welcome here, feel welcome here, and have an opportunity to find community here. When Mike Vaughn approached me about forming the LGBT resource center. I said, “Well, yeah! That’s easy.” It turned out to be less than completely easy in the long run but I’m very grateful for the support that Mike has given the center and Jane and Tammy Marquardt have 18 given to the center and we’ve had a couple of really great leaders of the center. It’s been a real important part of our commitment to diversity. JW: Have you seen any big changes in administration here at Weber State in your 5 ½ years? CW: Not huge. So, after, what, 2,3 years. Mike Vaugh stepped down from the Provost position and went back to the faculty and he had some really great ideas, including a center for the study of poverty and equality. He’s busy working on that and I was fortunate enough to be able to have Madonne Miner as Provost. She’s doing a wonderful job and then Jan Winniford decided to retire at the same time her husband retire from the University of Utah and they’ve been traveling the world and having fun in their new life. Bret Perozzi has stepped in as the student affairs Vice President. So, very little turnover at the executive level. So, I have a great team, and everybody is really working well. JW: Right. We’ve talked about some of your major projects here on campus, do you have a favorite amidst all it? CW: It’s a bad idea for a president to play favorites. But, since I’m in my last two weeks…. You know, one of the projects that really struck me was something called CAPES. It’s the Children’s Adaptive Physical Education Society and it’s run by James Zagrodnik and a couple of other faculty members, Natalie Williams. I had heard about CAPES during James’ presentation to the Hemmingway Trust in getting awards from them to start it and to retain it. He won the Gwen Williams Prize for it. I knew, kind of, at an intellectual level, what James was trying to do, 19 but one day he invited me to come to the Swenson Gym and just meet with the children, meet with the parents and I did that and I was totally blown away. CAPES is mainly for a group of special needs children, and they are mainly mainstreamed in public schools and because they have a variety of different challenges like being somewhere on the autistic spectrum or it may be a number of things. You know, kids are mean. They tend to be ostracized by their peers and it’s difficult for them to integrate into their peer groups in a publicschool setting. But at CAPES, everyone is special, and they have a great time with each other. What James does is he pairs each special needs student with a Weber State student and so they have a mentor-mentee relationship. On Tuesday evenings, they spend about an hour in the gym playing with balls. Practicing skills—motor skills and then they spend an hour in the pool. The water is just magic for most of these kids. It makes them open up, they have fun in the water, and it just creates a special environment that is just really magical for the kids. I saw that, I met with the parents and the parents say, “You have no idea what a blessing this is.” They said, “We get two hours off, once a week.” You know? These parents are on 24/7, 365. And for a couple hours each week. Somebody else has their kid and they get to interact with other parents of special needs children and exchange ideas and advice. So, CAPES works on so many levels and it’s such a great service to this community. It’s amazing and I was just completely impressed with James and the organization. Whenever we have an 20 opportunity, Victoria and I like to go to their graduation ceremonies that they have every semester. AH: Is that tomorrow? CW: No, it was last week and we missed it and I was so sad. You know, James brought a big huge card of thanks that was written on by all of the kids—all of the children. I felt so badly that I had missed it. But, really glad to get the card and the thanks from the kids. JW: What do you hope for the future of Weber? CW: I hope that the regents select a new president for this institution who recognizes the strengths of this institution and push them forward in new ways. They don’t have to be the same ways that I was working on. We can go to a different level, a newer level in a different direction. But my wish is for this university to get a passionate president who really capitalizes on the many strengths of this institution. JW: Yes. It is always a little nerve racking for those of us who remain here and who’s coming. CW: I know. I went through a lot of presidents at the University of Utah. AH: You have so many stake holders that you are beholden to. Were you surprised at the number of stakeholders? Were you surprised at the politics that you then became, had to be part of as the chief administrator of the university? CW: So I knew pretty much all of the stakeholders. In retrospect I think I missed judged some of the politics. But I’ve always been the kind of person who has to follow my own compass and do what I think is right. And I was always, from the 21 very beginning, conscious of the fact that some of the things that I do and say are not going to be popular with other people. The two most fragile jobs at any university are president and football coach. Right? When you need a football coach, the A.D. makes four phone calls over two days and hires somebody immediately and it’s done. When you need a new president, it takes eight months. I never sought to offend people, but I always had to follow my own conscious and do that pretty much regardless of what the consequences were. AH: What is the thing you are most proud of that you stood for, that you were not going to bend on? CW: Well, I think it’s a matter of public record that when we brought the proposal for the LGBT Resource Center to the trustees, it was not a simple thing to get passed. It’s one of the things that I misjudged. I didn’t expect for the trustees to be unsure of whether they wanted to do this or not. The first time the issue came up before the trustees, we had a brief discussion and the chairman, Allen Hall called for a vote and he said, “All those in favor say, I.” And there was silence. Allen had the presence of mind to stop right there and table the motion and we went back for a couple of months. Engaged in a lot more discussion and education for the trustees on why we were doing this and why it was important. I’m not sure that the trustees would have voted no. But, I think that they were so uncertain that they just didn’t want to commit to yes right at that moment. Two or three months later, we brought the issue back to them. They approved it unanimously. I was very proud. After that first vote, I was worried. I was worried that I would not be able to work for this Board of Trustees because I 22 felt very strongly about this issue and I think they knew that I felt strongly. But they also had conflicts within themselves and their own experiences that made them doubt about whether this was a good idea. I respect that. But we all managed to get on the same page and do the right thing as far as I was concerned. And so, you know, I didn’t have to fall on my sword that day. I didn’t have to have that really difficult conversation with the trustees. But it was something that I was definitely passionate about and if necessary, I would have given up my job in that very first year. JW: Is there anything that you wish you had time to accomplish or you have in the works that you’re kind of setting aside going, “Okay, maybe not this time.” CW: So with the five priorities, we either have accomplished everything that I set out to do. Or we’ve made a good start. I mentioned with diversity and with technology and instruction we’re not really where we need to be, but we’ve made a good start. We’ve put a lot of things into place. The one thing—the one major thing that came up about three years ago now, was that due mostly to the economic recovery in Utah, our enrollments were kind of flat. Flat enrollments are just not good for a university. We needed to grow again. So, we set out to create a detailed plan on how to manage our enrollments. Enrollment management is a very tricky thing for an open admissions institution. I mean, we’re basically committed to taking all comers, and so it turns out to be more a matter of marketing effectively both inside and outside of Utah to recruit more students. But also, helping our students to be more successful and having a higher commitment to their studies. 23 We’ve been putting these things into place over time and last fall our enrollments were up 1.2% Or maybe it was 1.5% I don’t remember exactly. But our budget related enrollments were definitely up, year over year. In Spring they were up 2.2% which is a great year over year number and the early numbers for summer and for next fall are up gangbusters, you know, 5 or 8%. It’s really a gaze, it won’t be that much at the end, but as we track registration trends, every indication is we are going to be up substantially. That’s just going great and I wish that I had more time to enjoy the fruits of that labor but I will watch it from afar. AH: We haven’t really talked about it, but to me, a mark of your presidency is your love for students. I’d like to hear your thoughts on being involved with the students and maybe some of those moments that have just been a joy for you personally. CW: Sure. Sure. When I first interviewed for the job, one of the first groups I met was the student leaders and Andrew Gardner was the incoming president. Abe Subsido was one of the student leaders and I got to know them and we had a lot of fun. They called me up to the Union one day, and I walked in the door and they put two enormous snakes over my neck and you know, I’m not a big fan of snakes. As long as the snakes were behaving themselves that was okay. Then one of them sort of disappeared inside my coat and started rummaging around. And I said, “Okay, that’s the end of that.” We had a lot of fun. We did the ice bucket challenge. There was a fraternity recently that wanted to do a fundraiser by hitting me in the face with a pie. I’ve always tried to do this job by having fun, 24 but not crossing the line between fun and undignified. And at first, I thought, “Well, a pie in the face that kind of crosses that line.” But then I realized that this particular fraternity had been very active in raising funds for breast cancer research and they were heavily involved in the campus safety movement. They were just a bunch of really good guys and I thought, “Okay, for these guys I can do a pie in the face.” And so, I agreed to do that. I went up to the Union and they had a station all set up and they were about to sell a bunch of pies in President Wight’s face for $2 each. And I said, “No, no, no. You get one pie. Auction it off.” And so, they disappeared to get some funding and they came back and said, “We’ve got a $30 bid.” I said, “I’ll give you $35 not to hit me in the face with a pie.” They disappeared again and came back, “How about $40?” I said, “Nope. Not good enough” And so they disappeared and they came up with $50 contribution. And I said, “Okay, for $50 I’ll get hit in the face with a pie.” So we did it and it was recorded in and I’m sure it’s on YouTube somewhere. That’s the kind of fun that we’ve had. I had a lot of experiences with students visiting classrooms talking a lot about parking and scholarships and things like that. But, really the most joy that Victoria and I have had with students is with the Spirit Squad. In 2014, Summer Willis who’s the coach for the Spirit Squad told me that they were going to Daytona Beach for the National Championships. In fun, I said, “Can we come along?” She said, “Sure.” 25 I thought about it, “Well that would be fun, wouldn’t it?” So, Victoria and I just paid our own way to Daytona. My mother lives in Orlando and so we stopped by for a day or two in Orlando and visited my mother. And it was so much fun. I think the cheer team won a championship that year but the dance team didn’t. There was this mascot championship and Waldo wasn’t entered. But, we looked at this mascot championship and thought, “You know, Waldo would do really well with this.” So, we encouraged him to go to camp and get qualified. He did it the next year and we went back the next year with them. And Waldo won the National Championship in 2015. We missed 2016 and we missed 2017, but in 2017 both the cheer and the dance teams won first place in division, won national championships. I thought, “Okay, in 2018 we just have to go back.” We went back this year, and the cheer team repeated their back-to-back championship, and the dance team repeated their back-to-back championship in hip-hop and Waldo won his championship and is still the best mascot in the country. I think that’s an incredible amount of fun that we’ve had with that group. It’s an amazing group. I have to tell you that there are many people in Daytona, and some people who contacted me afterward, who told me that they were completely impressed by—not just with the skill and performance of our Spirit Squad, but also with their professionalism and the way that they conduct themselves in an environment which is pretty much like Spring Break. I’m incredibly proud of our students and the way that they represent our institution. That’s also a great deal of fun for me. 26 AH: I don’t think we can let you get away without talking a little bit about Ghana and the experience that must have been for you and Victoria to travel with one of our most long-time groups that have made such a difference in Ghana in respiratory therapy. CW: Have you got time for a story? JW: Absolutely. CW: Okay. Our faculty have been terrific about organizing study abroad trips and foreign service trips. And two of the standouts have been Julie Rich and Lisa Trujillo. Victoria and I had decided that we wanted to go on one of these trips. But we couldn’t decide which one and ultimately, we chose to go with Lisa to Ghana with a group of respiratory therapy students and respiratory therapy professionals. It was an eye-opening experience. We spent some time with the group in classes before we left and there were a lot of things to do. You know, vaccinations and visas and so forth. We flew to Accra with the group and loaded… We each had three large suitcases. One was for us, one was a regular suitcase filled with donations. Mostly for school kids. The third item was a large rubber made bin filled with medical supplies and school supplies and things like that. We took all of this stuff and piled it on the roof of a bus and started on a trip around the country. We stopped at several different cities and gave free health and wellness screening clinics for people who came in. Checked their heart rate, oxygen saturation, breathing rate and all their usual vitals. But then if they had any bumps or bruises or cuts or anything, we would get them connected with a health 27 professional and do this screening. So, that was part of the mission. Part of the mission was visiting with elementary schools and talking with the kids and making these donations of school supplies and a little bit of candy. Things that the kids got excited. We had soccer balls and things like that. And another part of it was having fun as a tourist. We stopped at Mali National Park and saw the elephants and stopped at another park and saw the monkeys. It was some fun for us. But a large part of the trip was actually devoted to trying to bootstrap respiratory therapy as a profession in the country because right now they don’t have it. Lisa and Karen Shell have devoted their lives to creating respiratory therapy in this country in West Africa, because it doesn’t exist now and to make it exist, you have to do three things simultaneously. You have to work with the hospitals and the doctors to teach them how to use respiratory therapists to extend the reach of doctors. They work under the supervision of doctors. But there aren’t nearly enough doctors in Ghana to take care of people. So, having a respiratory therapist do some of that work will be enormously helpful for them to save lives. The second thing you have to do is to work with the universities to create a curriculum and a training program to train respiratory therapists to take jobs in the hospitals. The third thing you have to do is to work with the government and the Ministry of Health, to create a job called respiratory therapist. You shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of that task and so we were working in hospitals and we were working with universities. 28 We were working with the ministry of health and we thought we had an appointment with the wife of the president of the country to try to explain to her what we were trying to do. As it turned out, for one reason or another, she wasn’t able to come at the last minute. I suspect because she wasn’t sure exactly who we were and what we wanted. But we met with her staff and her staff seemed to be impressed by what we were trying to do. We were somewhat optimistic that the next time we were in the country we would be able to get an appointment with somebody who could influence what goes on in the Ministry of Health and maybe make some progress to getting that job created. Because if there are students in training programs right now at the University of Ghana and if they graduate and have no jobs to go to, well, that’s going to be kind of a shipwreck for the whole enterprise. One of the things that happened when I got back to Ogden is there was a Ted X event down at the Eccles Conference Center and it was run by Weber County. We had a little reception there and so it was just one day after I returned. I met a guy—and I’m blanking on his name, I’m sorry. And I was explaining what we were doing in Ghana and he goes, “Well the King of Ghana is my next-door neighbor.” I thought to myself, “Well, I know enough about Ghana to know that statement can’t be true on its face. But, I’m interested.” I asked him about it and he said, “Yeah.” There’s this guy who’s lived next door to him for a long time and he’s been called to be a king back in Ghana. He’s in the process of selling his house and going back to the country. 29 I said, “Can I meet him?” He said, “Sure.” This guy’s name is Jonathon Mahama. And so, on Monday morning Jonathon Mahama shows up in my office and he explains that his uncle has been tribal chief for the greater Accra region of Ghana, which makes perfect sense and I knew that these tribal chieftains move not from father to son, but from chief to nephew through maternal lines. Jonathon’s uncle was getting ready to retire, and Jonathon had been called to go back to Ghana to be the tribal chief for the great Accra region. He was getting ready to fulfill this responsibility. He’s been in Utah for a very long time. He went to BYU and recently worked as an HR specialist for a company in Ogden. He has two daughters who are going to school at Weber State and who would have thought? JW: Oh wow. CW: I explained to him what we had been doing to try to create respiratory therapy in the country. He said, “Oh, you know, I have this guy who’s kind of a protégée and he came over from Ghana and I helped put him through college and now he’s back in Ghana and he is the president’s chauffer.” He said, “I can just make a call and get you a meeting with the President.” It was amazing. So, I think he’s going to help get Lisa in touch with the President this time and help her to get the Ministry of Health moving to create this job description. It was a great trip. Mostly, I was just one of the crowd. You know, taking vitals in my blue scrubs. JW: How many students did you take with you on this trip? CW: The whole group was 22, and I know this because every time we got on the bus we had to count off. The students were amazing. There was one student had 30 never before been on an airplane. There were many students who hadn’t been outside of the country. The guy who had never been on airplane, we had to tell him, “You know in the future, when you ride on airplanes, it’s not going to take nearly as long.” But, it was an amazing transformational experience for him and it was great for us to experience not only the country and what we did in the country, but also see the change that it made in the students. They not only had a different view of the world, but they had a different view of themselves and that’s really important. JW: Yes. And then they carry that with them forever. I mean that’s life changing. CW: Yeah. It really is. JW: And the coincidence, that’s a great story. Wow. AH: I would say it’s a small world. CW: It’s a very small world. AH: That story underscores that as much as any story I’ve ever heard. JW: Well, and how could you really take somebody serious that says, “My neighbor is going to be the king?” CW: Well, it turned out to be almost true. AH: Good for you. JW: So, you’re heading back to where you’re from, almost? CW: Yeah. I grew up in Fairfax, Virginia and Salisbury, Maryland is just a stone’s throw away. And I’ll be President of Salisbury University. JW: What is the enrollment number for Salisbury? 31 CW: 8,700. But they are almost all full-time students and it’s almost entirely residential. Very different place from Weber State. JW: It looks like a beautiful campus. CW: Yeah, it’s very nice. JW: However, you’re leaving some people behind in Utah. CW: Hundreds and hundreds of great friends and colleagues. JW: And family? CW: And family. I have two daughters and two grandchildren in Salt Lake. That’s really hard. But my father and my sister and their spouses and my nephew all live in Deale, Maryland which is on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and so they’re about a two hour drive away. It’ll be nice to be closer to them. AH: Are you alright if we ask you a couple more? CW: Sure. AH: There are a couple of things I can’t also let you get away without talking about. One of them is the Faraday Lectures. That has been such a delight to see you teaching in tux and tail. Will you talk about bringing Faraday here and what that’s meant to you? And maybe the larger issue—you have taught regularly as you have been a university president. So, while it’s been a one-way door, you’ve kind of kept your foot in the door. CW: Teaching is why I got into this business in the first place. Why would I give it up now that I can teach anything that I want? So, it’s been a privilege to keep a small part of my teaching here. I teach one course, per year in the Spring, I teach the second semester of general chemistry. I teach it to a small group of honors 32 students. So, if my calendar happens as it does and I have to miss a class, I know that their going to be okay by missing a couple of classes during the course of a semester. The Faraday Lectures were a real pleasure for me. For many years at the University of Utah, Ron Ragsdale and Jerry Driscoll had performed the Faraday Christmas Lectures, designed loosely after some lectures that Michael Faraday had given for the Royal Society in the mid-1800s. So, when Ron and Jerry got ready to retire, Peter Armentrout and I sort of took over that outreach mission, because it’s mostly for small kids, but really, we say it’s for kids of all ages. We had a lot of fun doing it. I think we did it for eight years at the University of Utah. When I came up here, I convinced Michelle Paustenbaugh and Carol Campbell to join me in putting on a version of the Faraday Lectures here. We did that for a couple of years and then other colleagues in the chemistry department got interested in this. At one point, I think there were five people who wanted to do it. And you know, two’s company. Five is really a crowd. So, I kind of took a step back and I said, “I will introduce you and I will be there. But you guys go ahead and do this yourselves.” Then this past year, they invited me to come back and give my lecture on the chemical history of the candle. I did that for the Faraday Lectures. Laine Berghout, the chair of chemistry, has invited me back for a cameo appearance next year for the Faraday Lectures. So, we’ll have to figure out what the timing is like. But, I’m keeping my tux with the purple vest so that I can do that if I’m able. 33 AH: I think that’s fantastic and I hope you do and it’ll be packed if you’re there. But, I would love to hear about your warm relationship with Mayor Caldwell and that collaboration. They mentioned it at the campus gathering last week. But, the warm relationship that had not necessarily been in place before you came on board. CW: So, after I was appointed, but before I started the job. I was appointed in October of 2012 and I started on January 1st of 2013. In November, I came up to Ogden to meet with Mayor Caldwell and with Mark Johnson and his administrative person. I had heard that there was some tensions between the former president and the former mayor. I thought that it was important that Mike and I just get off on the right foot. He was absolutely charming. He and Mark both were. We had a delightful conversation. We talked about some of the history of what had gone on in the gondola project and some other things. We both took a blood oath to never utter gondola in public. Mike doesn’t remember this, but I do, and I remind him of it from time to time. We were able to not only have a great personal relationship, but also get teams of people on both sides engaged with each other in this college town initiative. And work together and communicate and ask each other for things. Not just easy things, but some difficult things. I think the most difficult thing that we asked the city for was for some zoning variances along Harrison Boulevard that would make it more attractive for private developers to build student housing adjacent to our campus. But that meant that we had to have a very difficult conversation with the neighbors there who were not necessarily eager to have a bunch of students in their 34 neighborhood with the parking and the parties and everything else that goes along with students. So, we and the city went arm-in-arm to meet with the neighbors and explain to them why we were doing this and why we were asking for it, why it was important. You know, I think we were able to, if not win them over completely, at least get them to a place where they respected why we were trying to do it. That’s really important. Working hand-in-hand with the city, helping them to manage some difficult relationships like with neighbors, having their support to build the community education center down on 26th and Monroe, having them be a partner in the Ogden Community Action Network. Ogden CAN has been really important and I think it will pay dividends for the city and the residents of Ogden for many years to come. I was just really delighted that Mike and I were able to have a great relationship and try to establish and institutionalize the relationship that would survive the individual personalities. JW: Yes. Will you keep your foot in the door when you move on to Maryland? Are you still going to teach one class a year? CW: Oh yeah, sure. Of course. I’ve already been talking with the chair of chemistry and told him what I would like to do and asked him to hold a spot for me in the Spring. JW: Well good. I wondered how you will remain in the classroom and is that one of your goals? CW: So, I’ll tell you just a brief story. A couple of years ago, I was teaching my class and we were talking about electrochemistry and batteries and you know, all sorts 35 of cool stuff. One of the students in the second row, all of sudden, her eyes got really big. I said, “Maddie, what’s up?” and she said, “I just realized this class isn’t about memorizing formulas and equations. This class is about how the world works.” I thought, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” That is just exactly what I want people to think about my class. So, the more that I can get people to think of it less as a burden or some hurdle that they have to get over to more interesting things. And more, it’s teaching them how to have the tools to connect the dots to understand how the world works. That’s my major goal. That was a big win for me that day. JW: What a great memory for them to say, “You know, when I was in college, I took a class from President Wight.” AH: From the president of the university. CW: Yeah, I’m not so sure that’s the ideal. JW: I think students remember those things. CW: I think it was scary for them. JW: At the beginning? CW: Yeah. Really scary. AH: So, what is THE thing you are most proud of? CW: You know, I don’t think I can take a lot of credit for this. But the thing that makes me happiest about Weber State is the culture. We have an incredible institutional culture here, where everybody—almost everybody—feels like they are a member of a team and everybody is rowing in the same direction. People understand the mission of this institution. They come to work every single day, happy to work 36 with their colleagues and friends to fulfill that mission. You have no idea how rare that is among institutions. It doesn’t really exist at any other institution that I’ve been at for any time. It makes me incredibly proud that we have such a positive reinforcing culture where people just love to work here. That’s what I’m really proud of. It’s one of the hardest things to achieve but we have a team here that just does it. JW: Is there anything that you would like to add that we haven’t covered? CW: I put a lot of stock in having fun in my job. JW: It shows, in a good way. CW: And when I say fun, I don’t necessarily mean carnival ride fun. But, the kind of fun where at the end of almost every day you have a deep sense of satisfaction that things went right that day. Things went forward and when I advise students, I say, “Be sure to choose a career that’s fun. Because you’re going to spend a lot of time doing it.” And if your job isn’t fun, at least most of the time, well go do something else because life is too short not to have fun at what you do. And I have had enormous fun in my job here at Weber State. It has been a joy almost every single day. Sure, there are some days when you want to go home and kick the cat. I never actually kicked the cat. But, most days, the vast majority of days I get to go home and talk with Victoria about what happened that day. And it’s almost all joyful and that’s terrific, that’s just what I want and in my job. So, I have had a tremendous amount of fun being president of this institution. Things have gone, not universally well, but very well. 37 JW: It has been fun to see the two of you at events, when Victoria comes with you. There’s always this presence of the two of you and I think that’s nice for everybody across campus because it brings you in, you are human, and you are here and you are mixed in with the students. AH: It’s always given us two people to look up to. CW: She is tremendous. She has been my support for many years even before I was president. So coming to Ogden from Salt Lake was a joint decision. We would not have done it if we hadn’t both bought in completely. And moving from Ogden to Salisbury is a joint decision and she’s totally on board and if she weren’t we wouldn’t be doing it, because I rely on her a great deal. I rely on her to tell me when I’m wrong, to tell me when I’m right, to comfort me when I’m sad and to join in me in happiness when I’m happy. That’s really important, we work really well together. JW: Okay, I think that is all I have. We really appreciate you taking the time to do this today. CW: Thank you for the opportunity. 38