Oral History Program Brett Perozzi Interviewed by Michael Thompson 15 September 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Brett Perozzi Interviewed by Michael Thompson 15 September 2022 Copyright © 2025 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: Perozzi, Brett an oral history by Michael Thompson, 15 September 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Brett Perozzi conducted on September 15, 2022 by Michael Thompson. Brett shares his life story before discussing his time at Weber State University working in Student Affairs. Also present are Kandice Harris and Connie Lopez. MT: Today is Thursday, September 15, 2022. My name is Michael Thompson, and I'm here with Brett Perozzi to interview him about his time here at Weber State University. Also present is Kandice Harris and our video technician is Connie Lopez. We are in the Stewart Library on campus at Weber State University. So to begin, when and where were you born? BP: I was born in Rochester, New York in 1967—kind of the heyday, actually, of Rochester, New York, when Kodak and Xerox and Bausch + Lomb were all booming there. The population of Rochester today is probably less than it was when I was born 55 years ago. Good place, liked it; grew up there, and I was about 18 but was ready to leave. MT: What was it like growing up in Rochester? BP: Where we lived was a suburb of Rochester. It's called Irondequoit. There's an east and a west. I happen to be from east Irondequoit, the better one. It was almost adjacent to Lake Ontario, which was really neat. We had kind of that lake climate actually, which is good and bad. Good in the summer, bad in the winter. We had a lot of lake effect snow. I did come to enjoy winter though while I was there, probably because we just got a lot of snow and I learned to ski. The first time I ever skied out west was Utah, actually. I was a freshman in college, and I came out when my friend's brother went to the U. I was still living in Rochester. But that's my first exposure to Utah. Loved it, oh my gosh! You could fly into Salt Lake City and take public transportation to the slopes. It was pretty neat. 1 MT: That was awesome. As you were growing up, were you encouraged to pursue college education? BP: Yes, and that's a little bit of an interesting story, which I won't make long. My mother didn't go to college, and my father was the son of an immigrant Italian farmer who was probably unlikely to actually go to college either. But he was 19 when he went into officer training school for World War Two, and then we were losing so many troops that he got transferred out. He used to always say he went from the best deal in the Army to the worst deal right into the infantry, literally in foxholes on the front lines and things in Europe. It was pretty crazy, actually, but that brought with it the GI Bill. So when he came back from his time in Europe after the war, he went to Union College, which is really a fairly prestigious, small, private liberal arts institution in upstate New York—Schenectady, I think, or Utica. So I ended up not being a first-generation college student, primarily because of the GI Bill, which actually I'm teaching about in the higher ed leadership program tonight because it's a major milestone of American education. The point being, even though those circumstances, where my mother didn't go to college but my dad did through the GI Bill, it was totally always expected that I was going to go to college. It's pretty cool, actually, because I've spent my whole life learning about education and studying student habits and behaviors and things like that. Now I realize the privilege that I had is that I was going to college, and there is never any doubt about that, even from when I was in elementary school. It was encouraged in my household. MT: Okay. What year did you first go to college? BP: Let's see. I was a freshman in college in 1985. Don't tell me if you were born then or not. I don't even wanna know. KH: I was not born at that time. 2 BP: Okay. I went to the State University of New York at Potsdam, which is three hours north of Syracuse in New York. Most people don't even realize you can go three hours north of Syracuse. It's about ten miles from Canada. It's the northernmost institution and one of the first 50 colleges in the United States, actually. KH: Oh, that's cool. BP: Yeah. It's kind of neat. I went there mostly for the Crane School of Music. I was a music education major as an undergrad, and the Crane School of Music is one of the best in the Northeast, so. KH: What instruments do you play? BP: Well, you know, when I was there, I actually played like 12 different instruments relatively well, but that was a long time ago. I still play flute and saxophone, though, and I've done some things here at Weber. We do a thing every other year in the division of Student Affairs: “Student Affairs Got Talent.” I always do something. We actually sang last time, and it's always around Christmas time, so we did some Christmas carols. They made me look great. Seriously, I just had to sing the melody, and my two partners—one man, one woman—they did the harmonies. It's a lot easier to sing a melody anyway. MT: So what started your interest in music? BP: I got into it early in third grade in east Irondequoit. We were allowed to take an instrument, and that has changed over time in American higher ed about when students begin, and if in some regions. But I started playing saxophone in third grade and I got kind of good at it, and then I became really good for a while. I was well-connected in the school districts and things in the area, and so I decided to do something that I really loved and enjoyed. A true story is that my mother cried for almost a week when I told her that I was going to go into music. KH: Happy tears or sad tears? 3 BP: Really sad, yeah. She was so disappointed and kind of didn't really want me to know but couldn't help it. But I figured I was a leg up there, and I really did like it. I was into conducting at the time, so I was a drum major of three different organizations over a six-year period. It was exhilarating, really. It was really great. I loved it, and I think that's about it. What ended up happening was that I changed course over time, and I don't know if that's a question or not, but… MT: Keep going. That was going to be my next question. BP: Okay. I wanted to go to grad school and I was still in school mode, you know; I was still ready to learn and be in school. I still advise my undergrad students to this day that if you feel like you're still ready to go to school, keep going. If you feel like you really want to get out, get a job, do it. You can go back later, but if you still feel that pull, do it. So I did that. I went and got my master's degree right after my undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona. I decided to study higher education administration so that I could potentially teach or be an administrator at a college or university without the traditional pathway, which is kind of like elementary music kind of thing—middle school, high school. I want to be in, eventually, college. I thought this might be a way to bridge that and maybe even get there a little bit more quickly. But I still minored in music and minored in conducting in my master's program. I studied with some awesome conductors there, or administrator and conductor, and I found this thing called Student Affairs. I seriously didn't even know about it. I was the president of my interfraternity council at my undergraduate institution, and so when I went to interview for an assistantship at the Off-Campus Student Services Center, the woman stopped in the middle of the interview and she's like, “You're really in the wrong place.” At first I took her literally, and I'm like, “What?” 4 She's like, “No. You need to come upstairs with me.” She introduced me to this woman named Carol Thompson, who became a mentor of mine to this day, really. I got an assistantship working with fraternities and sororities at University of Arizona. Then I stayed on kind of the higher ed administration pathway the whole rest of my career to that point. MT: Okay. After you got your masters, did you go out and get a doctorate as well? BP: I worked for a few years. I got to that point where I was like, “Okay. I want to get a doctorate, but I need to make some money and I want to see what the real…” I kind of changed careers at that point, too, because I was planning to be in music education, and now suddenly I found I really enjoyed higher ed administration. So I went to Texas Tech University for my first job out of the University of Arizona, and I hadn't had culture shock actually moving from New York to Arizona until I moved to Texas. In Lubbock, Texas, I was like, “Oh my, this is so…” It was so different, and I didn't like it. I liked the university, though. Texas Tech had a lot going on, actually had some similarities to Weber State. There's a really strong culture. People kind of knew what the institution was about and where we were headed, and most people were all rowing in that same direction. There's a lot of similarities with that with Weber State. I did only stay for one year at Texas Tech, and then I went to Indiana University and I kept working there full-time for four years. I started my doctorate, and part of the reason why I started my Ph.D. there—no, actually, part of the reason why I took the job at IU was I knew they had one of the best higher ed admin programs in the country. I thought, “You know, this is a great job and there's this program there.” So I moved there after a year, and then I worked there for a total of six years, and I completed almost all of my coursework before I resigned from my job. I took a grad assistantship again, and I did that for two years while finishing—I 5 think I only had one class left actually, and then my dissertation, so a couple of classes, maybe, on my dissertation. I went part-time for two years. MT: Okay. After you finished the... I just blanked there. BP: No, by the time I earned the Doctorate... There is a person who is well-known in higher education administration circles. His name is George Kuh. He was my advisor as a Ph.D. student, and he used to tell me and others, “Do not leave here until you finish,” because it's a 50% attrition rate in education. Only 50% of people who start their degree finish, which I hadn't realized. I had his words always in the back of my head, you know: “Don't leave.” I got this great job offer at Colorado State, so I immediately left. He was pissed, too, actually, but he was committed to me finishing. He really was a solid mentor after that, so it was really good. He is really, really stringent, difficult in writing. He actually used to use red ink for giving comments on a dissertation, and that was before the time of really even prolific use of email and things like that. I would finish a chapter and I would FedEx it out on Monday and I would have it back by Friday from him. It was pretty impressive. He would do it apparently immediately, as soon as he got it, put it back in the mail and send it back to me. I took this job at Colorado State University. I was the director of the Campus Activity Center, and I kind of scored, is how I felt about it. I was right out of my Ph.D. program at the point when my education kind of outstripped my experience to some extent. I only really had like five years of work experience and a Ph.D. and I was able to get a director job. I was kind of happy about that. Good folks. Pretty big portfolio for a new director, too. I made some mistakes, which happens, you know, and you learn and you move on, that kind of thing. That's what I did next is I moved to Fort Collins. 6 In the meantime, though, my wife and I got married. I'll just quickly tell you, I won't take too much time on this, but she and I met at Indiana University. I had my dissertation research that I had to do that I alluded to before, and I already lined it up at two universities. Right before I met Teri, she got a job at one of the schools where I had already lined up my dissertation, and so it was kind of a small-world kind of a thing that happened. We were able to get to know each other a lot better during that time frame, and then we got married in Colorado after we moved to Colorado. MT: Okay. How long were you at Colorado State? BP: Four years. MT: Then did you come to Weber after that? BP: No. MT: Is that in-between? BP: Yeah, for a while I was moving around a lot, actually, but it was okay. We were young, we didn't have kids and you could do that kind of a thing. After that, we actually moved back to Bloomington, Indiana because I was recruited by the Association of College Unions International. Shepherd Union here, you know, almost every campus in the United States has a college union or a student center or a university center, whatever it's called. I had been working in that realm for most of my career—actually, all of my career. Up to that point, I had been associated with college unions and I was a volunteer in that organization. They recruited me, and their headquarters happened to be in Bloomington, Indiana, which is actually odd because usually these associations are either in Indianapolis or Washington, D.C. So being in Bloomington was a little bit different, but it was partially supported by Indiana University. 7 Teri and I both moved back there, and when we were in Colorado, Teri got a job at University of Northern Colorado, which is about a 40-minute drive over to Greeley on a stretch of road that isn't very safe in the winter. This was a good thing. Then she got a job at IU, so we were both in Bloomington: I was working at ACUI and she was working in IU, so it worked out well. Do you want me to go to the next step? MT: Yeah, if you want to just keep going until we get to Weber. BP: Okay. Let me move this along. From Bloomington, where we were—actually, I kind of want to tell you this story, even though it's partly germane. There was a person who I hired at ACUI who had been working in college unions for a long time, but she was retiring from her institution and wanted to do something different, take a different job. I learned so much from her, and it was really weird that I was supervising this person who is a big figure and had done all manner of things in college unions. She had actually interviewed for the job at Arizona State, which is where I went next, and she and this other fellow who I knew quite well were in the pool, and actually all three of them I knew because it's kind of a small circle of sorts. One of them didn't get offered the job and the other two turned it down, and so Arizona State went out and did another search. I was like, “Well, what the heck? I might as well apply and see.” I'm telling you this, I guess, because I teach the higher ed administration class here, and I talk with this about students, as I ended up getting that job. Who cares if it was the second round? No one hardly even knows that that was the case and you still won. I don't go into all that. Anyway, I moved to Phoenix after that, and I spent only about three years at Arizona State for a variety of reasons; mostly organizational culture kinds of things, and my personal values and the values of the institution were a little bit out of alignment. I was in a good situation there because I didn't have to leave, but I kind 8 of wanted to. Teri also worked at Arizona State—recreation is her area—so we were looking for jobs. A friend of mine told me about "Webber" State [laughs]. I was like, “Well, I'll look into this,” because he actually is still the president of North Dakota State University, Dean Bresciani. He called me and told me partly because his former associate vice president was now the vice president at Weber State: Jan Winniford. So Dean, who I had met in grad school—he's the one who got me into rock climbing, which is cool. I loved it until I got old—he and Jan knew each other. He said, “Yeah, I think you might really like this. Jan's a great person.” So I applied, and I was ready for the next step to move to an associate vice president. That's when I was hired here at Weber State in 2007 as the Associate VP for Student Affairs. MT: Okay, what was Weber State like when you first arrived? BP: There was something different about Weber State. I knew right from the minute I came here. Having worked at the University of Arizona—because I had that assistantship there. So I kind of worked there also—and then I worked at Texas Tech, Indiana, Colorado State, and Arizona State. I worked at five major universities before I came here, and we were looking for a place to be for a while because we had been moving. I talked with other people here and a lot of people were like, “Yeah, I just came here for one or two, three years maybe, and I loved it and I stayed.” I can see how Weber can do that, but we actually were looking for a place we wanted to be for a while. It's interesting a little bit, and I hope this is okay to say, but I wasn't looking for a salary cut necessarily. I wanted to take the next step, but I didn't want to go backwards in salary. What was being offered was a salary cut when I first came here, so I initially said no, even though I really, really liked it. We came into town and we're big outdoors people and things and we're like, “Oh, this is so great.” I 9 thought through it and I was like, “You know, we're only talking probably like a $9,000 overall difference, so should that really matter?” I was hemming and hawing, and they brought me back again to interview again. I met with some trustees and things, some real quality people. Kathryn Lindquist, actually, was one of them that I met with and who I still get to work with to this day. [She] is partially responsible for me being here because I came back and met with her and had some real heartfelt conversations, and I was like, “Boy, if trustees here are this down-to-earth and really invested in this institution and our culture, this is a pretty special place.” I ultimately talked with Jan, and I accepted the offer and came here. She made a commitment that she'd do everything she could to move the salary up over time, and she made good for the most part on it, so it worked out. MT: Okay. How has Weber State changed during your time here? BP: You know, I said I didn't prepare. I actually didn't, but I had a feeling you were going to ask that question. I need to be real honest that I believe Weber State has changed substantially in 15 years. The culture is still strong, but it's not as attractive to me as it once was. There was a forgiveness of sorts, or a giving the benefit of the doubt, that I really grew to appreciate in Weber State. There's a lot less of that now. I do think the pandemic is partially to blame for this. I think that there's a level of expectation that borders on unrealistic from time to time. All of these things in combination make me reflect on the fact that the culture of our organization really has changed pretty substantially, in my opinion, over the last 15 years. MT: While you were here, you've made some changes. You want to talk about the 50/50 program? BP: Yeah. MT: How did that come about? 10 BP: Oh, my gosh, that's great. I'm so glad you asked that. I didn’t think you were going to ask about that. I did some research early on in my career on student employment during college and began to get into the research and the literature about the benefits that experience can have on students. I was really interested in why students who work on campus between 12 and 15 hours a week are some of the most successful students in American higher education. It's kind of like, “What is it about this employment experience that makes a difference?” What people have primarily theorized and not proven is that students get to interact with each other. They get to interact with faculty and staff on an informal basis, and so they talk about classes, they talk about other things while working on campus. It creates a bond and a esprit de corps of sorts that has a positive impact on the metrics related to students' success. It's funny because in 2007, the association I used to work for asked me if I would author or edit a book on student employment through college. I said, “Yeah, that sounds great. I would be really interested in doing that.” So it took two years to publish the book, but it was pretty much the first and now the most recent book has come out. It's called A Good Job, and some of my colleagues have written it and a former grad student of mine. Didn't realize until I saw her, which was really wild. But they used my definition of what college employment is, so it's pretty satisfying. I mean, it was a long time ago and I don’t know that I was trying to make a difference necessarily, but this has that impact. I have two copies of that book on my bookshelf, one in hardcover and one in softcover that I got for free, because that's about all I got [laughing]. Bruce Bowen, who used to work here until recently, was the associate provost. He came into my office one day and he's like, “There's so much out there on the value of students working during college.” He started schooling me on 11 employment during college, and I was shocked then and I literally didn't know how to handle this. I went to my bookshelf, and I got one of the books and I'm like, “Bruce, I actually kind of wrote the book on this! Let's talk about this!” It was exciting. Bruce and I collaborated on that. It wasn't all me; it was really Bruce and me together. Then later, the Provost's Office and the VP for Student Affairs Office funded the 50/50 program. We've expanded on campus jobs by hundreds of jobs over a period of time, so it's been rewarding. MT: I know we definitely benefit from it. BP: Do you? Good. KH: Connie's one of our 50/50 students. BP: Good for you. CL: I really appreciate it. MT: [To Kandice] Do you have any questions? KH: I know you started a lot of programs here. Are there any that really stand out to you that you want to talk about? BP: Yeah, I think because I just came from a meeting with Dustin Grote, who is the faculty member now for the Higher Education Leadership Program. It's kind of a fascinating story, and I guess I'm supposed to tell some stories, right? Jan Winniford and I, in probably 2008, said, “Why don't we think about a master's program in student affairs and higher education?” So we went to some of the leadership in the Moyes College of Education and said, “Hey, what do you think about a master's program?” They were fully not interested. Actually, I was with Forrest Crawford, too, so it was Jan, myself, and Forrest, and we all went and met with some folks from the Moyes College and they're like, “The University of Utah has one. Why would we do that, and can we get approval anyway?” USU, I think, maybe was just starting their program back then too. I can't remember that for sure 12 though. So we let it go. It was such a strong no that we didn't even revisit it for 10 years probably. I hired a staff member long before that, though, and she and I worked together on a number of different things. She got her doctorate at the U while we were here. I don't remember exactly how it came up, but we were like, “Why don't we see again? It's been a decade and there's new leadership now.” Kristen had just come in as the dean of College of Education. We went and we met with Kristen—oh no, she wasn't dean yet, I don't think because we met with her. You don't usually meet with deans. It was Kristen and Louise Moulding, I think, were just the two people initially that we met with. So we pitched this program and they were like, “Are you kidding? This is great.” We were like, “Really?” We were super prepared and ready for rejection, and they were all over it. It was really great. They did the heavy lifting with Curriculog and getting it through the faculty senate. We did a lot of work on creating the general outcomes, the syllabi; we have to suggest faculty and all of these things to get a program up and running. We did all of that, but then they took it and they brought it through the faculty senate and through Curriculog and all of that. We had this program up and running in just over a year. It was like 14 months. KH: Oh, wow. That's impressive. BP: I know. Isn’t that great what synergy and collaboration can do? Yeah, it was really great. Now we have the opportunity to hire three faculty members in the College of Ed, and they asked me if I would be willing to be a part of the interviewing team. I was like, “Yeah, totally.” I was able to suggest that we have a lot of folks in Teacher Ed that focus on these other areas that we're looking at hiring. We don't have anyone in higher ed. These other areas all have faculty members already; higher ed doesn't have any, so it seems like we should kind of prioritize it. It ended up where 13 people agreed that we probably should, and so we hired Dr. Grote as a result, and he's just doing great. He really got his arms around the program. He's revamping the curriculum. We had a big meeting in my office about three weeks ago. I have a big screen now because of COVID, and we were able to pull up the curriculum and work through it, and it's on a great path. Then we had another faculty member, our senior international officer, Dr. Wang, when she was here for about three years. She was a huge help, too. She also helped us create some reciprocal relationships with schools in China. We have lots of folks who come from Tianhua College. I also do a lot of international work; international student affairs is my other research area, so employment during college, and international student affairs. I've done some work to recruit students. We just met with the Chinese embassy about four weeks ago, and it looks like we're going to have another program that will be a feeder not just to our higher ed, more master’s of Ed. There won't be as many higher ed students in that because we're partnering with Weber and Davis school districts to bring Chinese dual-language immersion instructors. We're going to bring Chinese folks over who will take graduate programs at Weber State, and then they'll be able to get their foot in the door with the school districts. The school districts, though, are kind of selective. They have to make sure they do a good job teaching these young people. Not every person can be hired, but through internships and practicum and student teaching and things, the districts will get to see a lot of these new folks coming in. It's a great partnership. That was kind of a long story, but the higher ed leadership emphasis within the master’s of higher ed is something that I'm really proud of. It's not really tied specifically to my administrative job, though. KH: It's something from here at Weber. 14 BP: Yeah. I mean, it really is great. We have a full internship program. My division benefits from that tremendously and the students do. Interns take a lot of work, but they benefit a ton also. It's a show of support for the educational process to have interns and things, and so it's been a win-win relationship, I think. KH: I saw that you also helped start the peer mentoring program. What was that like, and how did it start? BP: It was a little more difficult, but all senior administrators need to work with their team to anticipate trends and ways to help students be successful. I mean, that's what your job is. We have known for years that students working with other students is about the most powerful success mechanism that there is in American higher education. The time had come where we needed to act on that. So I worked with— this is a little bit of an aside, but it's important that Madonne Miner was the former provost, and we worked together collaborating on requests from the legislature years ago. Actually, Jan and Madonne kind of paved the way. No offense, but I really believe that the female leadership style, stereotypically, is really quite excellent and we need more of that style. I would almost say women, period, but that's the style. I don't want to take this out of context, but this is a great example. When we had Jan and Madonne who were like, “I'm doing this same thing and I'm doing this. Why don't we just do this together?” So Madonne and I were able to continue that forward. The reason I say this is we didn't have the money for a mentoring program, so I had to go to the state. Madonne and I had lots of conversations about all the things we want to do around student success. I prioritize that really high. It was probably almost seven years ago now when we received funding; we went out and we hired Olga Antonio, and Olga is fabulous. We got a great employee and a champion for student mentoring all at the same time. 15 We have since put resources into our peer mentoring program; we provided a beautiful space. They have a really nice suite and it's so rewarding to walk by the students who are hanging out there and they sit and get to know them. It's really great. We added a second full time staff member who actually had come in through… She's a former student, and she went to the University of Utah to get her master's degree. In the process, she won a national award—a Rising Star, I think is what it was called. So we sent her to the conference so that she could receive it that year. I called the University of Utah because by then, she was a grad student there. I know the vice president there really well, and we split the cost to send her to the conference. It happened to be in Hawaii, so she got to go to Hawaii, which was awesome. Then we just recently added another full-time person to the area to focus primarily on faculty and staff mentoring of students. So you have two focused primarily on peer-to-peer mentoring, and then you have one person who helps faculty and staff. It's really more so helping staff, because faculty are kind of de facto mentors already because of the classroom experience. But we have a person who does all of those things now too. That took a little more time than the higher ed program or the 50/50, but we've got a super solid program. One other thing about it is Olga does things right. You're not going to care too much about this, but to be super good in these areas, you have to be very overt and transparent about what the learning outcomes are that you want the students to learn. You have to somehow teach those. They don't just happen. You have to have a curriculum of sorts that helps support what those are, and then you have to measure them. You've got to have all three of those things, and she does it. She even has the reporting piece about how you tell other people about it. She, Olga, is also responsible for the success of the mentoring 16 program. That sure wasn't just me. I mean, I had some initial ideas, but she is the one who has really made it what it is today. MT: Then you helped with some of the new buildings on campus? BP: I did. How do you guys know all these things? KH: Research, we're good at it! BP: Wow. MT: What was that like? BP: Honestly, exhilarating. Just amazing. The first building that I worked on was Wildcat Village. It's a set of three buildings and we built them in that way, too. It's actually Building 1, Building 2, Building 3. We still basically call them Building 1, 2, and 3. We never secured a donor for those, but Stewart-Wasatch Hall used to be number two and that's the most significant one. [To Connie] Are you familiar with that? Do you live there by chance? CL: I live at UV, but I've been to Wildcat Village. BP: Okay, great. I had done some smaller renovation work and things at other jobs, but I had never actually built a building from the ground up, and so to become familiar with that process was really great. I've often thought about facilities management kinds of things because you can walk around, you can see the fruits of your labor; student affairs folks don't always get that, necessarily. It's a little bit more intrinsic. Being able to be involved with those facilities is great. The added challenge was we built them over a three-year period. We did one the first year, one the second and the third year, and I was insistent with the team: “Building 1 must look brand-new in three years because this is going to be a village. This isn't three separate buildings. This is a village,” and they did it. I mean, it was impressive to see it as a three-yearold building looked pretty much brand new with students living in it day and night, which is not an easy task. They really stepped up. It was great. 17 The second building that I'm going to mention that most people do not even know about is the Davis D3 building. Student affairs and student fees paid millions of dollars for the common spaces and the kitchen areas that are out there. It's not going to be even realized until several more buildings are built out there. What we did with that second building—because D2 is the first one, then D3 was the second building—we built a kitchen essentially, and food services that can support lots of people. It was overbuilt. We're looking at kind of a 40-year plan, and that in itself was really kind of exciting to work with. What kind of footprint do you need, and drainage systems, and hood systems, and all of these different kinds of machinery and everything? Then we did the ballroom space, the common areas, the study rooms. We were responsible for all of that. One of the things I wanted to mention, though: someone asked, “What was it like?” Well, with D3 I spent three hours a week every Wednesday, 8-11, for three years with the same people out in a little trailer on Davis campus. That's kind of what it took from the initial kind of programming—they call it, at the very beginning—through your finished product was three years, and we met every Wednesday for three hours. So you got to know these people really well and everything. Actually, a little piece of color to this too, is that back in the day when—you’re probably not going to necessarily know these people but Kevin... I know a Kevin Krueger and now I'm blanking on Kevin's last name. Anyway, Dennis Montgomery was the fire marshal. Bruce Daley was the project manager. Mark Halvorson, I forget exactly what Mark's role was. And then, Kevin, the point of all of this and help me to labor it a little bit, but you may have noticed it when I was coming in, I'm pretty short. These guys are all like 6'6", every one of them! Oh, and it was so bizarre, kind of just like being in a different land with these giant people. It was just 18 really kind of funny. We got along great. It was a really rewarding experience. That experience was slightly different than the other ones. I don't know exactly why, but maybe because we were slightly removed from the Ogden campus and there was just this bond of sorts that happened during that, which was really kind of neat. The next one was the Wildcat Center for Health, Education, and Fitness. I can't remember exactly, but the Wildcat Center, and so we added that on to the Swenson Stromberg, and that was a fun project. That was the first one we got students integrally involved also. One of the students who was in the interior design program, she got a job out of that with one of the contractors who was part of that process. Then I think, you know, that building has gone on to be super popular with students. Probably the pinnacle of these new construction projects was the Outdoor Adventure and Welcome Center. That's award-winning. You know, it's literally won awards. That's been really rewarding to see that thing and to participate in that and climb on the wall in there and, you know, to have meetings in there and stuff too, is actually funny, though. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a meeting in there. A couple of days before, it was for a birthday celebration. I was going over there. The point is, I come in the doors and I start going to the classroom on the other side where the birthday thing is happening. There are people who work there and they're like, “Oh, can we help you?” I'm like, “Oh, I'm just going over here.” “Oh, you can go here.” And they're kind of telling me where to go. I mean, I thought to myself. Do I say, “Yeah, I designed this building?” But, you know, they don't know and who cares really? But I thought it was kind of funny. MT: Yeah, that is funny. So you started here as an associate VP? BP: Yeah. 19 MT: And then when Jan left is when you became the VP. Was that always a plan to eventually become a VP? BP: It was my plan, yeah. I don't know if that's exactly what you meant, but just a little backstory on that is when I was at Arizona State, I wasn't totally convinced I wanted to be a vice president at the time. I enjoyed my job. I was learning. I was continuing to learn. And then I had a couple of experiences where I thought, no, I actually want to be a role model and model what I think leadership should be and show people you can do the right thing and be successful also, because sometimes—I don't know, I won't get into that. It just rekindled my desire to be a vice president. So that's kind of when I took the next step to be an associate VP, and Jan and I got along really well, and so we worked together great. We worked together for 10 years. She knew she was going to retire at some point, but she didn't actually think it was going to be when she did retire. She figured it would be a little bit later than that, but she ended up, she was only like 62, I think, when she retired. So I was appointed interim VP, which was good. But it's also a weird situation to be in because you don't know how much you should or shouldn't do necessarily. And if you know you're going to apply for the job, it’s almost like — I had to just tell a staff member recently too, and I've said this to other people, but when you're an internal candidate, you've pretty much been interviewing for the job every day. Every day you were interviewing because you had people watching what you're doing, you're interacting with people, and you were or were not creating relationships. That all happens during a search process. People don't forget what happened, even if it was eight years ago or whatever. So I knew that and I was okay with that, actually. Generally, I was like, you have to make some tough decisions from time to time that people aren't always going to like. But I felt pretty confident, although I really only did think my chances were about 50/50 of getting 20 the job. It's partly because of the makeup of the president's cabinet at the time and who I thought he might be looking for. It's all about timing with jobs. I mean, you could be a super qualified, great candidate for a position, but if it's not exactly what the institution is looking for at the time, you don't get the job. So I mean, again, I tell younger folks, don't fret over a job. It's not necessarily you. You may have knocked it out of the park, but it's the skill set and the personality that the institution is looking for at the time. So anyway, I ended up getting the job. I served six months, a little over six months, I think, as interim, and then I got the permanent position, I think it was March of 2018. So then I served another four years. MT: During your time you've been able to serve under three different presidents. Do you mind talking a little bit about what it was like to work under Ann Millner, Chuck White, and now Brad? BP: Executive leadership is fascinating and it's difficult and it's part of what is, as a matter of fact, it's the topic of my class tonight. Leadership and governance is the topic for tonight. I just approach it by listening and learning kind of a thing and do what you're told and do what you're asked, what's asked of you and be valuable. As you know, every boss wants something a little bit different. There's always one of the most significant balances in managing hundreds of people, potentially, is the level of detail the senior leader needs to have at any point in time. So you might have a boss, president in this case, who would say, “How many student mentors did you have last year?” And one president, you might say, “You know what, I'm not sure, I'll let you know in 20 minutes,” and they might be okay with that. There might be another who would be like, “You don't know that,” you know? And so you're always kind of trying to balance to what extent do you let your people 21 do their work and stay out of their way with, how much information do you need to have on hand on a pretty regular basis and to what level of detail? I find that kind of fascinating between various presidents. I will tell you one thing that I think is fascinating is I received more emails from Brad Mortensen in his first month on the job than I did the entire time of Chuck White. KH: Oh, wow. BP: That's no exaggeration. I mean, I only receive… I can count on both hands and feet, probably the number of emails I receive from Chuck, and I got three times that in Brad's first month, or two anyway. So it's just different leadership styles. No, not one is better than or worse. It's just different. I was always also intrigued by Ann's keen focus on the legislature, and they all kind of have had that to some extent, because they have to. I also never assumed that was an aspiration of hers. Now to see her as a state senator, I was like, “Well, that makes sense.” She was really embedded in that and she likes that and she believes in it. So that's all that comes to mind for me. I think every presidential transition, though, is a little bit dicey. I do not subscribe to the old-school, you hand in your letter of resignation when a new president comes in, and that's kind of an ethos. Actually some of my colleagues did that. I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm not resigning. I like this job. That just seems so perfunctory. I mean, what if they say, okay, bye. Actually Barry — I've listened to Barry's oral history, Barry Gomberg. He is one of the people who told me one time, “Yeah, you tender your letter of resignation. If they want to keep you, they keep you.” I was like, “Yeah, I don't think so.” MT: Oh, that's interesting. KH: Are there any fond memories or anecdotes from any of the presidents you'd be willing to share? 22 BP: Yeah. Ann Millner… Sorry. I almost couldn't believe it. I went to a class. It was at the Davis campus, and there was probably 15 students, and Ann came and spoke to that group of students. I remember sitting next to a student next to me and it's like, do you realize how rare this is? That the president of the university is coming to this kind of random class and speaking to? I had never experienced it in, you know, at that time, almost 20 years of higher education. I was just like, pretty impressive person, pretty impressive place is what I thought. That's the only thing that springs to mind, though. Ann is an impressive person. There's no doubt, and she did a really nice job. MT: Okay. Let's see. What kind of resistance or battles have you faced throughout your career? BP: There's a personality type that I've encountered from time to time where an individual thinks they can do everyone's job better than them. And it's not just me necessarily either, it's other people. And that becomes a challenge because they're not really thinking from the lens of that other person. I had a wise mentor telling me one time, “Always think about the issue from your boss's perspective.” There may be things they know, that you don't know, and that's why a decision's being made or what have you. That's one of the things that I think has actually changed about the culture at Weber State over time, too. I believe that 15 years ago there was more of a — “You know, maybe I didn't like how that turned out, but I'm pretty sure they had the best interest of us and the institution in mind.” Not sure if people think that as much anymore. It's almost as if, “Oh, there must be a motive to why they're doing that,” instead of, “This person's trying to do the right thing for us.” I think that's something that actually has changed a little bit here over time. Oh, my gosh. You have to recenter though on the kernel of the question. MT: What resistance or battles have you faced throughout your career? 23 BP: I have spent an inordinate percentage of my time on a few people. I tell my students all the time, it's all about people. The old adage of, you spend 90% of your time on 10% of the people and what, if you ever heard that? But there's truth to that. There are a couple of employees from time to time who have a perspective one way or another about something that is not necessarily good for the organization. The amount of time that one must spend working on those issues is a detriment to the world. I mean, I guess that's hyperbole, but you don't have time to spend them on, “How do we help these students be more successful or how do we help these champions of these programs move these things forward?” Because we're spending all this time on these people who typically aren't performing or performing in ways that aren't acceptable. Don't get me wrong. It's not people who disagree with me or think we should be going a different direction. That's totally different. I'm talking about issues where Human Resources has to be involved, and there are significant involved processes, typically legally-oriented as well, that take so much time and psychological energy that it's super unfortunate. But I'm not alone in that, though, either, and it's not just Weber State either, but I think that is part of the reason why we can't always move forward as quickly or as well as we would like to. Actually, I read an article recently that talked about that being one of these, so the thrust of the article was basically, why does higher ed take so long to do things, essentially? And the other one is turnover, and particularly in top-level leadership roles is the turnover. Once somebody leaves an executive role, it takes tremendous organizational energy to get back on to that track or a track. So that keeps us from moving forward to some extent. There's some of that here. But as I mentioned before, some people come here and they love it and they want to stay, and that's great. It doesn't matter if you're 25 or 85 — which I had an employee who was close to that. As long as you're learning and you're changing and you're open, 24 it doesn't matter what age you are. It's the skill and the ability and the willingness to perform that makes all the difference. MT: Okay. How did the pandemic affect student affairs and your job in particular? BP: I'm still sorting that out. I was kind of fascinated by the pandemic, and I have published a number of articles about global student affairs and how the pandemic has impacted decision-making of colleges around the world. Not so much decisionmaking, but the involvement of student affairs folks in those decisions. What kinds of students were they working with and were impacted most and things like that. Doing this research during the pandemic, I felt, actually helped me a little bit in terms of leading. Honestly, people needed assurances and my sense was, you couldn't provide assurances was the problem, you know, that everything was… nobody knew. Nobody ever dealt with it, you know. So you had to provide as much parameter, I think, as possible; engage people, communicate regularly. I felt as though the Division of Student Affairs during the pandemic really kicked butt. We led in a lot of areas and some of it, I took some liberties as the senior person in the area to say, this is what we're going to do. I don't know if I was right, but people wanted something. So I talked with my team, and as I’m saying, it's almost always with my senior team deciding. But during the pandemic, it wasn't actually always with the team because I would — oh, my gosh, we worked... I'm kind of laughing, but it's like, when the pandemic hit, I worked more hours than I've ever worked in my life. There are people saying, “Oh, people are taking advantage of working remotely,” and I'm just like, “Are you [expletive] kidding me? People are killing themselves to make this right.” I was on the phone constantly with the president and Dane LeBlanc and so many things about the pandemic impacted student affairs. International students, most impacted student group. They couldn't get home. You know, their borders 25 were closed. Guys, I'm sorry I'm so emotional, this is kind of crazy. Sorry. But I felt for these students, what were they going to do? So we had to figure out ways to help and support them. I could kind of go through all of the different impacted areas. Counseling and psychological services, they weren't in the habit of providing remote services, and so they were kind of freaked out about this and worried about confidentiality, and come to find out, the students loved it. Although, actually, the students are moving away from it now, though; given the opportunity to choose one or the other, they're choosing in-person now. But I think part of the reason why I'm kind of emotional about this is I do think that the pandemic has been, and I mentioned it before, one of the primary drivers of the culture change at Weber State. Coming out of the pandemic, even though I realize we're not still fully out of it, was almost more difficult than when we were right in it, because you had to make decisions right then. That's why I say too, I didn't always have time to consult with my team. I had to use my best judgment and be like, “Okay, we’ve got to do this now.” I think those things generally worked out okay. But you also had staff who now were realizing they can do a lot of their job remotely, and you had students saying, “You know what, I'm totally okay with this Zoom thing for my sociology class.” I find now that students kind of want a little of both. Well they want it all, not both. But I think we did a good job, but I tell you, it was difficult. But I'm also really proud of our division. During the pandemic, I felt like we were providing a lot and we did our own town halls where — we had the university ones, but I did regular town halls with all staff and then I did them with all directors. We kept communicating. We let people vent and cry and whatever. I didn't typically cry on those Zoom calls because you do need strong leadership and you have to make sure that people feel comfortable and confident in that kind of thing. 26 KH: Would you actually talk about how you helped the international students during the pandemic? What was done for them? BP: We did a lot for international students in terms of, like, emergency grants and things that some of them needed. We had to, in some cases, find them places to stay, and that was primarily the residence halls. A lot of it was University Village also where they stayed. It got complicated with quarantining and things too, because at one point we had almost all international students. So one of the things that I learned through my research on this is that some institutions just closed the residence halls. Everybody had to leave, including international students. We didn't do that, even though this is one of those things that's really tough, though. So the person who's leading our pandemic charge for Weber State is like, “Get these students out of the halls. They've got to go. They have to go.” Our director, you know, several kind of levels in the hierarchy down was like, “Hang on, what are we going to do? I mean, what are the international students going to do?” And so I had to fight to some extent to be like, “No, we're not closing the residence halls because these students have needs. We just can't, you know, get rid of them.” It's interesting that not everybody understands student affairs, and I don't understand accounting all the time either. But one quick example that ties that building together with students is to be sustainable. When we were building these new residence halls, some of the sustainability folks were like, “Oh, when the plug load gets to 40 amps or whatever, it's going to have to shut off.” We're like, “Would you do that in your house?” I mean, this is not an academic building. People live here. If they plug in three devices, they plug in three devices. You can't shut them down because they have three devices. It just popped 27 into my mind that we all have to communicate, so that we understand what others do and do the right thing for the institution. MT: Yeah. Do you have any questions? CL: I was going to ask a question. You said you worked with student affairs closely at Davis Campus. Who did you work closely with? Because I'm doing oral history with Leslie Loeffel. BP: Oh, great. CL: So just what I was wondering, do you work closely with students there as well? BP: Yeah. Leslie's great. CL: Yeah, I read the stories from her as well. BP: Yeah. Leslie's the kind of person you could ask her to do anything, and she would. She could and would do it. She led Davis for about a year when Bruce Davis passed away. She and Kelly Simmerick, two folks together, they co-led the Davis campus. Leslie also has some of the best questions of any person in my entire division. Seriously, she would be like, “Okay, now why are we doing that? And do you think that's best?” I mean, seriously, really, really great questions, and from that came better answers. So I always really appreciated Leslie. We made some changes there in organizational structure because I had worked at multi-campus institutions before. I was not convinced that the way we were structured was the best for students, and so Leslie helped when we wanted to implement this change to where all student affairs departments are responsible for programs and services for students, period. It doesn't matter if they go to Davis campus. I mean, what are they supposed to do? There's nobody there to do it. You have to provide those services in some way. We got into online education, too, well before the pandemic. Again, something that set us up a little bit ahead of the curve because we were already meeting with Continuing Ed. and online education to 28 figure out what these online students want and need and how does student affairs provide that? Then about a year and a half later, the pandemic hit, so we were already moving in that direction to help those students. Leslie was a big part of that, to make sure that she was always like, “Remember Davis. Remember Davis.” MT: You mentioned some of the topics you’ve written on — student jobs and international student affairs. What are some other topics that you've written that you enjoyed? BP: Yeah, you know, interestingly, I had a mentor early on in the writing research space who told me, “Don't write about anything and figure out what you want to write about and research, early in your career and try to stay to that as much as you can.” I kind of took that advice. Really the only other writing that I have done has been around, kind of, student engagement generally and assessment of programs and services. So I did some of those early on, but then I have tried to stay as focused as I could. It's interesting, and I suppose worthy of saying, that I am one of the foremost experts on student affairs and services globally in the world. I know my friends are. I mean, there's only like four or five of us who have done this kind of research in these kinds of publications. A lot of people don't know that at Weber State, because it's not a core element necessarily of my job here, but I've always been a scholar-practitioner, you know: someone who's primarily an administrator, but I have always taught and done research as well. So, yeah, I appreciate that question because I don't get to talk about that actually very often. KH: As an executive person, is it expected that you publish as much as faculty are expected to publish? BP: No. As a matter of fact, in some situations, it's discouraged. MT: Okay. 29 BP: Yeah, not here. Well, teaching is, though there is a point in time where there is some momentum around not allowing staff to teach or to teach as much as some were. I mean, I understand the argument is like, “Well, how can they possibly do their job if they're also teaching?” But I pushed back against that pretty hard because, you know, most of these folks are higher education professionals and teaching is part of that. They're not pretending they're full-time faculty and they're not doing the same things, but they have the skill sets to teach these programs and topics and classes. So it seems like this makes a lot of sense. I've always said that I'm a higher education administrator who has happened to work in student affairs. Student affairs has been kind of my pathway, but I see myself anyway as being a higher ed administrator, not necessarily a student affairs person, although I guess I primarily am. MT: Kind of going back to the pandemic and around the same time as all the protests with George Floyd and that, how did that impact student affairs here at Weber? BP: That had a relatively significant impact. I think there were a few students who weren't as satisfied as they wanted to be with some of our programs and services, and they were really pretty vocal about the situation. I think there could have been some things we could have done differently early on, but yet there also was a little bit of a reluctance to work together also, which I wonder how much of that was kind of pandemic-influenced? I don't really know. But I will tell you, this is the first time in my career, so I have been doing this for 33 years, and there is a lot of joy and satisfaction that comes out of working with students who are pissed off about something. It happens all the time, you know, and you come together with usually administrators, sometimes faculty, and you work together and you come to a resolution. There is a basic satisfaction all around from getting to "Yes" with students. 30 This is the first time in my career where I felt like nothing was working, and it was a one-way street and not a two-way street. That might be something I might not want in the transcripts now that I think about it, but it really was not — there was a weird tension and a lack of understanding that we're on the same side. We want you to be successful. Also, it was like, why are you doing this to us? Let's work together. I'll give you a quick example since I'm down this road now. I was asked to go to a student Senate meeting, which I had always appreciated, which by the way, is slightly different because I was always part of student Senate. I sat at the table with the senators. I had my own name tag, as well as the student body president and the primary adviser for the group. Well, after the pandemic, that changed. I was like a guest now in Senate, which felt weird, but, you know, I don't intrude on student processes. If that's what they want to do, that's okay. So they invited me to come, to talk about the progress that had been made to assist, particularly, one group of our students. Super excited about it. I'm like, “Oh, this is great. We need more communication. I can talk about all these great things that are happening.” So I went there and I almost got shouted down and I was kind of like, “Wait a minute! We're doing all these things that we want to do together and to be successful, and yet you're like literally yelling at me.” I mean, it was very bizarre, honestly. It was bizarre and I had never encountered that before. So, learning experience. But I think some pandemic issues, it somehow crept into that whole thing. MT: Did you have a hand in the LGBTQ support center at all? BP: Yeah, I did. That was mostly Jan though, my predecessor and the prior provost, also. But I was very much involved with the modification of the preferred names, the processes related to changing one's name, the banner feeds actually getting to faculty roles so that students aren't misgendered during class and things like that. 31 But I tell you what, that was a really difficult and long road. I got folks together in the Miller Administration boardroom and it filled — all the people involved — filled almost that entire room. This was probably five years ago, and this just all got completed like two months ago. Cori Horne also, by the way, is really primarily responsible for making that happen. But I initially provided the forum for us to get together and talk through it. There's a lot of IT backend to it. It wasn't so much like political or ideology pushback or anything. It was really more about the systems and the operational aspects of making things happen. But yeah, that has now taken place. MT: Okay. Do you have any other questions? KH: So recently, Weber's working to become an emerging Hispanic-serving institution. Have you been helping with that at all? BP: I have. KH: What has been the process for that? BP: Yeah, okay. Good question. As a matter of fact, I just asked our new eHSI executive director to come to my class next week. So she's going to come next week, it's via Zoom next week, and she's going to talk about it. But yeah, I helped in the very beginning. Part of the reason why is that those germinal ideas came from my assistant vice president, Enrique Romo, and he was the one who became aware of HACU, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, and he became a member. He's attended some of the conferences. It was at about the same time as the senior leadership was also saying, “Oh, hey, we have some opportunities here.” But Enrique was really kind of that initial seed to move things forward on that. He and I would meet weekly and we would talk about these things, and so we kind of helped move that initiative forward. That actually led to something else, which 32 was the creation of the new Division of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. That's a whole other piece that I was super supportive of. This is an interesting lesson in leadership, though, because to create that division, we took areas within student affairs and we moved them to the new division. So there are people who are unhappy with me that I didn't advocate to keep them in student affairs. I'm kind of like, that should not be the reward for administrators is hoarding stuff. Their rewards should be working together as a university for the good of students and the organization. I was actually pretty proud that we had created some of these programs like the LGBTQ Center. We had nurtured other areas, and now we're picking them up and elevating them to a whole new division of EDI to represent, symbolically, the importance of this to Weber State. So I was integrally involved with that and proud of it, and it was interesting to me to get that kind of backlash to some extent, like, “Oh, I'm weak and I'm letting areas go,” and I'm like, “You know, this is what should be happening. This is a good thing.” Then I think people thought maybe I wasn't being transparent and I'm like, “Yeah, no, I'm totally serious about this.” They're kind of tied together to some extent, but I think it's a really good move for us to look at becoming an emerging Hispanic-serving institution. I think we owe it to our community. Our community is a third Latinx, so why should we not be thinking about, how are we going to have a vibrant community here for that population? KH: So I know that the new division was created just this year. When did you start working towards becoming the emerging Hispanic institution? BP: It was before that. I actually don't totally remember that. It's probably been at least two and a half years, though. Two to two and a half years, probably? I also created a full-time advisor for DACA and undocumented students. That was one of those 33 things that's similar to a mentoring program where you really got to, kind of, keep an eye on what's coming and try to be out in front of that. As a matter of fact, I had this curious conversation with a student about a month ago who was really upset that we weren't doing enough or doing more for particularly DACA students. I listen to this stuff. I was like, “Okay, good. I want to know this, where are you coming from, etc…” And at one point, she was super upset. I had to just say, “We have to agree to disagree, I think,” because if we hadn't had the foresight to actually create this position, we wouldn't even be where we are right now. I realize it's not enough and it's not quick enough for you, I get it. But again, let's work together, though, and make this better and see, how do we add resources? How do we leverage student experience and student input and things like that into it? She was super receptive and is an excellent student. She's in a lot of leadership roles and things. So I feel like that's kind of how it's supposed to be as compared to what I was describing a little earlier, is, okay, let's do this together. It's not your responsibility as the student, but if we partner, it's going to happen more quickly. It's going to be better and it's going to be more of what you are looking for if we work together. So that was a good example of a positive outcome, I think, with that. KH: With creating that DACA position, was the university supportive of it? Was the state legislature supportive of it? Did they even have any say in that sort of thing? BP: Part of leading, I think, is you need to try to stay out in front of trends, whether it's popular or not necessarily. I need to leave it at that. KH: Okay. MT: I think just a couple more questions. How have you become a mentor to others looking to go into higher education administration? 34 BP: I've been doing that for a long time. I have become a little more cynical as I've gotten older. It's a very rewarding career and you have to be ready for what you're getting into, too. As a matter of fact, it wasn't my idea, but I was on a panel for the Utah NASPA. NASPA's our professional association. We have a Utah chapter and the vice presidents came together to do a panel of more seasoned people, kind of a thing. I think it was James from USU who coined the title of our panel: Be Careful What You Wish For. That's kind of what I'm getting at a little bit is I see a lot of younger people in particular — it's funny, I never used to talk about that, but I'm feeling older nowadays. But there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of political balancing that one has to do. There's a lot of human resource kinds of things that are very serious issues. You're dealing with people's lives. I've also seen some people who don't quite get the gravity of that, that this is a person's job. It's kind of their everything, really. Whether you, like, don't like, agree, disagree, everyone is treated with respect and it's tough to do. I guess the final part of it is you don't get paid very much, as I think we all kind of know — until you get to some of the executive levels, the salaries are actually pretty good. But that's a long time, you know, to work through that. So I have been a major champion of salary increases at the institution. As matter of fact, I hope some who know me, that will at least be part of my legacy, is that I have consistently fought for increased salaries where, when I first began, human resources would call me and say, “You can't hire that person at $33,000 because you're going to put out of equity all of these other people.” I was like, “Well, tell me who the people are and I'll raise their salaries too!” And they laughed and I'm like, “I'm dead serious.” And eight years later they would call me and say, okay, “Here are all the people who are going to be out of equity if Carl hires this person at this salary.” 35 I'm like, “Okay, we're going to raise everybody's salaries then.” It's a smallish thing, but I felt like I changed the culture around that a little bit, and I'm kind of proud that we've been able to make a change. It's not like everybody's making big bucks or anything, of course, but we've made a difference. I also am a huge supporter of supplemental pay and believe me, not everyone is. But if you are doing work that is clearly outside of your position description, you should be fairly compensated for that extra work, and it's another way to get super low-paid people additional money. You can usually use one-time funds, which is splitting hairs a little bit, but one-time money is a lot easier to come by than base dollars to pay them higher salaries. So I really am in favor of that. This all comes back for, have you been mentoring or bringing people into the field? Yes, but I do it with a little more hesitancy now because I want to be sure people know and understand what they're getting into. That yes, this can be a very rewarding career, but you also have to understand what the ups and downs potentially are going to be, and it's not for everybody. It's particularly not for men, apparently. Seriously, because the attrition of men out of student affairs is like double what it is for women. Most of my team are women. KH: Why do you think that is? BP: I think it's a helping field. I think somewhat stereotypically, I think women are drawn perhaps to helping fields moreso. I also think we have a societal kind of norm that moves genders in certain ways and provides cues, and maybe barriers to some extent, around certain things. I mean, I think we're getting there though. We've got lots of STEM initiatives and women in business and women in engineering and lots of kinds of programs that are designed to really support all people, which I think helps a lot. My higher ed class right now is 15 students and two are men. MT: Interesting. 36 BP: But that also allowed me to spend time on gender equity. I had a director one time write me a truly nasty email, actually, about how there are gender issues in the division and other people in that person's category are earning more and blah blah blah. I was like, “Wait a minute, we just did this like three weeks ago. What are they talking about?” So I went to my finance person. I'm like, “Let's look at this data. Maybe we missed.” As it ended up, this person who was a woman was the exact mean of all of the salaries. It just happened that way. There was like 12 people lower, 12 people above her. I was able to write back and say, “You know, the 12 people who earn less than you do in the same classification are about four men and eight women. Those who earn more than you are, like, nine women and two men or 10 women and two men.” I don't remember exactly how it came out, but I knew because we had just done it like three weeks ago, where we had moved people's salaries around to make sure we didn't have gender equity issues. But I'm not afraid of the question, though, either, because I think it's a good one and let's make sure we're getting it right. If we're not, again, part of the culture change, I think we've seen as if we were out of equity, I would have made it right. I feel like sometimes people will say, “See, we're out of equity,” instead of, “Oh, that's great. Now we're in equity.” You know, it's a subtle thing, but I feel like there's this little bit of cynicism or something that has crept into our culture in some way. MT: Okay. Just a last question. Are there any other memories of Weber State or your career that you want to share? BP: So the only thing that popped into my mind right now, maybe because we spoke about it briefly earlier, was just that our division has had fun as well as worked hard. We do some fun things like the Student Affairs Got Talent thing. I think people really look forward to it. There's a lot of silliness and minute to win it games and things in between. I have always said for years, you can work with other people if you like 37 them or you respect them, and if you can have both, it's a huge bonus. So many of our folks have both for one another that it's been a really positive place to work. There's a lot of camaraderie. We can have different ideas and different opinions. It's kind of like how higher education should be. You know, you have differences of opinion and you come together and you talk about things and you learn from one another. I have felt like we have fostered that over time in the Division of Student Affairs. KH: You mentioned earlier on that people don't understand what student affairs is. Could you give a kind of a brief description of what that entails? BP: Yeah. When it comes down to it, student affairs professionals are trying to help students be as successful as possible. Student success is going to look very different for every student. You have to take both a broad approach to students generally, but you have to have individualized support and recognition also. The literature tells us that one of the most important reasons why a student stays enrolled in college or leaves is if they know if someone cares about them. That can be anybody. It doesn't have to be the psychology professor. It might actually be the person who is bringing up food in the residence hall, you know, this hamburger who they see every day. He knows that the student orders the same hamburger every day, that kind of thing. Like, are they going to notice that I'm not here today? There's one more thing I was going to say about that, about learning. Student affairs has been focused on learning for years. There's been this pendulum to some extent of institutional metrics. Are students enrolling? Are they being retained and are they graduating? Those are kind of university metrics. Kind of above that in terms of hierarchy, in my opinion, is, what are students learning? This is what accrediting agencies want to know also. Institutions need to be able to prove what our students are learning. Student affairs has been doing that for decades. We 38 have been talking about the learning outcomes. So, the chemistry professor needs her students to fully understand chemistry, but she also needs them to be able to communicate those concepts to other human beings and to be able to work in teams with other people. Those are the things, the outcomes that Student Affairs has been working at for years and years. That's kind of the common playing field, I think, between faculty in particular and student affairs professionals is we're trying to help students be great contributing citizens of a global society. We all want that. Everybody wants the same thing. So I think there's a lot more recognition of that now, too. There's more of a coming together between the curriculum and the cocurriculum than I've seen over my lifetime, and I think that's good for students. MT: Okay. Thank you for your time. BP: Indeed. MT: This is very wonderful. BP: Yeah, thank you. Well, these are great questions, things that you can just respond to pretty easily. You've only been doing it for a few years. How long have you worked here? KH: I've been here for, it'll be 11 years at the end of October. BP: Really? Awesome! You've been here a while. How long, Michael? MT: Five years. Just over five years. BP: Cool. [To Connie] And are you still an undergraduate student? CL: Yes, I am. I've been here since last October. BP: Do you have a major? CL: Oh, yeah. Anthropology. BP: Really? Okay, cool. Good for you. That's another metric, this success. The earlier you declare a degree, the more likely you are to be successful. CL: Actually transferred here with that declared major. 39 BP: Oh, okay. From another school in Utah or... CL: Outside of Utah. BP: Cool. Well, thank you for making it enjoyable. Appreciate it. 40