Oral History Program Thomas R. Burton Interviewed by Ruby Licona 11 March 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Thomas R. Burton Interviewed by Ruby Licona Special Projects Librarian 11 March 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Burton, Thomas R., an oral history by Ruby Licona, 11 March 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Thomas R. Burton 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Thomas Burton. It was conducted March 11, 2008 and concerns his recollections and experiences with Weber State University. The interviewer is Ruby Licona. RL: This is an interview conducted with Thomas R. Burton who retired from Weber State University as a professor in the English Department. He also previously held administrative positions, including Vice President for Academic Affairs, and served several terms as president of the Faculty Senate. Tom, to start with tell us about your background: where you were born, where you went to school, how you came to Weber State. TB: I’m an Ogden boy. I was born in Ogden, grew up in Ogden, went through the Ogden City Schools and graduated from Ogden High School. All the time I was in junior high and high school I went to all of Weber State College’s football games, basketball games, and loved the college. After graduating from high school, I went to Weber State for two years, 1951-53, and enjoyed the experience very much. I was elected to be a student body officer and was involved in a lot of the social things at the college. I was a member of the debate team. Aldous Dixon was president of the college then. I got to know him, and I got to know Leland Monson, who was head of the English Department. While I was at Weber, Leland said, “Tom why don’t you go ahead with your education and as soon as you get your master’s degree, come back and you have a job teaching at Weber State.” That stuck with me. That’s what I wanted to do. I liked Weber and I thought teaching here would be wonderful, so 2 that was on the agenda and my objective for the next few years, although a lot of things intervened. After graduating from Weber as a two-year college, I went into the Navy for two years as a radioman. RL: Was that during the Korean War? TB: It was during the Korean War. I stayed in the Navy for those two years and then was released or discharged in ’55 and came home and went to BYU for a year. After that I went on a mission, for the LDS church, to England for two years. I came back and finished up at BYU in ’59, and went on and got a master’s degree at the ,Y and finished up with that in 1960. I thought about coming to Weber to teach with a master’s degree, but at the same time I thought, “It would be good to go on while I don’t have a lot of ties.” I was married, but had no children yet, and I wanted to see what I could do about a Ph.D. I thought it might be well to get a degree out of state because of inbreeding in the institutions. RL: Absolutely. That happens a lot at places where people want to teach near home, doesn’t it? TB: Yes. So I applied at University of Wisconsin, and of course, the University of Utah, and the University of Washington in Seattle. I had an offer as a teaching fellow at all three of them and decided that Washington was where I wanted to go, so I went to the University of Washington. I was there for three years and did all the work for my Ph.D., with the exception of the dissertation, and I got a start on that. Then I came back and was hired at Weber State in 1963. RL: That was about the time Weber became a four-year college? 3 TB: The first year that I taught in ’63-’64 was also the first year that student graduated with a four-year degree. I remember sitting in the faculty area of the commencement service (it was down at the Ogden Tabernacle) thinking this is really a historic occasion. This is the first year that Weber has been able to grant a four-year degree. RL: How many students finished that first year? TB: Boy, I can’t tell you. It was a pretty good class though. [In 1964, 265 graduates received four-year degrees.] It was in the hundreds. Of course, then the institution was maybe about 8,000 students. Not that much. It was a real opportunity for me to come back and take a position at Weber State because that’s what I had in mind all along. I remember being interviewed by Leland Monson and then by Bob Clark and by President William P. Miller. This was in ’63. They offered me a beginning salary of $5,900. RL: And that was rich back then, wasn’t it? TB: It was to me, but it wasn’t as much as I could have gotten, for instance, at BYU. BYU offered me something that was a little bit more, but whatever we were offered was fine. The nice thing about it, by the time I retired, I’d almost doubled that salary! [Laughter] TB: So that’s my experience. As far as the institution goes, I was here as a student; I graduated when it was a junior college; and came back and taught when it was a four-year institution. Just a few years before I retired, it became a university. RL: Did your time fulfill your expectations? 4 TB: More than you can imagine. Weber was good to me. I never look back with regret, and I just enjoyed my experience here through several years. RL: I was looking in Sadler and Roberts’ history of Weber State College, and I believe that at the time you were hired, Levi Petersen and a couple of other people came into the department. Who were some of the other colleagues that you might remember from those very early days? TB: Glen Weise was here. Bob Mikkelsen was here. Gordon Allred was hired the same year I was. I think Levi was hired a year after. Sesh [Candadi Seshachari] came in about five or six years after I was hired. People like Leland Monson, Thatcher Allred, a lot of the old crew. I’m sorry my memory isn’t all that sharp. RL: I just was curious what you remember about those early days with those particular colleagues. What was the intellectual climate like when you first came here? Obviously there was some excitement about going from the two-year college to the four-year college, but what can you say about the intellectual ambiance? TB: It was a period of growth and development, and the institution had to move from a two-year junior college to a four-year institution. That took some changes in curriculum and it took some changes in faculty, and sort of upgrading of degrees, plus preparation and schooling for those people who were hired. It was a period of time in the sixties when you saw Weber come into its own as it developed and moved from a community college to an institution that would extend some rather significant degrees. 5 RL: Now, at that particular time, all of the faculty had at least a master’s degree, is that correct? TB: To my understanding that was pretty much the case, at least in the English Department. RL: And about how many would you say had doctorates at that particular point. TB: At that point I would say maybe two or three. The interesting thing is, when I left the institution thirty years later, we had an English Department of thirty faculty members twenty-eight of them had terminal degrees. RL: You said it was a period of growth and change on the part of the institution and the faculty. Was there an accompanying change in the students or did it take longer for them to grow up with the institution? TB: I think there was a developmental period with the students. My experience was that when they went to an upper division class and when certain requirements were maintained, they stepped up to those expectations. I felt like the product that we were delivering in terms of student graduates was comparable; and in a few years we were better, in some cases, than the larger universities because the instruction received here was delivered on a more individual basis. RL: Much more personalized. TB: Much more personalized instruction by a person with an advanced terminal degree. In the universities all across the nation those early classes are taught by teaching fellows and people who are more concerned with getting their own degree than with teaching. There was a period of time when I think Weber (and 6 it has probably continued) was better, at least in lower division and some upper division classes, than some of the other institutions. RL: What about the campus in general? How would you compare it to your experiences? The Y and Washington would have been much larger than Weber at the time and, other than that personalized contact between faculty and students, how would you compare institutions? TB: Well, the two institutions that I got my upper degrees in were obviously graduate institutions. That was the biggest difference. Once you left the four-year program and you got into graduate work, then you’re into research and you’re into dissertations. You’re into a whole new spectrum of education that Weber was not offering. So that was what I would say is the biggest difference, the difference between research in graduate institutions as opposed to a four-year program. RL: When Weber started offering master’s degrees, and they had three in place when I got here in 1990, was there a brouhaha about that? TB: It’s interesting that you’d ask that because that took place back in the seventies. I was the assistant vice president with Dello Dayton, who was the academic vice president. Roger Rawson was the legislative representative from the west side, Clinton or Plain City, and he introduced a bill for a graduate program in education. That took it to the Board of Regents. We just had to address it. RL: Isn’t that slightly different from how things are normally done? TB: It is. He was the one who was pushing it in the legislature and forcing the hand of the regents. It went to the regents first. Joe Bishop was president, Dello Dayton was vice president, and they asked me as assistant vice president to head the 7 committee for the first graduate program. That committee was comprised of Blaine Parkinson, who was Dean of Education, and Gary Carson, Dello Dayton, and two or three others. We wrote a proposal and pulled the research together, and I remember we went down to the Board of Regents and did our presentations. Of course, we had John Lindquist operating in the community with business people to put a little pressure on the board. In the business area, we had Nate Tanner on the state board at the time support us. We went down and made the presentation, and the Regents mulled it over. It was totally opposed by the University of Utah and by Utah State. RL: It’s their turf. TB: Yes. Finally, after they worked it over, with some pressure coming from the community, they came up with the idea of allowing Weber to offer a graduate program in Education in conjunction with Utah State. So it was a cooperative program. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted but we felt good that we’d gotten that much. RL: Better than nothing? TB: Actually we knew that it would develop. I would say within two or three years, it was an integral program at Weber State without any involvement by Utah State. That was the first graduate program. Later on, I think it was Business. RL: And Accountancy? TB: And of course, that’s led to all the others. So it was an interesting time and a time that I think is historic, in the sense that we left the lower division and upper 8 division and got into the graduate level. In time, it developed into a very well recognized institution. RL: The strategy, and maybe I’m wrong, but from my perspective Weber’s strategy has been to try to get programs that weren’t available elsewhere. TB: That’s why the graduate program in Education was so difficult because there was already a graduate program at the University of Utah, thirty miles away, and another one at Utah State University, forty miles away. It was thought that if you want a graduate degree in Education you go to one of those institutions. We felt there was a need here for teachers to be able to advance and do it without having to go over the hill or south. I think one of the best things that we did in the process was presenting and showing the need to the regents. RL: What was the situation in the English Department? I know that you had some people that were being creative in writing, but what was the situation in terms of research and publication as faculty requirements? TB: I would say, by the time we got into the early ‘70’s, there was an expectation. If a faculty member wanted to be promoted from assistant to associate professor then he needed to demonstrate the fact that he had done some research and some publication; and of course from associate to full professor, the expectation was higher. I think sometimes creative writing was recognized as well as research. Publishing certainly was expected if a faculty member wanted to move up the scale. I imagine it still is. RL: I think it’s become more so for most of the departments, even here in the library. 9 TB: Most departments have criteria for advancement and rank. The criteria indicate the types of publications and research that are expected. Usually they are juried pieces of research. RL: I read that you had become Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs under Dello Dayton when Joseph Bishop was president. Was Bishop the president who essentially got a vote of no confidence from faculty? TB: He was. RL: What was the situation? TB: Ruby, that was a troubled time. It’s hard to discuss it without seeming biased or vindictive, but it was a very, very difficult time. When Joseph Bishop came on the campus I don’t know of anyone who had more respect and support. At the same time, I don’t know of anyone who alienated the faculty and staff as quickly as he did once he was here. It was a sad situation and a very difficult time because it went on for five or six years. One of his problems was, he wanted to make changes, but he didn’t do it through the established channels of shared governance in the institution. He brought in a vice president from Miami-Dade early on. His name was Dwight Burrill. And he came in with these grandiose ideas about changing General Education. RL: Miami-Dade was a community college? TB: It was a community college, and Bishop bought into it. He’d met Burrill or they were friends previously. So he brought him in, and the whole thing was kind of forced on to the campus without any kind of faculty scrutiny or approval. I don’t 10 know of anything more volatile on the campus then General Ed and the requirements that a student must complete in order to get a degree. Every department on campus, for the most part, is involved, as is the library. RL: Well they have to be, if they are going to be giving degrees in the name of the institution. They had to have criteria that supported the work of the institution. TB: That’s right. Here we have a situation where a capsulized program is brought in and someone says, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. This is General Education at its best, and you folks who have been working here, teaching here, and developing your program for the last fifteen years are off base.” That was one thing, but then there were also a lot of administrative things that happened. Bishop came in and divided the largest school on campus, Arts, Letters, and Science in which Dello Dayton was the dean. Bishop decided that he wanted to split it into three colleges or schools at that time. I’m not sure that was such a bad idea. I guess he felt like he wasn’t getting the kind of support that he needed from the other deans in Technology and Education. So he made an announcement that he was going to rotate the deans. He chose other people in the schools that he felt comfortable with as the deans. That didn’t sit well. It was a very difficult time. At one point, there was an Administrative Council on campus, composed of all the vice presidents, all the deans, the executive committee of the Faculty Senate and two or three other positions such as the head of General Ed. The Honors committee was on it, the dean of admissions, and so on. So it was quite a large body and was called the Administrative Council. RL: Is that different from the Academic Council? 11 TB: Yes, the Academic Council was the precursor to the Senate, yes. The Administrative Council at one point. ( I’d say this was about three years into Joe Bishop’s tenure) met and really had a vote of no confidence. Now these are the leaders on campus. There was a vote of no confidence and, if I remember right, the vote was something like eighteen to three. Dick Sadler and I went to the president’s office and told him that we thought that it was in his best interest, and in the best interest of the institution, that he retire. It was a very difficult meeting. RL: I read that you were the first chair of the Academic Council. Did you go to him in that capacity or did you have a different position at that time? TB: No, I think I had completed my term as chair of the council, which became the Faculty Senate. I had to leave the council as part of the faculty constitution because I had been on for six years. I couldn’t be elected again. So I was off for a year and then elected one more time. I think it was about that year, Dick Sadler had been elected as chairman of the Senate. Dick, as chairman of the Senate, and I, as a member of the executive committee, went into see Bishop and discussed his resignation. It was a very difficult meeting. RL: So it was a vote of no confidence on the part of the Administrative Council and not on the part of the Faculty Senate? TB: There was a general faculty meeting early on. The question of a vote of no confidence came up, and there were a good number of faculty members who wanted it, but there was give and take in the discussion. The president came in and made a comment, “These are the things I’d like to do, and these are the changes I’d like to make.” After he left, there was a closed meeting of faculty only 12 and a significant debate about whether or not there would be a vote of no confidence. Some said, “He’s been in here, he’s talked about it. Let’s see if we can get some changes going and give him a chance.” So there was not an official vote of no confidence by the faculty. But there was a vote by the Administrative Council. I don’t remember exactly the timelines. I think President Bishop had a hard time because he didn’t recognize the appropriate channels, the Deans’ Council and the Faculty Senate. He really established his kitchen cabinet of people that he felt comfortable confiding in. He relied upon them for counsel and advice, rather than taking it through the channels of academic governance, and that’s what got him in trouble. RL: What happened to Burrill in all of this? TB: He left within I’d say a year or year-and-a-half after he came. [Burrill served in Academy Development from 1973-76.] Probably in talking to Sally Arway, you recognized that there were stacks and stacks of printed material that was never distributed. RL: That’s what she said, that the library was responsible for putting all these kits together and cataloguing them and would have been in charge of distributing, and so forth. TB: There was a lot of stuff that was printed and getting ready to be circulated but never was because it just had no support. RL: When Burrill left, who became Vice President for Academic Affairs? Was there a space before Dello Dayton moved into that? 13 TB: Gerald Storey had gone to the same institution and studied under the same professor as Bishop had. They were both into this management by objectives in Business. That was another thing that was imposed on the campus without due consideration. TB: It was supposedly the real thing in business and could be for education. So the vice presidents, the deans, the department chairs all started working under business’s model of management by objectives. Pretty soon the campus was so fed up with objectives, and so much of it was trivial and without substance. You made an objective, but how did you establish that it was ever accomplished? - especially when you made an objective simply because you had to make an objective. That was difficult. Dello Dayton was made vice president in an effort by the Institutional Council to bring back order and balance to the campus. Dello had the support of the faculty and he was a figurehead that people looked up to. He had integrity and he was a strong academician I think the Institutional Council said to Joe Bishop, “Look, take Dello as your vice president and maybe we can smooth things out.” So Dello went in. He asked me to be his assistant, and it was a couple of years before Joe went off on a mission to South America in 1977. RL: Did things change considerably after that? TB: It was then that we had Rodney H. Brady appointed president. Brady was a very focused president. He had a business background, but he was capable of good, focused leadership. He was a strong president, and the faculty and staff 14 felt fairly comfortable with him. He was not as personable as say, Bill Miller, but he was all business. It was the kind of stuff that made the institution better. RL: While you were assistant vice president did the library report to you? TB: Yes. I had the library under Craige Hall; also Instructional Technology, Honors, General Ed, and Research Development. RL: So Craige Hall was already director at that point? You weren’t involved in any of the problems the library had had previously? TB: Only in the sense that I was chairman of the library committee for a time on the Faculty Senate. We talked about things. We’d get little things done, and address administrative problems. We would talk with the library about the budget, and those kinds of things. I know that in order to put some sort of equilibrium in the library, Perry Wilson was assigned as the vice president over some of that early on. He had the support of the faculty. RL: So you were in some interesting administrative positions at the time when Weber was answering to the Chinese curse of ‘interesting times.’ TB: Those early years were troubled years, but they were part of the growing up, I think. It was during the Joe Bishop time that the faculty and staff gained some autonomy, some strength, and considerable shared governance they had not had. It was, as I discovered too, later on as chairman of the Faculty Senate, when we organized a group of senate chairs from the various institutions across the state to meet and discuss some of our common problems. I found that Weber State had much more involvement in the decision process, and academics, even in some elective elements of salary, tenure, and promotion than most faculties. 15 RL: So the faculty really took ownership of the process? TB: Yes. RL: In addition to your administrative responsibilities how would you describe your relationship with the students at Weber State? TB: I always enjoyed my relationship in the classroom. In fact when I came to join Dello in his office, I said, “Dello I would like to come and across you in the Academic Affairs offices, but at the same time I would still like to teach at least one class per quarter.” Normally it was one class a year for an administrator, in order to maintain his position in the department. I said I would like to teach one class a quarter. I don’t think that he really wanted me to do that, but that was one of the conditions I brought with me into my position. And so all the time that I was over here, for six years, I taught one class a quarter. After six years, I decided that I enjoyed the classroom more, and it was at that point that I went back into the department and teaching. It was also at that point that I got more involved in the Faculty Senate. RL: How many terms did you serve as president? TB: I served one when it was Academic Council, and then I think the next year it was changed to the Faculty Senate. and then after I came back from administration, I was elected to the senate and stayed there for six years as Chairman of the Senate. I retired after the sixth year. It just happened to fall that way. The way the senate works, you can be elected for six years from your college, but then you have to stand down for at least a year. As it happened, I guess about ’89; I was 16 elected to the Faculty Senate and then elected to the Executive Committee, and elected as chair. I stayed in the senate for six years. RL: In that time, did you see changes in the personality or makeup of the faculty? TB: I think I saw a growing dimension of scholarship in the faculty, and I saw expectations grow. But, at the same time, I saw a continuing of expectation in the classroom. I think we grew and came of age in the world of university status, but at the same time- and this is the nice thing about Weber- we never lost sight of the smaller classroom and more individualized institution. RL: Primary purpose? TB: Yes, helping the students build and grow in their chosen fields of study. That, from my point of view, is the finest thing we can offer; the experience with the students on a more personal basis. RL: At the same time that the faculty was maturing did you notice an accompanying change in the student body? TB: For the most part. I think there are some who feel the students don’t change, and that there are always those who are out to get what they can for as little effort as possible. There is always that kind of thing, but, at the same time, if you offer students intellectual challenges, there are a good many of them who grow in the process. Often, people on the streets come up and say, “I was in your class such and such. My name is so and so.” And I recognize the name and to a degree the face. But the only thing I say is “I hope I gave you a good grade.” [Laughter] Some of them say, “Yes, you did.” And I’m pleased to be able to say, “Well if I did, you earned it.” I’m sure this happens to every instructor on campus. They’ll 17 say, “I got so much out of your class. I enjoyed it.” Or, “It was so beneficial.” Those are the times when you get the pat on the back. RL: Makes it worthwhile doesn’t it? I know my response always is, “Gee, I hope you learned something from it.” TB: Yes. I don’t think there is a faculty member on campus that hasn’t had those kinds of experiences. It’s nice to know that the students are growing and feel good about their experience here. RL: We’ve talked about your time here when Bishop and Brady were president. After that came Stephen D. Nadauld. He wasn’t here very long. TB: No he wasn’t. I’m just speculating, but I never felt like he was comfortable here. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a good administrator; I think he was to a degree. A lot of good things happened, not the least of which was Weber State becoming a university, during his watch. At the same time, I always got the feeling that he had his sights elsewhere, but that may be an injustice to him. He was a reasonably good administrator, and the campus developed while he was here. Every president, from Bill Miller and Joe Bishop and Brady and Nadauld to Paul Thompson, all of them that I had experience with had given something to the campus, and the campus was better for it. Even given what many would term a negative experience with Bishop, it was a powerful growing experience for the institution. RL: After Dello Dayton, did Bob Smith come in as Vice President for Academic Affairs? TB: Yes. 18 RL: I have the feeling that he brought about some changes and some different ways of thinking and doing things. TB: Bob Smith came after Dello passed away from a heart attack during a basketball game. The sad thing was that Dello was about ready to retire, and BYU had offered him a position with a study abroad program, and he was looking forward to that. This was I think about December or January, and he was going to retire in June. It was sad, because you could go across the campus and come up to get a book or something at night, and you’d look at the administration office and his light was on. He was here sometimes fourteen, sixteen hours a day. And the campus was just alive. I think the idea of retirement was a very difficult thing for him that may have affected his health. Anyway he passed away, and Smith was hired. I was with Bob Smith for about six or eight months. When he came on board, I told him I wanted to go back into the classroom. He said, “Stay with me for a few months until I get my feet on the ground.” I told him I would, so I was with him for about six or eight months. Marie Kotter replaced me as assistant vice president. RL: Okay, so when Bob Smith came then you returned to the classroom? TB: Yes. I was only there six or eight months and then he hired Marie as his assistant. RL: Now, Smith was different from people who had served in that position previously wasn’t he? TB: He was. He was a very focused guy and I think he had a dimension in terms of the total grasp, especially of the budget that Dello and others didn’t have. 19 RL: During Bob Smith’s tenure as Vice President of Academic Affairs, he had command of the budget, but intellectually, was he different? I get the feeling that he was one to raise the bar and get people motivated to try and get over it. TB: I think that’s true. I sat with him on a few occasions when we were discussing tenure and promotion and the recommendations that had come in from the various colleges and departments. His expectations were high, and sometimes he didn’t approve the recommendations as they came forward. He’d say, “Send them back, this is wrong.” RL: He worked well with President Thompson, didn’t he? TB: Yes, he was with President Thompson all the time I was still at Weber. He retired about a year after I retired. RL: During President Thompson’s time, there were different things that took place. We’ve already talked about moving to the new campus, becoming a four-year school, and the change to university status. Were you here for the strategic planning program? TB: Yes. That was a difficult thing; there were some state budget cuts and consequently there needed to be some changes. President Thompson asked the Strategic Planning Committee to make some recommendations for those budget cuts, and that was a very difficult thing to do. He even made some recommendations for where some of those cuts might come. I remember the committee very often meeting at six o’clock in the morning. We had the various areas come in and make presentations to justify their department, whether it was an administrator or it was Student Affairs and so on. It went on for quite a little 20 while. Ultimately, on the basis of the presentations and justifications, the committee made some recommendations on areas that needed to be reviewed, trimmed back, or even cut. And it was difficult because some of them were affecting the colleges, in departments across campus. When it was all done and the recommendations were in, people had a hard time. RL: There was a big push in the ‘90’s in terms of diversity. The Assistant to the President for Diversity position was created to recruit a more diverse student body. Were you involved with any of that? What were your thoughts on it? TB: Not much. I think a lot of that came after I was gone, but there was some of it. I am really supportive of it. I think that we sometimes live in the closet and we sometimes hoodwink ourselves. There are certain values and certain customs and certain cultures that we accept, and then the others are hard to understand. We live in a diversified world, and I think the sooner we know that and deal with that the better off we’re going to be. RL: You were still here when they had the JAL (Japan Airlines) contract to teach the stewardesses English? Were you involved with that at all? TB: No. RL: Okay. What are your recollections of a social life at Weber? Was there much social life? TB: As a faculty member? RL: Yes. Interdepartmental mingling or… 21 TB: There wasn’t a whole lot of interdepartmental mingling. We had departmental socials and functions. Most notable was the department Christmas party.I think, for me, most of the socializing was done in a fairly small group. RL: What about the relationship between faculty and staff? We’ve talked about faculty and students. You mentioned Student Affairs a few minutes ago. What was the relationship between the faculty and some of the Student Affair areas, from your perspective as chair of the Faculty Senate? TB: I think there was something of a dysfunction between faculty perception and what Student Affairs was doing, and should be doing. I think sometimes faculty looked upon Student Affairs as a group that attempted to serve the students, but did not provide what was necessary in terms of the students’ academic role on campus. RL: What is your assessment of the intellectual life in Ogden? Are you involved with some things off campus since you’ve retired? TB: I’ve been involved with a few things. I think the city recognizes and always has recognized what the college provides for the community, and from that perspective the college is supported. I think the emphasis on occupation will prove a liability, and professions will benefit from them. RL Well, it keeps the community stable doesn’t it, because you teach or train the students to fit into the needs of the community, and thereby they stay and help to add to the community. I don’t get the feeling that there’s the town/ gown division seen in other communities. Was there anything in particular you would contribute that to? 22 TB: I figure the institution reaches out, and I think the community appreciates that and, in turn, responds. It’s been a very nice partnership. I think you always find certain individuals who cause problems, but in my experience it’s been a pretty amicable relationship. RL: There have been a lot of changes on the campus since you first came here. Are there things that stand out? TB: Graduate programs and the growth of those are significant. Mike Leavitt was a big figure on the Board of Regents at that time and looking toward governorship. There were a lot of things that took place during that time. I’d hate to see it turn into a Ph. D. research institute. RL: So what was your favorite thing about all your time at Weber State? TB: I would have to say, in spite of the fact that that I was heavily involved in administration, campus politics, Faculty Senate, and all of that, the thing I enjoyed most was walking out of a classroom and saying to myself, “Well, that went well.” RL: It’s nice to see a sparkle in the eyes rather than glazed over expressions. Is there anything else you want to comment on about your time at Weber? TB: I mentioned at the beginning that my experience at Weber was wonderful. It was one that I enjoyed and one that I never had any regrets about. Sometimes there were painful experiences and sometimes there were difficult and sleepless nights trying to face problems and deal with things that came up. But for the most part it was a wonderful experience. I felt comfortable when I was ready to leave. I could 23 have stayed on, but it was time. I wanted to leave on my own terms. So that’s the way I left the institution. I’ve never regretted it. RL: It is wonderful that you were able to walk away with a feeling of satisfaction. Thank your for taking the time to talk with me. TB: I’m very pleased to do it and thank you for making me a part of this program.