Oral History Program Susan Hafen Interviewed by Kandice Harris 25 June 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Susan Hafen Interviewed by Kandice Harris 25 June 2021 Copyright © 2021 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: Hafen, Susan, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 25 June 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dr. Susan Hafen Circa 2015 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Susan Hafen, conducted on June 25, 2021, by Kandice Harris, via video communication platform, Zoom. In this oral history interview, Susan discusses her life, her memories, and her career as a Professor of Communication at Weber State University. KH: Hello, today is June 25, 2021, I'm Kandice Harris, and I'm interviewing Dr. Susan Hafen about her time at Weber State. So let's get started. When and where were you born? SH: I was born in 1952 in St. George, Utah. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? SH: I lived in Las Vegas, although I was born in St. George. We moved to Las Vegas when I was two, and so I spent my entire life until I graduated from high school in Las Vegas, which was a very different experience than growing up in Utah. A lot of my friends had false ID's so they could work at the casinos because that's where you got the best tips. So when I went to BYU it was a radical shift for me, growing up in Vegas with my friends to BYU. I got my undergraduate in distributive education, which is the old DECA clubs in high school, if you remember that. I went to BYU mostly to meet somebody, get married, like most of my friends. All of my friends got married by the time they graduated and I was a junior and it didn't look like I had any sort of marriage prospects on the near horizon. So I went to a counselor and said, "What do I graduate in?" I've got to graduate in four years. I worked all through college and I didn't want to go past 2 four years. So I looked at my transcripts and said, "Well, you've been taking all these business ed classes because, you know, a woman could be a secretary." That's what my mother had been was a secretary before my dad. So my mother has an associates degree from Dixie College and my father has a master's degree, he's an elementary school teacher, was before he died. So he looked at it and said, "Well, you can teach business ed". And I said, "I really hate typing." And he said, "Well, you've taken these marketing classes and business classes. What about distributive ed?" And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Well, it is sales and marketing." I said, "Oh, you know, I worked at Penney's all through high school, so I know about sales." So that's what I got my degree in. Which meant I had to teach high school. And fortunately, I really loved teaching. And so I graduated, got a job at Brighton High School in Salt Lake. Did you grow up in Utah by the way? KH: I did not. SH: Okay, so Brighton High School is in a very rich area of Salt Lake City. So I taught fashion merchandizing and sales and some classes there. And they gave me one communication class and I really loved teaching it. And so the next year I had decreased enrollment in fashion merchandizing and increased enrollment in communication. I had been reading in the educational journals--about something called peer counseling. And this was in 1975. I started teaching high school when I was twenty one, so I was pretty young and I thought, "Peer counseling, that's what I really want to help students do." So I started doing that in my communication class and the school counselors were upset because I didn't 3 have a counseling degree. And so I went back and got a double masters in school counseling and curriculum design so I could design peer counseling programs. But by the time I finished my master's degree, also at BYU, I was sort of tired of school. And that was the era of what they called T-groups or encounter groups in psychology. They were doing that in all the counseling programs. You had to go to these T-groups. In these T-groups, people give you feedback and they start by telling you this is what their impressions of you are. And people would look at me and say, "You seem like you're from the east coast." I had never been east of Denver. And so I thought, "Maybe I belong on the east coast." So my cousin was working in Washington, D.C. for Senator Orrin Hatch at the time. She found me an apartment with a bunch of nice LDS girls, and I flew back to Utah and sold my car to get back there. And the next day I was learning how to do the subway and got a job in Washington, D.C. I worked as an assistant editor at an educational journal. Then I got a job at University of Maryland in curriculum design. So when I said that I moved to D.C., I actually moved to Virginia. But McLean, Virginia, is really the Washington, D.C. area. So then I moved to Maryland to work at the University of Maryland and one of my coworkers after I'd been there, not quite a year, got a job in Washington, D.C. at Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO). He called me one day and said, "Hey, how would you like to work at PEPCO?" I said, "I'm pretty happy at Maryland." Then he told me the salary. For the first time I understood the difference between being in the business world and being at the university. So I quit my job, moved to D.C., started working PEPCO as a trainer, and I taught 4 communication skills to employees. And so that's what I did for the next twelve years. I worked PEPCO for two years. Then a head hunter found me. I worked in Wyoming at Mobile Oil on the startup team for Mobile Oil's first coal mine. And then Kimberly-Clark, which is another long story, found me. And so I moved to Ogden, Utah, to start up Kimberly-Clark's first diaper manufacturing plant here. And the interesting story about that is that I didn't want to come back to Utah, so I had only applied to that job because it was really cold in Wyoming right then. And I saw an ad for Beach Island, South Carolina, and I thought, "Beach Island, that is exactly where I want to be right now." So I applied and they called me and they said, you know, you really are perfect for a job for our new Ogden plant because you are in the startup team for Mobile Oil and we want somebody in the startup team. And I said, "I'm not interested in going back to Utah.” At this point, I had left the Mormon Church. And so I really wasn't interested in going back to Mormon hub. But my brother lived in Utah, he just had a baby. So I thought, right, you know, I told you, I'm not interested. But if you want to pay for my flight out there, fine, I can see my brother. So I did. And I really liked the people. And I had forgotten how gorgeous Utah is. And so and they also promised me they were going to have manufacturing plants all over the world. I could be sent to Australia if I would continue to design training programs for start-ups. So I only had to stay in Utah for two years. So I took the job and after I'd been here eight years they were no longer expanding that much. And besides, I made a lot of friends in Utah and I was liking it. I lived up in Mantua. As the training superintendent for Kimberly Clark, I was asked to join the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce. 5 And there I met Ann Millner, who was at that time the associate dean for continuing education. And she heard me in a meeting criticizing Weber State because we had had some of their business faculty out to train our managers. They'd done a really terrible job, and our managers had all complained about it. And so I said, "You know, these business people are just academics. They don't know anything about business and we're not going to use them again." So she heard me say that and she talked to me and said, "How would you like to be in our continuing education and help us find business faculty that really could meet your needs?" So I said, "Okay." And that's how I got to know Ann Millner. And so I was on Continuing Education’s advisory council and two years later, or a year and a half or something, and during that time I would have occasional dinners with Ann Millner. Meanwhile I started a book club in 1987, and it is still going on today. And there were a number of Weber State faculty on the book club. One of them that you may know is Kathleen Lukken, who's the wife of Mike Vaughan. And so a book discussion one summer, they were all saying, "What are you doing this summer?" And I just stared at them. "I'm working of course. What do you mean what am I doing?" And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to Italy. I'm going to Spain." And I thought, "I'm making a lot more money than these guys, but I never get to go to Spain. I've never taken that time off." So I thought I really need a change. I mean, "I need to be a faculty member." So I talked to Ann and she said, "Come work for us." And I said, "But, you know, I haven't been in school since 1978; my master's degree was 17 years ago. I don't think I could take the math." And she said, "Come work for us for a year and spend that year applying 6 for a PhD program." So I did. And I got accepted to the PhD program at Ohio University. So I got a Ph.D. in organizational communication because it was still communication, but it was organizations which I'd been a part of for a long time. And [To Kandice]... is this more than you wanted to hear? KH: No, this is great. I love it all. SH: So I think it's an interesting story because it relates to Weber State so much. So I got a Ph.D. and my first job was in Wisconsin and I was there eight years and I really liked teaching, but I didn't like Wisconsin. It was way too humid. And I started missing the West, and one of my book club members who was in the communication department, emailed me and said, "We have a position open in our department. You ought to apply for it." And I thought, "I want to be in the West, but really not Utah, maybe Idaho, Wyoming, Montana. I would like to be in Montana." But I was trying to apply for jobs anyway. And I had one coming in Montana, I thought, but...she bugged me about it. So I thought, "Well...." I had to be out in Salt Lake City anyway for an undergraduate national research conference. And I was taking two students out there. And it just so happened they were interviewing people at that time. So I said, "I'll interview with you guys. You don't have to pay for my plane fare or my hotel, but I'm really not interested in the job. But it'll be good practice interview for me." Kind of like Kimberly Clark, and I got out here and I liked the department and I remembered again how beautiful Ogden is. And I didn't get the job in Montana. So it was Wisconsin or Utah. So I came back to Utah and I've been here for 18 years since. KH: Okay great. Were you encouraged to pursue an education? 7 SH: Certainly a college degree, because my mother had an associate's degree and my father had a master's. But the idea was only that I would go to college so I would find somebody and get married. That was the best hunting grounds for a husband. They were OK that I graduated. They were really surprised and not pleased that I wanted to get a master's. And they really didn't understand that I would want to get a PhD. KH: So what started your interest in communication and education? SH: Well, as I said, I taught communication in high school, I loved it. I'm just really interested in what people talk about. When friends say that they visit with somebody my first question is, "What do you talk about?" You know, I'm interested in conversations and from an organizational standpoint, one side, because I was a human resources and training, I was the HR manager at Kimberly Clark, I realized that communication is what makes organizations work or fall apart. And so it's the life blood, it's the glue of our lives in every way. But I saw a lot of problems in organizations and so I thought maybe I can study communication in the workplace, in my Ph.D., so my dissertation was on workplace gossip. KH: That must have been really interesting research. SH: It was really fun. It was really fun. I went back to the companies I worked for and interviewed people about the gossip stories and what the impact of those stories had been like. KH: What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? 8 SH: I went back for a PhD 17 years after I got my master's. And my Ph.D. was not in the same area as my undergraduate or my graduate degrees. I didn't have any idea what I was doing. And to be honest, I'd always done well in school. I had a really high GPA, I’d done well in the workplace. It never really dawned on me that I could be at a disadvantage having absolutely no background in the field. I'd never even taken any communication classes. I’d taken a public speaking class, one class, as a freshman. That was my only experience with all the communication disciplines. I was really over my head. So I really had to work doubly hard, not because I was a woman or because I was old, because I really didn't have the background in it. So that was my really biggest barrier. KH: You mentioned all of the degrees that you have. Were there any certifications you got along the way? SH: Yeah, I had that high school teaching certificate. I also have a school counseling certificate that I never used. I never did school counseling. So I have those two certificates. KH: What were your career options once you had your degrees? SH: Which degree? KH: You pick. Any of them. SH: Well, my undergraduate degree was to teach that was really the only option, I think was distributive education. My master's degree, I was again, in education, or I could gone into school counseling. What was interesting, though, is that that's what I would have thought. But with that master's degree, I went into 9 business. And I ended up being a human resource manager, a trainer at a coal mine without any business degree with a few business classes, but not a lot. So I really think that for me, being a woman in 1981 when affirmative action, had just sort of taken off and all of the stuff on sexual harassment, equal opportunity was huge. Being a woman really helped me get those jobs because they needed women in managerial positions. It was also a barrier because some of the men knew, rightly so, that I'd been hired because I was a woman. On the other hand, they've been hired because they knew somebody. Many of them didn't have any more background than I did. But the fact that it was my gender as opposed to their golf buddies seemed to make a huge difference for them. Both helped. So being a woman during that time both really helped me, and it also created some barriers that I had to prove myself against. KH: What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and your career? SH: My advisor in my master's program. Because I got my undergraduate and graduate degree from BYU and I went through an educational program that's now defunct, they're called ISTEP. It was an individually based educational program where you contract with faculty to achieve certain objectives and then you're put in groups and then you have to achieve them, you don't just go to classes. So it's very self-paced. It requires a lot of, not just dedication, but it requires you can't procrastinate at all because you're not just going to classes. You're looking at your objectives to see how can I accomplish the contract, get it done and you have to interview to get into that program. It was pretty selective. 10 And the advisor for that program really helped me understand the importance of communication because it was really all about those individual relationships with other students and with faculty that helped those students achieve. So I wouldn’t say he wasn't a mentor in terms of he didn't help me get my next job. I don't think I ever really had a mentor in the business world. I think there is too much fear of mentoring a woman in some respects. But that man, Dr.Hugh Baird, in the BYU educational program, he really helped me understand what teaching was about. And he was a huge mentor in terms of the way I taught in the future. And the way I trained. KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? SH: I think I already mentioned those. I was hired in the business world in terms of affirmative action, that didn't mean that I was less qualified than some of the men, but not a lot of the others. So there was always that sense of, you know, she's an affirmative action hire. KH: Were there any issues as you transitioned into the education field? SH: Yeah, it's really interesting. I was really done with business because... from a human resources standpoint, they say that people are our most important resources, but people are pretty you know, dispensable. And I saw a lot of things in policies that I didn't like. And so the idea of being a faculty member where there is a faculty governance where department chairs are elected by their faculty, it just seems so democratic and really exciting. What I found, however, is as much to criticize in the academic world in very different ways than the 11 business world. In fact, I wish I could be on some kind of national committee to look at ways to combine the best of business and the best of education. I love some of the academic freedom that universities have. I love the idea of shared governance. On the other hand, I love the accountability of the business world. If you have managers that aren’t performing that hits the bottom line in really good companies, then you give them feedback and they either change or they leave. In education, you have faculty who are terrible teachers who aren't keeping up, and they continue to teach year after year after year. But if your faculty don't show up for the classes or else leave class early, there really is little consequence for them. I guess I've just been really, really stunned at the lack of accountability in education. You have faculty that are such superstars. At Weber State, you have some faculty that are so amazing that really.... they're scientists and they're good teachers. And you also have faculty that it's really unfair for students to have to take the classes and there is no accountability. And so I think that's been my most frustration when I came into the educational world. I still have my H.R. hat. A dean at one point asked me if I wanted to stand for department chair, and I said, "No, because I want to fire people and the university does not help you fire people." You want to fire people even when they deserve to be fired and you become the problem. So, yeah. I guess that's what was the biggest transition for me seeing so much lack of accountability. And since I've been an HR manager, there was nothing I could do about that even within my own department. And that has been frustrating at times. KH: When did you start working at Weber State? 12 SH: 2003. KH: What was Weber State like when you started? SH: It wasn't as beautiful as it is now. I mean, isn't it a gorgeous campus? It wasn't this international. There weren't as many international faculty, the students weren't as diverse. I love the diversity of the students. I love the diversity of the faculty. There was still a sense that it was just kind of a second tier Mormon school, to be honest. It's not like that anymore. KH: What drew you to Weber State… I guess you kind of mentioned that with the faculty. Was there anything else that really brought you back? SH: A faculty member, asked me to come back and what was really fun is that... oh here's a really fun story. So Ann Millner, who had been my boss as an associate dean, was president when I came back. That seemed like a good sign because I liked her a lot. When I was interviewed at the College of Arts and Humanities, then Catherine Zublin was the associate dean and she interviewed me. And when I walked in, she said, "Well, Susan Hafen I've been hearing about you for years." And I looked at her and said, "Why?" She said, "You're the mother of our book club." And it turned out that the book club that I started in 1987 was still going on and she was in the book club. So I did come back to a lot of friends, that was nice. KH: What are some of your favorite memories about Weber State University? SH: Some of my favorite memories are working with Barry Gomberg and Mike Vaughan with the diversity committee to get the LGBT center started, that was 13 really exciting. And we had a sense of doing something that was very progressive and that would help students and faculty and staff in the future. And then some of my favorite memories are just some class times, you know, some class discussions with some of my students that were fun. KH: Would you talk a little bit more about starting the LGBTQ center. SH: So I'm lesbian and when I interviewed for the job, since I had come from Wisconsin where sexual orientation is part of the state constitution, I hadn't worried about it. I'd been out in Wisconsin, I knew I couldn't be out here, at least not too visibly with students at least. And so when I interviewed with Zublin and I said, "You know I'm lesbian, is that going to be a problem?" She said, "No." I said, "Okay." And it hasn't really been a problem. On the other hand, I haven't talked about it openly in classes like I did in Wisconsin, because in Wisconsin I felt like I could give organizational examples. So when I talked about sexual orientation in the workplace and policies, I would give personal examples. Here, I did not because I knew that it was a sort of a don't ask, don't tell environment at Weber State. Students... I saw what students would write in journals. You know, if students looked at my vita, then they would see publications that dealt with lesbian identity and LGBT issues. But not very many students did. So what I saw once that process began is that students and faculty and staff started coming out. What's interesting is that far more gay men came out than lesbians. I'm not sure why that is, but at least in terms of the meetings, et cetera, some of the gay men on campus would talk about their experiences. If there were lesbians they never said anything. I don't know. I'm not sure how to interpret that exactly. But what I 14 really saw was the impact on students as soon as that process started. What I found is that students would mention their boyfriend or girlfriend in class. And then it was a couple of years later that they started talking about being trans in class. That made a huge difference in the culture and I think in students feeling safe and in faculty and staff. I mean I didn't witness this, this is just a sense that I had from talking to students, faculty and staff that may have done what we now call micro aggressions - in the sense of rolling their eyes or saying something sort of slightly disparaging about LGBT issues, gay marriage, et cetera. They might have just in some ways let students know that was a moral issue that they thought was wrong—that stopped. That stopped with Chuck Wight and Mike Vaughn and Barry Gomberg sending a clear message that we do not want students to feel unwelcome in this campus. And so that was huge and they were very brave. KH: I agree. You mentioned that the administration at Weber State was very open to opening up the LGBTQ center.... SH: Not all. KH: Not all, okay. SH: Chuck Wight was. I don't think everybody was. Barry Gomberg, of course, was. And Mike Vaughn, who was the provost at the time, his leadership was critical for that because he funded it. KH: Did it have to go through the Board of Trustees and all of that stuff to get approval? 15 SH: Yes, and not all of the Board of Trustees were really excited about it either. I mean, I wasn't part of those meetings. Mike and Barry weren't going to come to our committee meetings and say, "These are the individuals who are trying to block this." They just let us know that there were individuals who were not excited about it, who were sort of blocking it. I think that Brad Mortenson is somebody who initially was probably not a big fan but has definitely, over the years come around on that issue. But I don't know that for sure, but again, because he was sort of a part of the administration that Mike and Barry would kind of refer to. You sort of had to guess. KH: So from start to finish or from when you started helping with this, how long did it take to get the center? SH: Three years. Three years before I was involved, probably longer from Barry's standpoint. KH: OK. So what was the process for getting the center while you were helping with it? For the meetings, was it trying to figure out how best to create the center or was it kind of a different? SH: It didn't start with the center. It started with, "What can we do to make this a more welcoming place for LGBT students?" So start with that question. And it started with serving students and hearing that they didn't feel safe on campus. So it was really a ground up. It wasn't a top down. NOT: We need a center. What can we do to get a center? INSTEAD: What do we need to help our students? What's the best way to do that? So it also includes workshops for faculty and staff. The 16 sad thing about those workshops is true with all workshops, which is the choir always comes. The people who should be there because you want to help open their minds aren't going to come. I'm not sure how useful that training is, and in part because, once again, and this again is an advantage and disadvantage of an educational institution that is very decentralized. Where it's not authoritarian and I don't believe in authoritarianism, but because there's not a lot of accountability. A department chair could tell their faculty, "I'd like you to go" and the faculty don't go. No consequences. So all they can do is... it's kind of like right now with the drought. Right? All the governor really wants to do is say, "Hey, I really hope that you guys will be mindful of our drought." But there's really no enforcement and there's no accountability and no surveillance. And some of that's good. But on the other hand, it means the drought's going to get worse. And it's going to take a longer time. It's going to take more people really suffering. And so it's tough. It's those kinds of things trying to change people's minds is tough. KH: As a lesbian on campus, do you feel like you had support to be who you were, even though you weren't really...I don't know if you were discouraged or not, but to not discuss it on campus? SH: I was never explicitly discouraged. That was my own fear. I mean, my colleagues might come and they might sort of whispered to me, like, [Talking quietly] "I've got this new LGBT article you might be interested in." I mean, the message was clear...and I would say, "I mean, as a lesbian..." they look around like, "Oh, God is anybody here? I'm talking to her and she's talking about this subject and 17 naming it." So nobody said to me, "Don't talk." The message was clear, like, "We don't want to make this visible or talk publicly.” KH: How has the communication program changed throughout your tenure at Weber? SH: We had a bunch of good ol boys, you know, call them the lads, that went to lunch, et cetera, and didn't do much research. Now we have real researchers in the department. So the research focus has certainly shifted. We have more women in the department, which means things are a lot more efficient. On the other hand, because people saw more research is what counted for tenure and promotion, that became a more important focus for people’s time. I would say it is a much more social, friendlier, department interpersonally outside the office, but because it's so research oriented and because people are so efficient that they are in their offices working while they are on campus. So whereas, before the lads would kind of walk along the hall and talk to people, they wouldn't do anything else. They sort of stand in your doorway and talk with their cup of coffee and you'd be like, "I have got things to do. I'm actually grading here." So externally, there was more conversation in the halls, you know, sort of more kind of what I would call sort of social lobbying in some ways. And now the doors are closed, more doors are closed because people really working much harder. Does that makes sense? KH: Yes. Yeah. What does a typical semester look like for you? SH: Well, the last couple of semesters have been via Zoom, so they haven't been typical. 18 KH: But prior to the pandemic, what did a semester look like for you? SH: They would say that it's teaching, research, and service. And my department is probably service, teaching, and research, because we have so many extra curriculars. We have the Signpost, we have the Ogden Peak PR Agency, we have Studio 76, we have the debate team, we have the speech team. We have all of this stuff going on, and faculty want to be supportive. There are lots of stuff you have to go to, and lots of students that always are coming to talk to you about this stuff. And so it's lots of meetings around that. Also, in our department, every faculty has to also advise students and we have a lot of majors. In some departments and colleges, there are staff who do the advising or else one faculty is assigned to advise all the students. All our faculty are assigned advising duties, and that takes a lot of time…And because our department is a communication department it's pretty democratic, then everybody gets to have input on everything pretty much. So there's a lot of meetings, a lot of committees, a lot of subcommittees. So I would say that a lot of my time was spent in service stuff, and then teaching. Then the research demands at Weber State, because you're teaching four-four courses per year, are really not horrendous. So I like writing. I wish I'd done more research. As I've retired, I've been going through my files and finding all these wonderful conference papers and rereading them and thinking, "Damn, I should have published that. It was really good." So not as much research as service and then teaching. KH: How did your department and courses change because of the pandemic? 19 SH: When it went completely online. I did a lot of Zoom classes, a lot of audio lectures. A lot more group assignments that were all online. I got one of these stand up desks because it was a lot more bending over my computer. Luckily, I already had my classes on canvas, but I didn't have all of my lectures on canvas. And I had all my assignments on canvas, but....Putting all of my lectures on canvas was such work, and because you couldn't have classroom discussions, I had to put those discussions on canvas, which meant that after every lecture, there were questions they had to answer because the lectures weren't...you can't lecture for an hour and 15 minutes. You can't do it. So there were a lot of...besides breakout groups, there were shorter lectures and then there were questions they had to answer and then they had to respond to other students’ answers, which was a lot more writing for me to read and grade. So grading became huge for me. KH: OK, did your department make any changes because of the pandemic? SH: Well, all of those co-curriculars had to make a lot of changes, so you'd had to talk to them and know they had to make a lot of changes. When you have the Signpost and Studio 76 and all these things that require a lot of face-to-face contact, they had to make a lot of changes. The department changes really had to do with meetings were all online. A lot of faculty ended up going back home, out-of-state to teach online. So we didn't see as many people. And once they went out of state, we didn't hear from as many of them. So, yeah, it really changed. I think that it was interesting. I think for many students, particularly the younger students, the freshmen and sophomores, it was very, very difficult. They 20 didn't get the social interaction. They were required to be more self-motivated and that's hard for them. On the other hand, for the older students who were married and had kids or had full-time jobs, they loved it. Because they don't have to commute to campus. I also think that faculty were far more understanding about problems, so a student that we might have failed we gave lots of incompletes to. The tests that were in the testing center became open book tests. So I think grading was much laxer during the pandemic. It was skewed that you had a lot more A's and a lot more F's or E's. But those E's were because students just dropped out. It wasn't because they did failing work, it's because they didn't do the work. They just dropped, you know, they just couldn't handle it. They just stopped coming. But on the other hand, students, because so many zoom classes are prerecorded, students had classes in the same time slot. Right. So they were able to expand their working lives. So some of the students really loved it. KH: Do you feel like any of the changes that have been made will be carried forward as we transition out of the pandemic? SH: Yeah, I think we'll have more meetings zoom. I love the breakout groups so much that if I were to continue to teach, I would teach hybrid. Because I found some advantages and breakout groups, you can put them in break rooms. You can randomize them and you can keep switching them. So in some ways, students got to know more people than they did in the classroom where they sat by the same people every single class period. And by having them write out their answers and having to respond to other people's answers, rather than just talk 21 about in class, there was more accountability. I really got to see who the smart students were, because you can't always judge by people who talk the most being the smartest. Right? I was able to give more feedback about people's writing sooner. There were some advantages. But I think ideally that hybrid format allows the best of both worlds, if I was to continue to teach. It would be hybrid. KH: What committees or organizations on campus or otherwise, have you or are you a member of? SH: Oh, gosh, I was on lots of college committees, I could not even begin to name all the college and department committees it's just too many. KH: Could you pick like three or four? SH: So the department ones, I was on the curriculum committees or promotion committees. I was on the scholarship committee. I was the honors coordinator for the department and the internship coordinator for the department. So on the college level, I'm on college and university internship committees. I was in the College Tenure and Promotion Committee. I was in Faculty Senate. That's a lot. For years I was on university’s committee for Deliberative Democracy Day and trained students to facilitate those discussion groups. KH: Yeah. Are there any professional organizations outside of Weber State that you're a member of? 22 SH: No. Well, sure I mean, the communication discipline. You know, I belonged to the Western States Communication Association, the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association. So, yeah, those. KH: OK, you mentioned that there's a lot of extracurricular departments like the Signpost and stuff. Were you ever an adviser for any of those things? SH: No, no, because I'm in organizational communications, so studio 76 has to be digital media, PR have to be the PR professionals. The public Signpost is journalism. Debate, is the debate coach. So I wasn't an adviser to those. I was the honors advisor to the department. But because all of those organizations have activities that they want faculty to support, or they have assignments that they want faculty to support. So with students in all those organizations, other faculty get drawn into what the organization is doing, even though you're not advising the organization. For example, the speech competitions, being a judge for them or attending those. KH: What topics have you written about? SH: Workplace gossip was my dissertation, I have a couple of publications for those. I did some stuff in sort of critical theory, I did something I called, Patriots in the Classroom, after 9/11 with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I did stuff on diversity training, its effectiveness and ineffectiveness. More recently, and once I got full professor and tenure, then I decided to do my real love, which is human animal communication. And so I've had a number of publications on 23 human/animal communication, people's communicative relationships with their pets. Yeah, it's called Zoosemiotics. KH: Great, what recognition's have you received for your accomplishments? SH: I haven't got any of those big awards. I received the Honors Faculty of the Year for 2014-2015. I got recognition because of my internship coordination, but nothing formal. I was part of the department that got a sort of a department award for work that we did with community, with interpersonal and small group class. So it was the all the people that worked in with those classes in the community outreach. Got an award, but it wasn't an individual award. I was nominated for the outstanding faculty award twice, but I didn’t complete the paperwork to be considered for the final award. It just seemed to self-aggrandizing to ask people to write more letters for me and write grand things about myself. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? SH: With the human animal communication, I've been one of the first people to start writing about that in the communication field, and we now have a subdivision at the National Communication Society on Human Animal Communication. And there's a woman in Connecticut who is now teaching classes in that and it started off by her attending my conference workshop and me giving her material. And so I feel like I've been sort of instrumental in that. I never taught a class here on human-animal communication. I tried to work with Dan Bedford in honors and he was really interested in me teaching honors class, but I wanted to co-teach it with 24 somebody in the sciences. I couldn't find anybody that wanted to do it. And then you know, COVID hit. It's one of the many things I wish I had done because I have a lot of research and a lot of books in that area and I should have taught an honors class on it, as I did on LGBT Identifies and Popular Culture for Honors. And it's not Dan's fault, it's my fault. I just wanted to teach it with somebody in the sciences and nobody was interested. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? SH: I would tell them that the key in being successful in any organization is—and it's something that I know not from being good at, but from not being very good at it —the bad word is brownnosing. I mean, that's the negative spin on it, the more positive spin on it is complimenting others. And they're both true. It's true that you need to brownnose, but it's also true that you need to give a lot of recognition to other people, especially those people above you. You need to always give recognition to people, and I haven't been very good at that. I tend to be more of a critic, as you probably can tell from this conversation. And so I give praise, but only when I think it's really well deserved. And that's being a kind of a cynic. But I do think that a lot of success—as I've watched people who have mentors, they have had mentors because they have praised those people. Most people want to become mentors to them. Does that makes sense? The other thing that I would say that's not cynical, that is really true is that you need to really get back to people. You can't ignore emails, not from anybody. And you also have to be really nice to your secretaries. They can do a lot of damage. So part of it is you have to recognize people and praise people a lot even when you don't think they 25 deserve it. And I would give that to anybody, whether it's in business or in education. As I watched people rise, I've watched them. I thought, "They praise people a lot." And sometimes I don't think it's deserved and I think it's brownnosing, but a lot of it is deserved. So I think that positive reinforcement is really, really important anywhere you go. It's a communication skill. It doesn't make you more competent, but it will make you more liked and it will make you rise in the organization. You have to be minimally competent and you have to be really, really good at praising people. KH: This is kind of my last question, what changes would you like to see made on campus in regards to diversity? SH: So this is something that I wouldn't have said until about two years ago. But I think that anyone can become a bully, not just white males. Black people can be bullies. Women can be bullies. LGBT people can be bullies. And right now, there's a lot of bullying going on. And some of that bullying goes on in the forms of complaints about micro aggressions. Because everything that's called a micro aggression, isn't an aggression. It's just somebody not being very wise, or being ill informed, or somebody that's got a personal opinion that maybe you disagree with. But it's not a micro aggression. Aggression has to be intentionally aggressive. I think right now the diversity is going to be receiving a backlash because people are afraid to say anything. They're afraid to express their opinions because they're going to be accused of micro aggression. And so some of those pro diversity people are hurting themselves. We have a legislator, this was in The Standard Examiner a couple of days ago, who not only doesn't want 26 to talk about critical race theory, but he doesn't want to talk. He wants to defund departments who even bring up divisive topics. Yeah, I can't remember the name of the Utah legislator. He's from South Jordan. And part of that problem is that it is not just that white males feel like they're blamed for everything and frankly, they have a lot to be to be blamed for, but it's that people are afraid to say anything because it can be viewed as a micro aggression. Which means that you can't have conversations. I think somehow what I want to happen on diversity is for them to take a step back, to not be so aggressive about micro aggressions. Try to have allow people to have some honest conversations. Because right now what's happened is we've really...up until now we've had sort of white males that are heterosexuals that have been Christians that have felt entitled, so they could go after the Muslims and people of color and women and blah, blah, blah. But now that other people have gotten to feel entitled, some of them I mean, not of the majority, but some have felt also entitled. But now there's just backlash and it's going to create a counter backlash, which is why you have all of these Republican Congress and so many people talking about, "You can't talk about critical race theory." Which really means you can't talk about our history honestly, and I don't know, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't have the answer exactly how that has to happen, but I do think that there are individuals on campus that have gotten a little bit too aggressive about pushing diversities. This notion of micro aggressions, when I see that list of things that are micro aggressions, I think a lot of that stuff isn't an aggression. It's just people not knowing the right word or giving their opinion, and the opinion is going to be offensive to somebody, but 27 they still have the right to that opinion. You know what I mean? Because I'm such a diversity proponent, and yet I'm looking now at diversity and I'm saying I wouldn't want to be in diversity training these days. It's gotten kind of aggressive. KH: Do you feel like it's too aggressive? I mean, you kind of mentioned that, but do you think it's their response to now that people are finally listening, they're going full in or is it? I don't know how to ask that question. SH: Back in the 70s and 80s when women wanted to stop being called girls, right, and being seen as a secretary, you might have a woman, faculty member who'd been asked a million times by coworkers to get the coffee or the lunch or to make Xerox copies and always in a nice way by someone who just assumed that that was okay with her. Right? Hadn't really thought about it. And so at the time, she turns around and says, you, blah, blah, blah, and swears at them and says, I'm not your secretary, your mother, and the coworker’s reaction is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I wasn’t trying to insult you! Right? You know, so you understand her reaction to the request and the assumption that as a woman she should perform secretarial duties for others. But that particular individual didn't deserve to be blasted for a mistake. I feel like that's what's happening right now with all of these micro aggressions. That everybody who makes a mistake in a comment deserves to be blasted if it refers to a group that has been historically disenfranchised. I mean, they're mad and they're just blasting people that really maybe...they should know better, but they don't. And that's just not going to help the cause. KH: Those are all the questions I have. Anything else you'd like to share? 28 SH: Nope, I think I overshared. KH: No you didn't. I love it when people expound on things that it gives you so much more to learn and to know about. SH: Yeah, well, I do interviews for my research, I know that interviews are fun because a lot of people like me right now, they want to be asked questions because they want to share their experiences. And it's so fun for them. So you're really doing the people you do that work with a service as well. It gives them a chance to reflect on their years and feel like they're sharing their opinions and their wisdom. KH: Thank you so much for your time. SH: Thanks Kandice.