Hello,
this is Julie Kaplan and Mira Khan interviewing Dean Mark Jacobs on November 18,
2018 at 8:50 a.m. in Sage North in Barrett,
the Honors College.
This interview is a part of the Barrett Oral History Project.
Our goal is to preserve a record of
Barrett's history in honor of our 30th anniversary.
Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us and share your experience.
Dean Jacobs,
you started working at Barrett in 2003.
What brought you to Barrett?
I was intrigued by the vision that President Crowe had
of
taking an honors college that was already very good
and making it even better in ways that
would be related to some of the things that a good residential
college of the sort I had been employed at
formerly Swarthmore College,
uh,
can do with its students.
So
both of us were interested in.
Doing the experiment to see which good
ideas for bright undergraduate education would transfer
to a public honors college,
and that was really attractive.
And how has Barrett changed since when you first got here to now?
It's changed in almost every way you can imagine.
It's gotten bigger in numbers of students,
way bigger in square footage of facilities,
way bigger in terms of coverage on all four campuses.
Hopefully,
people would judge it
also getting way better
as a place for bright undergraduates to
get their education with much better advising,
hundreds more honors courses
available compared to 2003,
um.
Scores more opportunities abroad
and for travel within the United States,
um,
more thesis
being done,
more thesis advisors,
uh,
weighing in and helping the honor students,
a much larger faculty
for Barrett itself,
which had to grow as we grew in size because we wanted to keep the
ratio of,
um.
Human events students to human event teachers the same as they had always been,
so it's,
it's almost every way conceivable,
it's changed.
So what inspired the human event honor seminar?
Well,
that was
present when I came.
Uh,
so my knowledge of what inspired it is only,
um,
stories I've been told by
the founding dean,
Ted Humphrey,
but quite clearly,
it was based on some of the great books,
courses that you have at places like Saint John's College,
um,
Columbia University in New York City,
University of Chicago.
Um,
The the idea that studying.
Terrific
thought of previous people,
uh,
can train students
to think clearly and argue
critically.
Um,
that's the idea behind the great books courses.
The human event was.
Um,
taken as a course,
starting with that premise and then
expanding it to all civilizations,
not just Western Civ,
um.
And hiring faculty
who were specialists at teaching specifically that course.
So that,
as far as I know,
is also
relatively a new idea.
Instead of having
your professors teach their other courses and then a section
of a great books course,
having a dedicated faculty solely for the human event,
so therefore one that gets to be better and better
with practice at exactly that kind of seminar teaching.
Was a new idea when it started,
but it was in place when I came,
and the only change we've made
really is that all the faculty were humanities PhDs when I came,
and Peggy Nelson and I added slowly over the years
a lot of social science PhDs and even some natural science PhDs,
so that even if they were teaching the same piece like
Plato's Republic,
they'd be teaching it from different viewpoints,
which we thought would be
generally good for the students to have.
And can you tell me about other honors courses that are offered?
Other honors courses?
Well,
as you,
as you know,
there are honors courses offered
all through the university,
over 300 to 350 of them each semester that are
self-standing honors courses in other departments,
but,
but just for honors students.
And then there are thousands of honors contracts
each semester,
um.
And I,
I don't know if the
listeners to this history know what honors contracts are,
but
they're a way of making a non-honors course into an honors course,
so they depend on a contract between the professor and the student,
having the student go through some
extra exercise,
usually hopefully involving a deeper understanding of the
material and more interaction with the faculty member,
um,
in the process to,
to
change the three non-honors credits into honors credit.
But if you count all of those,
it's 1,000s and 1,000s of courses each semester.
Awesome.
So Barrett has had a large focus in the last few years on global initiatives.
Can you talk to me about these and their significance?
Sure,
um,
One of the things
we try to do,
um,
each year is assess
how the honors college is doing
and going back to our roots,
so to speak,
usually means
starting the whole discussion by saying,
are we giving students at Barrett the best
education for bright undergraduates in the nation?
We decided to have that as our guiding,
um,
mission
to start meetings
when we're trying to discuss what we really could do to make things even better.
Um,
and although it's a little pompous to say best in the nation,
it certainly sets our sights in the right direction.
And two years ago,
well,
a year and a half years ago,
summer of 2017,
we
figured on our own that this was not part of a national movement or
a grant that the university had obtained.
It was just the people,
the deans of Barrett,
just thought that it was time for Barrett students to really grapple
with global issues in a much more concerted way,
not only by.
Expanding the travel opportunities
for Barrett students to go from Barrett out into the world,
but bringing world leaders into Barrett.
So,
um,
this coincided in discussions we were having with Craig and Barbara Barrett with a,
a grant,
a,
a second,
um,
grant or donation they made to the Honors College of $2 million to sponsor,
particularly the visitors that they know so well because.
Their personal experience is on a global level politically and at a global level
in the corporate world through Intel,
so they have
tons of contacts all over the world in business and politics,
and
they thought it would be wise to
support a program that brought those leaders in as well.
So
we realized this was going to be a big enough program
so that we would want to have someone running it full time.
So we advertised a year and a half ago for.
Uh,
a director of global initiatives,
we hired
Jason Briggs and um
in his first year.
Uh,
all sorts of things happen.
We,
we doubled the number of trips abroad that are available,
and most of them are shorter than the ones before,
so they're,
they're,
uh,
cheaper and therefore more,
more available in the sense of economically to more students at Barrett.
Um,
and he,
he through Barbara's and Craig's help,
brought in
Condoleezza Rice as a speaker,
the former president of Latvia,
the former,
the first female minister of defense in the world,
which was the,
the Minister of Defense of Finland.
And I,
I brought vice,
former Vice Vice President Dan Quayle.
We also had the person who was sort of,
in essence,
the city manager of the whole city of Hong Kong,
Anson Chan,
came in to speak at the law school and Barrett.
So,
right away the first year we had a,
a bevy of terrific
leaders,
uh,
lots of them,
female leaders of the world,
um,
to come and interact with the Barrett students for various,
excuse me,
amounts of time.
Um.
The
Va Vika Freiberga,
the former president of Latvia,
was here for 6 or 7 weeks with her husband,
and we had lots of events,
including a puck drop
at the start of an ASU hockey game
because two of ASU's hockey players are from Latvia.
So,
it's been
really terrific for the students to get exposed to
global thinking,
global issues that way,
and also with um the increased number of trips.
OK.
What makes you excited to go to work every day?
I should probably say interviews,
uh,
oral histories.
I love oral histories.
Now,
um.
It's wonderful to be working.
I mean,
I would,
I've always wanted,
uh,
you know,
everybody has that moment when you're sitting on
a sand cliff overlooking one of the oceans,
having deep thoughts about what you should do in life,
what,
what is something that helps,
that would help the world,
the planet,
the ecosystem.
It doesn't have to be humans,
but lots of people think of it in terms of helping humans too.
And um,
I always felt that.
Uh,
there are obvious answers like being an MD where you actually,
or a nurse where you're actually
literally helping people with wounds or diseases to
stay alive or have a better life,
but the other obvious answer is always education,
and education at any level,
elementary school
through college,
um.
I settled on being a college teacher
and I,
I love interacting with bright students,
particularly because I think
they have a greater chance of becoming
leaders in the country and the world,
so
it's easy to come to work every day when
your whole job
is making the education of bright students
better and better
and as trite as that sounds,
that what that is what my job is.
And it's wonderful,
and I'm,
I'm surrounded by terrific people who have the same
ideals,
and so
you're working with people who think the same way you do.
It's great.
What is the value of Barrett and how do you see it changing in the future?
The value of Barrett,
you mean,
for instance,
to the state or the university?
Yeah,
well,
um,
to the university,
it's a terrific magnet for wonderful students
and,
um,
other universities
after they saw what happened
with ASU getting better and better students coming in because of Barrett,
uh,
are copying us,
they're realizing it's a very,
that,
that is definitely one of the things that's positive about it,
um,
from my point of view.
I don't look at it as Barrett's just helping ASU be better
because I see the relationship as a symbiosis
whereby
um good students come to work with great faculty
in great facilities that the university has built,
um,
but then they have the community that Barrett represents,
and I really firmly feel.
Um,
uh,
a terrific student is not going to come here
just because there's a college built
that
that is sort of like a residential college or even a private one in the east or west.
Um,
they come also to work with Nobel Prize winning faculty,
members of the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering,
um,
all the things and,
and in terrific new facilities that
have evolved at ASU because of mostly President Crowe in the last 15 years.
So,
um.
It's,
it's a symbiosis,
but
the fact that the honors college is here,
the same students would also not come
if the Nobel Prize winners were here,
but there was no good structure for them,
no support,
no advising at multiple levels.
I think they'd opt to go as they did from what I'm told in the 70s and 80s.
To out of state
colleges,
um,
that was where families that I'm told in Arizona
who really cared about education sent their
sons and daughters in the past.
Barrett gives them an option to have a wonderful
education
right here in the state,
and that
is terrific for
the university.
It's terrific for the state.
I've had many MDs and professional people tell me when I'm in their offices,
Barrett is the reason.
I and all of my colleagues are sending our children to
to universities in the state,
in the state instead of out of state at private places that cost more
because it's gotten so good
that we recognize it's a terrific place for them to get an education.
So
I think it's helped
stymie a sort of brain drain from the state.
It also stimulates brain gain in the sense that we're
a 65-35% split in the student body between in-state and out of state students,
so we're now
attracting a lot of very good out of state students,
and there's a lot of sociological research that shows
that
a percent that's higher than you would expect
at any university has its alums come back
and work in the geographic area of that university
just because for those 4 years of their education they got used to the area.
So it really
could easily be probably is also a brain gain mechanism for the whole state
and then not to sound too
megalomaniacal,
but um
at the national and world level we are being copied.
This is the way
public universities all over the country and,
and now starting to be from other countries are
visiting us because this is the way they see.
Is the model they should use to take
care of their most intellectually engaged students,
they can't reproduce a Yale or a Princeton
in the middle of their campus,
or if they could,
it would be
much,
much too expensive and.
By following a model
such as Barrett with a public-private
partnership for building
a campus and with some of the
approaches we have with our
intro special course for freshmen
thesis,
undergraduate thesis,
and,
and small sections throughout,
um.
They see that as a valuable
way to educate their most academically oriented students.
So I think in all those ways we've.
It's,
it's a good.
Institution.
So to clarify,
Barrett is an example for,
uh,
universities all over the world
for an ideal honors college.
Well,
what we're seeing is,
is absolute copying of Barrett all over this country.
I mean,
10 to 12 universities have built honors colleges
after coming and touring Barrett
and then building them using a lot of the ideas we've used here.
So that's without a,
without a doubt,
and there have been.
People donating money to other universities that are their alma maters,
um,
saying as they donate the money,
you need to do
all these things and it's a list of things that Barrett does
or I won't give you the money.
So
there's no question it's happening in the nation,
but we're starting to be visited by delegations from universities in China.
Um,
that are coming to see how we do
this because they want to expand their honors programs
in a way like Barrett.
So I do think it's,
it's a model for
universities around the world too.
And how does it feel to be kind of one of the builders of this?
Feels great.
But honestly,
it's not great because
people come and bow down to you and
say you're so wonderful because you built Barrett.
It's great because it's making the education for bright students
at a good price available throughout the country and the world,
you know,
if,
if our graduates,
and this is true,
go to the same graduate schools,
professional schools as Ivy grads,
but even if they're out of state students at half the price,
and if they're in-state students at 1/3 the price.
We're disrupting an industry in a very good way.
I use that term
the way industry uses it when it talks about Hyundai
starting to make
cars that are 80 to 90% the quality of a BMW but half the price.
So it feels good to have an effect
that raises the level of.
Education for for for
intellectually engaged students all over the place and
one evidence of that is that both
Northern Arizona University which switched from an honors
program to an honors college and built a new
honors college building that opened in the last year.
And University of Arizona to the south
that had always had an honors college but not
built and operated the way Barrett is built and operates is
now building a whole new honors campus for its honors college
and
changing the way it operates to
have more of the services Barrett has.
You could say those are rivals,
but the way I like to look at it is the whole state
and its level of honors education has been increased,
and it's because of Barrett.
Even the deans at those other places would agree.
Can you tell me more about the Barrett undergraduate thesis?
Sure,
it's,
that is not a new idea.
Um,
many,
many universities,
whether they're honors colleges or just other universities around the country,
have
a have an undergraduate thesis,
but it's almost never required
of every student except at an honors college.
So Yale,
Stanford,
Harvard,
you can,
you can be one of the 20% of the
students there who elect to do an undergraduate thesis.
But 80% are not doing it and are just finishing up courses their senior year.
Princeton does require a thesis of all of its undergrads,
but even at Princeton,
the
overseers or directors of the thesis are
very often grad students and postdocs.
Here,
and I think at most other honors colleges,
the ones I visited,
the director of a thesis is always a faculty member.
And every merit student must do one,
so.
That's background.
What it is,
of course,
is a sustained piece of
research or scholarly work
that the honor student does
with um a professor
side by side here at ASU
and uh defends in front of a
group that includes sometimes other
faculty in the same area,
but Barrett students also have the chance to
bring in an outside expert from another university.
Um.
to whom they have to defend their thesis,
so they're they're part of the committee and they get to ask questions too.
So the student,
if
that part is elective at Barrett,
but
the student can elect to stand up to sort of the nation's
standards in that field if they wish to by bringing in an expert
from outside ASU if the expert.
Is any more expert than the faculty at ASU,
which isn't always the case,
of course.
So as a Dean,
what opportunities to interact with Barrett's students do you cherish the most?
Oh,
I love family weekend.
I love seeing
the talent show on family weekend.
I love homecoming cause the alums come back to the tent.
Um,
when I got here,
the former dean told me that,
um,
He,
he said at fall assembly,
you better look closely because you may never see this class
assembled again until graduation.
And I found out when I looked into it that there weren't
many opportunities to just see the students in a relaxed fashion.
There weren't any really
that,
that
had existed before.
So I started
this monthly lunch with the dean or breakfast with the dean series,
which I've done for 15 years.
And although the number of students coming to it is only 1212 or 14 or so,
it's a wonderful chance to have an hour to an hour and a half
just talking to students over a meal about anything they want to talk about
that could make Barrett better.
We've got lots of great suggestions that have come from those meals
or that they just want to say
is a good feature and we hope we keep it,
but
those have been wonderful times.
And then I,
I mean,
I teach
two courses a year.
Um,
a course to first semester freshman on leadership with
Dean of Students Kristen Herman,
which is,
it's wonderful to see students in their first semester at college,
and then I teach,
uh,
an upper level course on the history and evolution of human food,
mostly to juniors and seniors,
and
we have,
um,
because it's about food,
we have a dinner at my house at the end of that,
um.
That's wonderful
to,
to that,
and that gives us a chance for a whole evening to get to know students better,
but it's by the end of the course,
so I know them already.
Um,
and then we,
we've arranged a culinary class at Vincent's on Camelback
for about
15 students a year
with the
collaboration and support of Vincent and his wife,
uh,
Levonne,
um.
That teaches students culinary skills from a French chef's point of view.
Bechamel sauce,
this,
you know,
pastry making,
and it,
I don't go to all those,
but I get to
talk to the students who do,
and we have a big dinner at the end of that.
That's also very
pleasant
to take part in.
So,
I mean,
anytime
I think that you're interacting
with the students,
it's a pleasure.
That's what we're here for.
I mean,
if we,
if we're here to make education.
Of them
better,
why wouldn't you want to be interacting with the students all the time?
And now my daughter is a senior in high school and applying to college.
So
what's happening now is I,
even more than I ever did before,
I see the,
the students as,
as if they were sons and daughters,
and that's how
the former vice dean and I have always felt.
Um,
and,
and the dean of students,
Kristen,
we all feel
as if,
uh,
at many times we're,
we're charting a course that would be good for our own kids if we had them
at that age.
What does the future of Barrett look like?
I think it's very good for some of the same reasons
that I was talking about
um
as reasons we
we're an intriguing model for the nation.
I think we've had.
We've had hundreds more applications every year
compared to the year before for at least
the last 12 years,
and this is in the context of
colleges all over the nation.
If you read the
one of the September issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education,
usually a headline on the first page for the last 2 years it has been.
That freshman enrollment goals were not met
by half of the 400 to 500 small colleges in the country,
so
it's not
necessarily
the case that everybody,
every university or honors college is doing well,
but if we're having that
and we're staying roughly the same size,
um,
we're getting to be,
we have,
you know,
even more select students each year.
Um,
I think the future should include.
The development of Barrett at the other three ASU campuses
because it's not the same level of facility,
uh,
extent,
at least,
and maybe,
well,
the quality is terrific at the other places,
brand new
dining halls,
brand new sports complexes,
and new res halls,
but I'd like to have the Barrett community be,
um,
developed more at each of those,
and I,
I think it will,
um.
And then.
I think the prognosis is very good for Barrett in particular.
We have,
we're taking part in Campaign 2020.
We have many
friends and donors who are giving us
funds to keep supporting us as we expand programs.
We could only do an expansion like the global initiatives because we had
funds to do that with,
and
the future looks good for continued funds to do continued good work.
Can you talk to me a little bit about what the Barrett
residential campus looks like?
Well,
it's different on each campus.
At Tempe,
it's,
it's the most extensive,
and we have 1700 beds
in the campus we built that opened in 2009.
And those beds
were designed to be for
every year student
from freshman through senior.
So there are,
um,
in some of the res halls along rural road,
um,
one door into a suite that has 4
private bedrooms,
a living area.
A kitchenette and two bathrooms,
all just for 4 students,
and that's very attractive.
It's just that now
we did expand,
although we're not expanding in size for the last 3 years.
We were asked to expand by the president 4 or 5 years ago,
and
when we did,
we had to use a lot of the rooms.
In this,
this complex that we're sitting in
for first year students,
so
they get
terrific
rooms if they get into some of these rooms,
but we also were always wanting and planning to be a 4,
a potential 4 year
residential community.
We only asked the students to stay for 2 years,
but
many of them stay for their junior and senior year.
And so the president arranged
to make it
possible for us to
take over Vista del Sol,
this apartment complex across
one of the streets,
um,
that has 1800 more beds,
and all of those beds are in full-fledged apartments,
so each,
each apartment has a full kitchen.
Um,
I was worried because part of my vision of
building Barrett here.
Uh,
and the one,
the part that opened in '09 was to have all four years,
uh,
rubbing shoulders together in the dining hall,
the way that,
that,
that happens at
Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and Yale and the house and college systems there.
And I was worried if most of our upper classmen were
going to move across the street and they had full kitchens,
that they wouldn't come to the dining hall,
but luckily
enough of them.
Don't feel like cooking or don't cook,
so that they still buy meal plans and we have a good mixture of the different ages
in the dining hall.
OK.
What do you think is one of the greatest achievements of Barrett as a whole?
Well,
I think
you know
we're the honors college of a state university.
That's,
that's the statement that has to start discussions about,
about what Barrett does.
So we have an obligation to serve the people of the state.
We're supported
by um
state money from the legislature even though it's not
as large a percentage of our budget as it used to be.
We also are supported by fees the students pay
and in that sense we're semi-private,
um.
In that sense,
but we're the we're the honors college of of the biggest university in the state so
I think um
that we've made college education
more available and attractive to students of the state
is the best is the best thing we could have done
it should always be remembered when we're trying to.
Make ourselves even better that we're doing that for
the engaged academically engaged students of the state.
OK.
All right,
these are all of the pre-written questions that I have for you.
Myra,
do you have any questions you'd like to add?
Uh,
yes,
I do.
Uh,
could you tell us a bit more about campaign 2020 and specifically how Barrett,
sorry,
about what?
Uh,
campaign 2020.
Yes.
I mean more about Barrett's part of it.
Um,
well,
Campaign 2020 asked each of the colleges
to
have some goals
written up and,
um,
And
Disseminated in the form of campaign brochures
and Barrett has 4 goals for campaign 2020
and they are further support of faculty through
funding that lets them
do work that makes their teaching better.
There's all sorts of ways that can happen,
but often it needs to be support,
supported,
um,
visiting a,
a particular library
that's very useful for
some of the pieces that a faculty member might be using in the human event,
for example.
So travel and study.
But not so much for scholarly publication,
but to make their teaching better
and that's one of the four goals we have.
Another goal is
student scholarship support because
a lot of the trips
that we
have expanded recently,
as I was saying earlier,
um,
are nevertheless expensive.
So even when a trip costs $10,000 to go.
To Europe for 6 or 7 weeks and you include everything,
the airfare and the hotel,
and we have scholarship money
because we don't want these to be trips only for wealthy students,
so we have scholarship money to dispense
and we usually try to say,
uh,
let's leave something for the student if they have a 1 year
advance warning that they want to go on the trip
to raise some money themselves.
So we usually give a scholarship that's within.
1 or 2000 of the cost of the trip,
but even leaving only 1 or 2000
is not
always
allowing students who want to go on those trips to go.
And furthermore,
because we're giving
on a trip like that 8000 out of the 10,
we can only give a certain number of those scholarships before we run out of money.
And so we really need scholarship support
from donors for travel
and community service,
which we also,
we don't require,
but we
love to see our students do,
but even community service requires them to get to the
points
where they're serving and sometimes
that can be a barrier.
So
a second goal.
Of um
of the campaign for Barrett is student scholarship support.
A third goal is the,
the
building and staffing of a student success center,
which is coming along.
I think it'll be approved soon by
the,
the
president and provost of,
of ASU,
but it hasn't technically been yet.
The idea is to bring
all of the pieces of Barrett's support system.
That help students to be successful outside the classroom,
writing center,
uh,
academic advising,
advising for national scholarships,
internship and research placement,
all those things,
and now aided by a nice gift from the Tom Lewis Foundation,
um,
personal
success
coaching,
uh,
not just personal strength measurement through
indigo programs or things like that,
but also career counseling.
At a much higher and more serious level for any student who needs it
because,
um,
generally universities and also here and particularly in Barrett,
we just felt and so did Tom Lewis that there wasn't enough of that
to get all of that into one building
and we which we hope to build over in the middle
of the Vista del Sol campus near the Gold Dome,
um,
that's
a third goal
of,
um.
Barrett for the campaign 2020 and the fourth goal
was and is the global initiatives
program,
in other words,
increasing the exposure of Barrett students to global issues
both by making it easier to travel out from
Barrett but also easier to bring leaders in.
All right,
thank you.
Um,
also,
is there any particular faculty member on Barrett currently or in the
past who you feel just really embodies the spirit of the college?
Oh,
you know.
All the faculty,
I know this sounds
somewhat cheesy to say,
all the faculty embody that spirit,
and what I mean,
I mean,
an example of that is that
one of the faculty members suddenly had to be in the hospital for a couple of weeks
for a procedure,
just in the last month,
and this has happened
at least 15 times since I've been here for 15 years.
Uh,
there's been a need suddenly and without,
um,
without
any warning.
To take over their courses where the students would just be sitting there
and not have a teacher if
if something
wasn't done
and the other faculty on their own
spontaneously and quickly so there's no dropped class
arrange a whole schedule
so they teach the human event classes for that person
while they're gone and there's no damage to the students.
And that's
in part,
it's true,
it's possible because
the human events syllabus is
similar in each of the 97 human events sections,
but it's not the same.
So very often this requires the faculty member to
read up really quickly on what that particular faculty member was about to teach.
The next time their class met,
they always do it.
They always do it in a very high quality way and the students never miss a beat
and I guess to me
the fact that they're not paid extra for that,
so they're teaching all their courses too,
they're not paid extra,
they don't ask to be paid extra.
They see it
as part of being a faculty citizen
of the college shows you
that makes it hard to say there's only one
person who most embodies.
Barrett's principles,
I think the faculty in general do embody Barrett's principles.
I
is there anything that we haven't brought up that you would like to mention?
Um.
I always want to mention the support President Crowe has given us.
If it weren't for his support,
most of this would not have happened,
and it's been constant
and very,
very helpful through the whole 15 years.
I also always want to mention Ted Humphrey,
the founding dean,
because
elements that make Barrett terrific,
such as the human event,
the idea of a residential community which already existed
over in the city block between.
Damage auditorium and the parking structure along Apache when I came
and had 850 beds in it.
All those things were,
um,
there because of the planning of Ted Humphrey,
so.
I always try to mention Ted and Michael Crowe
because
without
the foundation literally laid
by Ted and the support of President Crowe,
this wouldn't have happened,
but because they both
Played those roles,
we've really been able to build,
I think,
a wonderful institution
for the students here and for the state,
so.
Well,
thank you very much for your participation,
Dean Jacobs,
and if you have any questions about this interview or the 30th anniversary
or a History Project,
please contact Vice Dean Foot.
Thank you.
Great,
thank you.
All right.
Real quick,
do you.
Yes,
you want me to read something?
Yes.
Was,