Hello,
Mark.
Yes,
I can hear you.
Good.
Are you ready to begin?
Excuse me,
are you ready to begin?
Yes,
I can begin now.
All right.
Hello.
For the recording of this oral history,
I,
Doctor Stephanie Delisa,
a teaching professor
and honors faculty fellow at Barrett the
Honors College at Arizona State University.
I am talking
with Doctor Mark Jacobs,
former dean of Barrett.
He has kindly agreed to be recorded as we add voice and texture
via these conversations
to honor and learn from a few of the many wonderful people
that have served Barrett and or have been served by Barrett.
There are many
from whom we can learn about the development
and evolution of Barrett over the years,
and Doctor Jacobs is surely one of the absolute best
given his role and longevity.
While I could say more about him,
it'd be much better if we heard from him in his voice
as much or more than mine.
So Mark,
would you please share some about your
educational and professional background before you came to Barrett so
we could get to know you a little bit more
and otherwise introduce yourself as you wish.
Sure,
I'd be happy to.
Um,
well,
I grew up in Princeton,
New Jersey,
the son of a professor at Princeton,
and I went to Harvard as an undergrad,
class of '71.
Um then I went,
I was a biology major.
I loved biology.
My father was a biologist also,
so I had a good relationship with him and that let,
let me
feel confident about
being a biology major in college.
Then I,
then I applied to graduate school at Stanford.
And went there as a PhD candidate in biological sciences from 71 to 75.
When I finished my
PhD
at Stanford,
working under Doctor Peter Ray,
I got a job at Swarthmore College
in the fall of 1975 and I was there until 2003.
So I was there for something like 28 years,
which was longer than most faculty had been there.
Uh,
for their whole lifetimes before they retired,
but,
but in 2003,
I,
I was approached
for the job at,
um,
at
Barrett Honors College at ASU.
I was only 53 then.
So,
um,
I had some more
mileage on my tires and I wanted to
try some administration.
I,
I had realized I liked administration,
I was good at it
in different capacities at
at Swarthmore.
I've been the chair of the biology department and I liked that.
I've been the vice,
the,
the vice provost of the associate provost of
Swarthmore.
There was only one associate provost,
the provost and the associate provost,
and we ran.
The academic side of Swarthmore College pretty much together.
So I knew I,
I was,
I,
I liked doing that sort of thing and I was pretty good at it.
So I started to apply for a couple of other places,
but
I was approached by a search firm
that,
that Michael Crow had hired during his first year as president of ASU.
To find someone who had been,
who had experience at something like,
as he said,
um,
an elite
Eastern
or not necessarily Eastern,
but an elite college like
um Amherst,
Swarthmore Williams,
um,
he had been on the board of trustees
of trustees at Bowdoin,
and he,
he knew what,
what,
what he wanted.
He wanted someone who had experience running
a college like that,
but who could who could come out to ASU.
And sort of install some of the quality
controls at ASU's
Honors College,
which has just been named Barrett Honors College in
the year 2000 when the Barrett's gave a,
gave a,
uh,
a very hefty donation,
um.
And he wanted,
he wanted someone who would be interested in doing that,
and
it was,
it was a stage of my career where I really
was,
I sort of fulfilled everything I could at Swarthmore.
I was a,
an endowed professor there,
and when I thought about things,
I,
I had,
I had to realize that I was either going to stay there for another 20 years
or move and do something.
New and exciting,
and that's why I decided to take the job
at ASU.
So I came out to ASU in the fall of 2003.
And I served there as a dean through 2022,
so 19 years.
But I,
I,
I then took a year
of sort of terminal leave to think and write and,
and ponder great questions of life
before I was,
before I was actually forced,
not,
not forced,
but before I decided to retire
at 73 in 2023.
So I,
I was at ASU for 20 years.
I'm an,
I'm an emeritus dean and emeritus professor of biology now.
And that's,
that sort of brings us up to date,
if that's what you meant by my timeline.
Well,
I'm glad you shared that.
I'm sure it will be
an
inspiration to any students who listen to this and provide good context
for any others who listen to this.
So once you came here,
who was already at Barrett that helped you get into gear,
and
what did you start
doing right away?
Well,
first of all,
there were,
there were 8 faculty at the time I came.
They're now,
they're now something like 48 or something like that,
I think,
if you count everybody on all 4 Barrett campuses,
but there were 8 faculty.
Um,
the,
the chair of the faculty.
Was,
um
A guy who was a philosopher,
you,
I don't know when,
when did you come,
Stephanie?
When did you arrive?
I came to
Barrett in 2010,
but I've been on the faculty since 1999.
0,
at ASU in general,
yeah,
OK,
well,
anyway,
um,
yeah,
so you,
you,
so 2010,
boy,
OK.
Well,
I should fill you in on some of the stuff that happened then.
Yeah,
I,
I came out,
um,
it was very important to meet.
The biggest supporter actually was President Crowe from the start,
and he's been a great support all the way through my career.
He was always
supporting.
Me and,
and,
and the college,
he wanted it badly to,
he wanted it badly for the college to succeed
in its newest form,
and
he was always,
he always had my back,
so that was very important.
The provost at the time was Milt Glick,
who was a biochemist,
and he was also very helpful at the start.
Um
The people who were,
but,
but really I was sort of on my own a little bit.
Kristen Nielsen,
as she was called then because she hadn't married Bill Herman yet.
Kristen Nielsen was,
was the assistant dean.
I didn't have an associate dean,
although the former dean,
Ted Humphrey had had an associate dean he worked with.
So I was,
I was aware that I,
I would be allowed to,
excuse me,
I'd be allowed to do whatever I wanted,
hiring an associate dean or,
or hiring other people.
Also,
President Crowe told me
that if I wanted to,
I could,
I could just ask every one of the 8 faculty to resign
and then rehire only tenured track faculty if that's what I believed I should do.
Or um hire other ones back that I wanted,
and I didn't want,
I didn't want to come in and do that at all right away.
I wanted to see how it went for the first year.
So I lived with all the faculty,
got to know them very well,
I got to like them,
didn't fire anybody
and realized that it was very good for,
for Barrett's students.
If,
um,
if in fact,
The
faculty.
Excuse me,
were
instructors,
as they were called then,
or
lecturers,
um,
because
they,
they didn't have to work on
research to get tenure,
and because of that they could do things
like lead trips to wonderful places during the summer
with the with the Barre students and
So after,
after the first year when I had already hired
Peggy Nelson as the as the associate dean,
she and I decided that
we didn't want to change the faculty,
we just wanted to add to it,
which we did eventually.
But
I won't go into that right now,
but that's,
that's how we started off.
OK,
so
was Don Beggs the chair
of the faculty at the time?
Yes,
yes,
that's right,
Don Beggs,
sorry,
and Ted Humphrey was the founding dean,
and I believe his,
his vice dean or associate dean was
Janet Burke.
Is that correct?
That's correct,
yes.
And then
you came in,
Kristen
Nielsen Herman was already here,
and then
how did you select to work with
with Peggy
Nelson?
Well,
I had
an advisory council that Ted Humphrey had set up.
Ted,
by the way,
was taking a terminal leave himself,
and he was going to come back.
He,
he could decide whether to retire or to stay on,
and he decided to stay on for,
for at least the next,
I don't know,
15 or 15 or 16 years,
so
Ted was,
was another great help because once he was back from his 1 year leave,
so it was the beginning of my second year,
he and I went to lunch every month.
And I asked,
got to ask him a lot of good questions and um
he,
he gave me very good advice through the,
through the years.
So Ted was important also,
but he had,
yeah,
he,
he had hired
Janet Burke as an associate dean
and um
she was,
she was going to step back to being quote unquote just faculty,
I think,
I think that's how it worked.
Um,
because she wanted to stop being associate dean also,
so I had to hire a new associate dean if I wanted to have someone to work with like that.
But sorry,
what was your question again,
Stephanie?
Sorry.
So you,
how you found Peggy Nelson
and
yeah.
So Ted had set up
an honors faculty council.
It was an advisory council,
and on it was a,
was a professor of biology named Jane Meinschein.
And Jane.
Came into my office one day and,
and very forcefully,
which was what,
which was sort of her nature,
um,
suggested
that I look up Peggy Nelson,
um,
who was in the anthropology department,
and,
and Jane liked Peggy very much,
she thought she'd be a great
person to help run the honors college,
and
so I,
I made a,
a lunch date with Peggy,
we,
we instantly liked each other and agreed on almost everything we talked about,
and she agreed to be the associate dean starting in January of my first year.
Excuse me.
So,
from that point on,
from January of 22004 on,
we had
me as the dean,
the associate dean of Peggy Nelson,
and then
within another year we
decided to,
to um
move Kristen from being
sort of an ombudsman who ran the college under Ted,
so Ted and Janet would have more time to do things
on their own teaching and such and such.
We asked her to be the,
the dean of students basically.
And,
and,
and we promoted her to
associate dean from assistant dean,
and from that point on,
the three of us sort of.
collaborated in running the college.
I,
I don't want to say run it because it,
it was run by the faculty and the staff too,
who were very important and all very nice people,
but,
but we were,
we were sort of the,
the triumvit that
that made
major decisions.
Yes,
I always thought of you and Peggy as a dynamic duo,
and then as time went on,
I realized how important Kristen was,
and as you just referred to it
as more or less a triumvirate.
Um,
can you expand on
some
key examples of how
you work together as a team,
the division of labor,
your relative strengths?
Sure,
I'd be happy to.
Um,
Kristen was,
as dean of students,
Kristen was overseeing,
um,
all the student services part of the college,
so that means
things like advising,
um,
all the activities that were student-related activities.
Uh,
things,
any,
any issue that came up with students from,
from the faculty,
they had a problem student in her class,
it would filter through Kristen's system to Kristen herself.
We had weekly meetings,
several,
two weekly meetings with,
with Kristen,
Peggy and I did.
Peggy and I had several meetings each week
with just ourselves,
2-hour meetings sometimes,
very often 2-hour meetings,
but,
but a couple of them each week.
So we really got to know each other and know how the other one thought.
And we ran the,
the rest of the college,
sort of,
which meant
Peggy focused on,
on the faculty,
I would say.
She was from the,
she,
she had been at ASU for 11 years before she became the,
the associate the vice,
the associate dean and eventually called vice dean of Barrett,
um.
And so she knew a lot of the faculty that were outside Barrett.
She'd,
she'd,
she'd handled
those faculty as friends and even as,
as,
um,
Clients,
so to speak,
when she was an officer
within the department of anthropology.
Her husband was,
was another anthropologist in that same department,
so she,
she knew a lot of the faculty
in that department and at the larger ASU.
It made sense that she would,
she would take.
Take the lead in faculty relations.
I did a lot of the budgeting.
I did all of the
representing to other deans and other colleges when we needed to do things like.
Ask engineering for a favor,
I would go ask the dean for a favor.
I,
I went to all the meetings with the provost.
And and the business officer for the whole of ASU,
the chief financial officer,
people like that.
And I,
I went around and represented the college
to high school students too.
Whenever we were asked to come and do a program at a high school,
I would be the one who went out,
sallied forth and told them all about
Barrett and why they should come to Barrett if they were so motivated.
So,
so,
so we,
we,
3 of us met several times each week.
I met more with Peggy.
Peggy and I.
They talked about almost every decision,
if,
if
the need for a decision boiled up from below.
If there was a decision about the budget,
for instance,
which I was keeping an eye on with,
with Erica
Laterwig,
the,
the business manager,
but if an issue came up,
I would bring it up with Peggy.
If an issue came up with the faculty,
she would bring it up with me and we would make a joint decision.
So it worked very smoothly,
mostly because we all liked each other.
The 3 of us really liked each other and got along very well.
Well,
as a faculty member,
I can
say from my personal experience that the good
relationship that the three of you had,
I felt made it a,
a welcoming and stable
college
to shift to from another college at ASU.
So I thank you for that,
and I,
I do
think that you did a wonderful job on building on the foundation.
That Ted
laid,
and perhaps we could
talk a little bit more about how you matured the college.
Why don't we begin with
ways that you matured the human event
and
how you feel like the human event,
uh,
relates to the success of the college.
OK,
sure.
First of all,
I'd like to say that I was visited by a delegation
of people of faculty from the business school.
Who were very disturbed to hear that I wasn't,
well,
let me back up a little.
At the end of the fall semester,
my first semester,
At ASU
and before Peggy had been hired.
A student came into my office to say he was sorry he was leaving the honors college,
but he just wanted to say he,
he enjoyed it and he,
he didn't hold any grudge.
I said,
grudge about what?
He said,
well,
about this letter.
He showed me a letter that was signed by me.
And,
and it wasn't a letter I had ever seen it was dismissing him from the college,
which turned out to be an automatic letter that went out from the
two-person advising office that was then at Barrett
to any student who fell below a certain GPA
in any semester.
If they fell below it,
they were just summarily dismissed.
That had been that had been a policy before.
So I,
I immediately changed the policy,
and I,
I had a,
I met with the faculty and the staff of the,
of the college and explained to them that,
The,
the entrance requirement to the college,
the decision to admit a student was the main thing,
the main hurdle they had to get over.
After they were admitted,
we weren't going to bother them unless they fell below.
You know,
a really low
GPA,
and we would try for,
excuse me,
at least a semester or two to,
to help them
overcome that
low GPA anyway,
but we would never summarily dismiss someone.
So I say that because
I was then visited by a delegation of business faculty,
got faculty from the Carey School of Business,
who wanted to tell me that they,
they didn't,
they didn't like that I had
relaxed the,
the requirements.
Because I had,
I'd studied what
What the GPAs of students were in Barrett,
and what I was saying was I didn't want them to be dismissed
summarily,
certainly unless
I never want them to be dismissed summarily without any consideration,
but I,
I didn't even want them to be considered for dismissal
unless they were below,
uh,
you know,
a C or a 2.0
for,
for two semesters or something,
and
All I said was
that what we were going to do is be very careful when we let people in,
that we,
we picked the top students that applied.
Once we did,
we wanted to just let them spread their wings and not hassle them,
uh,
certainly not on a semester by semester basis,
um,
to.
To hassle them
again and again
to try to keep their grade point up,
so,
um,
it turned out that.
This delegation thought they interpreted my change in rules
as softening the rules,
and I said,
no,
I'm actually hardening them.
It's going to be harder to get in,
but we're going to trust the students to work hard once they're in.
So that had happened already
by the time the first semester was over.
Now,
what was your question,
Stephanie?
Well,
my question was about ways that you matured the human event,
but let's pause on that for a second and follow up
on what you were just saying about how
you made it.
Harder to get in,
but then giving people the space to have
Spread their wings,
as you put it,
to have an off semester,
perhaps to have some ups and downs in their life before
they felt in peril
about being able to stay and bear it.
I think this brings up the question
of
the size of the student
population when you joined versus.
When you left,
you mentioned the size of the faculty,
but perhaps
before we get into
the
nature and
value of the human event,
you could expand more on how those earlier shifts
you made around admissions or retention
affected
the college.
Yeah,
well,
it,
I wanted to change the spirit of the college
to be one in which
To be one more like a Swarthmore or a Williams or an Amherst where students
tried very hard to do the best job they could to get in,
but once they were in,
they were,
they were
supported and,
and encouraged to take their own path
and not be so cognizant of what exactly their GPA was.
It turned out,
we,
we found out that there were very few bar students who ever had a GPA below a B,
a 3.0 anyway.
And we decided to
not really have a bottom,
uh,
a bottom,
a lowest GPA
below which a student could not get in
from high school,
say.
We wanted,
so,
so we were,
we were looking,
we,
we changed the
admissions application to have more essays,
more chances to,
more,
more reliance on some of the um
Teachers that they had in high school,
which,
which I worked out with
Keith Suthergill,
who became the dean of admissions or the director of admissions for Barrett.
Um,
But
We,
that was just,
those are just part of the things we did.
We also,
um,
we're,
we're looking at.
The
human event.
And,
and what,
what it stood for,
and it took me a while to get that because when I first came out for an interview,
when I was one of 3 final candidates,
they had me go to a human event class.
I went to Jackie Scott Lynch's
class
and I was bowled over by how good the students were.
I had just,
I was teaching an advanced seminar at Swarthmore at the time,
and
students were easily as good as Swarthmore students,
and Jackie was masterful at running that class.
So I knew that the human event had really a good core,
but when I looked at the qualifications of the faculty,
they were almost all humanities related faculty,
and Peggy and I,
I was a biologist,
Peggy was an anthropologist,
we thought it would be good to have
some faculty who,
even though they were teaching the human event,
And teaching great ideas humans have had.
Since the beginning of recorded history to the present,
which,
which was sort of the way of describing a human event,
it would be good to have their backgrounds and their knowledge be
from different
PhD origins,
so we would have more social scientists and more natural scientists.
So
when,
when we talk about
maturing the human event,
we didn't want to change the basic structure of it because Ted
Humphrey had done a great job of installing a great structure.
Um,
and,
and that structure included,
um,
the faculty members' own ideas of what the best
works were from the beginning of recorded history to,
to the Renaissance or so,
and then the Renaissance to the present in the,
in the second semester,
but also,
um,
A chronological sequence.
And,
and
we,
we knew that that.
The background of the faculty member couldn't
help but affect how they taught something,
so even when they were teaching the same,
same thing like Charles Darwin's Origin of Species or,
or Dante,
they would have different takes on it,
and we thought that was a healthy way to have the human event be,
be taught.
And we also knew that students would find out in advance
who the teachers were sort of sympathetic
in their areas of expertise to the student,
each individual student,
and hunt them out and try to get in their sections too,
although that didn't always work because
often
students who had a good time with the professor
when they were randomly placed as a first semester freshman
wanted to stay with that person just because they knew them,
but it did help expand it to quite an extent.
And we,
we needed to expand the number of faculty because
we went from 24 or 500 total students,
which meant something like an entering class of 500
to
when I came in 003,
to a total of over 7000 honor students when I left,
where we were having an entering class of 11,800 or so.
It's really quite amazing,
quite amazing change,
but
one of the,
one of the main things I had to proselytize for with the provost and the president was
to keep the ratios
of students to faculty in each human events section
the same through all those years,
which meant,
of course,
hiring a lot more faculty.
Yeah,
so,
It also means needing more space.
So,
before we move on to space,
I guess I would comment that in my experience teaching the human event,
I would say that building on the foundations of the people that went before us,
it was a challenge the first
year or two,
but when you really leaned into it,
it helped.
The faculty member grow
in amazing ways as well
as we learned from each other on that hallway
about different texts that we might include and,
and largely
being chronological,
maybe not perfectly so,
but it really did help
students get the idea of a,
a general arc of the human event.
It's kind of built in the name
when you start early and
end in modern,
so I think the founding.
Um,
thinkers on this
put together something that helped with the success
of the college.
Do you have experience
with that as an administrator in terms of,
of
people
considering the human event a key component?
Well,
sure,
I mean,
first of all,
um,
it turned out that
That having everyone along the same hallway,
so to speak,
by the time you came,
Stephanie,
I guess,
um,
there was a modern hallway with all the offices off of it,
but there was,
there was a long hallway in the old building too that was there when I was,
when I first came in '03 and '04,
um,
that had all the faculty offices together,
so
we,
there was a,
the structure of the hall.
I don't know if this was planned,
or if it was just the building that,
that,
that Ted inherited when he moved the honors college to the
To the uh campus where it was
when I came,
which was next to,
to,
um,
Gammi Auditorium,
but
whatever it was,
whether that,
whether he planned that or not,
the faculty being along the same hall was a huge
addition and a good,
a good
situation for them because it did encourage them to talk to each other and,
and they have ever since,
and I think that's,
that was sort of important.
The other thing I wanted to say about
the human event though is that
different faculty came in with different,
Different goals for their,
for their careers.
They all had to understand what their primary job
was to teach the human event and to be,
in essence,
another layer that was 4 years long
of advisors to be students who came in
and stayed for 4 years
through to their senior year.
It wasn't,
it's never been a formal advising
capacity,
but,
but when a student comes in and takes a human event,
they bond with,
hopefully they would bond with the.
The faculty member
and and use them as an
an.
A good advisor for other years,
even though they weren't their formal honors advisor or their formal major advisor
in the majors that they went into in the big outside university,
but
the faculty could vary quite a bit.
We had
some faculty members who came in and wanted to do research
and they
They met their obligations to the human event.
They,
they would stack them all in 2 days.
They would teach 4 sections,
3 or 4 sections of a human event
on Monday and 3 or 4 on Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday.
And then have the other 5 days of the week to themselves,
and they could either,
some,
some of the faculty
realized that they would be promoted
and,
and given
higher and higher salaries,
no matter what they did.
With their,
with their non in class time as long as they
got very good teaching ratings because that's what really mattered.
But
others
just filled their
their their extra time
with research.
They they they they they allied themselves
to departments in the bigger university outside.
They asked for support
to help pay for some of the instrumentation they were using.
And
I even had one guy
come in to see me and he said,
you know,
He had a German accent.
Uh,
this is Akim Hermann,
but I don't know if you remember him.
Did you do.
He came in one time and said,
you know,
Mark,
this is really quite easy.
I can do lots of research
in,
in my spare time and I still can teach,
and he,
he,
he had some of the,
well,
he had lower teaching ratings,
but the,
but the lowest rating of any faculty member at Barre was higher than the average
teaching rating for,
for,
for instructors or lecturers in the whole university.
In other words,
if you looked at the average rating for
lecturers in the big ASU,
even
the lowest rated
faculty member at Barrett was,
was higher rated than,
than
the average,
and
in fact they,
they,
they bunched together all the time,
very closely,
all at the top of the.
Of the rating scale.
So,
so in other words,
what Aki,
what Dr.
Herman
illustrated was you could do research,
and he did do research.
He published research
with,
with collaborating faculty in larger departments outside Barrett,
but he still met
the conditions
of his employment,
which included
She included
The human event and he still enjoyed teaching it,
I think
it was good to have him along with some
superhumanists on the,
on the commit on the faculty
who spent their,
their extra time
planning,
reading and bringing in special speakers to enhance their knowledge of
The books they were covering in the human event,
in other words,
doing all the homework,
so to speak,
that a family member would want to do.
To be a good faculty member teaching the human event,
so
we allowed that kind of variation to happen.
Within the faculty,
and I think that was also healthy.
Oh,
I do think it's healthy.
Um,
I think
many people
chose
to
still choose to focus exclusively
on their teaching,
and depending on how they approach
grading or feedback,
they may have quite a bit less quotequote extra time than some of their
colleagues,
but overall,
I think
letting people
Adjust what they do to help keep their
morale and
scholarship and spiritual
love for this job is a win-win for students,
faculty,
and administrators.
Absolutely,
absolutely.
I guess what I was thinking about though is things
I've heard you mention in the past of how different.
Universities nationally and internationally have
reached out to Barrett,
seeing it as a,
an example,
as an exemplar of a successful honors college,
and
that
having core faculty as opposed to borrowing from other units or that blend
that Barrett achieved with core faculty teaching
the human event and some senior seminars.
With some faculty in the larger university
covering many other honor sections,
that seems to be something that was a key ingredient for the success,
but I think you also mentioned that the human event
sequence itself
was
key in what some of the
Lookers wanted to learn from
Barrett.
What some of,
some of who wanted to learn from Barrett,
what was the word you said?
I said lookers,
the people
came
to you for advice about starting honors colleges.
Yes,
they,
they did.
They were intrigued by the idea of
our own faculty paid.
To teach a particular course which was,
which was becoming
during the 20 years I was there,
increasingly
viewed as really important for,
for
any student in the world,
not just American students,
but particularly American students,
because they weren't learning much about
history
and they weren't learning much
about how to write.
And when I first came,
there was a lot of complaints in the
national media about how nobody could write well,
and
And then,
and then that was combined with the sense that,
that,
that
students coming out of college didn't have a good sense of history either,
and,
and the human event teaches both history and great writing,
particularly,
particularly of course great writing because
of the,
the,
the whole setup of the human event with
conversations in class.
Followed by submissions of
written works
that were all
judged and supported and
critiqued by by a faculty member whose main job was to do
that exact job was to lead discussions in class and critique papers.
So
that was a unique setup.
It shouldn't have been,
but it was a unique setup.
In the,
in the country and even in the world.
So
this coincided with also universities around the world realizing and in the US too,
particularly
that
um
public universities had a lot of really good students in them,
really good students,
and
there was a whole cohort of students who
could have gotten into or did get into an Ivy or a Stanford sort of place.
And yet
came
to ASU
for a reason.
Either their mother had cancer,
they wanted to be near home,
or they just,
they just wanted to,
they were an athlete in a sport that only a big university had,
or that they wanted to major in one of the 400 choices of majors
instead of just the 25 choices that the small college has.
So for example,
um,
One of my sons
who was at Harvard wanted to be a major in Japanese.
There is no major in Japanese at Harvard,
you can't do that.
But here
at ASU you can do that.
You can be a major in violin,
performance.
There's
there's an immense variety of majors.
So as students,
but,
but lots of those students who
were coming to the public didn't have
the structure to really let their minds go wild
and spread their wings intellectually.
For
their basic training,
so the idea of
a an honors college,
b,
a course like the human event,
and C,
human event taught from the very first year,
it's another important
thing we haven't talked about yet,
but I think it's really important that the
human event is required during their first year.
Here and not,
it's not,
it's not a capstone thing,
they fit into their
other
duties when they're a senior,
it's something they,
they get as background.
Foundation work.
So,
so it's they,
they get critiqued in their writing and their thinking and their way of thinking
early,
and they also make a,
make a faculty.
Friend
who can be an advisor,
uh,
an,
an informal advisor
for the next 3 years after the human event.
So,
um,
For all those reasons,
I thought it was a good.
A good structure.
And I think,
I think foreign,
foreign universities thought so too,
because they,
they heard about it and they,
they came to visit
National University of Singapore,
Chengdu's University.
Um,
from China and
others,
and they,
or they invited us over to talk about
our,
our structure.
In their
context sometimes.
You're completely right that
at least in my experience,
the human event students often stay in touch with their
first-year human event faculty as those kind of informal advisors asking
advice about
thesis,
directions or careers or graduate school or all kinds of things,
and even if we can't answer them,
we know who to point them to.
So there's several levels
of
Of wrap-around care for these students once they get here.
And yeah,
and the human events very unique.
I tell my students it's
may use literature,
but it's not a literature class.
It may have some
sacred texts in it,
but it's not religious studies or political
treatises,
but it's not.
A political science class,
it really is interdisciplinary,
and they
learn to engage in
polite civil discourse
to
use evidence-based.
Exploration of these texts and learn from each other's perspectives and how to
disagree in a civil way,
which Ted Humphrey
often said
the core of the human event had to do with
developing.
Citizens as much as
as students and of course all in the service of being
better humans.
Yeah,
yep,
I agree.
So,
in terms of space,
you talked about
the
space that existed when you arrived at Barrett.
Perhaps you could talk a little bit about
the process in your role when Barrett moved
into the space
that it is now.
You mean how that,
how those decisions were made or
how we got there?
Yeah,
yeah,
well,
um,
yeah,
we were,
when I came,
you,
you know,
Barrett had started before it was called Barrett
when it was just the honors college in,
in a single,
um,
square shaped,
sort of a fortress shaped
building,
uh,
elsewhere on campus
that had a central,
a single central courtyard,
it was like a single square.
Building with rooms around the edges and a central courtyard
that had about 100 students or 200 students in it.
Ted Humphrey was,
was the founding dean and he,
he was critical in,
in
lobbying for and receiving.
The chance to,
to have a new campus which was on,
which is,
which is on
land that's called Center Complex now,
but,
and then he,
he,
he moved into these dorms
in
Center Complex,
which,
which was a city block
next to Gambridge Auditorium and,
and,
and on one side and on the other side,
um,
a parking structure for ASU.
But um,
he then added dorms to those.
Existing dorms,
he was able to,
I don't know,
I never heard the story of how he,
how,
whether the provost or the president voted
to give him the money to build
new dorms or or how he arranged that,
but
he oversaw the,
the,
the
construction of new dorms.
New ish storms in the,
in the,
in the late 1990s
when he,
when they moved,
I think they moved in 1995 or 106 or so into center complex and
the number of honors went up to about 800 beds
in that complex.
So
Um,
that's,
that's in that complex,
there was one,
there was one building,
the Irish,
Irish Hall,
that housed
both
the faculty
along a single hallway up on the top of the 2nd floor,
and the administration
offices down the 1st floor.
So that was it,
and,
and there were something like,
I said there were 88 or 9 faculty,
and there were something like.
I don't know,
15 to 23
staff.
The total advising office for Barrett for these 20,
remember the 800 students were just the ones living there
and you only had to live there for one year.
So it was,
was
the total number of honor students was something like 2400 or 2800.
For all those honor students,
there was only two advisors
in the advising office,
and there was no required advising either.
So one of the other things I did right away was I
required
advising for,
for 3 times at least during their careers,
their freshman,
sophomore,
and then
their junior year,
so,
so we,
we could give them advice.
About
courses to take and
subjects,
subjects for their senior thesis,
for example,
um,
much more frequently and,
and in a required way,
so we had a better handle on what they were all doing.
Um
But
So
I know that.
You've just described well the previous complex,
but you've played
an important role in some of the,
the dimensions and features
of
the existing complex on Tempe campus and
perhaps some other areas too,
like the size of the courtyard and the dining hall.
Could you expand more on,
on the physical
aspects of
the campuses that you cared about and were influential in?
Yeah,
well,
this is where,
this is where President Crowe's support came in,
incredibly importantly.
He,
he and the,
the chief financial officer of the of the university
decided that they wanted to build a new honors campus.
And that was something that they,
they,
they completely engineered.
They helped find the firm,
they had,
we,
we put out a proposal.
Requests for RFP,
request for proposals
and 12 different entities in 2008.
It was just before the 2008,
um,
sort of economic issues.
It was early 2008,
put out an RFP for
for a whole honors campus,
and 12 different entities submitted
proposals,
so we had a great choice.
I asked one of the business managers of one of the entities that that
that
that put in for.
For
a proposal.
Why,
why,
why did he think there were so many,
there were 12
groups that were,
these were each groups of,
of sort of um.
Construction for each group had a construction firm,
a finance firm,
and usually a student services firm firm,
student services department within their proposal that was
proposing how to
run the student services parts of these campuses
that they were proposing and
I asked one of the business managers of one of these,
one of these proposals
for proposing groups,
why so many would have come in.
He said,
well,
he said,
you know,
Tempe is the biggest single
undergraduate housing market in the nation right now.
So I guess we were lucky in that sense.
We had,
we could pick from 12 different people,
12 different groups.
We,
we picked American campus communities.
And from that point on,
um,
we had a committee that interacted with
the,
the
main people in American campus communities,
which
was a,
a vice president of the whole of the ACC
but also
people who were specialists in
housing
and student,
student affairs sort of management stuff,
um.
And
Uh,
a group that,
that,
that I
arranged to meet with them
that included Kristen as a student affairs person for,
for Barrett,
and me and Peggy and faculty and some students.
So that was what we called the Barrett Users Group,
the BG Group,
BU,
BUG.
We met we met with them every week
for more than a year,
starting in '06,
I guess.
The new campus opened in '09.
And it was a result of a lot of work by all those people.
So
there are many stories about picking out the block for the for the walls
of the new campus.
There are stories about
how we wrangled
the placement of the new campus and the placement of the new campus's dining hall
was really going to be shared
with one other
building.
On the,
on the same new block,
which was going to be dorms for non-honor students,
and we were going to have one dining hall,
and I just didn't like that.
I wanted to have a dining hall all for ourselves,
so that took a little arguing because it had to have
a different loading dock and all that sort of stuff.
We also
had
Um,
we,
we put the washing machines and dryers on the
top floor instead of in a dingy basement.
And there's all sorts of stories about that.
There also was a battle I had with people
who wanted to have crushed rock in all the courtyards which they had
in all the other courtyards of every other building at ASU basically,
except maybe the front of um.
Of uh old Maine,
but
I wanted grass and I wanted palm trees,
and I,
I,
I had these people who were sort of actually environmentally oriented from the,
from the,
the,
the big
users group which had some some folks from,
from the
physical plant
at ASU also on it,
who said you can't do that,
you can't have palm trees aren't.
Aren't a native species for for Arizona.
I said,
look,
we're trying to recruit National Merit Scholars from Minnesota,
and part of their iconic image of
where they want to be is a palm tree,
and we're going to have palm trees.
And that,
that was an example of,
of one of the many
different arguments I had to have to have grassy courtyards where kids could throw,
throw frisbees
and um
palm trees.
And
Crowe backed me up with all this stuff.
And whenever he went up to Crowe,
he would,
he would just back me up.
So
it,
it started to,
I wanted a central dining hall.
I didn't want music piped into that thing.
I didn't want television screens hanging from the ceiling of that.
I just wanted
to hear the clink of
silverware and the sound of students discussing things
over lunch or dinner,
and that's what we,
that's what we got.
Yes,
that's good because they get enough screens everywhere else.
It's nice to have a place for conversation.
Oh yeah,
yeah.
And also we,
we wanted to,
the architect,
there were two architects,
one a Phoenix-based firm,
and then 11 was from Princeton,
New Jersey,
called Icon 5,
and I,
I got to know those guys because I went to,
I went,
I was going back to Princeton many times
to visit my parents.
So I would walk into their offices,
Man,
I got to know them very well,
and they,
they were basically.
They were working for us
and ACC let that happen because
ACC had meanwhile gotten to trust us in our,
our decisions about what we thought would be good for this new campus.
They let us work directly with the architects,
so it was,
it was as if someone had given us the money to hire
top-level architects who had designed
lots of the buildings at Princeton University,
but we got to talk to them.
Just by ourselves
and with our own ideas,
as we got to know them better,
I became very good friends with the principal architect.
He's now,
he's also a photographer,
he's retired now,
but
he,
he sends me his notices of his
showings at different places of his photographs.
So it was really great because
I could talk to him and say,
look,
we want to have something where students can lounge around during the day
and read books,
and he came up with the flat topped boulders idea.
Um,
you know,
the,
the boulders in the courtyards are not
round.
They're flat tops so students can lounge on them
and stuff like that,
all sorts of stuff like that.
I told them I wanted to have columns the way Stanford had,
had had columns
around their courtyards,
but,
but instead of
just sandstone,
I wanted to have.
Our cos made of the bougainvillea bushes,
the bougainvillea vines growing up them,
so that's,
that's how the,
the,
um.
They're gonna be a columns of them.
Academic court got put in place.
So there's just endless stuff.
All sorts of things.
Those columns are beautiful and the flat top boulders,
especially if they're
under trees.
I think I've even
seen
posts that have been put in the ground
for people to hang hammocks under trees
where there are still trees.
Yeah.
So we spent a lot of time making those things very high quality.
And we even had the,
the artwork throughout the whole campus,
be from Barrett students or other students who,
who were art students at ASU.
So,
I think you also
had some hand in the specific size of the courtyards or
the,
the way the dining hall,
the special room in the dining hall was developed
and maybe some of the staircases or steps.
Yeah,
well,
we wanted to try to avoid as much as we could,
but it wasn't,
we,
we were,
we were proposing to put 1700 beds on 9 acres,
and to do that,
you had,
there was no way around having sort of block-like buildings,
to house the students.
So,
but we wanted to do whatever we could to ameliorate that look.
So
the architect had the waving wall of the dining hall.
They had plantings and grass to make it softer seeming.
Um
And
Sorry,
what was the other thing you said?
I remember you used to tell stories about
the courtyard
size and the,
this kind of dining hall you wanted,
the
separate room.
Yeah,
well,
the dining hall,
we,
that was another happy coincidence that I went.
I went to visit the London,
Dublin,
Edinburgh.
Trip
from Barrett one summer
and I visited them when they were in London,
and then my wife and daughter and I took a separate trip
um
to,
to Oxford because she had gone to Oxford for a summer,
for,
for a summer experience when she was in college.
She wanted to show me.
The new college,
which was built in 1300,
so it wasn't very new,
but
um it was called New College,
Oxford,
and
that's where she had stayed.
She said,
she said I should see the garden and I should see the dining hall,
the refectory that is.
And when she showed me the refectory,
I took a picture of it and I brought it back and it was
the coincidental timing was just that
this is one of the architects who we by now
we were very good friends with.
and they
they they got right away what I wanted.
I wanted to have one of the rooms that they were designing to be like this refectory.
Which,
which people at ASU sometimes call the refractory,
you know,
but anyway,
um,
so
I showed them the picture and they,
I said,
could you do a sort of more modern version of this,
but,
but still with the clear story windows,
the,
um,
the wood all around.
Um,
The
The banners hanging down,
the lighting and the,
and the,
and the furniture.
Well,
President Crowe really got interested in this.
He,
he picked out
the tables and chairs
from a,
from a Stickney's catalog or something.
I,
I don't know.
I don't know the company.
There's some company that makes really high quality
furniture called Stuckey's or Stickney's or something.
He picked out the,
the chairs and tables.
We have all wood floors in that room,
and we have the clear story windows and sort of modern-esque looking chandeliers.
They're not like the ones at New College,
but they're,
but,
but the look was definitely
refectory type look,
and
they were able to put it into place because we,
when I came back that summer from
visiting London,
Dublin,
and Edinburgh,
they were just starting to plan that,
that room.
And they,
they were willing to put a room like that into the place.
It could have been,
the whole dining hall could have just looked like the,
the outside part.
They had already decided to put the waving wall on it to,
to break up the block-like nature of,
of the interior part of,
of Barrett Honors College at Tempe,
but
they,
they were going to do that,
but there could have been
just more space for
regular chairs and tables,
but they,
they put in,
they fitted in a real refectory.
And that was wonderful.
I,
I was behind many tours,
I may have told you before
that were going through the college when,
when.
Once we opened,
we had the refectory all set up,
um,
and I,
I,
I heard students talking to their parents.
They didn't know I was listening,
they didn't know I was behind them.
I would just stop by and sort of
take the tour a little bit for myself,
and I heard them saying
when they saw the dining hall,
that's when they would usually turn to their parents and say,
I'm coming here.
It was,
it was a huge recruiting tool,
because in,
in Arizona there was nothing like that.
You know,
the,
um,
the,
the library at Vassar or the dining halls at Princeton
looked like that,
but,
but kids from Arizona had never seen anything like that,
so it was a huge recruiting tool.
Well,
it's a lovely space and it gets
used well in many different capacities,
as do the,
the courtyard.
So thank you for all of your efforts to give us those usable outdoor spaces and some
unique inside spaces as well.
We're
getting close to 1 hour and there's so much more
we could talk about because I have a list of
roughly
30 amazing achievements and innovations
that you
helped
develop and advance
the Honors College which rippled through into helping ASU and the wider
Arizona community.
So we'll certainly have to
schedule another
conversation at some point.
But just as we wrap up this particular
visit,
I have two things that come to mind.
One that relates to something we spoke about earlier,
when you said that you arrived.
In Barrett,
the faculty were called lecturers,
but I know one of the things that you achieved was obtaining
a different title
for the honors faculty fellows
in,
in addition to the title that they carry as honors faculty fellows,
their
title at ASU in a
different administrative
slot is lecturer,
and you got that changed
to teaching.
Assistant,
associate,
and full professor kind of titles.
After many years of championing that,
could you explain why that was important and share more about that process?
Yeah,
well,
one of the,
one of the things I knew from my experience before I came to ASU was that
That lecturers,
every place I'd been
sort of had a raw deal because they did,
they did a lot of the teaching,
up to most of the teaching,
depending on the university or the college we're talking about,
yet they never had the same title as professor.
And professors
were latching onto their titles
as the one way to distinguish them from the lecturers,
so they didn't want to cede ground,
so to speak,
to lecturers in most of these places,
and so the lecturers were sort of in this limbo everywhere.
So I came,
I came to the job feeling that,
that lecturers were getting sort of a bad deal and that,
and that they should,
they were doing a lot of very good teaching,
but that,
that combined,
I have to give credit to Jackie Scott Lynch for this because
she was the one who really
wrote,
she's a great writer,
she's a great writer of proposals to go to Muckamuck's higher up like the president,
and she,
she wrote
several different
treatises about why
The
the Barrett faculty should be,
should be elevated in pay
and,
and in titles,
and it was a battle that went on for most of the 20 years I was there,
but in the last year or so,
and I kept,
uh this is through 33 or 4 different provosts too,
but,
um,
Mark,
Mark
Searle was the provost who
finally changed the,
the,
the
wording on the diploma that be students get to.
To have Barrett Honors College be on their,
on their ASU diploma,
that was a major.
Wonderful
change.
But the,
but,
but then the next provost,
it was actually,
it was Nancy.
Um,
who,
who
was the person who,
who finally agreed to
To change the titles.
And she did it,
she.
I,
I was using,
I was using the arguments that,
that Jackie had made.
I,
I even kept Jackie's
written
proposals from years earlier
and showed them to,
to Nancy Gonzalez
and um,
She read them and she,
she,
you know,
sometimes you just have to,
you just have to.
They have to find your body by the wall enough times that they break the wall down,
that's what it really was.
But,
um,
I kept bringing it up to new provosts,
and they must have finally talked to Crowe,
or maybe they made a decision themselves,
but
um,
we went from
just being called lecturers,
senior lecturers,
and
principal lecturers.
I was the first trio.
To honors faculty fellow,
which was the argument we used when we,
when we got the pay,
the pay scale to be different from other lecturers,
which,
which was maybe 5 years into my
administration,
and so we've had that for a long time.
We've,
we've had a different pay scale,
as you probably know,
Stephanie,
but,
um,
but then the last step was the step
you mentioned at the start of this,
of this little sub conversation,
which was
the step of calling them.
Teaching,
teaching assistant,
teaching associate,
and teaching professor,
which I think they they deserved for a long time.
So I'm very happy that that happened.
It's,
it's,
I think it's still the,
it's one of the only places where
that has happened.
I think something like it has happened down at
UFA
and that helped,
that helped
convince Nancy,
I think,
to,
to do it also because if the hated UFA
rivals were doing something like it,
then we had to at least be like them
or be better than they
were,
so it might have helped.
Well,
thank you for your perseverance and patience with that,
not giving up.
Well,
it was,
it was a very good principle,
and we followed up on it,
yeah.
Well,
I do have,
as I said,
a number of things that
we would
benefit from learning more about from you,
but I think we'll put a pin in those,
including
the,
the last question I was hoping to talk about today
was your relationship with the Barrett's.
You shared some about your relationship with Ted and Peggy and Kristen
and that
dynamic that you had.
I think maybe we'll start next time
with what
It was like to work with the Barretts as well,
but thank you for your time today and
for the wisdom and the shepherding you've given us over the years,
and I look forward to our next conversation.
Well,
I do too.
It'd be great.
Well,
we can set it up whenever you want.
Thanks,
Mark.
OK,
thank you.