Hello,
this is Phoebe Preston and Maggie Lorenz interviewing Doctor Ramsey,
Dean of Barrett at the West Campus on Friday,
December 13,
2018
at 10:57 a.m. in the West Campus Barrett Suite.
This interview is part of the Barrett Oral History Project.
Our goal of this project 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.
My pleasure.
So
I know that you came to ASU at the West Campus in
1994,
but how did you get involved with Barrett and what was that process like?
I became involved with the Honors College immediately and.
before.
Because
there wasn't yet.
Honors at the West Campus,
and so we needed a liaison
to the Tempe Honors College.
And the person with whom I met biweekly was Michael Cochise Young.
The late Michael Corchiso.
So she would come and we would have coffee and talk about the kinds of ways to get
um honors
to the West Campus.
I would visit Tempe.
Then Dean Humphries.
To talk about these things.
And that lasted from 94 to 96,
and then in '96,
um
I became
an a de facto but unofficial.
Affiliated faculty of honors
and I taught a number of honor special topics courses.
At the request of the person they appointed as the director of honors here,
who is Joseph.
And that
Version of the honors program here.
I think it was still called a program then
um took place in Fab on the first floor
near the College of Mary Lou Fulton.
Was the College of bad
Um,
that's where
Doctor Ryan.
Professor in
Just two little rooms
in fact.
How much,
how much staff was on the Barrett team at that?
It was a wonderful staff person.
She helped me order my books and set up this and.
Is
Yes.
Something I'll have to look up.
So,
a handful of people involved in.
It was she.
OK.
It was she and,
Oh,
OK,
awesome,
um,
so.
What were some of the challenges with getting
honors here at West?
Like what did you have to overcome to get?
We had to think of a way because it wasn't until 2001 that the West Campus.
Enrolled its first freshman class.
We're an upper division campus.
For a long time,
but when I came in '94
until 2001.
So we had to find a way to make sure that the special topics course and
honors could be given because you had to take one of those courses as part of your
graduation requirements,
and that has since evolved.
With some help of mine and some other faculty into
what is now called the history of ideas somehow.
So that was one of our problems.
We needed to provide
something
like a space for other students.
We needed to develop special things for graduation so that we could honor them.
Those were all things that
were important to.
And starting all that for the first time.
That's awesome.
So.
When did you really realize that this is where you needed to be,
like this is the place for you?
Well,
I had the great good fortune of,
I don't,
of being successful,
if I could be so bold,
um,
as a graduate student,
as a teacher.
And my
word of this got to the Honors College at Purdue and they asked me if I would teach
honors classes while I was a graduate student.
a great gift for me
and it was doing that for a number of years while I was
earning my PhD
that allowed me to have the kind of experience that
when I asked to be appointed as the liaison,
I was the one who had some background in honors education.
So that made me very happy and it was.
From that
that I realized.
I was really
excited about honors and it was giving me
this other opportunity at my new institution.
oppress people.
Be a contributing member of the campus and I thought that was a way to do it,
because the person who mentored me there,
Doctor Clayton Lean.
Was very good,
I thought,
and he
taught me enough about honors that I could use the vocabula.
Talk intelligently with Doctor Young
and so that.
So
in talking about you being involved in honors and that being a place for you,
what does it mean to be an honors student?
Like what do you think it means to be in Barrett?
From the student perspective.
You could also start from,
you were talking about the difference
between teaching honors and regular classes.
Well,
I knew honors was for me because I was here at a campus where I had the kind of training,
the way most of my colleagues did,
where
we thought we were going to teach at
institutions where we would have tons of PhD
students and we were going to pursue our writing
mine in philosophy,
that I was going to do that with
graduate students and I didn't have graduate students,
but I had a really good gig and I had
honor students around and that's one of the things that's been
the greatest blessing of honors for me
is to know that
Maybe I can't teach the 6 ideas I want in an honors seminar as I could in a PhD seminar,
but I can do 2 of them if I go at the right pace.
It's why I thank honors students and honors classes and
seminars and my acknowledgments to the things that I publish,
because I teach the things I need
to do
to be the kind of philosopher I want.
So that's one of the great things about honors for me
is it allows an undergraduate experience to keep me abreast of what's going.
And usually
the professors do that with PhD students and
I get to do it with advanced undergraduates,
um,
on that note,
you serve as both a professor and a dean,
which is kind of magical.
um,
so what are some of the advantages of being both in a
classroom and at the administrative level
working with students in both capacities?
Being a professor helps me be a Dean because I never
am
allowed to forget
what the first year class is like,
what the students are like,
what their concerns are,
how things have changed in the 20/20 years that I've been here.
So I love that.
It makes me
think as a Dean about what
this next incoming group needs
in their differences from fond memories that I have from
Has passed,
so I like that quite.
I like not being addressed as Dean in the classroom.
I don't want to be the Dean.
I want to be a professor and a philosopher.
So
I asked students if they wouldn't mind
not
using that title in the classroom.
Go for a professor or a doctor.
Because I don't want that administrative thing hanging over the
task that I've set by the books I've assigned.
But I like how much insight it gives me when I come back to this office after teaching.
Absolutely.
I think I get that as well because
I use my title
to accept all kinds of invitations across campus,
so I sling hash at the
midnight breakfast,
right,
um,
I go to almost every major event on campus to represent the college.
I think that's important.
I see students there.
I see students pleased that
myself and other honors faculty are there,
and that helps me be the dean to realize.
I don't just make administrative decisions or
simply
go to meetings,
um,
but I participate in the kind of
life that a student has from
it's why I attend move in
and it's why
we're required to attend.
Medallions are
I think from the first day to the last.
I like being the
Yeah,
and we're very aware of your presence.
Like it's notable that you are on campus all the time,
um,
so
it's part of that,
that students see you and you have a reputation
for being a role model and changing lives,
but how do you feel about that kind of perspective from students?
It's more responsibility than I know how to bear,
so
students are surprised that I get nervous,
but I'm nervous all the time
before I go to class.
Before closing night
I understand it's a responsibility.
I also understand that the college takes on a kind of tone
of the person who
is in this office.
I try to make it a tone that others can adopt and
contribute to in terms of difference and not just imitating
what we do,
but I like the ethos that I'm trying to
make here.
I think the repetition of excellence is a kind of progress,
so we do things that work again and again.
I don't find that boring.
I find that extra.
The new students make it different,
but I think.
Trying to do things that work
is and having some tradition and expectation.
What do you think as being a dean and a professor,
where do you think you have the most impact on students' lives?
I wouldn't know how to hierarchize it,
I do different things different ways.
I am hopeful it matters to our students at the West Campus that the Dean tries.
To know
I like to greet people
when I see them on campus when I'm walking.
I don't,
they don't have to be in seminars that I teach.
I like that.
I'm hopeful they like that.
I mean,
um.
Here's what I remember when I was you.
My favorite professor said hello to me on campus,
it was a great day.
It gave me confidence
when he or she would
invite me to a certain kind of conversation during office hours,
it was meaningful.
When they listened and remembered to the kinds of things that were important to me,
so I try to listen to students when I meet with them,
so that when I see them I can ask.
How's it going?
Say something to you about Shakespeare,
for example,
I ask you if you really wanted the major that you.
Absolutely.
No,
I did not.
And I thought I saw that,
absolutely changed the game for me.
Thank you.
Um,
so
being at the West Campus specifically,
I know you've had a lot of really impactful
changes and you've directed a lot of programs,
but
what have you been most fond of?
What are some of those programs that you feel like I really did something,
this is amazing,
this is gonna last.
When they asked me to be the dean again,
I stepped away to write another book and.
I was able to do that
and then when Andrew Kirby,
who was the dean.
I was away,
so I was the dean from 001 to late in '04,
yeah,
so 005,
so I was five years and then started again in 2010.
They asked me what it would take to get me to come back.
I said,
well,
I need all of the.
2000
UCB 201.
I need the entire suite.
We were sharing the space with 4 or 5 other divisions.
It was horrible.
Um,
we made it work because we were welcoming and so on,
but it wasn't right.
Uh,
we had trouble recruiting students because we had nowhere to walk them through and
Heron Fanne was instrumental with me.
Getting the plans for UCB 201 and we knocked down walls and we.
So,
and it was a wonderful collaboration because
the new college or the.
Dean of the new College and was also the vice provost
of the campus and understood what Barrett meant to the campus.
She's the one who asked me what I needed,
so she gave me all of the funds to.
Remodel this entire space.
She gave me the freedom to decide what
that remodel would look like and didn't interfere.
She thought we understood what we wanted and Heron was really good at that,
and
she and I worked together.
Then Marc Jacobs
understood what it meant,
so he gave me the budget to furnish.
This space.
So if you're looking for
funny anecdotes,
then here's one.
Goodman's Furniture came out and I had a budget from Dean Jacobs,
and they said,
here's a catalog,
you should choose the kind of furniture you want,
and I said,
but there are no prices here,
they said,
just choose what you like.
So I chose what my taste
wanted and it was,
I think,
5.5 times the budget.
So we had to change our taste a little bit.
I still think we did all right taste-wise.
We had a color palette.
We were trying to do something.
Um,
the furniture is now over 8 years old.
It's held up well.
We care for it.
We tried to make each room unique.
We tried to name the rooms.
We wanted them to have a purpose.
I think that makes it easier to tour students when you can say you're on a tour.
This room is called Rosalind Franklin because.
That was a name that came from students,
young women scientists.
I didn't know who Rosalind Franklin was I.
And those are the kinds of things that I think just add a little bit of touch
to what we try to.
So I thought that was a big deal.
I think our classroom is a beautiful space.
Susie.
If it's a mural.
Oh yes,
would you like to hear the Meryl story?
Uh-huh.
I was told I could have that room,
which had been dormant for quite some time,
and I said I would use Barrett Fonds to remodel it,
but that I had to paint over the mural that was along the back wall,
and they said,
no,
that's our only
rule,
you can have the room if you don't,
but you have to leave the mural.
It wasn't just my taste that thought,
so it was the worst mural in the history of the world,
and
it had to go.
So
I finally kept saying this won't do,
it doesn't fit
what the room has to do.
It has to have a feel,
it has to have an attitude in it,
it has to be a place where.
When we enter,
we know we're about to do,
we're going to read good books and talk about them,
and that mural doesn't say anything.
So I made this concession and I finally got them to say,
OK,
so I had to leave some remnant of the,
of the mural.
So I searched all of its images and I found an owl,
and that seemed like Athena or Minerva.
It seemed like wisdom
and it seemed like the fine concession.
So I talked the painters into covering the owl.
They painted the entire mural,
and then they removed the.
Blue tape and there's the owl staring out at us.
It's a good conversation piece
and we put,
I thought a nice passage from Plato along the back wall that I think
captures uh what the human event in the history of ideas tries to do.
I was
asked for a little bit more money and was granted it
because I wanted those chairs because I thought they were gorgeous
and I think aesthetics matter,
so we chose a certain kind of color for the carpet and the tables.
Some of my colleagues were upset that the tables didn't have wheels,
but that's exactly
what I thought we needed was a room that couldn't be rearranged
because it should look like a seminar room all the time.
If we need to move tables,
we'll go to another.
Absolutely,
it,
it belongs like that in the back of that chair,
I just,
it pleases me every time I go in there.
That's great.
I had students test the chair,
we had a version of it up here and people came through and gave me their reviews.
A popular review of the chair was,
is this too much detail?
Go for it.
Is it?
No,
this is great.
This is the kind of stuff we need
is that
it's just comfortable enough not to want to get out of,
but not comfortable enough that you can slouch in it.
And I thought that's exact that's a seminar chair,
right?
Relax,
but you have to sit up and take,
take notes.
So I thought they were the perfect chair,
and you don't see students sitting like I am now
in this chair,
right?
They,
you just can't do it in that chair.
And I think that's a virtue of its design,
and I like designers.
I think they're smart people.
They work hard at making good things and so.
We honored them by trying to make the room beautiful.
Yeah,
and it had an impact on the people,
so I'm hopeful.
I think this,
don't you think when students come,
you must have been in seminars where.
Students we're recruiting
to sit in on the event one day.
I think they're impressed by that and they get the little chair and they're like,
wow,
this is an experience with the room and the setup.
Yeah,
they always look very like,
wow,
I'm,
I'm small.
This is intense.
Um,
so other details about West,
we are very different from Polly and Tempe.
Um,
downtown,
so what are some specific,
we're,
we're very different from everything,
but what are some specific challenges that we had to face to be what we are now,
like
some really big things we overcame.
Buried at this campus suffered because the West campus suffered when.
The
president of the university was in a.
Kind of
press war
with with um.
Legislatures.
And he offhandedly said that,
well then we'll disclose the West Campus,
but it got a kind of traction in the press,
so we dealt for years and years and still to the to today
find this a problem
that people don't know that Barrett is here.
Some people
Still wanna know when the campus is going to close.
So those were real
difficulties.
The life of Barrett at the West Campus is tied to the life of the West Campus,
so when the new College and the West Campus go well.
Barrett does better,
Barrett helps them clearly by bringing students like yourselves here.
But we can only be as good as the
reputation of the campus,
it seems we've helped that reputation great.
But
I would say from.
08
to at least.
13 or 14,
maybe later,
we suffered
dearly for that
war of words that was taking place in the press.
When people ask
This hurts.
Is it really Barrett at last?
that crushes me
because,
as you know,
we carry out the entire Barrett mission here.
I think one of the virtues of Dean Jacobs is to allow someone
with the title of Associate Dean and then
be called Dean on that campus.
To make decisions that fit the campus
and not try to imitate what they do in Tempe so successfully because
they do something at a kind of scale we can't,
so we should do some things better
and there's probably things we can't do as
well because you need a larger student body.
And we've got our biggest freshman class.
Like we're growing,
we're doing things well.
Our growth that we would be better
if we had a full-time recruiter and
arguments were
understood in Tempe and we were given a recruiter.
She just gave me numbers for,
26 students ahead of where we were this time
last year when we admitted our largest class ever.
long shot.
This is actually a good place for me to jump in.
It's Eric Oberly on the,
for the recording's sake here,
which is that one of the design goals of
the whole university is embeddedness in the community.
And maybe it'd be good if all of you just talked a little bit about
how you feel
west,
the westness,
right,
the embeddedness in the West community is important to your experience here and.
Maybe I'll comment on it because I think that's also part of the function.
Hi hello,
um.
I just love how
it's.
Um
I love small schools.
I have to be in a small school because otherwise I'll feel so
cloistered and
Unimportant.
And relatively.
Tiny.
Isolated.
And it's
like that.
You're in a crowd,
but
wasn't it,
um,
Gatsby?
And Gatsby,
how they said that
even though you're amongst a whole bunch of people,
you can still be like,
yes,
it's Gatsby.
Anyway.
And I
We do.
And I
I never really had any friends in school.
And so,
but once I got to West,
I finally had,
I have everybody's super nice,
and I love how kind and compassionate everybody is.
I love.
Being able to
not have to
scurry to get to classes if I need,
if need be.
I love that I get to have one on one time with professors.
I love that
I get.
I love the smaller classrooms,
and so I don't feel so.
Closed off from everybody else and.
Kind of claustrophobic at times.
I think it's wonderful here and I love the architecture
and just the feeling of it.
I love all the trees.
I love trees.
It's a beautiful space.
At the end of my freshman year,
I told my mom that I don't think I would be as happy in college if I wasn't
at West and at West Barrett because the community here is what I was looking for.
And I couldn't have captured that at Tempe
because I want the one on one and I want the time and the space where you
run into someone and you get into a
conversation about biology and I know nothing about biology
and it's beautiful and it's fun and
you get into debates or you get out of
class and you follow the group because they're still talking
after the human event and we've got more to say and
it's an incredible community that's small enough and
it's slower
in that you can just make your way through the day
and the breeze and the lawns like it's gorgeous and.
I like the pace of the West campus quite a lot.
I think that's part of the ethos here.
I think it was Heron who first said when I overheard her recruiting students
the campus is large enough that you'll
pass someone you don't know
but small enough that it's unlike you you won't also pass someone you do know
and isn't that a nice way to think about it so it's not so
small that it's like,
oh God,
not him again,
right?
But it's large enough.
That you can say,
oh,
who's that?
Which is a fun thing to say sometimes from across the.
Yeah,
Plato's Republic might have worked out if it had been more like that,
right,
right.
There you go.
Yeah,
I think
another thing
that I don't understand,
and I've asked students about this,
but I,
I don't have a keen sense.
I think we feel embedded in the campus but not in the
West surroundings because
I don't think we're a large enough campus yet to
influence the kind of businesses that are around us,
and that would be nice if there were a coffee shop and a used bookstore.
I think those things are on our horizon,
so
maybe that's something you'll ask me to the end,
what do I see in the future,
but that kind of integration of our campus into.
I want us to build walking bridges over.
Forty-third and over Thunderbird
so that students can safely pass to those places
where
they might be able to walk among those shops,
but I want those shops to be ones that would be
Willing or
wishing
they could walk among and they don't have,
we don't have that,
yeah,
it's,
it doesn't feel college town around here,
even though
this feels to me like a college campus all the time,
a nice.
So we try to make up for that.
I think our first Friday things are,
are interesting,
um,
We haven't done this in a while,
but it used to be a yearly thing,
we had a make your own culture day
where
students would show up in
my home at
10 in the morning,
we would write a quick script
um based on either a short story or an aphorism or something,
a line from the symposium,
then we would send filming crews out while the rest of us stayed behind and.
Prepared for the barbecue,
then the
filmers would come back,
they would give the
film to the,
the
footage to the editors,
they would edit while the rest of us did the barbecue,
and then at midnight that night we would premiere the film,
so we'd make a film in one day,
that was a lot of fun,
yeah,
and those are lasting things because when you spend a day making art.
Memories are made,
but also friendships.
So it might be nice to talk to some alumni who are a part of those.
Great films and all of those films are archived
by Liz Marini.
And some every once in a while I get.
Forgive me,
maybe nostalgic,
I don't know,
but I ask if we can have an afternoon where we just run them all
back to back.
That's very
representative of the community though that's exactly who we are.
We're very creative and we're very
active and.
I really enjoy that.
In addition to hosting that at your home,
I know you host Thanksgiving as a tradition,
which I've heard a lot about.
I have not made it yet.
I intend to next year.
What is
that about?
What does it mean to you?
Well,
that was something that a professor did for students of whom I was one,
and it was quite meaningful,
and I thought.
I.
We all imitate the people we think.
We like so
I that was something I took over.
So it started in 200 and
5.
And it's gone every year since then.
It's probably not the best name,
but we call it orphan Thanksgiving,
but we just mean those folks who,
who are unable to get,
whether through distance or some other reason,
um,
are unable
to,
to get to a Thanksgiving meal.
We make a number of turkeys and do all of the cooking,
it's
in
recent years,
it's been joined by the co-host of Sohini Roy and Doctor Michael Walker,
both Barrett West.
It's a wonderful day.
About 6 o'clock,
students who for whatever reason.
Start showing up also for dessert,
so we have
between 10 and 30 for dinner
and then
Scores more
for dessert,
it's also become a place where Barrett West alumni
know that they can meet.
If they're all in town,
so
that dessert also becomes a kind of alumni West reunion time.
I like watching the returning
alumni talk with the current students,
um,
many of them are doing the very thing that the current student
wishes to do,
they're MDs or attorneys or some such thing,
that's.
College professors,
so I think that we,
we're old enough now to have those kinds of successes
that I think inspired the
first year students who were there.
Or at least the current students,
they're not all first year students.
So I like that.
Yeah,
that's fun.
I think it's really special and that's also just really
that's so West campus
to do and I really think that's beautiful,
just being that one on one with the professors and.
It's really magical.
Are there any events that we hold throughout the year that you really value?
special.
I know how special it is from the student report,
the closing night.
It's oddly the thing that I always ask the staff,
do we really have to do this again?
And they say,
absolutely.
And every year I think they're
I don't know why I keep asking.
But I think it's a
a lovely evening.
I think opening night is a nice way to be serious at the beginning.
I'm a fan of our formal
Dance.
The.
I think that's lovely
I was mistaken,
I thought for the 10th anniversary,
the live band was going to be perfect and it wasn't.
That's alright,
we keep trying things and then we edit.
I like the
I.
I enjoy
the opportunity
to invite
scholars from around the US and the world.
And I like giving Barrett students the opportunity then to dine with them
either at a lunch or a dinner.
Um,
I think it's important to be able to meet those kinds of people.
Sometimes you don't know
just who you've met until sometime later,
but that's OK,
because I think our students are.
Trained well enough in various ways through
being in a club with Liz or Susan or.
I think that's I think it's just important to be
around intellectuals and to remind ourselves that
culture still thinks it's.
There'd be such a thing as intellectuals.
Yeah,
and I have a role to play.
I know that
for me,
especially,
opening night was like emotional and I didn't anticipate it to be,
but I came back and I was like,
oh,
I'm returning to my home.
Like,
oh,
I see you back at this community where all my
people are and I can talk to people about it.
Was was the most recent one your sophomore year?
Technically,
yeah,
OK,
so Doctor Murphy's talk was actually quite moving.
Yes,
and the year before I thought Wattros was great.
Um,
I,
I think asking the faculty
to say something reminds the students that we are in this together.
This is something that we do.
Yeah.
Oh,
I'm so happy to hear that.
And having the Barrett faculty available all
the time is really awesome and staff here
and the university officials want me to move the faculty out of the suite,
but I resist because that's part of the beauty of this place.
They're just mistaken,
they don't quite understand
the,
it seems to me,
the
pedagogical function of having Waresa's door open where
you can talk with her at your leisure.
Especially for human events students,
I think at that first level and then,
yeah,
that's a stressful moment
coming out of that.
I realized just how much we were reading and how much work that was,
and I didn't realize,
and then I'm going into non-honors classes and I'm like.
All right,
all right.
I once had a dream that this would be the non-textbook campus.
It would be the text,
it would be the primary text campus,
wouldn't that be glorious?
You couldn't teach any class with a textbook,
maybe,
maybe in the skills and sciences,
but
if you were teaching intro to sociology,
you'd have to read Weber and.
Every,
this is what people don't understand,
they think the classics only belong,
I don't know to whom.
But there's classics in every,
yeah,
to the dead.
They belong to the living.
That's what,
that's why they're classics.
But every discipline has its classics,
and that's how you should introduce people.
So I ask students often,
what if every one of your intro classes was like the human event?
Their eyes light out,
they go,
that would be better.
We could have a,
we could have a psychology class like that.
I,
yes,
professors can do whatever they want.
So why did
Oh,
you can see.
Why do professors do that then?
Sometimes accidentally we all teach them something,
right?
Yeah.
And we all think accidentally.
Right.
There's a there's there's a,
there's a passage from Michelle Foucault that I sometimes cite.
About how
you have to really work to make education seem to more.
Um,
and yet we do it,
and it's just,
it's sinful.
It that
that passage,
which I sometimes quote at length has gotten me in trouble,
by the way,
yeah,
because.
Is that the one where,
where Foucault actually talks about the impossibility of teaching too?
Is,
is it's the same thing,
but he says if,
uh,
should I go on record saying this?
We can edit it out.
He says if you just let education be what it is,
then it would be as pleasurable as sexuality
and that people would be crashing university doors trying to get in,
that everyone would want to be here,
but he thinks we make it boring so we can
restrict the numbers of people that we have to.
And so I said that at a public meeting and the
the then president of the Barrett Parents Association.
Went to the microphone and said how inappropriate what I just said was.
Other parents came up to me pleasure,
right,
it's
true,
but other parents came up to me afterwards and said I understood.
I'm sticking with that
Well,
I don't wanna get you in trouble.
Yeah,
too bad.
I stand by the claim.
I think it's right,
because think about the symposium.
It's about love,
but it's also about learning.
And if there isn't kind of something.
If you can't love to learn,
then
yeah,
it's why I don't teach chronologically in the human event,
I think you have to start
with loving learning,
so I start with symposium
and then go somewhere else.
It's the first symposium,
it is.
One of the things that,
if I may just kind of say,
one of the things I found really great about this conversation,
and I just would love to have all of you commented on,
I was really struck by.
Dean Ramsey talking about the possibility of,
of that nervousness was important to teaching and the,
the kind of fear
and,
and uh it'd be interesting to know
whether that nervousness is fear of failure or
whether it's related to the possibility of learning.
You were maybe just suggesting.
And I was really struck by what Phoebe said about
the,
the being surprised that you were emotional at opening night
when you're talking about the purpose of being here.
And I think maybe
it,
maybe you could talk first,
Phoebe.
I,
I don't know,
I don't wanna script it too much,
but I mean,
one of the things that's interesting is
those were really interesting surprises that I think go to the heart of,
of,
of in many ways what we're trying to.
To do here and and maybe you could expand on why were you surprised or
why,
why did nervousness come to mind as a sort of uh caught up with the enterprise.
Well,
I think initially when I was thinking,
OK,
I have to go to opening night,
it's this very like I have to go,
I have to get dressed up,
I have to show up,
I have to see these people,
whatever.
I don't like going out,
um,
and so I get there and I'm like,
oh my friend,
like oh my gosh,
and it's touching and I'm like,
whatever,
I'm still too cool for this,
whatever,
blah blah blah
and then I'm there and I'm listening to you speak and I'm like,
you're right,
this is who we are,
this is what I want to be.
I am stressed about this ending
because I don't know what the next chapter looks like.
And I know that this is going to impact who I am
and like the attitude that I come at life with
and so it's very difficult to like realize
this is your 2,
I have 1 more and then I'm out so
I need to cherish this.
I need to experience this fully and so it's that emotional.
Like
concept of I'm returning home and I'm coming
back to this place that's safe and welcoming and
beautiful and so
I just expected I'm showing up to this event I
have to do to go to my school because education
doesn't always
have this sensation and I've always loved learning,
but.
An institutionalized education doesn't always mean that I am enjoying learning.
It's more from Foucault,
right?
Yeah,
it's beautiful,
right?
I mean gorgeous because what you just said,
right,
if,
if I mean you had an it there that I was trying to track,
but you were,
you,
you meant
the fear of education ending,
right?
And that that's what makes you emotional,
right?
A little bit,
yeah,
and it's this welcome back home and then
where do I keep learning on my own in my future where I need to be working
to live,
right?
But the part that makes you happy is the fact that
you kind of know that education isn't going to end.
Right?
It's that you've been prepared to continue.
Yeah,
and Barrett prepares you to
kind of not do your own research but
keep
investigating and keep reading and keep learning and
realizing as part of the human event there's these books I would never pick up
the City of Ladies ever.
I have no interest
and here I am like,
yeah,
and this and this other thing and I've got hard opinions about things and I'm
coming into it and I'm
interested and so then I go out in the world
and I learned something in the news and then I.
Look into it further instead of just accepting things and so
it's taught me how to live a little bit differently and think differently and
look into stuff and I really think that's
of value to me
and hope to other Barrett students.
I feel like that's a big part of being a Barrett
student is learning how to see the world a little differently.
That's important to me.
It's not just a valuable thing,
it's maybe the most valuable.
Who?
Well,
I really love
last
opening night,
I had the big responsibility of being a Barrett Minor
and I had to
talk in front of all these freshmen
and give them advice.
And I remember staying up
A bit
late
the night before and just going through like what can I tell him,
what can I tell him,
what can I tell him.
And
none of that really mattered.
Ultimately,
they just wanted to know that they were gonna be OK
and that.
They're gonna have a lot of fun.
It's gonna be
challenging,
but.
A good kind of challenging.
They're gonna have.
A whole brand new experience that they're never going to ever have ever again
or previously had.
And it's sort of
kind of like a dragonfly and amber.
It sort of cements what Bart is.
And it
keeps track of what
we're trying to do.
As well as reflecting on what we've done in the past,
it all sort of coagulates to this really beautiful
experience.
I think you're mentoring the thing that Liz does with all the mentors and.
Is important because I think students expect
people with my title to say the kinds of things.
But
they don't think,
they think students don't have to say that,
I think you add a sense of legitimation to what we say.
I couldn't be more grateful for
And you say things we can't say.
For all the things I do know,
I don't know.
I get nervous because I really
to keep myself.
I've gone to talks not nervous and been terrible.
I need to,
I need to remind myself that
there's a responsibility here,
you can't just.
So I promised myself many things.
I will never go to a human event class without rereading that week,
the thing that
I've assigned,
even if I've read it a gazillion times.
It,
it,
it's not the first time for me teaching symposium,
but it's the first time for that class,
and they
deserve a professor at his or her best,
and one of the ways to do that isn't to pretend you know what the text says,
because you probably don't.
I taught a really difficult book last semester,
it was,
it was a seminar where we read just one book because it was so challenging,
and it was the 7th time that Barrett,
that I've taught that book.
And I was embarrassed about 4 weeks into class thinking
I wasn't qualified to teach it the 1st 6 times.
I really kind of get something about it now.
But I remember kind of feeling that way the other times too.
I love that every kind of Socratic conversation about a book
experiences it so differently,
and if you've talked about a book a million times,
you go and you talk to someone else and they say something that you're at first like,
no,
and then you're like,
wait,
keep going,
tell me more.
That sounds crazy,
keep going.
I wanna hear about this.
What do you think this is?
Penelope's.
Those are lovely moments,
they really are.
I always feel outraged when people are like,
I don't know that Barrett is for me or like I'm a
sophomore and I think I'm just gonna drop it and keep going.
I'm like,
how?
What are you seeing?
What do you,
how do you not see what I'm seeing?
Like
I can't conceive of not feeling this way
and I can't conceive of not being part of this.
blows my mind.
The comment that makes me smile,
though I try to hide it,
is when
a student will say,
well,
I've already read that in
ID or something,
I go,
yeah,
well
just wait
because I,
as I say,
and you've probably heard me say,
there's a kind of infinite distance between high
school and university and it's hard to know
it's an infinite distance and yet somehow it can be bridged,
but
Students almost have to experience it before they will believe you,
because the way of trying to tell them doesn't quite convey to them.
But maybe that's where the student experience
when they when.
Prospective students talk with the current students.
Maybe that's what helps most.
It's hard to put in words.
It is
like explaining.
I'm when I spent this semester working in the writing center,
I was talking to students who were working on the human event essays
and I'm like.
Well,
it's gonna be completely different for you and I can
help you with your ideas if you talk to me,
but I wasn't in that class.
I don't know how this conversation went.
Yes,
I read this book,
but
you're experiencing it differently like I don't know how to help you with that.
You need to think this through and
I think
one of the hardest parts at the beginning is them
developing their own ideas
and understanding.
That they have a voice in the conversation and
getting into that because in high school
it's a completely different way of learning
but I,
I don't think I've ever felt so truly challenged until I did the human event
like that really met my
abilities
in a fair way that I really had never achieved before and that was
really mad because the 5 paragraph essay is not going to do it.
No,
it is not.
You're,
you're
working in the writing center reminds me,
maybe that is something else that I've liked that Barrett has done here,
and it did it by necessity,
but I think we've made a virtue out of it
is we can't have our own writing center and we can't have our own call
lab
and
we can't have our own change maker space,
but I think we place students in those places,
I think the fee that I pay to the call lab is important,
I,
that Barrett West pays to the call lab is important because.
The campus is the size where we need to take advantage of what's best of the campus.
It's small enough that Barrett still feels.
Like they belong.
You don't have to wait in line long to get those things.
Do you work in the call lab as well?
Um,
I think I was invited,
but Elizabeth Livingston.
Yes.
Are you a lab person?
But I think that's important.
So those that integration,
I think is essential to what we do and that's special
to West and the majority of the writing center is Barrett,
even like into the
like front desk,
like it's the majority of the team.
So
that's really magical and I think that has a big impact on
the rest of the student body getting to work with Barrett students.
No,
that's what I think the college has to do is make sure that it's not so.
Insular that
or
that it doesn't
give back to the campus and that's one way.
I think we do it by having Barrett lead non Barrett student groups.
They're usually the class president on campus,
right?
Oh
And I think it's also really cool that I mean
the compound at Barrett at Tempe is really magical and
like a beautiful place to experience,
but I think it's
completely different that we don't have our
own isolated space beyond the Barrett Suite.
We go out and we're with everyone and we're in classes and we're
like interacting even in the dorms during first year
we're doing human event essays in one of the
like
common rooms with normal students around us and we're like.
Freaking out at midnight with everybody as a normal person,
so yeah,
it
has a completely different feel like you feel
different but not
any you separated and so it's kind of that special like we're still
with everyone else
and it's interesting.
It's humanizing,
yeah it's lovely.
It kinda keeps us grounded a little bit.
And it helps dispel some of the misconceptions about honors education.
A lot of people don't understand what it means
Some of my favorite things are when Barrett's students are
dating non-Barrett students and then the non-Barrett student says I.
Right,
because they bring them to events and so on.
That's a pretty cool gig.
I'm like,
I wanna do that.
So I think we're gonna get 3 of those in the current
batch of applications.
I think that's lovely.
That's a cool way to recruit.
We have a lot of students that don't really get what it means and I'm like,
why aren't you in Barrett?
Like I've met you,
the way you work,
the way you approach education,
you belong
here
and they're like,
what's a Barrett?
OK,
I'll take this.
Tell me more.
I'm excited about that.
My own apprehension about
speaking and teaching reminds me that.
You asked
earlier,
I thought about.
Some challenges of being the dean,
and
that's one of the challenges is I think.
Many students who come to Barrett at the West
Campus despite the decision of the admissions committee.
Wonder if they belong.
And their nervousness isn't a good kind of nervous,
the kind of
apprehension and and excitement I have before I go teach
isn't the kind of stress,
like they're under,
they're under one that I think is more damaging,
and I think that's an important role that the Dean can play
um in many ways by also having mentors who assure them in all kinds of other
ways.
It's to say yes,
you belong.
Which doesn't mean it isn't challenging.
If you're challenged,
that doesn't mean you don't belong,
that's not the marker,
and I think sometimes they,
they
treat things as evidence for not belonging that isn't,
it's just part of what
it means to do the,
the challenging work of.
Reading a primary text,
writing about it in.
Those things are difficult for all of us.
So that.
Is another
thing that I want us to be here to be really.
Keen
to notice,
um,
and work
in
various ways to overcome that.
This shouldn't be a stressful thing.
And I think it's hard because not every honor student is necessarily good in areas of
writing and communicating and so they walk into
this very philosophical class and they're like,
I can do math real good.
What are you talking to me about Plato for like
and so that can be really hard and they're like,
I don't know what I'm saying.
There's 3 kids that are talking because they're into it,
um,
and so I think that's a really cool space for them to kind of
figure it out and find that time,
but
I very distinctly remember,
I think Doctor Gruber talking to a group of us and saying,
you're here,
we picked you,
you're here,
we picked you,
and we're like,
OK,
like maybe,
perhaps,
but yeah,
it's a very stressful like.
You're setting your own expectations and the college isn't
saying you're not doing enough but you're feeling it
and so it's kind of overcoming that that makes you find your place here
I think that's part of figuring out if this is.
It's really good.
I'm gonna
do one.
I'm gonna,
this has worked so far,
so I'm gonna try this one more time.
And so one of the things I hear kind of connected.
In an interesting way here is a relationship between peer mentoring.
Doctor,
you could talk a little bit about the history of peer mentoring,
mentoring,
and
probably this is a process of discovering this is a useful thing for this campus.
But,
but maybe you,
Phoebe,
and Maggie could talk about how that's been important for you and how
it's important for you to,
to kind of like the other thing I think kind of I hear connected to peer mentoring
is this question of,
uh,
am I in this community and how,
how do you kind of recognize that you're in it and become
part of this idea that it's a contagious feeling
of being enthusiastic about it through your peers as well as your,
your teachers.
And so maybe talk a little bit about how peer mentoring and,
and feeling like you're part of something
is also part of kind of the,
the startup field that's still part of West Campus.
Because I think that that's all part of the history here.
It's a,
it's a great question in many senses,
but it also
reminds us that.
The this
Charge to carry out the Barrett mission with a little bit of
autonomy is important because Dean Herman had already had mentoring forever,
right,
and was running this incredibly successful thing in Tempe.
We realized we needed it,
but we needed to,
to do our version of it
and I think that that
our version of it is probably what you're
going to hear at downtown and at Polytechnic,
right?
It's.
Barrett allowed to do our version of it,
so Liz Marini has done an extraordinary job,
I think,
of being.
Staff advisor to
Because she trains the mentors and professionalizes them,
you go through a lot of work to be a mentor,
and it's a wholly volunteer,
yes,
um,
but there are weekends set aside where they're with one
another and do all kinds of team building exercises and
because we want the mentor
not to just be someone who wants to do it,
but has been trained to do it,
and I think that's really.
And we link that then with
the Barrett student request of
the Dean.
That they didn't want to do ASU 101 anymore,
they wanted a Barrett version of ASU 101,
so we do that on our campus
and we allow the mentors a place in that class.
2 and 3 times a semester as I recall.
And I think that helps.
Great.
So I want to hear you two talk about that.
So you're both are mentors or you're no,
OK.
But you were mentors,
but you could talk about it.
You were mentors,
right?
Yeah.
Would you like to go first?
Go for it,
from the experience of the mentor.
I personally love the mentoring program.
It's probably the best decision I've made in college.
It's taught me how to socialize.
And it's taught me,
I've actually every every mentor is my friend.
And
we're so close and this
team that we've built.
It's gonna
go on past the mentoring program.
We're gonna meet up next semester and
every month and.
Reconnect,
but it's.
Forced me out of my shell because I've.
Actually have to go up and talk to people,
which
I was never really comfortable doing.
And so
I remember
going to the gym
and seeing,
trying really hard to go up and talk to people
but not really having the courage to do it.
But now,
I can
go up to a freshman and start
introduce them to the suite and introduce them to
the people who work here and hang around here,
and I just.
I love being able to connect with the freshmen,
and I love being able to connect with other Barrett mentors,
because
we have a lot more in common than we initially realized.
And I think it's a really great way to humanize everybody.
Your MIM event is one of the first things you did as a mentor,
right?
And then one of the last thing you did was get on stage and.
Do a mashup for lip sync.
That's a long way from not wanting to talk to anyone.
That's.
Um,
I think from my own experience.
Uh
mentors.
People that I spotted all the time
and so those are the students that I see the
most around the suite and out and about and I'm like
they're the most involved students just generally and
I don't know if that is a product or
whatnot but.
It was really significant because I was able to
pick up on names of those people and then I
had people to talk to freshman year that I could
like spot and it's that idea of walking around West
I recognize a lot of faces.
I have a lot of classes but
maybe I don't know everyone's name but I know the
mentors and they give me a wave and that's.
A moment when you're a freshman
and just feeling like,
oh,
this is my
foot in the door of this community is to meet
this person that will have a conversation with me first
because a lot of the freshmen didn't really talk to each other even
because we're like scared and we're like,
I don't know who you are and you can't really tell who the freshmen are and it's.
It's just really magical to have
that connection immediately and they
tell you,
oh yeah,
this teacher and that teacher and this human event and
it's gonna be hard and you just have to do it and it's fine and just continue and
you're gonna enjoy it or maybe not.
I don't know if you're talking to someone that's a
science major they're probably like it sucks and you're like,
no,
tell me more.
Wait till we get to Lucretius that's what I thought.
Interesting because
that's the most real talk you can have about Barrett when you first get in
is when you're talking to a mentor because everyone else is very
formal and like meeting you you're not gonna say
so what's the scoop?
Tell me more
um
but when you get those mentors kind of out of
the way of all the adults and you're kind of like
what's the truth?
Tell me what we're into because I don't really understand what this is yet and
so that's kind of the behind the scenes little peek
into this is what it's gonna be like and.
How did you find
the courage to start hanging out in the suite?
I know freshmen sometimes feel as if.
Spots have already been claimed or something and.
There's a little bit of an attitude of like
you walk into a space and someone walks in and sees you
and leaves cause they don't wanna like take up your space,
but
I enjoy working in a public space where there's a kind of.
Not like straight conversation to me but kind
of ambient noises happening and so that really
works for my type of
skills and so
it was nice to be able to come here and have people around and like
hey Sasha,
hey what's up just
checking in with a bunch of people and
be able to pass people you recognize but
I think getting over intimidation was kind of just getting to know people and I don't
know that I really got into that until the end of freshman year or the beginning of
this year.
Um,
but it's kind of just a matter of figuring out
this is
my
thing that I'm a part of,
this is my space,
and it's not just something that's exclusive for me,
and I think that's something maybe needs to be
directly said to the freshmen because it's kind of hard to,
yeah,
in the morning,
absolutely,
yeah,
and you use Whitman.
Were I a student,
I always think I would be in Kurosawa,
that would be the.
And there's students in there too,
there are types in different places.
One of the things that I'm really moved by is
hearing you talk,
and I was trying
to be
mindful of it,
but you can't have a conversation about what
we think goes well at Barrett West without
we've mentioned every staff name
numerous times,
right?
So what Sasha does with the BRC and what Liz does
with mentors and advising and so on and so on,
and now that Hannah's been promoted,
I think her
role as an advisor is going to be great,
but
she was.
She was extraordinary at the front greeting people
like she made it a welcoming place,
and I know that our new person there,
Sohini will do that.
I've said in public more than once,
so I'm happy to go on the oral history record of saying.
My,
the staff here at Barrett West is extraordinarily good and a
lot of their great work gets attributed to me and I don't
wanna pretend that I don't know.
They're incredible.
And developing
individual relationships with all of them as a student,
like
bonding with Sasha over art and Harry Potter,
and she's like,
Hey,
have you heard of this new watercolor?
And I'm like,
How do you know that?
You'll deal with a million students.
And Susan with her dresses all the time,
she's fun.
Exciting and
there's really great energy around here and I think they all
have a completely different personality that we pick up on,
which is cool because they're the staff like
we
we need to respect them and
like
they're a certain
status in this
experience,
but
it's very,
very different,
I think.
I really appreciate it,
it's cool.
Well,
I like college.
Me
too.
It's like a second home.
It's like quite a lot.
I'm,
I'm worried about that.
Um,
so,
the future of Barrett.
It's it's impossible because we know what
the future has to be
to,
to do what the university wants to do,
which is to become larger.
And we know that part of what we like about this is this sauce,
so
I think we have to put the kinds of things
in place that habituate this ethos that we have.
And be very careful
when it starts to slip to say how can we have it back,
even though we have now.
125 new
first year students and uh.
So we went from 40,
47,
we used to make those kind of incremental,
right?
Then we went to 63,
then we went to 71,
then we went to 97,
and we expect 115 or more next fall.
So those,
that changes everything.
More advising,
more people in the residential life,
but that makes Sasha's job more difficult,
makes the CAA's job,
etc.
So
the future is.
I'm glad we're having this conversation.
It's almost like a focus group for me to think about the future.
How do we keep the ethos
and invite more people to join us?
Because we do want more voices,
we do want.
Do think that this is the way to come to the West Campus is to be in there.
The thing we can't say out loud,
but it's.
Confirmed,
I think,
at least by your experience and what I.
Watch happen
For as challenging as the human event is,
etc.
it's easier to be embarratt than not because you have a built-in community,
you have people caring about you,
those are the things that retain students
and we take you seriously as
people who have ideas.
Mhm.
Isn't that the best thing about the human event is that
you couldn't tell your professor what
she wanted to hear you
because you don't know what it is,
right?
The class isn't like that,
right?
There isn't.
You can't,
you can't just please them,
right?
I love that.
So,
and I say to students,
I'm your ally until you turn your paper in.
I'll help you write the essay you want,
but after that,
then I can't,
right?
I have to be someone else.
The,
the way the university is set up,
I have to be someone who then evaluates,
but
I'm your ally trying to write whatever
crazy thesis you want.
I like that I've directed.
A handful of honors thesis with which I don't agree.
I think that's really important
and I told students from the start.
You,
I don't think you're gonna be able to persuade me,
but here's how you would do it if,
right,
here,
here's the best way to make your terrible argument.
Yeah,
um,
here's the best way to try to,
to make your side of the case.
Um,
I like that.
Yeah,
there's there's a goal,
and I'm sure
I'm,
yeah,
um,
with one
now Doctor Kitchen,
and
we still have a wonderful
disagreement about her,
her thesis.
That's something that.
Barrett should pride itself on is that kind.
Because that is a tolerance in a cheap sense,
it's
intellectual engagement where.
Issues so complicated
that there are
arguments all around.
And she made a good one.
It just didn't persuade her.
But
she should say the same,
that I've made an OK
rejoinder,
but she's
remains unmoved too,
so I,
I think that's fair,
that's a good standoff on that question.
We've talked a little bit about
how proud you are of the ethos we've maintained,
but if you could see it evolve in any way,
what would you want it to be in the most ideal?
challenge.
It's a challenge.
To know it's so far from perfect,
but not know exactly
what I would change is.
A damning insight.
Touche.
Can I say damning insight?
You can.
OK.
I
I'm gonna let you think about that.
I'll throw something in as an observation because I,
I get the rule here of
I'm,
I'm just an outside observer,
but I mean it's been a wonderful conversation about really about what it means to,
to be a lifelong learner.
And you know,
one of the things I think that's really interesting and again I think
that all of you are bringing out.
Is that there's something about
being maybe an American that resists
throw going all into
a kind of intellectual discussion and the
one of the things I see often is that
11 of the things that's really important for Barrett is that it tells other
students,
other students tell other students it's OK to be intense
and serious.
You're right,
you're all nodding about that like almost instantly,
like it's like a relief to say that.
And I,
I mean,
I,
I guess I don't know how that can evolve,
but,
but at least in terms of one of the things that,
that you brought up Dean Ramsey was like the
relation to the larger community,
right?
I mean,
how can Barrett play a role in
um.
Helping Americans or Arizonans be serious about
their,
um,
intellectuality or about their mission or about their relations to each other,
more articulate,
more civil.
Um,
because those things I think are really
central.
And I mean,
I don't know if you feel like you're a better citizen
as part of being in Barrett,
or if it's
more like a club,
but,
but maybe to think about the civic side of it would be a nice way to end the discussion.
How does this prepare you for being.
An American or a citizen in a broader way.
I do feel like I kind of orient myself to the world in a way that is kind of more
European and artistic and
maybe not
what is purely American and so it is very strange for me to.
A line that I've always kind of felt like I am really into.
A lot more of the
education and art and whatnot that's happening in Europe than what's in America,
but I think as far as just being more willing to.
Be open minded and investigative of what's happening.
I think that would make me a better citizen just.
By result,
but
I can't say that I am more
blindly supportive of things that are happening in America.
Like I feel like that makes me a more
challenging citizen
than anything else.
Perhaps,
yeah.
So I don't think I'm necessarily
better or worse.
in terms?
I love how Barrett supports and.
Encourages and stimulates critical thinking
because that's what my parents have always.
Brought me up to do.
And I just
Love how
everything that we read in human events
kind of.
Even though
they,
they come from traditionally
viewed
as
drastically different
juxtaposing.
Studies
like
Lucretius and then we'll get to Freud and then.
It's
amazing how much these authors have in common.
In terms of
Well,
you wouldn't even
begin to
think of at the very beginning.
And then
You can apply these,
like,
we're not all
completely
different.
We have so much more in common than most people think.
Like one of my favorite things to do is think about
all the ways that chemistry and Shakespeare have in common.
Surprisingly similar,
but
I just love reaching out and thinking of all the different ways we connect because
that humanizes these studies and then we can further those
and we can talk to people that we would have never thought about talking to.
So like a computer science major could talk
to a communications major and realize that we
love the same TV shows and we love the same books and the same
everything.
And then we can talk to people of different majors and different walks
of life and get to know them better and feel like we can
really.
Commence a really wonderful relationship.
You both must have been in the 191 where we read the little
section on what it means to be addicted to study and
I'm sorry.
No,
it's a strange little,
it's a powerful little piece for being so short.
Yeah,
that kind of blew my mind,
especially as one of the first things that we were doing,
I always I always wonder if that's too soon.
That kind of opened up like,
oh,
that's who I was in high school.
I understand how I go through life.
Critical
And it leads to that moralistic discussion too,
because people don't like the word addiction.
But
of its use in the piece,
right,
is to try to
Provocation
OK.
This is awful.
I don't know what I want to add to the ethos.
What about the attitude of the
Towards us.
I think we're more or less welcomed,
more or less,
most of them.
We're asked to participate often.
that we do that.
I think we share.
Compared to some other things,
we have an embarrassment of riches.
That they don't understand it.
And I think that we aren't transparently.
Out on a stage,
but that's not where we wanna be necessarily and so I
think it's hard for them to understand what we do because
we don't.
Tell everyone.
In terms of books and so on,
we,
I think we do a nice.
At least we're trying to be conscientious about diversity.
Our reading list and those kinds of things.
I think in terms of gender and
Sexual orientation,
etc.
We're doing a nice job on the faculty.
But clearly if we had a person of color on the faculty,
that would
add another kind of.
Moment to all of this that would be important.
I know the college changed when we hired.
Women on the faculty,
I mean,
we had no faculty and that
so.
I just watching people at the office hour lines and,
but not for
human event questions,
but for
what it means to be a college student question when you see.
Successful with
Despite not having a really good answer to your question,
which I will.
Take up in my own thinking,
I promise you.
What I do think.
is important is that I think the ethos is one that's responsive,
and that helps it.
So when it really comes up,
what we need to do,
I think we're going to be able to hear it,
even if I don't know what that is.
And the nature of students is questioning,
so we're not gonna let anything go.
You
people come to my office and make
reasonable,
interesting requests,
and we try to respond to them,
right?
I,
it's how you know.
Um,
I don't like guessing
what students want.
I'd rather know
what they think they.
Yes,
and
we have the kinds of things in place to do that,
right?
We have talks with the dean,
um,
we have those moments where we survey the students and then.
have that meeting at the end of the year where students can ask
questions of,
of the staff and myself.
So I would say
the only virtue of my inability to answer is that I do think we're in a position
to be responsive when we hear.
What it is the next move has to be.
Do you have any other things you'd like to mention
before I don't want it to get to talk about
what we do with this kind of intensity.
was flattered to be
asked.
I do wanna say some things for the oral history part.
I do think we have to find Julie's last name.
We have to talk to Doctor Joseph Ryan.
We have to think about those kinds of things.
I also should say when I complimented the staff,
which is.
Also the staff who are not heron fan of.
And here's a nice anecdote.
Um,
we had the.
We had the layout of the suite as it looked before it was the suite.
Um
For the record,
I'm bringing now a diagram of the week.
Can I take a photo of that when we're done?
Can do.
Before it looked like this,
it looks like the way it did,
right?
Um-hum.
So this is how you come in.
And there was a huge conference room here,
so Whitman is knocking down all of those walls and so on.
But Heron had,
um,
I don't know how it's called,
but it's an erase white tape.
And every time she would do,
uh,
it was
thousands of dollars.
It was a wall coming down,
but every time we moved that pen,
we knew that we were cutting into the
budget under we,
we,
we had to work,
um.
But we,
we thought about what it meant to sit here.
Not to look into a conference room which.
Mhm.
Bars you,
but you're a prospective student sitting here waiting for your tour,
you look out across Whitman and now you're sitting there reading um as you like it.
You see the
goings on of the college and it feels like it's a place that's welcoming you.
So our first move was to take down walls and try to make that space open.
So the kind of idea of openness,
and we called it Whitman,
the poet of democracy.
I mean this was easy.
Borges was a librarian.
But still,
I thought Whitman wasn't a bad choice,
no.
And then we tried to cite his poem,
the,
the Open Road,
and to make it the Whitman open space.
I thought this poem was great calling Freud the storage closet,
everything we didn't know what to do with we just stuffed in Freud,
right?
So um.
This is the name that students gave
to that room,
so it's nice.
Uh-huh,
right,
the Rosalynla room for those listening on audio,
right,
yeah,
right.
Did you get your photo?
Yeah,
absolutely.
Well,
I think one of the things maybe to comment there is that
that one of the things that you're underscoring,
all of you underscored is the importance of,
of
having
the community of Barrett have a space that
that reflects the idea of community and openness and sharing.
Right,
is that
And.
You've heard that
it's been a struggle to get similar spaces elsewhere because the university
almost feels as if they made a mistake giving us this space,
but
I
couldn't imagine this enterprise working.
In a certain way without it,
right,
it wouldn't be,
and so when they give me these ideas that
of how I should redesign the space,
I don't think they've thought all the way through everything that it does.
I think John Dewey causes collateral learning,
right?
It's the learning that happens.
And
I mean there's a pedagogical setting to everything that happens here.
Well,
learning is always a dialogue and,
and you learn.
I mean,
I,
I teach these things too,
and,
and one of the things I always tell the students
is that I don't know what you don't know and you
have to teach me what you don't know so that you can get some of the things that I do know
and in the process I'll learn something too as well and it's,
it's always a dialogue and it's true for institutions as well as for,
for classrooms.
I think
the structure of the suite is really integral to the way the community operates and
every space is really purposeful
and so even the one that has like
a blanket and couches and beautiful window space like
that is a different environment to go into and so if you're doing
like any kind of educational work
it's really important to be able to change
your environment so drastically like every room feels different
and it has different levels of
social.
Exposure or
comfort or
darkness,
like whatever you need and
I feel like the suite is so perfect for everything we've ever had to do
and you can like transform it to have a talk and transform it to have a
press conference,
like whatever needs to happen
and
I think it's really.
Important to how the community feels from the student's perspective.
There is a kind of disposition that ends up in the corner
office with the windows and a disposition that ends up in Kurosawa,
which is
so poorly lit.
From the perspective of
the corner office,
but I think it's perfect and.
Finding people in the beanbags is always a surprise.
It,
that's,
I wish there was a rule against that,
but
it was always shocking.
I didn't need
science to tell me that naps were good,
but
there is research out now that tells us naps are good.
Yeah,
they always say you,
you learn in,
you learn in your sleep and you,
you learn to skate in the summer.
So
I.
I've seen,
you know,
napping take place in Rosalind Franklin.
In Kurosawa and I think that's a legitimate thing to do.
I'm worried about there being plenty of space as we continue to grow them.
The space makes so much sense for where we're at.
But capacity is gonna change.
I'm committed not to moving
unless I'm mistaken and I can be talked out of it.
I'm committed not to moving until we have enough space
to make a larger version of this that tries
to at least reproduce those different kinds of dispositions,
the different way in which.
A Whitman-like space could be used three different ways.
I don't wanna move just to a bigger space if it couldn't be
partitioned in a way that allows it.
Multiple use.
But that's our next big thing.
So my real wish isn't for
radically different ethos,
but
a
radically wealthy donor who wants to build the honors building
that we designed.
With student input and try to get this
to scale.
We had too few students for the size of the suite when it was built,
but I promised them that we would bring the stu the students would get,
we could persuade people to come
if we had something they want,
to which they wanted to come.
And it turned out to be right.
So you're gonna have to fight that fight again.
Yes,
but now
in the millions of dollars rather than in the tens of thousands.
That's a different conversation and a
radically different fight,
I understand.
And I would say that I don't know how to be good at the 2nd.
But that's what foundation people do,
right?
That's,
well,
yeah,
and I mean,
I think that one of the things that is interesting,
right,
is that.
ASU is this.
Phoenix is now the 6th largest metropolitan area in the United States
and
ASU is the educational institute well,
it's not the,
but it's,
it's the
not just dominant,
it's not strong enough,
it's,
it's the,
the core educational institution in the,
in the city that is the 6th largest
city in the country,
and there's really nothing that.
And um I think
if you think of um.
Educational institutes as being a little bit
like institutions as being a little bit like
acorns that that have to have a kernel that that's vital that makes them grow.
I mean,
I,
I think Barrett is,
is,
is the kernel of,
of how these institutions can grow because they provide the kind of intensity.
Education
I would say not just educational experience,
but the experience of an experience,
um,
uh,
the,
the kind of sense that
that that
crystallizes into something that,
that,
that sustains you later.
I do think it's really important and it's hard
to kind of.
How would you say,
how to say it's,
it's very hard to think about history while you're living in it,
but you have to,
right?
And I think that's kind of what we're doing here.
I mean,
this is for me this is a lovely conversation because,
um,
one of the things that is truly important is that
you have to think about education while you're in it.
right.
I mean,
I was very struck by what Phoebe said about.
The the
the kind of
being surprised by that,
it's important to learn to be surprised.
I like that you were defensive and then it got,
then you just.
It happens,
so you accepted it.
That's a nice part of that story.
I like,
yeah,
I'll take it.
Yeah.
Well,
I,
I think we should turn it off and thank everybody.
I,
I'll just thank everybody.
I don't,
I don't have the official role of thing,
but I,
I,
I feel privileged to have just even
participated in this discussion.
Thank you,
Dean Ramsey,
for your participation.
If you have any more thoughts to share later,
please feel free to reach out.
And if you have any questions about the
interview or the 30th anniversary Oral History Project,
please contact Bine Nicola.