 All right, this is Robbie do interviewing may you say your name, please Anthony presigian and it is Friday March 29th 2019, how are you doing today? I'm doing terrific Robbie. Thank you. Yeah now Could you tell us when and where you were born? I was born in Salem, Oregon July of 1944 So I am a war baby What did your parents do when you were growing up? my parents were basically in sales my father was in the furniture business and my mother worked in department stores, so they were both in retail So your mother worked at the time too, right? Where did you go to school here? What can you go through your academic history? Okay, well I grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, which is halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee And that's where I spent my my formative years and when it came time to selecting college, I was the First attendee in my family to go to college. I Think because I was an only child and my parents were very protective they pushed me toward going to a small liberal arts college and I enrolled in Monmouth College in West Central Illinois It was there that I majored in biology And that provided me then a springboard to go to graduate school at Indiana University Not in biology, but in biological Got my PhD at Indiana University What Made you pursue a career in higher education. Did you always know you wanted to be a professor? well, I Prepared for this interview. I had a chance to reflect and what were the key triggers in my life and I was in fact reminded of my first week as an undergraduate at Monmouth College when I went to my Biology 101 class and there was a new assistant professor there Dr. Allison Professor in that class and during the course of 101 biology He took some time out and he was a freshly admitted PhD And he took the time out to do Overview of his PhD research And he brought to class all of his documents and all of his research papers You could see all the steps that he took In his research leading to his PhD and his assistant professorship at Monmouth College He was so enthusiastic and when I saw All the steps that he took to get his PhD and excitement of research Now standing before a class of undergraduates I really admired the guy. It was an infectious presentation and it was right then Freshman in biology That he said well, I want to be that guy and I want to be a professor someday so that triggered then Completing my undergraduate degree and then moving on Okay, and what did you write your dissertation on it for me? Oh, okay That's another interesting story. My PhD professor at Indiana University was notorious keeping his graduate students for a long long time and I'm talking like Five to eight years complete their PhDs and I was too impatient for that and My professor's area of research his specialty wasn't exactly my cup of tea and I can't remember Exactly how I struck upon my topic, but I Settle on a subject that he didn't have any particular expertise in that would give me some latitude to do my thing and graduate in a timely way so his field was looking at relationships among prehistoric Native American populations using Skeletons and so I was steeped in working with prehistoric Native American populations and I ended up Doing my research on osteoporosis, which is a common malady today Especially in post-menopausal women. So the question was Did prehistoric Native American populations in different settings? Did they experience what today is a universal phenomenon bone loss bone mineral loss? with age I Was very fortunate to have Linked up with the medical school at Indiana University in Indianapolis We're at the time there was experimental new methodologies for measuring bone mineral and living people And that was photon absorptiometry so using iodine isotopes I was able to pass photons through the radius bone of these prehistoric peoples and very precisely measured bone mineral content Knowing the age at time of death of the person I Could look at the relationship between age at time of death bone mineral content low and behold Those Native American prehistoric peoples who were able to live into their 40s and 50s Underwent the same pattern of bone loss that we do today. So it's kind of a universal phenomenon of aging And here males are clearly at an advantage. They do lose bone at a lower rate and do females so it was an interesting topic and It gave me some freedom to get the project done in a timely way So I came to UC in 1970 And I had not completed my PhD at the time And I'll never forget that First year at UC as an assistant professor Without my dissertation, but of course plenty of incentive to finish It was in April of my first year at UC, which is the beginning of spring quarter at the time I was giving a paper in Boston, and I got a call That sadly my advisor died right in the middle of my dissertation Fortunately, I had some backup professors on my committee who were able to step in and Help me through the ending stages of completing my PhD. So in 71 After my first year, you see I completed my PhD So you've come to UC Was it just they were hiring and you came here or did you know anything about the program or anything like that? Well, my decision-making proud process on UC was Kind of serendipitous I had gone to the national meetings of the American Anthropological Association this would have been in fall of 69 and I was doing a lot of interviewing and This was a time of Really explosive growth in higher education we our country had really received a real scare from the Russians with Sputnik and In response, it was rapid growth in higher education in college enrollments and so UC was part of that and they were were growing and so I Interviewed four or five schools at the meetings including UC and As it turns out Even without a PhD. I was getting offers from Oregon State and Brooklyn College in addition to You see and I liked in particular the head of the department Gustav Carlson I found him inspiring person someone I'd like to work with work for and so I gravitated toward UC and in particular, I was Gravitating to UC because I was looking long range in my career Where should I start my career? and so I Opted for UC because frankly it was the closest big university to Bloomington, Indiana And it would be my my stepping stone so I came in fall of 70 began my career and Lo and behold since Nettie grew on me and I stayed for 40 years So what jobs did you hold during your time here at UC? Well, that's interesting Question and one we could spend a lot of time on but I'll try to be brief. I've had a good fortune of serving in many roles at UC Early part of my career, of course was 100% Professor teaching and research but There were an opportunity arose in the early 1980s when Arts and Sciences was undergoing a transition and There was appointed acting dean and the acting dean in fact a professor of history and He and I were well acquainted and We had a good rapport and he asked me to Step in a temporary basis to be the acting associate dean and I thought well Why not? It's not a life sentence so I'll give it a good. I'll give it a go and I wouldn't have to give up my teaching and continue to teach So in the early 80s, I became acting associate dean in Arts and Sciences and then that opened up a series of developments in administration During that time I became acting associate dean and became associate dean and then there was Transition going on in the Department of African-American Studies or Africana Studies. I believe it's called today and I was wearing two hats as Associate dean of Arts and Sciences and acting head of Africana Studies, so I did that for a couple years Then in the early 90s Opening was created in the provost office Vice provost for academic affairs and I felt that I had some measure of success as administrator in Arts and Sciences so I applied for this vice provost position and Was selected in 1991 to be vice provost for academic affairs. I served in that role until December of 1993 when the President of the University Joseph Stager who at the time was serving as president and as acting provost I Was asked to step in on an emergency basis To be the acting provost. This was in fact December 7th 1993 a day that could be remembered so I agreed to do this until December of 1994 when Hopefully the provost search would be completed. I had no interest at all in being provost Well, you never can control things all together and The provost search did not go well In fact, there are a couple failed searches So I found myself as acting provost Until 1996 So I served 28 months as acting provost and then you see hired a provost and then I went back to my role as As vice provost Well as things worked out during that Return as vice provost for academic affairs There was another development in the university where the Athletic director was fired and At the time I was chairing the NCAA certification self-study for the university The president figured well, I might know something about sports so With four hours notice He asked me to be the AD and he wanted a quick decision because AD had to go and he needed to find a quick replacement So my life completely turned on its head within four hours as I became the acting athletic director of the University of Cincinnati 1997 so that was obviously an interesting term of events and I was in that role for About nine months and had a great time quite frankly Then at the end of 1998 You never know what's going to happen the provost and the president had a falling out so to speak and The president asked me for a second time to be the acting provost So I Agreed to do it a second time, but only this time We reached an agreement that if I wish to pursue the job full-time I would have the freedom to do so So in December of 98 I became provost again and I applied it for the job in 1999 And then in March of 2010 excuse me of March of 2000 I Became the provost and was in that position until August of 2010 Wow, so you've been all over the map and been all over the administrative map and for much of the time that I was provost I continued to teach my Survey of physical anthropology of biological anthropology course but by about 2007-2008 it became Two owners to do everything and I knew deep down that my students were not getting all of me and So I Stopped teaching in 2007 Um So you've told us a little bit about your time in the administration your time as a teacher What can you tell us a little about your time there their colleagues that Stand out in your mind. You've mentioned a few already And then what sort of differences were there yeah between being in the academic department and in the administrative side of things well When I came to you see in 1970 and began my professorial career was a different culture at the time and I was sort of brought up in a culture that Students should appreciate professors they should respect professors They should follow the professors. They should listen to the professors and And our only obligation was that we would go to class We would do our thing and deliver our material And the students could take it or leave it They were just fortunate to have us in their presence But That was in 1970 and for many years thereafter but the university changed and relationships between professors and students changed and During my time at UC What evolved was a partnership Where professors and students shared equally in the responsibility for the teaching and learning environment so As the years unfolded and as I became more plugged into trends in higher education I began to appreciate the importance of assessment Assessment not only at the level of the class of the class that assessment at the programmatic level as well so Toward the end of my time teaching I Try to use as many devices as possible to ensure a partnership with the students things were flowing Profitably In the classroom, so I opted to use the so-called five-minute essay so At least two or three times a week. I would stop five minutes early at the end of my class And ask the students to do a five-minute essay Where they would scribble down one what was the most interesting thing that happened in class today and Two what was the least understandable thing that happened in class today? And that was a treasure trove of information getting feedback On how the class went that day and it was always illuminating to see Where I thought I was crystal clear but where the students Were completely befuddled and didn't follow up how the class how the class is going on so I During my time as a professor became more invested into classroom assessment Then as an administrator involved with the accreditation of the university I began to appreciate even more the importance of assessment at the program level Where it's incumbent upon us as professors as departments to set clearly defined goals for our majors and to assess the outcomes of that work at the graduation level to see if our graduates have Realized the student learning outcomes and goals And if not What kind of changes do we make in what we teach and how we teach? to ensure that the learning objectives Objectives are met so That was I think a change in my philosophy and my orientation to become more student responsive more student Engaged at both the department Program level and the classroom as well and during My time at UC It was very refreshing to see UC moving more and more for the use of technology in the classroom. I Can't say that I was an active participant as I moved on to administration, but Clearly that was a major development in the teaching and learning You speak very fondly of a lot of these developments obviously there's Yeah, there's Both positives and negatives to every kind of change But you seem to would you agree that you view most of these changes as positive for the university? Yeah Is I Look from the again the vantage of my 40 years particularly proud that It was part of an administration in the mid 1990s that was really visionary and In fact, I want to give Some very explicit credit explicit credit to Joseph Steger His legacy for most people was primarily The building Renaissance Incredible development architecturally of the university But what doesn't get enough credit and here I think I want to give myself credit as is his provost that We recognize He in particular where higher education was going 1994 the state Directed all the universities to offer functional mission states Stayed wanting to make sure that we had our act together Then we were a function of functions system and so one step toward that was to look at yourself as An institution and articulate your functional mission statement. Who are you? What are you? What are your priorities and? Dr. Steger was Almost unilateral and writing that he didn't go through a comprehensive process of engagement with everybody But he kind of authored the university's function mission statement, but it was truly visionary as we look back and We recognize for Trajectories for higher education One was globalization or internationalization so University took active steps to create an office of international affairs that turned out to be a brilliant move in terms of where higher ed is going President Steger recognized that Higher education to stay vibrant and to stay engaged and to stay productive needed to be interdisciplinary It was sort of a standing joke in higher education That the world has problems and how does the university respond will they respond by creating these silos called academic departments as If anthropology is going to solve all the problems of the world or biology or history or philosophy So in the mid 90s higher education is becoming more interdisciplinary So solutions to problems are complex problems are complex. So you have to bring multiple disciplines So interdisciplinarity multidisciplinary became the watchwords of higher education UC was ahead of the curve In terms of this interdisciplinary multi-discipline so globalization multi multi-disciplinarity or interdisciplinarity in addition technology UC was ahead of the curve in recognizing the importance of Technology in the classroom and the fourth pillar was pedagogy Putting teaching and learning Bridging that together Until then we all only spoke about effective teaching. We only talked about teaching but never the outcome of learning And so I'll never forget Sentence in our functional mission statement where president Steger quipped UC will be a place where students can't not learn and That's pretty good And so that became the guiding motif into the into the next century And I feel very proud to have Part of the administration's thrust around that as pros and probos That became my guiding motif In terms of executing my work in terms of evaluating programs evaluating professors evaluating the university That's really cool See I'm sort of touched on a number of them, but what would you say some of your more memorable Experiences the specific examples of something that you were involved in that you're particularly proud of maybe Could you get into maybe one or two of those examples? well, I wish I could start with a graphic academic Example, but I have to say when the acting athletic director position fell in my lap That was one of the more interesting experiences in my in my career at UC and It obviously raised a lot of eyebrows in the community Not the least of which one of the current columnists at the Cincinnati Inquirer Paul Docherty who's still very active today and I remember he was at the press conference when my appointment was announced and The next day he wrote a column about this anthropologist who is now the athletic athletic director And he made a joke about well, I don't know how long He's going to be in that role, but we hope he doesn't forget everything he ever knew about Neanderthals So anyway, I think that acting athletic director position was one of the more Memorial one of the more memorable ones Another particular honor for me at the University If I could be a modest for a moment One of the thrills for me was getting the Oscar Schmidt public service award at the time University had while we've always had awards for teaching and research and student engagement But the University implemented award for public service and One wouldn't normally think that an anthropologist In arts and sciences would get the public service award, but I had spent many many years Serving as a consultant at the Hamilton County Coroner's office as a forensic anthropologist So I was particularly proud to get the public service award for my work at the Hamilton County Coroner's office What do you think? You've mentioned that you see was ahead of the curve and it's changing and the vision is the visionaries that have been leading it But what do you think really makes you see stand out as an academic institution? well You see in many ways is comparable to many other schools, but We were to Highlight its strengths its cache and higher education and not to Come across as just too cliche, but I think if you were to try to distinguish your Characterized you see I think you have to start with its It's comprehensiveness. We are a comprehensive public research University and so I think that It doesn't distinguish us necessarily from a great many peer institutions, but it does accurately define us and establish us as a major player in American higher education So stepping down Or stepping away from just the observation of our comprehensiveness I think you have to obviously note that We are a place where there are academic strengths and Traditionally, we've had very strong professional programs As everyone knows Co-op was founded at the University of Cincinnati in 1906 and so in 2006 when we celebrated the centennial of co-op that was really a big deal So co-op I think renders us as a distinct and distinguished University So we have many traditional strengths when we look at our top 10 programs Nationwide or Nationally, it's very distinctive our strengths in medicine our strengths in engineering or strengths in music our strengths in Classics We have Strengths across the board Humanities and social sciences across the life sciences or STEM disciplines So I think our professional programs are very distinctive and bring considerable strength to us Of course, I'd be remiss in not identifying athletics as well We I think tend to forget the connection between Athletics and academics But in my time in the athletics department, I learned That the athletes that you see perform at levels equal to or surpass non-athletes students you see So the teaching and learning environment that you see is greatly accentuated through the athletic programs and I think UC has always been a diverse institution proudly speaking and I know that Our international enrollments have grown and I think you see can look proudly At that both at the graduate level and the undergraduate level Proliferation the growth of international students and in particular proud in terms of our distinctiveness to note that we've been leading at Leading edge cutting edge in terms of online learning. I think we were Really ahead of most of the other public research universities in Ohio advancing towards online programs including online degree programs Just as you look back at your time here and from what I'm hearing is you're describing all this But you say it's fair What it's what is it fair to say that you hold a lot of love for the institution this place? It's a special place in your heart. Oh, I Kind of bleed black and red I'm a bear cat for life Exude pride for the institution Proud to say that my two children attended UC my daughter completed her degree in arts and sciences and economics and my son Came to UC and Attended the College of Law where he graduated and my daughter also attended the College of Law and Graduated so UC and my family. It's a family affair to be sure and so I I do look quite proudly and fondly and On my 40 years at UC and as it turns out my connection with UC has Turned to turn out to be very different as a professor emeritus that I now work for another university the future University in Egypt when I retired in 2010 I Moved to Egypt actually in December of 2010 I've lived there for five years working with the future University in Egypt FUE and In 2013 The future University of Egypt Engaged in a formal began a formal partnership with the University of Cincinnati This was in the fall of 2013 and so I Very proud of that obviously that my Egyptian University was now a formal partner with my former employer the University of Cincinnati and in 18 The five-year partnership between UC and FUE became renewed President Pinto Visited the FUE in November of 2018 And signed renewal of the agreement for five more years so Very gratified and proud of my home institution and my new institution in terms of this Very productive partnership and again Harkening back that UC has an international agenda And has a very important footprint in the Middle East No more so than in the so-called capital of the Middle East That's really cool is I guess just in closing is there anything you want to say that I didn't ask any You already gave a shout out to one president and anyone else you want to thank or say it's okay If you don't just any final thoughts final thoughts again reflecting on the Big picture when I arrived at UC fall of 1970 We were a respectable institution We were a municipal university part municipally supported and part state supported As a 1970s unfolded that changed dramatically and decisively When in the late 70s we became fully state supported That was a big deal another big deal was that the university faculty unionized in the late 70s and Between going full-state and unionized faculty major developments to be sure And as the 80s 90s and early 2000s unfolded You see underwent incredible incredible transition from being I would describe as a regional university To key major player as a comprehensive public research university ranked in two for the top 200 in the world And so I think you see it's a mirror tie should feel justly proud Being part of that transition Becoming a public research university Without ever shirking its responsibility to its students It's really great. All right. Well. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking about this