 Good morning, Mr. Norman. How are you? Well, can you just call me Norman? That would relax me. Why don't you go ahead and tell a little bit about yourself, you know, the way you did at UC. We just started talking? Yeah. I came to UC in the late 70s, I think. I came as a head of what was then called Quantitative Analysis Department, now Business Analytics. I was head of that for five years, went back to the faculty for a few. Then in the early 80s, I went to the provost office, first as acting vice provost. Before I became vice provost, they asked me to be provost. I did that for almost ten years. In 94, returned to the faculty at a year leave. Used that year to build a program called the Blender on His Plus program, and undergraduate on his program. And the College of Business did that until I retired in 2002. I actually stayed around for another five years because the primary donor to the program wanted me to continue being involved until we got the program up and running. So finally retired, I guess, officially stopped going to campus pretty much around 2007-2008. And what was the Blender's plus program? What is it? What was the Blender on her plus program? You're asking me what it is? Yeah. It's an undergraduate on his program. Each student gets five-year scholarship in quiet co-op at Cooperative Education. Includes an overseas trip. They now do Europe, China, and South America. We initially started in Europe. The students have gone for four to six weeks. They spend one week with a university in that region, studying global business in the part of the world. It's actually a full semester. The first part of the semester is where they study the global business perspective from the U.S. perspective. Then when they go overseas, they get a chance to see it from the perspective of that part of the world where they are. After the academic program, they meet with companies. And we asked the companies to provide three things to the students. An understanding of what their strategy is for operating the business within their region and also within the world. Two, the opportunity to meet with ex-patriots. Some who have come from America and have stopped working in their area of the world. Others who leave that region of the world and come to America. Coming to the United States is actually more difficult than going overseas for reasons we could talk about. And the third thing is please make sure the students have an opportunity to see your company and product. What it is that you do is a product or a service. If we do 15 or so companies, I think the students get a pretty good understanding of what's happening in that region of the world from a business perspective. The program was designed jointly by faculty and business leaders. The business leaders were asked to identify what are the characteristics that make a business program outstanding. What does a student should know by the time they graduate? What are the important things to discuss? And a faculty committee to put together the academics. It's a little over 20 years old now and doing very well. And did some of the students that were in their Honors Plus program today work overseas too? Have you graduated? Our hope was, and I don't know if you want to comment, we talked about this. We wanted to attract the best students in the region to the program. For the region, that was inside 275. For us, it was like 100 mile radius, but we never really talked about that. Our hope was that 70% of the students would continue to work in the Cincinnati area. Because we thought it was important for the program to take predominantly students from the region who would stay in the region. I think we've done pretty well with that, about 30% stay. A number of them are with companies like Proper & Gamble, but they're working overseas. They're in Europe, they're in Russia, they're in South America. Others have gone off. In fact, Levandes Jones just came back. He was one of our early graduates. He was running a company in Africa. He was the University of Chicago College of Business Alumni of the Year last year. He started a company in Africa. It's almost like an Uber for farming equipment, where they provide short-term rentals for farming equipment. Started in Nigeria, now in seven countries. He is now back in the United States and working in the Cincinnati area. So the students have gone off and come back. There's some interesting stories from what the graduates have done. His is one of the most interesting. What other companies were already involved in overseas besides Proper & Gamble? Well, it goes on and on. Unilever, IBM. Pretty much their one. The students are being recruited all over the country now. Every year, as I said, our goals are 70% a year, but every year San Francisco, a number of companies in San Francisco, higher and regular basis. Charlotte, New York, Chicago. We have our loans all over the country, all over the world now. I don't know. When you figure 25 a year for 20 years, all of a sudden it's over 400 people up, 500 people out there. I can't keep track of them all I've been going through. Actually, one of the other nice things is Raquel Crawley, who's one of our early graduates. She's an accounting major, worked at P&G, then worked at one of the CPA firms. She's now back running the program for us, which is kind of neat that we have an alum actually running the program. Oh, nice. What are you most passionate about? Now, golf. In those days, you know, dependent. When you look at my career, it's very hard for me to answer because the early part of my career as a teacher and a researcher, in the middle of my career I was building a department, and then working at the university level, and then finally the honors program. And as I mentioned earlier, then went from that to where my son always started the company. So you have to tell me which stage of life you're asking about, and you ask my back. The thing I'm most proud of is the Honors Plus program. That has affected more lives positively than anything else I did, as far as I know. At least I can see the results of it. You know, some of the things you do as provost, it's so far removed from the students that you can't see the impact it has on individuals. When you're running an undergraduate honors program, every year you see amazing things happen. We're young people who probably wouldn't have had opportunities otherwise, not only having opportunities, but then you can follow their careers and see how well they've done. That's the thing I'm certainly most proud of, because it's had so much positive impact on so many lives. Did you like being a provost? I don't think anybody would like that, but you can imagine the span of control of 23 direct reports. The relevant word isn't like, I was challenged by it. It was an interesting stage of life where I had to learn a lot more about myself. I had no training whatsoever. Really, my degrees are all in engineering, even though I was working in a business college. I had no training to be anything like a senior vice president of a major university. So it was a learn as you go kind of thing, so it was challenging. I think we did some good things, but I don't remember a lot of times that I would write down, wow, that was a real joy. Why did you want to teach at the university? Boy, that all happened by mistake. My whole career is a series of unexpected opportunities that I took advantage of. Nothing was planned. When I graduated from high school, my dad was a house painter. The year between my junior year in high school and senior year in high school, and the junior years, my father said, Dad, son, what do you want to do when you graduate from high school? And I'd been working with him for five years. I said, well, Dad, I thought I'd go to work for you and take over the business. He said, Dad, it'd be wonderful. I spent that summer, 90 degree temperatures, painting the insides of closets with lead-based paint, which was ugly. At the end of the summer, he said, son, what do you think you want to do when you graduate? I said, Dad, I've been thinking about college, and that was my career counseling inside of closets. So that's how I ended up in high school, in college. I went to Northeastern, where I co-opped. A friend of mine who had about the same academic record as I did, had a scholarship, offered at MIT for his master's, and I said, well, if you can do it, I can. So I sent out to a number of places, Northwestern, offered me a scholarship, including a stipend to live on. I had a child by then. He said, would you come out and do your PhD? There was a government program, National Defense Education Act, that was trying to build more people graduating into sciences. I did that. I got to the end of that, interviewed with companies and universities, and decided that I really wanted to teach and ended up teaching at Purdue. Then I went to Georgia Tech, where I started the PhD program in the area at Georgia Tech. Came to Cincinnati when they offered me a chance to build my own department. So that's how that department got started, and then after five years, I decided they needed somebody who had some new idea. I used up everything I had, and that's when I had a chance to go into the public office. So none of that was planned. It was a journey of seeing something, an opportunity in taking it. I'd like to say it was all planned, but I had these goals, and it was just not true. Did you do any outside research, besides university? I don't know what you mean by outside. I did lots of research. There's a faculty member, and I do consulting. Depending on how you define those terms, I did both of those jobs. Okay. What did you hope students took away from your class? Say again, please. What did you hope students took away from your classes? I don't understand the question. What did I hope to take away from my classes? What did you hope students took away from your classes when you taught? Hope students would take away. I'm sorry. You're fine. Boy, that's another interest. I taught some sections with 500 students in big auditoriums, and I just hope they'd survive. I hope that it was an introductory class to quantitative analysis with what they now call business analytics. What I hoped they would walk away with was an appreciation of how analytical tools could be used, what kind of data could be produced, and how business decisions could be based on that data. That's as much as I could hope for. There was no hope that they would learn how to do it in a class that size, but they could walk away with an understanding of what was possible so that they could use it with some guidance, but use it in their business careers. That was as much as I could hope for. At the senior and master's level, you're hoping you're developing the tools so they can go out and do the work at the PhD level, you're hoping to get them to the point where they can add to the tool base so that the field continues to grow. My generation was the first generation in that field. We were the first people to really start to try to analyze big data. Really, those are the stages you were hoping to develop, awareness, some ability to use, and then finally an ability to develop new tools. It would change depending on what class you're talking about. What was the hiring process when you came to UC? I got a call from an ex-student, Dave Anderson, his name, who was then the head of the... He graduated, he's got his PhD at Purdue, wanted to be... He basically said, thinking about building a new department up here, I thought you'd be the perfect person. I've recommended you to the dean, would you be willing to do it? I took a look at what was going on and said under the following conditions, I'd be willing to do it. They met those conditions and I came. So it wasn't much of a hiring process. They went after me and brought me. That gives me the way to say it. What were relationships like among your colleagues? Well, again, that's... I'm sure it's an unusual... There were two... Faculty actually there at the time. One did not get tenured. So when I came there, there were two. I knew one had been my student. And the other guy was a... Somebody I got to go to a lot of it very easily. As we built the department, I think it was a challenging situation for the faculty because I was pushing them to move out of a comfort level of just teaching and getting into publishing and developing sponsored research, which I thought was essential for the developer of the program. And we were adding one to two faculty every year. So it was a growing faculty. I think the fact that most of them stayed there for a long period of time meant that we did it in a way that helped meet their needs as well. And I believe the development grew very well. So I came out of the school. It was a working team. That's the best way to describe it. That's what we set out to develop. There was no one really in charge. It was just a group of guys who wanted... Actually, people, because they were a couple of females. We were just a group who wanted to make it happen. And we did. Did you feel about the administration during your time? Not a bit. I was the administration. As a department head and faculty member, I was grateful for the opportunity to develop the program. Pleased that they honored their commitments from a resource perspective. And I think just grateful to let us develop that program without a lot of external complaint. Virtually, we were free to develop the way we thought was proper, which I thought was very fortunate. You'd have to ask somebody else how they felt when I was there. I mean, did you like that freedom? Oh, yeah. I think it's essential in the university. I think there has to be some understanding of what the university is, what it's about, what its priorities are, where it's headed. But beyond that, within the research, mainly what you can do from the perspective, from the administrative perspective, is set directions. Where are we headed? Where do we want to get? Talk about how do we get there? And then, you know, provide the resources that it's possible to do it. Hardest thing in a public university, maybe private too, but I don't know. Hardest thing in a public university is how resource restrictive it is. Every time the state takes a budget cut, you get hit. And so you're constantly fighting that. When I took over as provost, about 40% of the revenue stream was subsidy from the state. About 50% was tuition. Nine years later when I left, it was down to around 25% subsidy. So there's a 15% cut. The academic budget at that point in time was somewhere between 300 and 400 million that kept growing. Well, if you take a 15% cut of 300 million, it's 45 million. And you look at it for a while and you say to yourself, 97% of the academic budget is salaries. So where do you get those budget cuts? Either you replace the funding or you're taking pretty severe hits on people. There's no other alternative when 90% of the budget is salary. So now that wasn't true in places like administrative services where they have trucks and things like that. You look at a faculty, look at that budget, it's people. There's small parts of it that travel, small parts of it, there's predominantly people. So every time there's a budget cut, it hurts. It hurts being people. And that was the hardest thing by far the hardest. And I guess as a provost you had to make tough decisions as far as You have no choice. I almost said something you probably don't want to think about. It's not good. Were there incidents or events that were handled in a way that kind of disappointed you? I know you mentioned budget cuts. You're looking at a 30-year journey there are lots of things that disappoint you. Sometimes that you're a football team. Other times it's a dean that you thought would really be great and turns out not to be. Other times it's finding that there's been sexual harassment or racial discrimination that you have to deal with. There were some ugly situations over the years that were extremely disappointing because you just don't believe people can behave that way and you find out they do. And then you have to deal with it. And how did you deal with those situations? Very carefully. I had a excellent person a female who was able to how can I say this she was tough. She could go out in those kinds of situations and because I would end up being a final decision maker I pretty much had to stay out of the issue of what happened that had to be done by someone else because eventually this case is going to be presented predominantly to me and then I discuss it with the president depending on what it was I'd get the affirmative action people in I'd get the human resources people to keep people but at the end of it it's going to be my decision. We'll sit as a group and discuss it but it ultimately is my decision so I can't also be involved in the investigation. And I had a person who did those investigations and she was excellent and I think without her it would have been a different story. I think we handled most of them well I look back on it now I see what's happening in today's environment and you go back and say what was the environment like then cases where you probably would now refer to the police who just made darn sure the person out of the university and it was done in a way that that person would never teach again at any other university but there was no thought at those times to and then you got two lawyers sitting there we have our lawyer, the person involved has their lawyer even they weren't talking about this is something that should go to the police but I would guess maybe 15 or 20% of those cases now would have been referred to the police that's how much it's changed every time I read about one of these or hear about one of these instances and you look at it and say did we really miss it by that much then I think back on where we were and what was being expected I don't know that's the one thing I spent time thinking about because I don't know I don't know we should have gone further in some of those cases or not even today sitting here I can't tell you about I've resolved that I just don't know I can't differentiate between what's happening now and where we were at that point in time and how did you see respond to your needs like research and money or grants or even salary well that's a lot of different questions that was research when I took over as provost I wanted to at least maintain the quality of the undergraduate programs I thought the undergraduate programs were really in pretty good shape and our goal was to continue to build them to maintain them make sure they stay stay good and when you look in those days college conservatory music and DAAP by far the outstanding engineering, undergraduate engineering if you took the three and said which ones can you put nationally compete nationally, those were the three that you could say yep we compete nationally on those business, education were in a stage where there was hope you could probably develop them at that point in time so there was a goal of maintaining and developing excellence where we already had it and then because of resource restrictions we were able to build everything it's just impossible so then the question became what else do you try to build and my goal initially was to build a graduate program in engineering especially in sponsored research build the science programs in arts and sciences especially the research and build the two key professional programs for the region which in my mind were business and education I think we did real well in engineering I think we did real well in education I think we did okay in business until recently I think the last 10 or 15 years business has finally gotten to undergraduate where I thought where I hoped it would be so there were some successes and some that weren't but you set those you set those goals you set those goals and you make sure the deans understand because you can't have a dean of a college where you're saying look all I want you to do is hang on the best you can because we don't have enough resources to put everywhere and we're not going to put it into your college and they need to know that when they come in they need to understand that's how it's going to be because you can't bring them in make these promises and then walk away so it's much easier to recruit the places we were planning to build than it was in the places you were but we set some priorities I think we I think we did a good job building graduate programs and I think education did came a long way and I think business is getting better but again the idea is in my mind at least was to set some goals and directions and then hire people who could take you there sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you didn't I don't even remember the question was that at all relevant you said research Juan was there like those that they you know respond to your needs well like you know trying to get you know sponsors trying to get technology well but that's all wrapped up in the graduate programs if you're bringing in sponsored research you're on the frontiers of what's going on Dean Papadakis that's another interesting story Taki came in he was tough as nails very demanding he went off to be president he did a great job for us before he came here from Greece for his master's he did his master's here in his PHD in Michigan and he came originally from Greece when he came back when he came here as a master's student there was a first year that the fraternities and sororities were back on campus so the headline of the student newspaper was UC welcomes greeks to campus he thought it was him give you an idea where the z-go was how has faculty changed every time? I don't know how to answer that you know the last I've been out for so long now I don't know what the faculty are like anymore in my time period more emphasis on graduate programs more emphasis on what they did for research and whether or not it was something we could hope to get sponsorship for things that in the past were mainly concerned about undergraduate education were less important became more important so you need to keep a balance you can't have I used to tell students all the time the best of the universities in the United States are not necessarily the best places to get your undergraduate degree if you've got faculty that are so focused on research and publication they're probably not paying the attention they need to the undergraduate program so you're trying to recruit people who have a balance who understand the need to have excellent undergraduate programs but also have the ability and interest to build their graduate research in their publication so you're looking for that balance you're not looking for the best scholar you've changed the world you're looking for a person who can come in you'd love to have him too but what you're really looking for are people who can contribute across the board would you say you have that balance that you see I think there were if I were to summarize it in a typical department you had a cadre of folks who were primarily undergraduate oriented you had a cadre of folks who were only graduate and research then you had folks who cut across together the idea that the unit has to be in balance not every individual so again, you're building a team in my view the right department an outstanding department is an outstanding team that works together to make sure all those goals are met doesn't mean that every individual does it it means that together as a team and that's how it should be I believe in academia whether it is now or not I can tell you about the Honest my linear Honest program but beyond that, I'm completely out of touch with the university have you ever stayed in touch in the university? other doing fundraising for the Honest program no how often do you do fundraising? well, it's pretty much continual it's not every day but I meet regularly with a couple key donors who have become my advisors I meet on a regular basis with whomever is directing the program at that point in time and we talk about what's happening talk about who else we can approach to try to get some funding the key once the program gets going the key is to have alumni who are willing to contribute the Catholic high schools do that extraordinarily well we were just learning how to do that I think that's happening with the Honest I think the alums have been very loyal to the program and they're not making big donations but you know you pick up $100,000 a year from the number of students and it adds up and you need to have enough to accomplish a piece and do you think you did a pretty good job of doing that of keeping the alumni together I, no I thought you were right I mean the first three or four years if you go back on my description of where it was I left after about five or six years when the program started Jerry Ricketts took over and she's the one she was on the faculty committee that developed the academic program she came in as the academic advisor let me say it that way she was a ten year faculty member she is a ten year faculty member came in as the academic advisor while I was out building support for the program and then when I left she took over as director she did an absolutely outstanding job building the program getting students involved developing the long term commitment we very much wanted students to be involved on campus so when they came in we strongly my belief students who get involved love the university probably don't and the whole key to enjoying your undergraduate experience is getting involved doing the kinds of things you guys are doing right now every year there's one of the students we know there's 20 students 25 and what's happened over time is the program evolved as the senior junior senior students the people who have been in the program for two or three years take the freshman under their wing and encourage them to get involved and we weren't clever enough to figure that out but the students figured it out and so what's happened and there's continual commitment of students to give back to the university and the community while the air is undergraduate and then you see it continue and not only are they continuing to give back to the program but we get students all over the place who are giving back to the communities and that was one of the things we wanted to build and we didn't figure out how to do it but they did so yeah I think that happened but that only was because of me I think Dr. Ricketts really did an outstanding job she deserves at least as much credit as I do for the program and in fact if you can't get her you should she hasn't volunteered you should look her up J-E-R-I R-I-C-K-E-T-T-S she would give you a different a little different picture on that program and what it's done a week ago President Pinto a month ago President Pinto's person called and said would you come in and talk to the president sure so we had lunch and basically said I wanted to thank you for developing the Liner Honest Plus program you talk about how much visibility to add in the business community how important that was to the university I thought that was really neat and I said you really need to bring in Jerry too because she's the one that took it over I got her started that's true I got the funding she's the one that made it I paused and the reason I did is I am absolutely convinced that I could not have built that program if I had not been provost so he asked me am I glad I was provost all other things he asked because he gave me the entrees I needed to Procter & Gamble who gave us money to get cash to get the program started who gave us an endowment so we could keep the program going we needed both gifts we wanted to give scholarships the first year so we had that money to support that and then we needed to have money to continue between those two that got it there was enough to get us started and make it happen I don't believe I could have had access or credibility if I hadn't been provost and had a chance to meet me and see what was happening at the university when I was provost a lot of things that happened that were completely I was going to say outside of my control and I think they were there but certainly within what happened to me that made that happen it wasn't just that there was a faculty member who would decide to do it it was that Cuminuth career that was sitting there that I think was what made it happen I am convinced that it wouldn't exist if I hadn't been provost so you take that you put it together with two people and you thought it was a great idea to have this kind of a program in Cincinnati and had the resources to make it happen and then I was blessed to have Jerry on my side developing the academics well I went out and developed the rest of it and did uh again a team I mean did the honors program have any effect on the city itself like the city of Cincinnati itself you know all over the city that in positions they probably would not have been I mentioned Lavandes earlier Lavandes came out of Walnut Hills he did not do particularly well on a on a standard ice test I could take standard ice test for the rest of my life and never do well I just don't it's a different story Lavandes didn't but he had been in government at Walnut Hills and just all kinds of signals about this young man and his potential for leadership and my daughter who at the time was working at Procter & Gamble I think she's a really good judge of people I said Karen would you please go interview this young man for me and see what you think and she came back with you've got to admit and we did not if you look at a standard ACT score has to be 30 or above I mean it wasn't there his undergraduate grade point average was 3-point something but what you saw was a young man who just had all kinds of potential so we didn't build the program in the classic honors sense we were looking for people you don't have to be a genius to be a business leader I'm sorry you need a good government sense you work with people you're not a nuclear physicist it's a different world he just had all the attributes he wanted that young man he worked at AC Nielsen bases went from there stayed with them when he graduated went to China to Beijing where he set up their Chinese operation set up in three cities married a Chinese gal that he met while he was there he left there to go back to to go to the University of Chicago got his MBA and I mentioned earlier that last year he was the alumni of the year for the business school at the University of Chicago graduated from Chicago went to DuPont and merges and acquisitions then developed with another couple this program in Africa with the farming equipment agricultural equipment the farmers there can't afford to rent that equipment so where do you get the money USA foundations you've got to raise that money from someone interested in making this change happen in Africa he did that Gates Foundation Gates Foundation gave money to make this happen he left because his parents are ill and he needs to be home to help them he's back here when he got back he had offers all over the place he's working with one of the major equity financing firms in town he's a young man I believe if he hadn't had that opportunity probably would have gotten into undergraduate school but I don't think would have had connections and opportunities to do what he did and I look and he's been an outstanding alum for us he's done a wonderful job for himself and you look at what he's done and he's made important contributions if that company can, they're in seven countries now I think I mentioned they started in Nigeria and they've added I think six others might be five, I think it's six anyway it's growing and you look at that and that's going to impact this is a young man that I don't know if he would have had those opportunities if he would have looked back on them that's what I think the program has done I think it's taken people I would say each class there's four or five young people that probably wouldn't have had that opportunity otherwise and because of that have gone on to do pretty remarkable things okay so it looks like it definitely has so yeah I feel awfully good about it and it's neat when I tell Ben Jones as a political commentator he's still the band does but anyway when Ben came back in town one of the first things he was calling he said can we have a lunch and talk and it's that kind of thing that makes my life good yeah I think I think the program did well that definitely sounds like it sounds like a tremendous impact on people's lives and giving them opportunities that they would have I think there's some of the young people because of the family situations they had probably had the same kinds of opportunities when you see the people coming out of the less fortunate situations where money is an issue where they're the first I was the first person to go to college in my family I know what that's like the first person to go to college it's a different setting and having that opportunity for them I think makes a big difference yeah how has the campus changed since you started at UC physically it's different President Steig almost the whole time I was Brobo's Joe Steig was president he and the vice president of finance were really focused on building the physical nature the buildings the grounds etc I fought them half half the time I was fighting them because I wanted those resources for academia I was on I had nothing to do with the medical center one of the first things I requested was get somebody else to run college medicine nursing I don't know anything about that I don't want to know anything about it let's get another provost let that person run everybody thought I was nuts because I was shrinking the size but it made no sense for me I wanted to have some of those resources for the academic side and I think the tension between us made it happen because I kept fighting hard enough so they got sufficient resources to do what needed to be done they kept fighting hard enough that they got what they needed to get to physical campus and I think together those two things have made a big change so I look at it and I would say continued growth and the excellence of the undergraduate program areas where the graduate programs have really become quite good and then the physical campus itself those are the things I would say how does it feel about this change that you saw I think overall it's been very positive yeah I don't know remember you're going back to the 1970s I mean in the 1970s it was a commuter school it's pretty much a residential campus now I'm not saying they're not commuters but much more likely that students are why is that important because that's when they get involved if you're coming into class and going home you're less likely to get involved with what's happening on campus than if you're living there now I'm not saying after the freshman or sophomore year living off campus but I mean the first year or so I think it's pretty important on campus become a part of what's happening there so yeah I think it's changed a lot and I think for the better okay how have UC's priorities shifted since you started we've talked about that a number of times do you think UC is more of a research university than it is I think some of it is no university no care if it's Harvard or Stanford no university is uniformly good everywhere you have programs that are very good and you have some that are okay you have some you kind of look at and say why in the world are we even doing this now the number of those in the last category are much less at a place like Harvard and Stanford than they are at a place like Cincinnati but you can't look at any campus and say gee the best city planning department is at Harvard the best math department the best English department no they're going to be not in uniform as well different levels of quality I think the number of programs that are very good at the University of Cincinnati has increased I think there's still some that need to continue to grow but I'm out of touch when I left I know that was true I think it's still true from what I see I don't think we have the resources to build excellence everywhere you know I don't want to get into naming examples because that's to nobody's benefit but I think that's still true but you see on the upswing absolutely there's no question if you go back to where we were in 74 and where we are now it's a very different university and I think you see it all the signals are there much more of a residential campus the amount of sponsored research is going way up etc our Ph.D. students are going to the best universities to teach I had graduate students who went to Virginia to LSU to Wharton School of Penn you know that didn't happen in the 90s by the time I left it was starting to happen so we had areas where the research was sufficiently strong and noticeable they were out to high-rise students to build their programs and I think that's a at the graduate level that's the real test I imagine students going to the best companies the best companies here recruiting and master students and are the best universities recruiting your Ph.D. students right? you feel really proud of that since you made it? I mean I'm glad I played a role in it but the reality is if you look at engineering it's Papadakis I gave him his head I hired him and said go get him I'll support you the best I can but you got to make it happen I got 20 other places I got to worry about if you're really good I don't have to worry about you I can turn my attention to someplace else and Luke Castinello he was the Dean of Education was the same kind of thing he was the first African-American Dean I think of College of Education wonderful he left us, went to Georgia after a while you can't it's like a revolution the person who leads the revolution probably shouldn't lead the country we have different traits you need Lou and Taki were builders and I think they each did a wonderful job because they were so good I didn't have to do much I feel like it happened but I don't take credit necessarily for it I think I take credit for putting people in place and providing the kind of environment within which they could succeed but you have to give an awful lot of the credit to the demons that made it happen the thing I'm most proud of is Lina Ron's boss when I I've told my kids I'm 82 years old I don't know how much longer I got my wife just bought a car that she'd been leasing and the finance guy said do you want a 10 year extended warranty they said that on me or the car I'll be 92 you'll get a 10 year warranty that's nuts that's easy but you just hope it's going to last and you feel good but the thing I feel most I look at the young people and I can feel it I can touch it I can shake their hand I can give them a hug I can hear what they're doing that doesn't happen in the other places that I was involved in so the thing I'm obviously and the rest of it I say I was in a position where I could help make it happen that's good and then on this plus I want to continue to say Dr. Ricketts is the other half of the key I provided her the opportunity she built the academic side she built the academic side I definitely got that again I hope so I don't know that she's a maritime I know she's retired I don't know that they've actually gone through the maritime process yet but you definitely should talk to her and talk to her about her role in it I think that would be the other half of the story and it's an important story because the president one of the things he I don't know if I mentioned this or not but one of the things he said to me is every place he goes people talk about that program people in the business community so it's clearly had an impact and she deserves at least half the credit okay what else would you tell me about that you hadn't talked about before the University of Cincinnati was the first and only place I worked at faculty union all the other administrators looked at that union as something that was preventing them from doing what they thought they needed to do and it wasn't pleasant believe me I took my first vacation in eight years my wife and I went off for a month literally first vacation in eight years and we went off for a month we just did a driving trip we're from New England originally up through Canada came down through New England just to get away the whole time I was gone the faculty union were writing letters about our provost who didn't care enough to stay around the campus my mind totally unfair their mind but when I look at it and I look at what they have done to help make sure faculty get equitable treatment when it comes to salary that they get fair treatment when it comes to promotion and tenured decisions the other side of that picture is equally important having been a faculty member longer than I was an administrator and having seen some of the libertarianism that was taking place before if you go back when the university started it was pretty much under the control of the president he decided what he wanted and he did it having that counterbalance just as the counterbalance between myself and the president when it came to academics versus physical plan the counterbalance between the faculty and the administration the faculty union gave them a voice it wasn't always the voice I thought should be there because the more active faculty and research were not going to be in the union they were going to be off doing their thing so the voice represented a segment of the faculty to be easy to ignore otherwise I think it was extremely important and I worry about it in today's room because I see so much stuff going on anti-union, anti-this, anti-that but what I consider to be hate politics going on at the national level I worry about it because you've got the people who are in the weakest position need the strongest representation and that faculty union provided that so I guess that's the other thing I would say I think that overall you net it all out the union was a positive thing okay that's what Dr. Kretschmer said it was like the union probably like one of the syndicate events that happened that you see was overall positive I believe so you can argue you can argue with the other side I mean you definitely can but I think overall it was necessary I think you answered all my questions is there anything else you want to talk about or pretty much drained me I hope I was coherent oh you were great I definitely appreciate it my pleasure