 I am here with Professor Milam. Can I start off by asking you what is your connection to the University of Cincinnati? Actually, for most of my career I was a professor of geology and paleontologist by trade. I started as a faculty member in the university in 1986. Eventually I became the head of the Department of Geology and then for a brief time Director of Environmental Studies. And then an associate dean and then a senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. I retired officially three years ago, almost a little bit more than three years ago in June. And now I'm back for five months and five months only as acting divisional dean in natural sciences. But I would say that for the most part I'm currently a professor emeritus. What was your work at UC? By trade I'm a paleontologist and so my work was a combination of research in my field which is paleontology. If you're interested I could tell you a little bit more about that. But in addition I taught courses both at the graduate and undergraduate level including one course that I taught in retirement. In the fall before COVID. That was actually a new course on extinction. And one of the things I really liked over the years is teaching sort of intro levelish non-majors courses on the history of life. Which is something that I have worked on in my research. Extinction and changes in biodiversity through geological time and trying to relate those more and more to the present day biodiversity crisis. So that has affected both my research and my teaching and my advising of graduate students over the years. And more and more what I've tried to do regardless of the various things that I've worked on within my field is to not only do science that I hope is interesting to my scientific community but also to try to relate it where appropriate to a larger scale societal question that we're concerned about. What years were you associated with the anniversary of Cincinnati? Okay so just again I started in 1986 straight out of grad school and retired officially it would have been let's see it's 2021 so it would have been June 2018. But I guess I'm still associated as I said already. What changes have you seen over your association with the anniversary of Cincinnati? This might include teaching methods or administrative structure. Or anything I guess. Let me count the ways. I would say the administrative structure has not changed enormously. But I think a couple things that I would say. Physically the university has changed immensely and when I first came here the campus wasn't very nice. It was not a pleasant place to be. Cincinnati the university I think had been about 10 years into being a state university at that point prior to that I think it was a city university. But it was still very much making the transition and at the time it was as much as anything in computer school. There were dormitories on campus but not nearly as many as there are now. There were not fun things to do on campus. The gym was lousy you know etc. and so forth and over the years the physical plant of the university has been completely rebuilt. Which has made it even though at times I was skeptical of all the building that was going on. I can't really argue with the final product. It's a much more attractive place to be. And that in turn I think has helped to attract at least some students who might not have come here otherwise. And so that's obviously a big change. Also what I can see in recent years intellectually although I still think the university has a ways to go. Is that there's much more interest in getting out of the silos of what we do within our fields. And the beginnings of collaborations across different disciplines among different groups of people. Some of which I engaged in with colleagues in biology for example near the end of my run before I retired. But now this is being formalized more and more with some of the new programs. And some of the new initiatives in recent years at the university. So this is a good thing to see in my view and I hope it continues because that should be the future. Can you go into further detail about how the campus has changed over time? I started talking about that a little bit. When I first got here so my office was and still is. I still have an office although not a lab anymore in the geology physics building. That building was under construction when I first arrived at Cincinnati. And so at that time I was in a building called Old Tech which doesn't exist anymore. It was one of four or five buildings that sat between McEan Hall and Tangerine University Center. And so to me that's sort of emblematic of a major change on campus physically. Those buildings were all knocked down and they were replaced with grass and so McEan Green didn't exist before. And also there were lots of surface parking lots on campus that have basically been removed and replaced with grass as well. Sigma, sigma, commons. The area between those dorms that were reconstructed. And where the College of Business and the soon to be College of Law are located in the former College of Business building. That whole area was once a parking lot in between and it's not anymore. It hasn't been for many years and so over the years a lot more green space has been created on campus. And obviously an enormous number of new buildings. I remember at the time that the Tangerine University Center was completely reconstructed. The dormitory that sits over the swimming pool and the gym all of that was new. And a lot of that was done at one time. And so I remember flying over the university coming back from a meeting I think once when all of that was happening. I think it was the early 2000s. And it looked like I was flying over a quarry. You know the whole center of campus was a construction site and you had to go around it to go anywhere. They had put up these on the quadrangle in front of the engineering quadrangle basically where Baldwin is in old tech. We called it the grease tent because that's where the food court was temporarily while they were redoing Tangerine University Center. And so all of a sudden all that stuff was done and it really transformed the university. Sort of the central spine what they call Main Street now. You know everything that was sort of surrounding was constructed if not quite simultaneously nearly so. And I think that that was transformative. Do you have any thoughts on the campus expansion in the past and the present? Or how might have you handled the campus expansion? I might have. As I kind of suggested before I was a little bit skeptical because at first and I think a lot of my colleagues were as well. Because especially in my early years here was a bit of a struggle to get. We felt it was a bit of a struggle to get the respect get faculty to get respected by the central administration. At the same time that all these new buildings were being you know where the construction was beginning. And we were concerned some of us were concerned at the time many of us that you know there were some misplaced priorities. Putting the physical plant of the university over the intellectual and academic plant. But it's hard to argue with the result. You know it's hard to imagine where you see it would be at least in my view. Would be now had that transformation of the campus to a place where people actually want to be. Had that not taken place. You know and I'm not unmindful of that I have to admit. How was the University of Cincinnati connected to the city and urban issues during your time at the University? I think that's an ongoing struggle is maybe too strong a word. But it I felt at the time when I first got here I felt that the university was perhaps especially insular in some ways. That began to change at least in my recollection when Nancy Zimfer was president and she started referring to the university as an urban research university. And momentum in that direction has has continued over the years but I'm hopeful that it will continue to pick up. The city of Cincinnati provides a real in some ways in some cases natural and in some cases unnatural laboratory. For issues running the gamut of intellectually what the university does. You know everything from just about every subject you could think of whether it's in the natural social sciences humanities arts you name it. There are experiences that Cincinnati has had and is currently having that are very important to study not only because it would be good for the city. But because it's simultaneously would be important for the city for the university to be a real partner with the city and the region in solving problems. But at the same time it's obviously has relevance beyond Cincinnati. Cincinnati is a microcosm example of so many things that I think are important for urban centers and surrounding areas and other regions as well. And we've got a real opportunity here to to take advantage in a positive way of those resources may not be quite the right term. But those features of Cincinnati including things that have not gone so well over the year. And I feel in some respects and this is a long-winded answer apologize I feel in some respects that the university has not been the best citizen you know and the best partner. And I'm hopeful that it seems to be changing now. I'm hoping that hopefully that will continue to evolve. I also get concerned a little bit that not just with respect to the transition on campus but some of the some of the changes going on around the campus. Lots of lots of places where new apartments have gone up and things like that and other things have been removed. I think have been done. I've seen universities and other cities do the same thing. The University of Chicago where I got my PhD did this in a big way in the area right around there. And they basically took it over and it's not always to the benefit of people who were living in those neighborhoods prior to the transitions. What personal experiences did you have with race and racial issues at the University of Cincinnati? As part of my work I've been very interested in diversity and inclusion, diversity and greater inclusion. I was part of a program called LEAF. It's an acronym. I don't remember what it stands for anymore. But I was actually on one of the steering committees for LEAF for a few years. It was an NSF funded project and it started off as something focused on faculty. And it started off primarily focused on the development and advancement of women faculty, but it eventually broadened out also to consider underrepresented minorities. And I played a role. This is just an example. I played a role in sort of assessing how the program was doing and making suggestions for how it might move forward more effectively. And got interested in a range of different questions that I continue to be interested in now and might have an impact on in my next few months. With respect to things like integrating diversity, equity and inclusion issues more directly into reappointment promotion and tenure. And also community based research, which I think is important for collaborating with surrounding areas. Also, that's sort of one part of it in an administrative context. But I guess another thing has to do with my own field, which is paleontology, which is the field of paleontology. And the field of geology in general is not very diverse at all. In fact, it's maybe not the least diverse science, one of them in natural sciences. And we've been very concerned about that. And so over the years, and I was recently president of the Paleontological Society, this is something that we talked about quite a bit. And in addition to sort of enhancing our outreach efforts and sort of forwarding our educational efforts, we've also realized that one of the problems with geology is in terms of advertising it as something that people might major in when they're in college. And I made this mistake when I was head of the department. We played up too much being outdoors and going out and camping. And that was successful in attracting potential students who like to do that kind of thing because they grew up that way. But there aren't many people who grew up in an inner city who necessarily feel that way. And the fact is that science of geology is much more eclectic than that anyway. And we ought to be talking about the range of things that a geologist does, not just out in the field, but also on a computer, in a laboratory, and elsewhere. And so we could be doing a much more effective job of talking about the own practical diversity of our own science in a way that I think would attract a more diverse audience and a more diverse pipeline. And so that's something I thought about and we're taking action on more and more. Also, it's been an interesting time to be at the university in the past half decade plus ever since the shooting of Samuel de Beaux, which impacted the university community, obviously. And I was just coming into my job as senior associate dean in the college after the shooting and tried to really play a role in college and university dialogue. And last year, in the spring, after George Ford was murdered, I was afraid that I felt that after the De Beaux shooting there was all this ferment and then it kind of faded away. And I was afraid that that would happen again. And so I just started talking to people about that and it still concerns me that we saw this as a galvanizing moment. But I want to make sure that the university moves forward in a different way as a result of those moments. And I'm not yet convinced that that's happening. And so this is something that I want to continue to have conversations about with various people who make decisions. Did you witness any student protests? Can you describe what happened if so? Yeah, I certainly saw some protests during my years down on Main Street and participated in a couple. But also it depends upon if you want the student protests to be on campus or off. I was downtown with a lot of our students and many other people. Last spring, for example, right in the middle of a couple of marches, including I think the biggest march. I had ever seen in my time in Cincinnati that originated on Fountain Square and then went through streets of downtown and ultimately ended up at the courthouse, I think it was on a Sunday, a year ago, spring. And certainly those I thought were very impactful and really meaningful and impressive. I've seen sometimes that that was sublime. I've also seen the ridiculous. And we've had a few people come on campus and just literally almost stand up on a milk crate and tell students as they're walking by and then gathering around them that they're all going to hell for various reasons. And then this sort of goes back and forth. And so yeah, there have been some very meaningful protests that have taken place in the wake of the divorce shooting. I went to various meetings, some of which took place organized by student groups in Tangerine University Center, among other places, and a couple of teachings, actually. That again, I thought were very effective at getting messages out. I just want to make sure that they lead somewhere instead of ultimately being forgotten. How well do you think the University of Cincinnati has dealt with race and students of color during your time? With race and students of color? Yes. This is when being earnest here. I think there's now a chief diversity officer and that position did not exist. I don't think when I started here and certainly not for many years after I've been here. I'm a little concerned and continue to be concerned that the university wants to be seen as responsive and genuinely wants to be responsive. But there are certain things that need to happen that have not happened yet. I think probably because they would cost a lot of money. And I think they stand in the way of real change. In my view, first and foremost, this university needs more faculty of color. And if there were many more faculty of color and we need many more faculty of color, that in turn I think would have a knock-on effect on both our undergraduate and graduate student populations in a very positive way. But that takes a real investment and I have not seen that forthcoming. I was hopeful that we might see the beginnings of that after the divorce shooting and then coming out of the Black Lives Matter protests of last spring. And this is why I say I hope the moment doesn't go by. That's really what I mean. I think that to me there's nothing more central. There's no more effect. It's the only way to really effect change at the university in a meaningful way is to change the population of faculty who are here. And I hope that that will happen one day, something I'll continue to nudge for. But I think there's some decisions that would have to be made and a willingness to invest very significantly in a way that has not happened as of yet. How have you seen the role of women change over time at the University of Cincinnati? Well, in a number of ways there's certainly more women faculty than when I was first here and definitely in the College of Arts and Sciences. There are many more women in administration than there were. Starting first and foremost again, I'll say with Nancy Zinfer, when she was president of the university I think she was an excellent president. And I think in some ways really sort of changed the tenor of the university in a way that I think we continue to benefit from now. But at the time that Zinfer was president, Karen Gould was the dean of the college. And then this is after her Valerie Hart Castle as dean. It's much, much more common I think to have at least in the parts of the university that I'm most familiar with women in positions, in administrative positions than there were when I first started here, in addition to there being an increase in the number of women on the faculty as well. And also that's certainly true of the graduate program in my department but I believe true in at least some others as well. There are many more women in geology than there once were. What would you say the University of Cincinnati supported or limited women's roles? Say it, I'm sorry, say that again. What did the University of Cincinnati do to support or limit women's roles? Support or limit? That's a really good question. Certainly they've done some things that are supportive. Obviously in setting up a substrate where women could advance to leadership positions I think that that's a positive. There are programs that have been directed towards women and women in leadership as well which I think is very positive as well. Something else I was going to think of that was not so positive but I think it's set the way for the moment. I might come back to that later. What type of research did you do at the University of Cincinnati and if you had any collaborators or people who impacted you, who were they? Oh, that's a big question. So my research, as I said before, I'm a paleontologist. I study the history of life. I've never studied dinosaurs. Many people equate paleontology with dinosaurs but that's not me. First of all, I study the fossil record of marine life, that is, animals that lived in the sea. For example, the bedrock of Cincinnati is very famous because it encompasses an interval of time called the Ordovician. The late Ordovician period, which was about 450 million years ago. At that time, what is now Cincinnati was covered by, and a lot of what is now North America, was covered by a shallow sea. That sea was sitting in the southern tropics because continents move and we were in a different place back then. So there's a shallow tropical sea and it was teeming with life and ultimately, a lot of the shell creatures, the invertebrates, were preserved in the geological record. I have spent some of my time studying the fossils right in this region because this is a world-famous natural laboratory for looking at how the biota, the animals living on a seaford, changed with changing environments in space and time. You can also watch some evolutionary changes in action here by going through the layers of rock in the Cincinnati. But some of the other questions that I worked on were much larger scale. You can take this information and people for centuries now have been publishing information about the fossil species found in different parts of the world in rocks of different geological ages representing different environments. I got interested in, first for that Ordovician period, building a database of that information so that it turns out that the Ordovician was a really interesting time in the history of life because it was a really, really big increase. One of the biggest increases in the history of life in biodiversity that is the number of species living on the planet during that interval. You can see it by counting up the different kinds of species that we find in the geological record. And then at the very end of the Ordovician period, it was one of the so-called big five mass extinctions that took place in the history of life, a time when a lot of species died off in a relatively short amount of geological time. And so I got interested in learning more about why this might have happened and one of the things that helped me to do that was to build a database of occurrences from around the world that I could ask, you know, was there more extinction here than there was here and so forth. This ultimately led myself and a bunch of my colleagues to develop a project called the Paleobiology Database which goes on today. It's an online resource that captures that kind of information for all of geological time all around the world and even for dinosaurs. And so this one includes all fossil organisms. And so people can use those data to study large-scale questions about how the biodiversity has changed and where it has changed and hopefully learn a little bit of something about why it has changed. So that's been a big thrust of my career. And then I would say the other major one has involved working underwater that I'm interested in sort of how fossils accumulate on the seafloor because I study marine fossil assemblages and we know there's evidence in the rocks around Cincinnati that while this shallow tropical sea was sitting not far from the equator back in the renovation, it was subject to incredible hurricanes much stronger than what we see today simply because there's no analog for this relatively shallow sea sitting in such a warm environment and ancient storms and layer after layer in the Cincinnati. So that raises questions about how storms can affect the distribution of species that we see in those layers. And so I've actually spent some time studying the accumulation of layers of shells on seafloors working down in the Caribbean where I lived for a time working in a marine lab a long time ago. And those accumulations are useful not only for trying to get a sense of the resolution of skeletal material deposited after these species are no longer living and subject to being moved around how is the acuity of that fossil material especially after hurricanes hit. I had the good or bad fortune depending upon how you look at it look at it to have had a group down in St. Croix a few years after I got to Cincinnati not expecting a hurricane to hit but one did a big hurricane called Hurricane Ugo. And we had been collecting a lot of samples along a transect for the kind of work I was just describing all of a sudden the hurricane hit this gave us it was awful and a lot one could say about it but it gave us an opportunity scientifically to then go back and sample the same from exactly the same places after the hurricane to see how much the hurricane affected distributions directly. So that's another part of what I do. Those accumulations are also useful for studying. It's not just for trying to understand the fossil record but also understanding more recent changes to environments that humans haven't do so-called anthropogenic changes because that record if usually when an environment changes significantly because of human activity what lives there changes and you can actually see that in the accumulating record one of my students and I a few years back did some analysis just to demonstrate that the record itself the accumulating record actually had the acuity to detect those changes and so that's a and I also work on reefs and then finally the last thing I'll say and this relates to collaborations in addition to having some mentors who were very important in my career you know when I was in graduate school back at the University of Chicago and obviously some people here who in the geology and paleontology program were close colleagues near the end of my research run I began collaborating with colleagues in biology including current department head Teresa Culley who was a plant biologist and we were studying and published a series of papers that also included Guy Cameron who was a former head of the biology department and one of my former students Sarah Colby who spearheaded a lot of what we did we studied the distributions and the compositions of plant communities along an urban to wild land gradient we were interested in the effects of urbanization on the impacts of urbanization on what lives in a forest basically and I won't go into all the technical details now but it turned out to be really interesting and it was very cool because I was applying some of the principles I used to study in the fossil record the same kinds of things sampling here, sampling there, sampling there and then seeing how compositions of things living on a sea floor change as you go from one environment to the next to the same thing with plants living in a forest and so it was sentencing and then using a lot of the same quantitative methods that we did and you know the work I was more commonly doing and so it was wonderful to be able to collaborate with my colleagues in biology on that work and it was a nice culmination What were athletics like during your time at the University of Cincinnati? Athletics I would say that the profile of athletics has increased fairly dramatically When I first got here the football team wasn't very good and neither was the basketball team the basketball team was not playing on campus I think they were just beginning to construct what was called the Shoemaker Center at the time I believe it's now called Pistodirina and at that time they were playing home games for one year at what was then called Riverfront Coliseum I don't even know what it's called now, the Arena Downtown and they played for a year or two at this place called Cincinnati Gardens which has since been demolished and then they moved out to campus I think coinciding with around the time they moved out to campus the basketball team began to improve a lot and so it's actually been more interesting to watch their games similarly as you know in the past decade the football team has improved decade plus now has improved pretty dramatically so again, this is one of these things like construction where I kind of have mixed feelings especially given the investment in athletics on the other hand, I'm not unmindful that the students in particular having successful athletic programs is a draw, mostly for undergraduate students and so certainly the profile, the athletic profile the university has increased in the time that I've been here having said that, there was a time well before I got here where the university's basketball team won two national championships in a row and that hasn't happened since, they haven't won since so who knows, it goes up and down I guess How do you think the student experience changed over your time? I just want to say one more about athletics I'm really impressed in part because my neighborhood was across the street from me right here in Clifton is the coach of the volleyball team and I was very impressed I thought it was really, this reminds me, I thought it was really cool that there were several athletes with UC connections who played in the Olympics just concluded in Tokyo including a really, really good volleyball player who I enjoyed watching until she sprained her ankle but then the team went gold medal and she was a real anchor especially for the first half of the tournament so yeah, had to throw that in How do you think the student experience changed over your time at the university? I've kind of talked about this a little bit there's a campus life now and there wasn't when I first got here, there really wasn't there was no reason to be here at night on campus but that certainly has changed and I think there's a lot more for a student to do and I think it's really, and it's not trivial to say that because I really, what I experienced when I was an undergraduate was that what really impacted me moving forward was sort of the chance events that happened by meeting people not in classrooms but outside of them when I was in college I worked first as a sports editor and then as a managing editor for what at the time was a daily student newspaper and that not only affected my writing skills and things like that but just sort of the interactions especially when you have to put out a paper every weekday and you're sort of managing the whole process that definitely we talk about transferable skills those sort of skills that have served me for a lifetime in the classroom and there are other things that happen that cause me to encounter people that I won't go into all the details now but impacted the career of choices that I made and I suspect that there was a time when it was hard to really meet people as much as you can now at the university and I'd like to think that that enriches people's lives in ways that affects them in deciding what they want to do next and maybe in many cases choosing directions that they wouldn't have if life had been as uninteresting if life were as uninteresting now as it is and they might have gotten it backwards but I hope you get the point What were conditions like for faculty and what role did you play in the union? Oh, I was actually faculty I think conditions have improved and I think that's partly thanks to the university having become a state university but also thanks to us, I think definitely thanks to us having a unionized faculty I think the AUP has been instrumental in looking out for our rights I think a lot of faculty tend to be insular I hope that that's changing anyway because I want all faculty to pay more attention to and act more in the outside world but let's face it, they don't as much and it's good to know that union leadership was looking out for our rights over the years especially as they relate to security not just health benefits and salary but also basic rights as faculty members I actually went on strike I think it was, I want to say 1992 something like that when we had a one week strike and at the time the president really was intent on I think he thought that he could break the union and he had a chief negotiator who really was intent on doing so and it didn't happen I think the outcome of the strike turned out to be more or less a wash but I think the union remained and even thrived in the years since there was a period I don't really remember when it was now but probably close to 20 years ago maybe a little less than that when I actually served as treasurer of the AUP for about a year and a half, maybe two years and it turned out I really didn't have to do much with respect to watching the books because they had somebody who did that but I was on the board at the time and so I was privy to lots of discussions going on in preparation although I was not a negotiating team preparation for what was going to be the next contract at the time and I found that interesting and fascinating and it was a good upfront experience was there any presidents of the university that you admired or had a perspective on the leadership? Yeah, I think I already mentioned Nancy's info I just, you know, sort of there was a broad range of people I should say that Joseph Steger was the president when I got here and he was a very long-serving president so he was around for quite some time and I'll just say he had his good points and his bad points and I'll leave it at that as I've already said I thought that Nancy's info was transformed sort of the sense of the university and then it's sort of interesting to see how other people have used the position over the years Santa Ono was sort of the king of social media everybody wanted their picture taken with Santa Ono and he had been a provost before he was president I think he was a better president than he was a provost because I don't think he was really interested or his skill set was more on the communication side rather than the managing the university side and so I think a president is a little bit more of a front person for the university and the provost and the provost is more the person who is overseeing the real academic mission of the university and perhaps more hands-on in that respect and so Ono was impactful in that way I like Neville Pinto he's not nearly as out there as Ono sometimes I wish he were a little bit more on the other hand he's very dedicated to the university and I think he's in it for the long haul which I see that as a positive one thing that concerned me for a period of time at the university not that I want our presidents to stay around for two decades but I also don't want them to change every two years and we had a bit of a revolving door for a while both for presidents and provosts and it would be nice to have a stable period because I think every administrator at every level has a learning curve and sometimes just as people were getting up to the point where they were ready to do something to believe and I think it's important to stay around for a while but not too long What do you think your most important contribution to the university has been? No, that's not for me to judge Here's what I might say I've gotten some things done in research and in administration and in teaching so for more than two decades I taught an intro level course on the history of life for non-majors and attended to have about 100 students in it this is just before the switch to semesters and then things changed and so the courses were not that large after that I would run and still do from time to time but it's not as common as it once was when you started getting up to years you kind of realized that you've taught a lot of students like a couple thousand or more and it run into them in odd places somebody waiting on me in a restaurant would say I took your class and I loved it just trying to raise consciousness about issues that I think are important and one of the things I tried to do in that class was not only try to teach people about the world around them but why they should care about it and why they should stop to think about it and I think that clearly at least impacted those students that I would run into afterwards and I think that to me is a meaningful thing especially if they stop and look around a little bit more when they're outside maybe one day if and when they have kids they do that with them so I mean I'd like to think I've made a difference on that fundamental level and to me that really matters as much as anything I've published or grants I've gotten or things that I've units that I've served as an industry Did you have any important mentors at the University of Cincinnati that we should know about I know you talked about this but I don't anymore Certainly at the University itself certainly there were some colleagues in the geology department who were important to me especially early on Dave Meyer Carl Brett came later he actually I was here for almost 13 years before he got here but he was an influence on me before he got here because he was somebody I knew in a field like mine what's really interesting about it is it's very personable and personal because it's not that big a field but it's also worldwide so you get to know people on a first name basis around the world meeting them at different meetings in some cases traveling to where they are and so with Carl was somebody I knew for a long time he was sort of a mentor from afar before he came here as a faculty member but obviously his presence was important to me along with Dave Meyer he was on the faculty as a paleontologist when I got here and I think he was the chair of the search committee that hired me and those were a couple of examples of people who come to mine What do you say you liked your experience at the University of Cincinnati yes I'll tell you why because I believed first of all it's been a really interesting place to be it's been fun to watch a change over the years I think the fact that I came back for five months to do this this acting job I think it's testimony that if I hated the place I wouldn't have done that I don't want to come back forever I like retirement but I like it enough and I remain fascinated enough by the university as an institution that I still want to be at least a little part of it from time to time but in terms of personal and professional development this was a wonderful place for me I always felt that I always felt supported when I felt that first of all I felt supported in being able to do my work and do it well and I felt in turn if I did it well I would be recognized for it and so I felt that the University kept its promise and this reminds me of something I was going to say on the not so positive side with respect to women I still think and I think it continues to this day there's an imbalance in the I think that I don't know if demand is the right way but on the responsibilities put on women at the University to play service roles and I think in some cases more so than men maybe because men are at least some of the men on our faculty are not willing to step up and play those roles and so in the breach women are more likely to step up on the team sometimes and I think sometimes that's been not to detriment but it's impeded sometimes professional development in other ways and I think that the University has to do a much more conscious and conscientious job of leveling the playing field in that respect I think it's really important I think that's also true for underrepresented groups especially because there are so few black faculty for example on campus black faculty often get called upon much more frequently than I think white men especially to serve on high level search committees which can be a lot of work and then they're not rewarded for it and it's not taken into account enough but I think since you asked the question of women before I think that's something that I meant to say but then it fell out of my head that's something where the University really still needs to make progress and with more women in significant administrative positions over the years and hopefully continuing into the future I'm hopeful that that's an imbalance that can be addressed more effectively Is there anything you would like to talk about that I haven't asked you Not that I can think of Am I slouching too much? No you're fine, thank you very much It's been a pleasure really Thank you