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[ Silence ]
>> What attracted me was the philosophy, was the mission.
It basically reflected what I believed.
I strongly believe in equal educational opportunity.
I like that open door philosophy.
I like the fact that community colleges were preparing students
for jobs, real jobs that the 4-year colleges are ignoring.
This isn't the vocational technical programs.
Even back then and today, most of the jobs
in our society do not require 4 years of college
but they require some post secondary education,
one or two years.
So that fit with my philosophy.
There were over 350 applicants.
I didn't know that at the time
or I probably wouldn't have applied.
I didn't think I would be chosen
because I thought I was probably too young.
I knew I had experiences that were relevant, even relevant
to the problems that they were facing including, you know,
collective bargaining where I had actually served
in collective bargaining at Bucks County
as part of my experience.
And, but I didn't think that I would get, I think it was seven
or eight that they interviewed and then they got down to two.
Then they came out to visit.
It was a very thorough process where they visited the campus
so they could talk to the people, the faculty
and the staff where I worked in Clarinda
and the person I reported to and the board.
I attend all the board meetings at Iowa Western,
report to the board at that time.
But I think I was very fortunate to be chosen
from that many individuals, especially at that young age.
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I knew it was a very solid college.
Maybe they were going through some tough times but, you know,
tough times don't last forever.
And I knew, you know, they were obviously looking
for new leadership and fresh leadership and I like to think
of myself sort of as a forward looking, innovative leader,
new ideas and I thought maybe that's the kind of leader
that they're looking for and that would be a good fit.
[ Silence ]
I think they were obvious.
People knew what they were and I was on campus and I knew
that the strength was the vocational technical education
programs they had.
Not only were they quality but they had programs
that were offered nowhere else in the state.
So they were unique in that they were serving not just this large
region of North Central Pennsylvania, larger district
than any district, any community college district in Pennsylvania
but they also had an Area Vocational Technical School
called AVTS.
The only one in the state,
it was part of the community college district.
That made them unique.
[ Silence ]
The facilities were poor
but they were former industrial facilities and, you know,
we had individuals coming from plants at midnight,
they finished at midnight and they go to school
at Williamsport after midnight.
Sometimes we couldn't find time to clean the rooms
for the custodians because we were running a secondary program
in the morning, post secondary in the afternoon
where there was duplicate programs
and we had adult education and part-time students
in the evening then we'd have some programs
for industry after midnight.
This was probably the best utilized facility
in the whole United States, in my opinion,
because I've done facility utilization studies and in a lot
of community colleges facilities are empty a large portion
of the time.
That wasn't true at Williamsport.
[ Silence ]
One of the things I did in the first 2 weeks is I looked
at the 1974-75 budget.
Remember I started on April 1st.
The fiscal year starts in July 1.
The budget is basically in place.
I made major changes in the budget in 2 weeks,
reorganized the college in 2 weeks.
Started a long-range planning process in 2 weeks,
got the accrediting commission.
We were due to do an accreditation self study.
Some people don't know what that is but every so many years
and if you're part of middle states you have
to do an intensive assessment, a self study.
But what people don't know is you can ask
for a special self study.
So I thought okay, we have to do a long-range plan.
I'm going to ask them if they will accept
as a self study a long-range planning study
and we can do two things at the same time.
And they said yes and it will meet all the criteria
for accreditation and we'll go through that process.
And we started in the summer with some working committees
and we finished in the fall.
I took the report to the board in December.
Again, I started in April.
So we moved very quickly to address some
of these major issues.
[ Silence ]
Well certainly I had a vision but I also knew that I needed
to develop a shared vision for the college,
that it couldn't be just my vision.
So the process that I alluded to earlier setting up these,
I think it was six or seven subcommittees
under a steering committee for long-range planning
for the next 10 years, was to really try
to develop that vision.
We either rewrote the mission or wrote a new mission.
We rewrote a philosophical statement.
We wrote new goals and objectives together.
And I started talking about a concept
that they weren't fully familiar with called career education.
When I arrived I saw lots of plans.
I actually did.
I saw the head of staff.
I think maybe we had a full time architect.
But then I saw facilities and there was kind of a disconnect.
And I had my experiences from Bucks County with facilities.
And I said, I think there's a better way to do that
and to approach that problem.
So it's not just planning but it's also action planning
and having specific goals and objectives,
making sure they're measurable
and then holding people accountable, myself included,
for accomplishing these things,
measuring your progress along the way
and then resetting the goals or setting them higher.
We cut the budget by $200,000 the first year.
And I felt that we shouldn't try to do this in one year.
We would do it over three years
because it would negatively impact students
and faculty and programs.
So I was able to get agreement on a three year plan.
Within the three years we were in the black
and we passed a policy.
We had a minimum contingency reserve fund of 3%.
I knew the number one job was to rebuild trust across the campus
with the faculty, the administration, support staff,
you know, with students, with everyone.
Because without that trust you can't do anything so forget
about the facility problems and forget
about all the other things that we want to do.
We have to build a relationship where we're united as a team,
as a college going forward.
I had met Bob Bowers and we got along fine and I saw
that he had the kind of personality, soft spoken,
and he really believed in the college.
He had the trust of the faculty and the respect
and I thought he would be a good negotiator for the college.
And so I approached him and this a novel idea,
I said how would you like to represent the district
and we'll forget about the person who was doing it before
because you understand the college
and you understand the faculty?
And he said I'll think about it.
So he thought about it.
This wouldn't be a full time job.
You could still do some teaching.
But I said, we're going, we'll have a special assistant
to the president for employee relations
and that regard you would report directly to me.
And so he said yes and he did a great job.
We know we got through the various issues.
We signed contracts during that time.
And I think that signaled a new beginning
of faculty administration relations
that we could work together.
[ Silence ]
We're a product of our education and training.
So if you're trained as a physicist,
you think like a physicist or like a teacher of literature.
You know, that's how you see the world and that's how you think.
If you're an artist, you think like an artist.
But if you're in technology, you think in those terms.
But I didn't find any major issues or problems with that
because the history had been a vocational, technical emphasis.
And people that came there knew that.
I think they accepted that.
At the same time I personally saw it as a false divide.
I think career education bridges
that because you need basic skills.
I don't care what you want to become, what you want to do,
if you can't read, if you can't write, if you don't know how
to do mathematics, you don't have the basic skills
to succeed.
And all of those skills, general education,
are taught by the academic side of the house, if you will.
And so bringing those together
and seeing how these pieces fit together in the curriculum,
I think reduces friction, whatever friction there might be
between those two sides.
Academicians like to debate so that's okay.
Debates can be fun but on the other hand, for the benefit
of students, the faculty has to work together.
And I think they worked together very well.
The world is changing and it's changing rapidly.
Remember in the 1970s, there were no PCs.
I think IBM came out about 1980, [laughter] the first PC.
But we were starting in the computerization.
We had these big hard drives and one
of the things we did is we developed a new computer center
when I was there because we needed a new management
information system to give all these data
that we needed for decision making.
So I think I could see for the future it's even more important
that students have these basic skills.
And then the public gets the wrong conception that if you're
in a vocational program you don't need
to have this information.
They don't understand how much math is involved
in these programs.
And that yes, there is course called technical writing,
you know, we taught that,
okay but if you can't write basic English
or write a simple sentence then you're not even ready
for technical writing classes.
So I think that to me I was just a really strong proponent
that this was something that we had to strengthen if we were
to remain a leader in vocational technical education.
Once a year I'd present the annual report
for the college, the progress report.
We'd present the budget and our plan for the next year
and they had to approve it.
In addition, one member of each
of the sponsoring school districts served
in what was called the executive council.
They were treated just like a board member.
They got all the board information.
They came to all of the board meetings.
They sat around the same table in the Parkes Automotive Center,
we didn't have a special board room,
and we got these big tables we put together rectangular
and we had 15 board members, 20,
35 plus the president, a few staff.
We had about 40 people all talking on the agendas.
[ Silence ]
The rest of the campus needed major renovation or replacement,
they both, needed both, and it's not just that they looked bad
but there's health and safety issues and that was my concern,
is how long you could keep these places alive?
I was surprised that the students didn't complain more
about the facilities.
We tried to keep up with the equipment,
the state of the art equipment
but the facilities were approaching the point
of not being safe and nothing had happened in 20,25 years,
there were no buildings.
I said we've got to move this schedule ahead much faster
than that and start the first of a series of phases.
So our 10-year plan was broken up in two 5 year phases.
And then beyond that there'd be another 10 year plan
and so forth and so we begin moving on that right away
with the Klump Academic Center and it took a while
to get the learning resources center, the metal trade center,
the building technology center,
those constructions started toward the end of my tenure.
You need to be able to recognize what is someone's strengths,
what is their potential.
When you find a Veronica Muzic and she's teaching English
but you could see that she's capable of more
than teaching English, wonderful English teacher.
She can do more.
Bob Bowers, he is a great mathematics instructor
but he has other skills as well.
Tom McNally, ombudsman, what's that?
Well, Tom, you listen as a counselor, that's all you have
to do is listen and take notes and be objective,
you know, and report back.
Then we brought in some new people with skills
and they made a great contribution as well.
[ Silence ]
Become a leader for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons.
Really know yourself.
Do you want to be a leader because of your ego,
because you're attracted to power,
because you want authority?
Those are the wrong reasons.
Or do you want to be a leader because you want to serve,
because you want to help others.
You cannot lead without followers.
So if you don't have followers, you can't be a leader.
But a leader, you're expected to go first,
that's what it means, step first.
Be a risk taker and you need to have credibility.
So the first thing, advice would be okay, if you want to do that
and it's for the right reasons, then you want
to be honest and forthright.
You want to treat people fairly and you want to build, you know,
lasting relationships because that's the heart
of the institution, is those relationships.
And you really have to be a risk taker because you want
to accomplish meaningful things and you want
to make improvements so you got to be,
you got to like challenges and problems and you have
to see those as opportunities and get people to work with you
because a leader doesn't accomplish anything
by himself or herself.
A leader accomplishes things through people.
[music]
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