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Title
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Alan Donovan
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Description
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Since my retirement in 2008, I have had ample time to consider the accomplishments of the 20 years of my presidency. But clearly what "we" achieved - with proper emphasis on "we" -- was done as a community, working together to make SUNY Oneonta grow from good to great. So this conversation is dedicated to all staff, faculty, students. alumni and friends who worked so hard to make our collective dreams come true. I thank my long time colleague Gary Wickham for joining in this review.
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Contributor (Interviewer)
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Gary Wickham
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Date of interview
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2019-09-01
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Duration (Extent)
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1H11M54S
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Type
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Sound
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Subject
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business
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Transcript
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Date: August 1, 2019
Duration:"01:11:54"
Alan Donovan: Welcome to another edition of Kitchen Table Conversations. I'm joined with my colleague and friend, Gary Wickham, and today I am going to be talking about my administration with the college. You know, I've been retired for 11 years and I've had a chance to reflect upon my time here at Oneonta, and it became clear to me, among other things, about the accomplishments as a team we we achieved. So for the record, this interview is dedicated to all staff, faculty, students, alumni and friends who are so much a part of our successes, and certainly I'll be naming names as well about many of our colleagues who helped. So Gary here we go.
Gary Wickham: So for a change, the interviewer becomes the interviewed.
AD: That's right and take it. Take it easy on me, yet.
GW: Yeah, well, welcome to Kitchen Table Conversations. As Alan just said, I'll be, I'll be asking Alan some questions and we'll get some frank answers. We hope.
AD: I think yes,
GW: Let's talk about when you first got here. Let's talk about where you were before.
AD: I. I came from Northern Michigan University, which was an institution probably about the same size.
Part of the whole state of Michigan, and it was more isolated, certainly, than Oneonta is for sure.
GW: And you had some experience with SUNY.
AD: Uh, yes I did. I was at SUNY New Paltz during the Wonder Days.
GW: [chuckles] Wonder Days. OK,
AD: When the that would be? In the in the - let me think now - that would be in the early 70s,
GW: OK.
AD: and SUNY New Paltz was quite a place to be, as you may imagine.
GW: I remember.
AD: Any campus that hosted the Jefferson Airplane on campus would be a place to be, you might think. I think SUNY New Paltz still kind of has that cache. I'm not sure, but I think so.
GW: I, I actually, I just interviewed a young lady who’s a reporter for the star who's a New Paltz graduate, and I asked her ‘had it changed much’ and she said not a bit.
AD: Still the same.
GW: Not a bit. So, so anyway you you, you came you came here as you the college’s search, they selected Alan Donovan.
AD: That’s right.
GW: And and you show up. What are you walking into?
AD: Well, the first thing that I noticed was the state of the facilities. You know there's a lot of reasons for that. Part of it was our relations with SUNY. Part of it may have been the leadership, but there was a lot of need for improvement, so we launched on what was really a 20-year effort to improve the campus, to to transform it physically, and it took probably 20 years to get to that. We did get an initial gift from Clara Netzer who was the widow of my predecessor, Royal Netzer. I. She gave a gift of the colleges - I think about $135,000 - in endowment for a campus beautification. So that was good. But really, when you start talking about key players in the whole environment here, I have to name the name Tom Rathbone.
GW: How long in your in your tenure here did he, did he come in?
AD: I'm trying to think because Tom took a leave - I think in 91 - because he was in the naval reserve,
GW: Correct.
AD: He went to desert storm so he was gone about nine months, but I think he started serving prior to that and believe it, you know, believe me. We saved his position open so that he could come back to it and then he served, you know, fully from 1991 until he retired several years ago, over 20 years.
GW: As a as a no, because I know Tom as well. Tom, Tom served admirably in the,
AD: Oh gosh yes
GW: Navy and he's quite proud of his service. He's always always a lot of fun to talk to
AD: Right? And not only that, but he was an onsite guy. Tom was here day and night crises and not crises, weekends. He was always around and he wore this, this little pad. This notepad in the back of his pants and he’d go around taking notes. So we really began to take a look at the campus and and start putting money into getting money for it from SUNY and so forth. Some of the milestones that we had from the beginning would be the Fieldhouse for example, in 1999 that was a big lift. We had been maybe promised a Fieldhouse or thought we had a Fieldhouse and had to choose between that and I guess the library. But in any case, it all came through and we had a wonderful opening in 1999. You may remember who was there.
GW: I do, uh, Tony Bennett,
AD: Tony Bennett
GW: Led the, was the lead entertainer.
AD: Yes, he was and he sang acapella in the Fieldhouse after it had been opened, maybe only two weeks. It was a great success.
GW: You have to credit our friend Roy McDonald.
AD: OK sure.
GW: On this as well. Who got us some much needed dollars to finish it off.
AD: Yes yeah, Roy and Carol Blazina, and actually there were five of us who helped to put our own money into. Was myself, Roy McDonald, Carol Blazina, David Brenner, and the gentleman who was head of the Alumni Association. I can’t think of his name, probably come back to me during the course.
GW: Ok
AD: And all five of us put our money into it and so we got some lobbying help then. For example, we … the Albert Hall, which of course has affectionately been called 50 for years, and, for example, the Higgins Hall was a major gift in 2004. Along the same time as we were doing other kinds of things on campus, landscaping, sidewalks all that kind of thing. We did add a new soccer field and that was followed by the turf field up above. You know, the the the student Union, Hunt Union, and so that was those were signal moments, ones that we can we can talk about But it was a day by day kind of thing and one of the major things that we did was to redo some of the some of the things in the quad and that was very important. By the way, the other gentleman who helped us out at that time was a gentleman who was head of the alumni association named Granville Thompson, and he was a great deal of help. Along with the concrete kind of things and buildings we had to race to keep up with technology, and I can recall we just about got the campus hardwired when wireless came here. So I'm not sure where the wires are anymore and I'll tell you right now as you know, it's a challenge even today. Over these over these 30 plus years, it just it's impossible to keep up with the technology.
GW: You pop out any ceiling tile anywhere and there's 20 years ago was wires 10 years ago was wires, you know, so it's hard to keep up.
AD: And I think we're now pretty much wireless. Is that what's working?
GW: Yeah, for example, right over your head just outside the door is a wireless router that serves this area down here.
AD: Ok, and of course the technology of wireless was not available back in the early 90’s. I don't believe so, it was something that relatively new. And I always remember that there was a constant race beginning right after commencement and lasting until about the middle of August to get all the innovations done.
GW: Yes
AD: And Tom used to say, Mr. President, I'll let you know when to worry. For example, we were building Higgins Hall and there was some sort of strike in Japan about bringing over ironworks or whatever. Wherever they came from, but we managed to make it through and open in time and then we had some more-than-ankle-biters as he would call them in creating a Fieldhouse, but it all opened up again pretty much on time. Very lucky. So that was the beginning of a transportation which I must say my successors have worked at even even up to this present time. The campus does look very good and people acknowledge that, and I think when you have a good looking campus, people take better care of their
GW: Constant state of construction.
AD: Yes,
GW: Generally in any given year is a building on a renovation.
AD: Right.
GW: This building was built a couple of years ago. If you come up around the top right now, the parking lots are torn up by the new welcome center.
AD: Ohh gosh yes.
GW: You know, so it's constant it goes on.
AD: And I I total redoing of the science buildings and for example Fitzelle, which is a LEEDS building which means it's environmentally friendly.
GW: You know the four older dorms down below to Wilbur, Littell, Tobey and - don't leave them out, Golding - were all redone from their 1956 model, I think when they were built. They look very modern today.
AD: And 50 beds were added each.
GW: Yes,
AD: Because at one point in time there was a concern about adding another dorm or residence hall as I as our friends in student affairs would tell us, but we did that. We added a dorm by virtue of taking four of them and adding 50 beds each.
GW: Right in the center area, which had always just been a single story now was the full three stories.
AD: Then we should talk about the Blacklist.
GW: Yeah?
AD: Let me go through the facts as I remember them. The whole incident began Thursday night before Labor Day in 2002. There was an assault, nearly a deadly assault, on a companion of a nun who had come up here to make a presentation to the Italian-American club. They had their meeting in Morris Hall as I recall. The attacker was identified by the companion of the nun who was attacked as an African American male of college age. This person disappeared, completely disappeared, and I'm guessing that probably the case is still open, hasn't been solved. The names of 75 male African American students was released to police by then Public Safety. We had failed at that point in time to attain a subpoena. If we'd had a subpoena, then the focus of the concerns after the attack and the release of the names would have been quite different. There was a disturbance on campus, mostly regarding racial profiling and the nature of the police search. Although: when you think about it, there was great concern about this particular suspect roaming around, and people worried that - they were worried - and had they been fully aware of the damage done to the woman as we were, they might have felt differently. By the way, there was searches done at Hartwick and the Job Corps as well.
GW: Correct.
AD: It was, it was a process that was difficult to get through. The students and their supporters hired a PR effort by Albany law firm, and later on that year, I'm going to say it was February or March, ABC program Day One, which is a new news program,
GW: Right.
AD: Kind of like 60 minutes. Came to campus to do some interviews. And I should tell you that we were on the 3rd installment of that program, which I think no longer exists. The first installment was about Jeffrey Dahmer.
GW: Great company.
AD: Yeah. The second installment was about sex and southern prisons.
GW: OK.
AD: So anyway we were on we were on Day One. We had, I would say, good support from then-Chancellor Bruce Johnstone, and generally speaking from SUNY Central, although I must say at this point I did not follow all of their advice and in many instances. Long term results. Well, we after that we modernized campus safety to a university police unit under the leadership of Barton Ingersoll, who came over here from Cornell.
GW: Is this about the same time the university police started carrying weapons?
AD: That happened a bit afterward, so I think I think about that time, maybe a little earlier. Most campuses had what was called Public Safety. They were not trained as police officers, and they were not armed. The movement arm campus police came and was fully enforced, I'm going to guess by the time we got to the late 1990’s, early 2000’s. We moved, as I said, to university police. We developed further efference on the Center for Multicultural Experiences, which by the way was in Lee Hall and already underway and it it got more support, more functions, and more attention because of that. But obviously we, because of the publicity and some of the follow-up, we had a difficulty recording - recruiting -minority students for quite a while after that. The lawsuits regarding the release of the names, which would be considered a loss of regarding violation of civil rights, actually went through a whole series of courts and actually made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which decided not to hear the case. It also made it to the New York State Court of Claims and then to the Court of Appeals and one of the results of all the legal maneuvers and argumentations was that, in effect I believe, it was ruled that you could sue the state. Although no suit was ever, ever really sound. In the long run, there were two other suits attendant to this whole Blacklist thing, and they were actually settled against the City of Oneonta. And in at least one case the suit was sealed, so either the plaintiff or the city could not answer questions, and then the other individual, as I recall, got a settlement about $7,500. There was no follow up by the Federal Department of Education. Now they would have followed up, because it might have been considered a violation of what was called the Buckley amendment, which was passed several years earlier, and the Buckley amendment was an amendment which guaranteed the privacy of student records. And obviously the student records about the African American students was released without without their knowledge or permission. In the city we established, Mayor Brenner established, the Civil Rights Commission, and there was the founding of the local NAACP, of which I was charter member by the way, and then of course even more attention to diversity on campus.
GW: And we we need a diversity officer.
AD: I'm trying to think whether Dr. Grace Jones was - Dr. Grace Jones was already here in a position that was called Vice President for Multicultural Affairs. The terms have changed in the meantime, so she was already present at that time. That was not something that was new.
GW: I remember Cecilia
AD: Cecilia, Dr. Zapata came, I would say probably oh 2004, 2005. Something like that, in that area. And she would be Equal Affirm- Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Officer. It's it's part of our history. I think my successor had a a kind of a reconciliation moment 20 years after the fact, which would have been, I believe, in 2012. And and it still gets mentioned from time to time.
GW: It does,
AD: And it's part of our history, and it was certainly a learning experience. It was very painful, very painful for almost everybody involved. And to this day, as I said, the assailant was never caught.
GW: And because the assailant was never caught, the search really kind of spread beyond the campuses and Job Corps. I had a young fellow that worked for me, a young African American fellow who got hauled off a bus and they wanted to look at his hands, because apparently the assailant has cut his hands on glass.
AD: The woman who was attacked at the house, which is adjacent to the campus, was actually trained in judo. And evidently the assailant had a knife and one can only speculate as to what the use of the knife was going to be. But he actually cut himself, and there was lots of blood, and I think if I recall the facts correctly, there was a bloody towel found up near campus.
GW: Right.
AD: As if to suggest the assailant had come up here. We talked with the then chief of state police, and he told us that if we had seen the woman who was assaulted and realized the extent of the wounds that she had, we would have been equally assiduous in trying to get the case solved and find find the suspect. It it was, it was a bad moment, no question about it.
GW: And no real, no no real end to it, because there was never never arrest.
AD: Well, I think there there is an end in a sense, because it has become more and more part of our past since now. You know, going on over 30 years since it happened, and people do forget, but it was a moment, there there was at the time a concern about racial identification that happened on the Jersey Turnpike, and that African Americans were being stopped on the Turnpike merely because they were African Americans, and there was kind of a connection. And there was a lot of concern throughout the community, and I think it was was a wakeup call for a lot of us, including the African American community on campus. Not that they needed to be wakened up, but I think it was something that shocked them. It, but it informed more programming. We had a number of people coming to campus and Cornell West was brought to campus shortly after the incident, and he is is an advocate for awareness, and I think he gave his speech that was well received. So we tried to regain our balance after that and if not exactly atoned for it, at least trying to move on.
GW: And speaking of moving on from it, let's talk a little bit about enrollment over the years.
AD: Well, here you're going to get inundated with facts and figures here, but that's how you look at enrollment management I think, and that effort was largely led by Roger Sullivan. Who sadly just died.
GW: Yeah,
AD: About six months ago or more. And Roger came in 1997. Now if you go back on our history, at one point in time it was said our students were comparable to those who were coming to SUNY Binghamton, and if you know the history of SUNY, you know that Binghamton students are very good indeed. Very good. Yes, that had faded after a while, so that we had our work to do for sure. We had several things going for us. We had location and we had a campus that was moving in the right direction I hope, and everybody seemed to be feeling that way. So, we did a number of things and the stats kind of showed what we did. First of all, in that period of time from 1997 to 11 years later about the 2008, our applications grew from 6400 to over 11,005, almost double. The mean high school average increase from 81.99 to 91.20. A mean combined SAT scores - which would be math and critical reading - grew from 996 to 1134. So those indices just on their own merit, spoke of a great change in the academics on the campus. Better students, better quality, qualified students, and eventually better retention.
GW: As you know, I tell my students that I would not have gotten into this school today with the grades I had back in the 60s.
AD: So, we we focused at the behest of most people on campus for academic excellence. We didn't ignore diversity because we certainly had the impetus and the lesson of the Blacklist, but at the same time, we wanted to increase those qualifications. The freshman sophomore retention rose from 60.2 to 87.4 in that 11 year period. Now let me tell you what that meant. What that would mean is we take in, let's say a freshman class of 1000 students and only 600 would return the next year. I mean that that is, that's very damaging both to the profile and the enrollment profile that we had. You couldn't, you couldn't really work with that very well.
GW: And this is considering all reasons for not returning? You include academic or personal-
AD: Academic, personal, or whatever else. So then if you raise that so that the next cohort coming in, let's say in 2008 you had 1000 students, 874 would return. Big difference.
GW: Oh huge.
AD: Big difference. Huge. And that meant that you could be more selective in your admissions, and that you would get better students who would retain better. Very important.
GW: Certainly.
AD: We did work on under underrepresented student enrollment that increased by 8 from 8.2% to 13.1%, and that would bring more students of color to campus as it happened, and I think the percentage rose even higher in succeeding years after I left. What did this mean? Well, it mean it meant a rise in a host of national rankings, most notably from Tier 3 status in the 1996 U.S. News and World Report to rankings to Tier 1 and the Top Public Masters, Northeast category as a recognition for Oneonta.
GW: Wow
AD: Yes and not many school had done that. So that we then became highly qualified and highly selected for students and the word got out. And as the word got out, we had recognitions from Money magazine, Kiplinger's, and other national rankings and then along the way, probably about the time I left, our national rankings cited us as ranked third among the SUNY University colleges.
GW: Wow.
AD: I think we were behind SUNY New Paltz, actually behind SUNY Tennessee and SUNY New Paltz at the time I left. So that, those kind of rankings, whatever you want to say about them mean a lot to parents. And we saw a huge increase in the number of people coming to admission open houses. We we were delighted to be able to fill the Fieldhouse time after time and and the word got out. So it's it's partly a word of mouth kind of thing, but then we had a very well staffed and very active admissions department, and that was chaired by Karen Brown, who worked with Roger Sullivan, and it made all the difference in the world. And let me tell you something else that happened: when you get better retention and not having to recruit so much, it helps the funding formula. So that indirectly, with all these changes in admissions, we really were better funded, funded, and more secure in our funding. Because SUNY had what they call a resource allocation model, and if you didn't reach your FTE’s as projected, you were penalized financially, and so we we suffered. At one point in time, early on in the process, we have a committee that reviewed students performances between the 1st and 2nd semesters, and this committee was chaired by Doctor Al Lubell and I can remember one January - excuse me - they met. And they had recommended, recommended that the 300 students be given at least a year off because of economic performance. And I said yes, not like what would happen, and I think that made a change too because the message got out that you had to perform to stay here. And I think also that it was a message that faculty appreciated as well. That that they knew that the students would have to expect demands; that they could make demands. There would not be great inflation to retain them unnecessarily. And you may have seen some of those factors in your time here.
GW: I have, I have, yeah. It's it it amazes me as I as I look at I - just to go back to the rankings for a second - every time I pick up the paper. Or of course our office of Marketing makes great use of this every time.
AD: They should.
GW: You know, as our national rankings get better and better, obviously it recruits recruits better students. You, you know people well know that a great deal of our populus comes from the metropolitan area, Long Island, and and basically any college that you pick unless it’s Stonybrook or Old Westbury is going to be somewhere in the woods. So what makes us better than Plattsburgh? What makes us better than Potsdam? What makes us better than Brockport? Yeah, or Cortland? You know? Obviously you can go to school anywhere. Why do they pick Oneonta, and maybe the rankings.
AD: Well and then we have the enviable position of being just within the ambit of the drive from New York City and the New York City area, as well as the Southern Tier, and across the Throughway across the major cities upstate and that makes a big difference: if you're further north, not so good, and I think that would account for some of the success in the same way as SUNY New Paltz because they're about 75 miles so.
GW: Much closer to the city,
AD: Much closer to the city, and they are a larger institution, but it's important. The other thing I would say, and I'll get to it later on, is that this dovetails in with alumni relations and positive thinking on the part of the alumni, which in turn helps us raise more money.
GW: Just to go back for a second, also, to the maintenance of the buildings. 20 years ago my niece was going to school at Rye Purchase
AD: Yes, OK.
GW: And and the buildings are very similar the dorm buildings, are very similar to what we have here.
AD: There's a standard formula. Each dorm room seems to be about the same size.
GW: Down there. The hallways had graffiti on the walls - they've been painted white - the brick had been painted white, they were light fixtures missing, there was not any standard of maintenance there that compared with here and it really made you appreciate what's happened here.
AD: You know, and then if if you have a campus that's not well kept, it'll get disrespected.
GW: Certainly.
AD: Because people will not care what they do right? I compare it to the beginning of the Long Island Freeway. Maybe I shouldn't, but last time I was down, that was pretty messy and it's not going to get clean unless you start cleaning it up and it looks good.
GW: Yeah yeah.
AD: And so that happened on campus as well.
GW: You you have to give a lot of credit back to Tom Rathbone.
AD: Oh yes,
GW: Who had thought nothing of driving the golf cart up the sidewalk and pull weeds between.
AD: Oh yes yeah,
GW: Pull weeds between the, the cement sections of the sidewalk. Or pick up a, you know, a gum wrapper or a cigarette butt. There's a guy that really had the beauty of the campus.
AD: Not only that, but it's a better place to come to work.
GW: Sure,
AD: Nobody wants to come to work where there is graffiti and it's not very clean and so forth. So as I, as I said before, it really is a 20 year effort. But then, everybody pitched in. I mean, it wasn't just simply Tom and his crew, although it was very much them, but everybody else. And I think you can see that on the campus even today.
GW: Certainly yeah, certainly you can.
AD: And I think people expect that. Let's talk a little bit about academic affairs. I had I had spent some time working hard to find successful leadership in academic affairs, it's a difficult slot to be Provost for us. So let's say and I finally did find that with my good colleague, the deceased Dan Lark. Who actually ended up teaching here for 50 years.
GW: I was one of the students.
AD: Were you? Yep,
GW: Many, many, probably early in those 50 years. Yes, I was his student. Also Carol Blazina’s with that.
AD: I will say that Dan Larkin, aside from having a photographic memory and being a great researcher, was a wonderful character.
GW: Ohh yeah, yeah
AD: He didn't suffer fools easily. Was not given to giving in unless he thought it was the right thing, and he worked with his council of Deans to turn the place in a good direction, I think I. Which was not easy. And as as I will comment in a minute or two, you can see the positive effects he had under his leadership. I'm going to guess that Dan, who who stayed after I left to serve as Provost for a couple more years, was probably in that seat, I would guess, for eight years, maybe more. I can't remember now. And it was important because he knew the institution. He knew the programs.
He knew what the faculty thought, and I think while they didn't always agree with him, they certainly respected what he was doing.
GW: And he stayed in the classroom all that time.
AD: Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. Yeah, I think he taught at least one class every semester. He was, by the way, a collector of cars and I had occasion once to ride in his 1936 Cadillac which - so if you've seen the gangster movies, that kind of thing that you saw, yeah? So anyway, they they worked on academic reorganization. As I think is to be expected, academic reorganization is always happening. I believe it's still happening
GW: Oh it is
AD: And the the magic organization has never been found, as far as I know. But along the way, we worked on accreditations which I think are important. Accreditations aside the …. States, which you have to get accreditation for in order to get the federal funding, are a good sign of programs that have met standards outside the you know the institution. So we got NK, which is the accreditation for teacher education. We got accreditation for music. We continued accreditation for chemistry. We got accreditation for dietetics and then we started the long preparation for AACSB, which is a collegiate schools of business, which I think happened several years after I left. And that's a tough one to get. And as far as I know, we still hold all those accreditation. Then along the way we created a number of new majors. Now new majors are important because every few years the market changes. It does. For example, I had heard that one of our departments that had 400 when I left - probably 10 years later, has maybe 800 students. Yeah, because of the students interests in different careers and professions, so that's important.
GW: And others decrease obviously.
AD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
GW: Thinking of education.
AD: Actually, yeah, and I think probably to be honest about it, in the last 10 years there's probably been more fluctuation among majors on campus, some remaining the same, but some receding quite a bit and others coming along very strong. A good example, I think, of that is the department you're in. Communication Arts. Which I think boasts a list of 600 majors or more, something like that. And that happened in part after it was split off from Drama, which used to Speech and Theater. So anyway, we created a number of new majors: computer science, music industry which really flourished, mass communications, criminal justice, computer art, and then a few master’s degrees. Although largely what happened in the master’s programs, is that we we closed a number of them. We didn't have the enrollment. This wasn't an interest in in in getting a master's degree in some of the humanities. The ones that are continuing to thrive in part are the ones in education. Then of course, we have a national level master’s program in museum studies. And I had to say that otherwise, Gretchen Soren who's now directing their program, is is a force of nature really has led that program to national election.
GW: She has.
AD: Over the years, we got a lot of recognition for chancellor's awards. 52 faculty and staff and that period of time during my 20 years received chancellor’s awards, and probably as many students. And that that's was a an award that was created, I believe in the early 2000s, and in those days involved the individual getting the award traveling to Albany to be recognized in person by the chancellor. I don't know whether you ever saw any of those or not, but,
GW: No, I've seen the ones here locally.
AD: Yeah, yeah,
GW: I've never made the trek to Albany for that.
AD: And and they're also they're also recognized on campus at commencement. Things like that. So that that's a nice exterior recognition, and I think SUNY is still continuing, and it's not an easy process,
GW: no, no,
AD: You have you have to really know what you're doing to get to that. So, the academic program flourished and it was doing very well. Will we ever solve the program or the process of academic organization? I don't think so.
GW: It will change constantly.
AD: I think it will.
GW: Changed four or five times since you left. We went to a 5 Dean system. We're down about four Dean system. Schools that were in social sciences are now in humanities.
AD: Who goes with whom and the disciplines and so forth, it's important in one sense, but it's unimportant in other ways too. But I think in the minds of the faculty and departments themselves, it's something that contend with.
GW: Certainly,
AD: And as I said, struggle as we did with that, and we had kind of an odd structure, I think because we had subdeans that otherwise might have been full deanship. It worked. It seemed to work. Yeah, we had good people. As I say, we had good people throughout the academic administration. One of the things that I that emphasized and was concerned about was community service. One of the ways that a faculty member or staff member is judged by the kinds of community service they might serve. Public service, it's called and it's one of the three things that we do as part of our larger mission. So one of the first steps in that direction is that we establish the Center for Economic and Community Development in 1990. Which is no longer an-
GW: Unfortunately, yeah
AD: That that didn't succeed to be continued under my successor, but I think probably now more than ever, that's important because the community and the region looks to the college and its talents for helping economic development now more than ever. But anyway, that flourished for a number of years under the leadership Barry Warren, people still talk about some of the services that we did. One of the things that we developed was a program called Leadership Otsego. And Leadership Otsego which probably now has what you would call 150 alumni, is a program that takes young professionals for a year’s course maybe one day a month to learn about all the various aspects of the county and hopefully they will then serve on nonprofit boards and other other positions. So I worked very well to be honest we copied that to a great extent from Leadership Chenango County. And gratefully, now it still exists because it was picked up by our local Chamber of Commerce after it was dropped on campus under the leadership of Barbara Ann Heegan.
GW: You know the Center for Community Development. I recall, for example, doing a having them do a survey for us in the town of Milford for our comprehensive committee our comprehensive plan and the service from Barry was great, but Barry's always been great.
AD: Yeah, well, its interesting because when I was begun oh all these many years ago, I'm not sure there was as much need for helping economic development as happened recently. Would the concerns about loss of population growing, number of impoverished and loss of services.
GW: And not to mention things that we never considered 20 years ago. Like fracking.
AD: Yes
GW: Like environmental placements or landfills, things that weren't of concern for years, suddenly are in the forefront.
AD: Challenges in the energy industry, which is a major concern now, development of downtown Oneonta, all these things could have been helped, I think more. Not, not that the college is totally disengaged, but I think having a part of the college dedicated as an office to that effort is good, very good. In 1994 we received a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, which is a national organization, to develop the Center for Social Responsibility and Community. And this is a center that focuses on student volunteer activities, and I'm happy to say it's still there, still functioning under the leadership for many years of Linda Drake. And we had up for a period of time, a local AmeriCorps program which is volunteer service.
GW: The Center for Social Responsibility every year sponsors, for example, Into The Streets. There they'll go down and wash windows on Main Street, or maybe scrub the sidewalk. It's a very very active Saturday.
AD: That began in 1997, the same year as Leadership Otsego, and I, If I remember correctly, in the day we used to get 600 students who would be placed in various service areas throughout the community. They weren't, they didn't they didn't go out and from under to some place, it took careful placement and they're still going on, it's still part of it
GW: And the local AmeriCorps program
AD: I don't, I don't think that still exists.
GW: It does not.
AD: But it was slated, I think, a federal program that engages students in a larger volunteer effort federally and nationally. And I think we actually had some AmeriCorps students visiting here, and maybe some of our own students did it as well. Again, the emphasis on volunteerism - and you know, when you're an institution and you're in a county of 60,000 people, it's fairly rural and isolated, and you have all these students there, it's well and good to encourage them to get into volunteering. And I can't tell you how many good volunteering efforts are out there in the community today. I mentioned Saturday's Bread because I'm part of that and I'll talk about that later. But certainly, having student volunteers go down to that soup kitchen every Saturday is important.
GW: It is.
AD: And it's good for them.
GW: It is.
AD: It gets them to see a part of life that you wouldn't otherwise see and get outside themselves.
GW: Exactly.
AD: Well, then there's philanthropy. Now that dovetails in, as I said, with a more stable student enrollment, better alumni opinions, better national rankings, that kind of thing. And when I came, quite as a surprise because it wasn't solicited, but I think it came shortly after I arrived. This gift from Clara Netzer, who was Royal Netzer's widow, of about 135,000 as an endowment. Now that would not yield a whole lot of money each year at 5%, but at the same time it was a signal and I think I think without getting into the details, it was an indication on her part that neither she nor her deceased husband were happy with some of the state of the campus. Without getting, as I said, into any more details. We we didn't really have much leadership in alumni affairs or philanthropy until we hired Paul Adamo in 1993 and Paul, is actually an Oneonta graduate. I think, I'm going to guess that Paul graduated in 1981 or something.
GW: Somewhere in there, yes.
AD: Yeah, went to work over at Pathfinder village with Marian Mullet then worked at Union College and when we decided to have a position - I think it was Vice President at the time - of Philanthropy and Alumni Affairs. He applied, and we talked and there he is. So he's been here going on I believe 26 years, yeah, and he began building boards, that is to say, the Foundation Board, the Alumni Board, a staff. He has a good staff out there, working.
GW: Excellent staff.
AD: Publications which are necessary, alumni week meetings. Now, of course, that's all tuned into social media and things like that.
GW: Phone-a-thons
AD: Yeah Phone-a-thons are very important. Yeah, we did that and you know, things really have taken great shape, took a while, took a while, because none of the SUNY institutions really were urged to go out and raise money.
GW: You know Paul and his group leave no stone unturned.
AD: No, they do not.
GW: And my old fraternity. Which hasn't existed on this campus for 20 years now. Funds the scholarship.
AD: Yeah, what was your fraternity?
GW: Sigma Tal Alpha.
AD: Yes, OK, good.
GW: And we now fund a scholarship.
AD: Good!
GW: Can't tell you what, I think it's to the tune of about 20 grand you know that we all contribute to and
AD: There's a minimum amount that you can endow to have, otherwise it's not worth not worth the effort to maintain at that point in time. A very active plan-giving program, a naming program. The most recent indication of a naming program was the naming of the Science building after Janet Perna, alumna, who actually gave a gift of $5 million a couple years ago to the college. That's got to be one of the major gifts to university colleges in the SUNY system. And to be clear, the endowment now, as far as I know, it's about 66 million. Up a little bit from the two million when I came.
GW: Yeah, just a bit.
AD: Just a bit, you know. And we had other benchmarks along the way. We had, we increased - or developed - an Alumni Fieldhouse endowment. We got the Sayer bequest for the field station. We got our first big gift of 1.5 million from a woman named Robin Ross Higgins, after whom Higgins Hall is named in honor of her husband. And that was the biggest to date, going back to 2003. Yeah, good. And for years we led university colleges and SUNY with percent of alumni giving, at least from 2002 to 2007. So that's important, and one of the one of the good effects of this is the increase in scholarships. The scholarships of course, bring better students, and when you have an endowment of 60 million, a lot of that is restricted to scholarships and that can bring some good students in that wouldn’t otherwise come. So that that's been very important to us. We had two major campaigns, I can't remember the dates now, but we raised about 18 million other money coming in along the way. This is what what colleges do.
GW: Certainly.
AD: We we modeled ourselves on what the private colleges do in terms of alumni affairs. Donor solicitation publications. Reaching out. Visits and all that kind of thing,
GW: And there's this, the SUNY system doesn't restrict that at all, do they?
AD: No, they do not. No, they do not. The the SUNY system with the Chancellor Robert King encouraged it, but up to that point in time there had been no mandate. And I think by now, any new SUNY president has a signal from SUNY central that he or she ought to be out raising money for their for their endowment, sure, and so that that's what worked. The endowment when I left was about 32 million. That didn't stay that that way because I left in the summer of 2008 and there was a little dip there, but I think it only went down maybe by a million or two with the great crash of 2008, and then it came back. So that’s something to be really proud about.
GW: Ohh yes.
AD: And you can see that throughout the campus. No question about it. Uh, financial management. Well. What can I say if we had. As I look back on it now, I feel badly in one sense because I can see how well that Leif Hartmark and the team did. It didn't appear to be the case at the time, because we were always struggling with the relations with SUNY. Trying to figure out what the resource allocation model would be, trying to get our place in line for funding. Trying to hide sometimes as we could, but he brought a great knowledge and skill to the whole financial management. Our system was largely decentralized, it was not one where we necessarily went to the College Senate in order to get their advice on things, I may have been a little selfish on that, but I felt that we needed to create a reserve. We need to manage the reserve ourselves, and to allocate the monies as we saw fit. Working with the academics, student personnel. Maintenance, and all all the different reporting areas, so we we didn't do a lot of consulting necessarily, but along the way we grew from a majority state funding to much, much less. I don't know what it is now, but I'm gonna guess that when I first came about 90% of our funding came from the state, and then when I left that had had receded to probably less than 20%, difference being made up in tuition.
GW: Right.
AD: Because we went through a series over the years of constant tuition increases, and in some cases we had no tuition increase for several years. Then you'd have a bump. I think at one point in time during the last decade there was an increase of tuition by formula for five years in a row automatic, which I would have loved to have had, certainly brought a lot of sure, a lot of things ….. We're formula driven as I mentioned. If you don't have the students, you don't get the money, period. And then we made several changes with ancillary services. Working to maintain the college camp, contracting out the food service, working to employ those unions there that really helped to benefit the campus in terms of quality of life and so forth. Good management, good management. And I think I should add that Dr. Hartmark was chosen at one point in time as SUNY business manager of the year, which was well deserved and well earned. Well. Government relations and public relations.
GW: Yes.
AD: Ohh my gosh, what can I say? That really started from scratch in 1993 with Carol Blazina, our late departed colleague. And she came from the Phys ED department, she was no expert to begin with. And she built that team, and actually guided a lot of my efforts in that direction. For example, the Fieldhouse in 1999. SUNY in prior years was not inclined to give funding for the Fieldhouse. And if you know how the funding work, you had to line up. make your case, hope that you get the money, but it was never a guarantee. So, we worked very hard on that, and as you mentioned, our colleague Roy McDonald, who was later in the state legislature, was very helpful in that. He was not in the state legislature at that point in time. And he was one of the five who helped get together some money to hire some lobbyists in order to put us in that direction. So getting the money for the Fieldhouse which opened up finally in 1999, and I believe the allocation was 15 million. Costs a little bit more now, but 15 million at that point in time was quite a major step. We needed a Fieldhouse.
GW: It was,
AD: And we also needed governmental support. We could never have gotten the Fieldhouse without the support of Assemblyman Bill McGee and Senator Jim Seward. You just needed it all. They were out there, helping us, advocating, making our case known and you know, by the way, Senator like Jim Seward not only has us in his district but also SUNY Cortland. Certainly, he had two Dragons. Yeah, he did, he had two Dragons. So the Fieldhouse is one, I think, milestone about our efforts in government and PR. We also, for example worked in legislative relations, where Hillary Clinton - Clinton excuse me. Her talking tour which started in the early 2000s began on campus, and that was because we were visible and available and known. Otherwise, it wouldn't happen. I remember that when she came we had 13 uplink trucks. What do you call those trucks?
GW: Satellite trucks,
AD: Satellite? We had 13 satellite trucks like that. There's a big event. Yeah, and lots of Secret Service people.
GW: And of course, she announced her candidacy for the Senate just over in Pindar's Corners.
AD: And then she did it here, yeah as well,
GW: Yeah, and then we had a a news conference in Morris Hall in what's now called the Craven Lounge, and I remember it was crowded and we had to put up little standing stands so people could crowd in. Somebody dropped a camera and that got things going, but it was it was a big moment for the campus. It went very well. The other thing I should say is that the Council for the Advancement and Success of Education case gave us a gold medal award in 2002 for our admission publications and that is due largely, but not completely, to the efforts of Glenn Mayer, also a deceased colleague.
GW: Yes, unfortunately.
AD: Did you know-
GW: I did know Glenn yeah,
AD: Good good man.
GW: Yeah, I worked for him very briefly but he -
AD: Did you?
GW: Great guy and,
AD: He worked tireless. He did our press releases, he worked on our middle states report, God love him. He also did a lot with publications.
GW: Yes, he did. I remember writing center way back. Yes he was yeah, and when I had a chance to fill that position of Press Agent, I guess you call it, because of a a retirement or a somebody who left. I ask Lynn to come and do the job, and we talked to him, he said he would, and he said the only thing that he had as a reservation, he didn't want to wear a tie. So I said, OK, you don't have to wear a tie, but when you take the minutes for college Council meetings, you'll have to wear a tie for that. So he kept a knotted tie on his doorknob to remind him of what was going on. So we we did well and and lots of people took part in that, but I think as you know it was largely Carol who took took the horns on that and she took to it marvelously.
GW: Carol wanted people to be involved in the community because there was a Chamber of Commerce dinner, or a tree lighting, or the spelling bee, or the Daily Star cook off, she expected her staff to be there.
AD: Oh yeah, and local politicians or area politicians when they were running again for office or for the first time they would call here and they'd say to Carol. What do you see? How should I do things and so forth? And she was, she was very helpful and that that was their way of noting her expertise.
GW: Right.
AD: Her smarts. She was very smart. She would come in with those dark eyes blazing and read me the riot act - used to call it something else - but they do a rip and I would, I would think about it, mostly right no question about it and the
GW: I’ve been on the receiving end of a couple of those.
AD: Yeah, you seen those? Well she was, she was a New York City girl.
GW: Yeah,
AD: So yeah, she knew what she was talking about, but what a difference that made.
GW: Oh yeah.
AD: I mean that took us into the age that we're in now, where governmental relations and public relations are extraordinarily important for campuses.
GW: Amazing that the two people that you chose were big leadership positions. I'm thinking of Carol here and Dan Larkin where I had them as professors in the 60s. You know, and that was always a great great memory.
AD: And you know, I was lucky with Carol and Glenn. Because Glenn was like an engine behind the scenes.
GW: Yeah,
AD: Doing I don't know, maybe 4 or 500 press releases a year, doing the admissions stuff, and so forth. I mean he he was he was quite something and I I I felt very glad to have him,
GW: yeah.
AD: Student Development, which was called Student Affairs when I came, it began with Fran Daley. You may remember Fran
GW: I do.
AD: He was VP for Student Affairs when I came, and then, as I recall, he was succeeded by a Griesmer, and then by Steve Perry.
GW: Correct.
AD: And both Ed and Steve were local products yeah. And I believe Fran was too. We did searches for those positions for both Ed and Steve, so we did a national search, but I think as it turned out, we were lucky that they knew who we were. Because you have to know your students and where they were coming from. We had this curious blend of a of a crowd from Long Island, a crowd from upstate, and God knows what after that. So they did a great job and at that point in time, admissions reported the student development along with academic advising and public safety eventually. Athletics, so they had a nexus of support offices for the students. Student aid for example, student financial aid reported to them, so they did an excellent job over the years. I must say.
GW: Oh yeah.
AD: Had great fun with Ed Griesmer. He was a character.
GW: He was.
AD: And then Steve Perry was an associate to Ed, and he came out to be a real pro. He really did an excellent job. I told him at one point in time, I said ‘Steve you have the good qualities of being college president if you wanted’, but I think he wanted to stay where he was, and he retired as Student of Development Vice President.
GW: And I don't know where he is now. I used to run into him occasionally,
AD: Ohio, he moved to Ohio.
GW: Always good time to talk,
AD: And you know they lived through an era where there was a growing need for counseling services, which I think is done nothing but increase over my time here. I'm not talking about the kinds of services provided in the old fashioned Wellness Center where you go down if you had a cold or needed a shot of some sort. I'm talking about psychological counseling, and addiction, and overdose, and things like that and that sadly, but truly, has only increased over time.
GW: That, and I'm not even sure what we call this now, but the judicial affairs on you know, which has a relationship with with the community in that because you could only control the students so far.
AD: I'm glad you mentioned that because that brings to mind our fraternities and also some of the athletic teams. We had a terrible time in the 1990s downtown. It was, it was riotus. People were badly injured. We had one case where a student ended up being a quadriplegic because he was hit in the head with a golf club. The fraternities did pretty much what they wanted, we tried to create a code and get them to join and be recognized, but that didn't always hold, it was it was bad times.
GW: Oh yeah,
AD: Bad times and bad for the community. I did spend several nights downtown and River and Water St I think it was called, the alley, with Mayor Brenner and chief of police Jack Donadio, and I had a chance to see what our police force down there, Oneonta police force, was dealing with and it was ugly. It was not good.
GW: It was-
AD: It it did subside I think, we've had some outbursts from time to time, but nothing like it was nothing like it was. And these groups of attorneys acted in some cases like gangs, they really were, fighting with each other, fighting with anyone else. Yeah, it was not good. The other thing I would say is that we had a very successful residence life program working for people living in the residence halls. And I was schooled to say residence halls are where people sleep and they have programming, and dormitories are where they just sleep. So, and we still do, I mean lots of residence hall activities integrating the students. Getting them things to do, keeping them active and watching out for their welfare is very important. We had a number of what they're called student opinion surveys, which came about I think maybe around 2005 or so, it's initiated by SUNY and they worked very well. They gave us a whole sense of what the students thought about all sorts of things, including parking, food service, counseling and so forth, and along the way we worked very hard at some of the results and came out as winners in many cases. Top sometimes in the whole SUNY University College Sector which is good, and that helped with retention as it was. So, as we're looking down toward the end of this wonderful talk here, and I appreciate your efforts, I did want to say that I've always believed in volunteer efforts and I worked very hard at that Fox Hospital Hospice, Opportunities for Otsego, the National Soccer Hall of Fame, the Economic Education Council of the state, United Way Red Cross, and so forth. And I've always thought that that was a good service, and you know you get more out of volunteering than than you put out really. Volunteering is good. And then before I close, I want to talk a little bit about station WUOW.
GW: The late WUOW.
AD: All I want to say is that I am eternally grateful, to your efforts in particular, because you were running a station by yourself at one point in time.
GW: It seemed like it.
AD: And, Brian - think so - and Brian Levitz, Mark Simonson. And Rebecca Hully yes. We had good times, I think.
GW: We had great times.
AD: And you engineered us to the point where we had a dish on Crumhorn Mountain. We're getting up to Cooperstown and so forth.
GW: We we expanded far enough so we covered the eastern and central port portion of Otsego county. We didn't really get to Unadilla, but we did have Worcester, Cooperstown, certainly up along Otsego Lake. We covered Oneonta certainly, which is our first our first thing. We went on the air is a low power station thanks to a guy named Bob Kafarski who applied for the license. We went on with 100 watts of power from a tower.
AD: A grant from Senator Seward, at first if I recall. We got a very small grant and we got a bigger one to follow that we, we’re sitting actually where the studios originally were. The tower was up on Job Corps towers doesn't exist any longer and we covered Oneonta and our - one of the things that we attempted to do, and successfully I might add, was to provide emergency services communication. It wasn't long after the floods of 2006, and we bought a really state of the art emergency services system that allowed, for example, I don't remember, Bob Barnes like Bob Barnes, but the Fire Chief back in those days, he could actually pick up the phone, dial a code number, and be on the air and make emergency announcements. Nobody's ever done that before.
AD: I think the county has picked up on that since then.
GW: Yes, yeah, but nobody's ever done that before. Nobody ever had services that were backed up by a generator. If the power goes off for the radio stations, they're off the air. We could stay because they thought far enough ahead to get us this. We expanded with a full-service transmitter. It’s actually on Hooker Mountain in Milton, right next to Crumhorn and with a transmitter here for Oneonta. It was great. It went well, and before I before I tear up, I actually listened to Kitchen Table Conversations archive. The last broadcast that you and I did exists on that page, and it's called the last broadcast.
AD: Yes, it was. Well, actually, we then soldiered on without the station and have done several things since then. Are still doing recordings and so forth.
GW: Thanks to the Greater Oneonta Historical Society for that as well.
AD: Absolutely, have to remember that, and also Janet Potter,
GW: Certainly.
AD: Janet Potter who saw to it that that the kitchen table conversations after 2013 were archived in the library and still are.
GW: And she was a great backer of WUOW
AD: Absolutely yeah, yeah. Incidentally, she was also chair of the board at the Greater Oneonta Historical Society.
GW: She was.
AD: So that was a big help, and then we're still going on. We had a bunch of characters coming in to do things with the station, I think.
GW: It was a true community station.
AD: Mark Drnek.
GW: He had a show, Mark Drnek had a show. There was a young lady that taught in the English department named Jill - I cannot remember her last name - who had a show, did a conversational show. We featured a lot of local talent.
AD: Terry, was it - Terry O’Brien?
GW: Terry, Terry Doyle.
AD: Terry Doyle from WIOX.
GW: Yep, late Terry Doyle, died way too young, had a couple of shows that he did. Doug Decker.
AD: Yeah oh, Doug Decker.
GW: Had a show, yeah ok, so we we had a lot of local folks. We were very fortunate that we were an NPR affiliate, so we got news and some programming from NPR and we also partnered with the Daily Star for local news.
AD: And it could have been run by the department of comm arts, no question.
GW: Very easily, very easily.
AD: Well without mourning too much, it was it's a great loss and it would have been a great window for the community.
GW: I agree because today station would we started this thing, stations were locally owned, the Bettiol family owned WZOZ , I'm sorry WSRK, and WDOS and Jim Baldwin and Jim Johnson owned the other station. And you know it's all part of a big corporation called Town Square Media today operated by you know, somebody who knows where, but not here.
AD: As essentially a nonprofit, we could have very well had a nice venue for everybody.
GW: Yes.
AD: And people people understood that.
GW: Yeah.
AD: And just to mention one item in the archive, I went back to listen to our conversation with Joe Campbell. Yeah, we just had a service here about 10 days ago, so and the fact is that we have a wonderful archive. People we talk with.
GW: and Joe Junior. By the way, Joe Junior and all the grandkids are spitting images of Joe.
AD: Oh are they really? Okay
GW: Yeah, he took all those conversations that that Joe was involved in and and put them on CD's and are available to anybody that wants them. And yes, of course you can go online and listen to the online anyway, but Joe was giving him all the funeral so.
AD: Anyway, it's been a great run. As I say, I salute all the people I talk about, and we're comrades in arms, archived and still walking.
GW: Yes, the evidence is there. I think it it's been great and I'll tell you why: It's been great working for you and working with you over the years.
AD: Well, Thank you, thank you. It's people like you they got the success that we had over the years. Over the 20 years,
GW: You know, I remember when you were announced your retirement as President I we went over and sat in your office and we did an interview, which I don't think that's part of Kitchen Table Conversations, but it it aired on the station right then and and we were very, you know it was great to have that conversation with you, it was it was great being able to work with you all those years.
AD: I’ll end on a little observation. I know that people were crying when I retired, but not always because they [laughter] not always because they were sorry, OK, Gary over and out.
GW: Thank you Alan.
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Creator
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Gary Wickham
