Oral History Program Doris Geide-Stevenson Interviewed by Kandice Harris 25 March 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Doris Geide-Stevenson Interviewed by Kandice Harris 25 March 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Geide-Stevenson, Doris, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 25 March 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Doris Geide-Stevenson 25 March 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Doris Geide-Stevenson, conducted on March 25, 2019 in her office, by Kandice Harris. Doris discusses her life, her memories at Weber State, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Marina Kenner, the video technician, is also present during this interview. KH: The following is an oral history interview conducted with Dr. Doris Geide Stevenson. It is being conducted on March 25, 2019, in Doris’s office, and the interviewer is Kandice Harris. The subject of this interview is Doris’s time spent at Weber State University as the faculty member from 1996 to present. Also present is Marina Kenner, our video technician. When and where were you born? DG: I was born in Germany, and that’s actually the first part of my name, it’s actually pronounced Guy-da, that’s the German part— KH: Oh, I’m sorry! DG: I was born in 1962 in Germany in the Frankfurt area. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? DG: I grew up in the Frankfurt area, I was born in a town called Oberursel. I’m gonna get my bearings, this is weird. KH: Sorry. DG: No, I just… So early childhood, right? Elementary school in Germany, and then high school in Germany, then I went to university in 1981. I started in Würzburg 2 at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität and I studied economics, so I actually have a degree as a Diploma Vaux Verte, it’s kind of a master’s degree from a German university. Early childhood; so my parents, they did not have a university education. They had both finished their schooling after, actually, 9th grade. My parents were a little older, my dad was born in 1921, my mother 1928. She only went to school for 8 years because she got to skip a class, she was very bright. And then because she grew up during the war in Germany, and they were in a small village, they didn’t have the money, and they also didn’t think it was safe for her to go to a big city to go and get more schooling. She basically had the basic school degree for Germany, so did my dad, and he was lucky, he finished an apprenticeship before the war, and was a machinist. KH: Oh nice. DG: Yeah. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? DG: That kind of flows from, you know, my parents’ background was one that they did not have higher education. So, just like many Weber students, I’m actually a first-generation student. I think my mother always regretted that she couldn’t pursue more schooling. So I think this was something – and I don’t even know that she told us explicitly—but I think because we were really aware of her story and like, “I would have loved to get more schooling” you know, and she would tell us stories because after school, there were just weren’t many options. She 3 actually ended up working in a neighboring village, and so it was maybe less than a mile, and she would walk to work and walk back. It was a job to make cigars, to roll cigars, so very boring, repetitious work. She said how she would just cry when she walked to work because she was just so sad, it was just so boring to her. That was, I think, a regret she’s had. I think that influenced both my brother and I—there were two of us—and so both of us really pursued education, higher education. KH: What started your interest in economics? DG: I liked school a lot. I had many interests, and really in some ways I was trying to find something that that was pretty versatile, and also something that that could lead to a job. So I was sort of pragmatic, which I think is pretty typical for first-generation students. But at the same time I didn’t want to go directly into business, I sort of had more broader interests. I liked thinking about big systems, like the economy. So I really tried to figure out how “This seems important, and I don’t quite understand it.” I think I kind of approached it from “I think this is interesting, I think it’s also pragmatic.” In high school, the way German high school works is that actually we do all our gen eds requirements in high school. Once we get out, we’re done. We don’t do general education requirements at university. We go into economics, and then everything that you do pertains to that field. So in high school, the sort of major courses that I had, emphasis areas, were math and English, and those seemed to really relate well to economics. So I was really kind of toying with different ideas. I did, for example, like literature. 4 But I thought, “Well that’s a nice hobby. I’m not going to go in that area.” That was sort of the more pragmatic type of decision that I made. KH: How long was your program at university in Germany? DG: The normal duration was nine semesters, and that’s what I did. But in addition to that, I actually decided to do a study abroad, and so it turned out that the university—Würzburg is in Northern Bavaria—had a really extensive exchange program what the SUNY system—the State University of New York—and through that relationship they were actually able to send about sixty students each year to one of the many SUNY campuses. So I had this in the back of my head. And you know, I don’t know why, but I’d never really been in the United States, and I wanted to study in the United States. I think this was probably influenced through my mother’s stories. Because she, like I said, I grew up in a small village during the war, and they were sort of geographically lucky because they were in the American sector. So she had all these stories about American soldiers coming through their village. I think the amazing thing to them was that, you know at the time, in the small village, there were no men in the house. My grandfather was off, he was older, he was not a soldier, he was a work detail at that point. There were two aunts there with my grandmother, and then her sister and then my mother, so there were five women in the house. So potentially that’s scary, right? You have all these soldiers coming in, and they’d take over and they, I mean, they were everywhere. But in a way, they had such positive experiences there. Actually that’s very typical that there is this very very positive image of the United States right after the war, so that had fascinated her. She 5 had met people, and then I think in a way, she was always wanting to get more education. She really would have liked to travel more. But, I think by her talking about it, in some ways, my brother and I ended up doing stuff that she really wanted to do. I think that’s kind of how it worked out. So the question that you started asking was what? KH: How long was the program? DG: The program, see, I’m now getting into it, right, so I knew that this would happen. Nine semesters would have been the regular time to study, but then in between I did, because of the sort of background story, I had sort of this desire to go abroad and I went to a SUNY campus. I went to SUNY Oneonta which is right between Albany and Binghamton. KH: Okay. DG: In some ways that’s also why I ended up here, because that’s where I ended up meeting my husband. KH: Oh, okay! DG: Yeah. KH: Okay. Outside of your master’s degree, what other degrees or certificates do you have? DG: That’s it. I have that master’s degree from Germany, and then I did that year at SUNY Oneonta. When I was done with my diploma, Diploma Vaux Verte which was the German degree, I went into a Ph.D. program, basically, at SUNY Buffalo. 6 KH: Okay. DG: At that point, in my mind I didn’t start a Ph.D. program. I just thought, “Oh, I’ll just do the first year of a Ph.D. program, I get a master’s degree in the U.S. because then people will know what it is.” It’s always a little hard to get degrees accepted internationally. But after the first year, which I did again as an exchange student from my university—so I didn’t pay tuition—I basically got this degree, the master’s degree in a year. But then they said, “Well, you did the Ph.D. courses, you did really well. If you want to stay, we’ll give you a teaching assistantship.” And so I basically stayed in the Ph.D. program at SUNY Buffalo. And then I got a Ph.D. in economics from there. KH: Okay. What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? DG: The German system is very different, it trains you in a different way. We have no credits that we accrue, if you don’t do your final exams you literally don’t have anything. But everybody knew that, everybody was in the same boat. So it’s like, okay, you just buckle down your last year. You have to take those five big exams, you have to write a thesis, and then that comprises your degree. It’s really those final exams. On the way there, of course, you did have to take some other exams, and we had to get something called a pre-diploma. But basically those final exams were maybe a year’s worth or two years’ worth of material. And so it was a very comprehensive type of exam. Really high stakes. 7 You would walk into the exam room, there would be all these little desks pretty separated, and then you would get an essay topic, and you didn’t know, it could be anything from like the last two years, and then you’d have to write an essay for two hours. That’s kind of what I did before I started the Ph.D. program, so when I started my first class and we took the first exam after six weeks, some of my classmates in the U.S., in Buffalo, they said “You don’t seem nervous,” and I said, “It’s six weeks of material, I can’t really be nervous about this, because I just took these big exams in Germany. It’s really fine, I think I got this.” And they were really like, “Wow! We are new to a Ph.D. program.” That was hard, but everybody did it in Germany. The exams, the classes I was fine with. But I was one of those students, when I had to come up with my dissertation topic, and then really think about what to do for my own research, that seemed really challenging. That’s where I sort of like, “Oh, okay, how to do that?” I think that was hard, and then also you know in retrospect if I’m kind of comparing with some other colleagues, I don’t think that I had a particularly good advisor. I don’t think the advisor was really helpful and so I ended up actually really coming up with my own research agenda, and that wasn’t his research agenda. I actually did not draw on his research at all In the end I didn’t allow him to put his name on the paper, because I came up with it—it really was my paper. But I feel that I didn’t get the mentoring or the help that some other people did get. But you don’t know that, you’ve never done it, and you don’t have good comparisons. So really that dissertation phase was challenging. Yeah. KH: What was the topic of your dissertation? 8 DG: I started my master’s study in Germany in 1981. I was done in 1987, and then I started the Ph.D. program right after that. I think I did my classes in the late 80’s, and then I would have had to start thinking about, “Okay, what am I going to do for my dissertation?” In the late 80’s, early 90’s. I’m just bringing up the time because, historically, in terms of what was going on, was that the European Union was going through this enlargement, and through this creation of a single market. So what you had going on at that time was that there was this idea that the European Union would become a closer and closer entity, and move sort of from a kind of a free-trade area to an area that started to have its own currency, that had more political unity, and so there was all of that stuff that was starting at that time. I ended up writing my dissertation about situations where you have two countries that start out not having economic transactions, but then you open up the countries and you allow this free mobility of labor, or free mobility of capital, and then kind of explore what that does. And so what economists do is we build models of economies, and then we kind of think through. That’s one way of doing it. We kind of simulate what happens if you open it up. People react to incentives, people want to maximize their utility, or they want to maximize their income, and then what happens if you allow this mobility. So I wrote about what this idea of oh, the European Union is kind of moving towards this closer union, the single market, not just for trade, but also for people, people could move freely. So that was sort of the general topic of my dissertation. KH: Okay. What were your career options once you had your degree? 9 DG: I think my career options in Germany would definitely have been to go into industry. Most people actually got jobs after the diploma, and they went to work for banks, maybe. Quite a few people did that, or they worked in industry— maybe in marketing, purchasing. I mean really it was pretty versatile of a degree. So I could’ve done that. I didn’t say this earlier, when I decided what to study, what I probably would have liked to go into more than economics was actually I would have liked to get a degree as a teacher. In Germany you need a master’s degree and then deal with pedagogy. Basically that was what I thought from when I was little, that I would be a teacher. The situation when I had to decide on a degree in terms of teachers, was that people would talk about a flood of teachers entering the market. So there was this idea of “There’s a flood of teachers,” and there are too many teachers, and they can’t all find jobs. So I thought I wouldn’t go down that path, that that was too narrow. That’s really that’s the other thing with economics, that in some ways I could’ve made some maybe sort of a turn and become a teacher there. So the option was go into industry, become a teacher, or basically continue and then stay in academia. And in a way that’s what I ended up doing, but in the U.S. So, I mean economics really is pretty versatile in terms of options. And then I made my way back towards being a teacher actually, but being at the university. So it worked out great. KH: What mentors or resources did you have while you were in your program? DG: In Germany, you’re pretty much on your own. It’s a very different system, you just fight, you just fend for yourself. So we don’t pay tuition. You can start, but then 10 it’s pretty clear that the first year, the exams are really designed to weed people out, you know it’s not like, “Oh, I’m going to help you persist,” no, “We let you in, and it’s on you to show us that you can do it.” And so, in a way, you really do learn things from people like maybe just one year ahead. There were a couple of professors, but they had such large classes and they’re really not as close to the students. There were some professors that I really liked. One of them was actually the person who became the Chief Economist for the European Central Bank. His name is Dondo Atma Ising. There were certainly people that I thought very highly of, and that I liked, but I wouldn’t really call them a mentor. I mean it was even to the point where the way we would actually write our thesis, there’s this little office—it was called the examination office—and they had this little box this, and basically they had little slips of papers in there. When you were ready to write your thesis you would go there and pull out two little slips of papers and they had two topics, and on the spot you had to decide which one to take. So you’re like, “Okay.” I was lucky, one of the topics was with a professor that I really liked, and one I actually didn’t even know exactly what the topic was. So I kind of felt like, “Okay, it’s pretty clear I need to do this topic,” but then when I had one question. I thought, “Oh, how do I set this up?” And they wouldn’t answer my question. They’re like, “You’re really on your own.” So in terms of mentoring, that just wasn’t the mindset in the German program. Then in the Ph.D. program, there I mean, you obviously had an advisor, there were a couple of younger faculty at the time, like assistant professors, and so they were sort of a role model, a little bit. Some of them not—some of them 11 were really helpful. Like I already said, I don’t think my advisor was particularly helpful. KH: While you were at university in Germany, do you have one chance to pass the exam and you’re out, or do you have multiple chances, just no help? DG: You do have multiple chances. So people redo exams, but it’s sort of like you go, you’re responsible to figure out what it is you need, and then you can go take the exam. So you do have multiple chances. But if you don’t take the exam in the end, if you don’t pass, you have no degree, and actually that’s how you apply to jobs. You’re back to square one. So you might have learned stuff that is helpful to you, but in terms of starting a career, you have to really do some training to kind of get credentials. You really don’t have anything even if you studied for maybe three years, and then stopped or whatever. KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? DG: After I finished my Ph.D., I did that fairly slowly, I kind of slowed it down because my daughter was born in 1993, my first, my oldest daughter. I basically kind of slowed it down and like, “I’m still writing my dissertation here, but I’m not going to go to the job market this year,” which I could have done maybe without that, I just slowed it down a little bit. At the time the job market wasn’t that great. So there is sort of this, “What is the economic situation like when you actually graduate?” Which you can’t influence, so there’s really this element of luck. I saw this because when I first went on the job market, or just sent out applications, which I’m like, “No, I’m going to not look for a job this year, because I’m going to deal 12 with the baby for a year.” It was actually very easy to get lots of interviews, and there were lots of job openings, and then things kind of slowed down. There was a recession in the early early 90’s. I’m trying to think how that worked out, but the job market got worse. It was sort of like, “Okay, this is a little harder than I thought to find a job.” The other thing that I found in terms of maybe a bit of a challenge or barrier was that coming from the German system, I didn’t really know the U.S. higher education system well at the time. So in a way, I had to get a sense of, “These are good schools for you to apply to.” Again, there was no good mentoring from the Ph.D. program. They didn’t sit us down and say, “Here’s how you go about it.” We had somebody who was called a “placement officer” who was supposed to help us, but he didn’t help us until pretty late where you had already an interview. You were waiting and he’s like, “Oh, maybe I could call and see and find out what’s happening,” but they weren’t really helping us in terms of, “Here’s how you put your materials together, these are really good schools for you to consider, because this is where our program is, this is where you can probably get a job,” there was none of that. I felt like this was trial-and-error for me to figure this out. That was definitely something. That process was a lot of you just had to do it a few times to figure things out. That probably could have gone better with some mentoring from the Ph.D. program. Then once I had the job, I really did think - this is probably another question - but I think it was sort of like, “Okay, I understand what I have to do.” I’d say that was probably kind of a barrier, not particularly good mentoring there. 13 KH: What positions have you held in your career? DG: It took me a while to find a tenure track job. I did actually have visiting positions around the Buffalo area, that’s where I graduated, and I did actually get a visiting position at SUNY Buffalo. So my own department actually hired me for a year, which they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t think, “You did a good job,” so that was good. I did have a couple of other one-year positions. I think for a while we did try to stay in that area, to basically find a job there, so I did have various visiting assistant professor positions, which I think was good because like I said, it’s not like I planned it that way. But it kind of made me realize how varied institutions of higher education are in the U.S. We don’t have it like that in Germany. There is hardly any private universities, at least when I went through. They’re still not the same type of thousands and thousands of different colleges, some really small, some really large, undergraduate, Ph.D.-granting. There’s just this whole landscape that I basically learned about a little bit more because I was a visiting professor at a small Jesuit college, and then another smaller liberal arts college in Rochester, and then my own university. So that kind of helped me understand more what the U.S. higher education system was like. So I had that, and then I came to Weber State and started as an assistant professor, associate professor, and then now professor. I’ve been here for over twenty years. For that time I was department chair of economics for nine years, so I had three terms as department chair. Then after that, I was on the faculty 14 senate and I have had actually three terms, I’m in my third term as faculty senate chair. They are one-year terms, but I have been re-elected. KH: What drew you to Weber State? DG: Well, they offered me a job, so that was good! I did have a choice, though. I did actually interview with another university, so I did have a choice in terms of, “Okay, I have another offer.” But comparing, I think what really drew me to Weber State, and I had no idea, I just had no idea—I did my degree in upstate New York, kind of was more familiar with East Coast. My husband is actually from upstate New York—so we didn’t know anything about Utah. So when I came, I didn’t really think—you know you kind of go, “Oh, let me just see what this is all about.” This is pretty involved, the whole interview process as a professor is pretty involved. I had my first interview at - we have the national meetings and I think it was in San Francisco. So you meet and you just have a twenty-minute, maybe thirty, forty-minute interview with a whole bunch of people, and then they decide based on interviewing maybe twenty, thirty people to bring a couple of people to campus. They invited me here and actually I was here for probably three days, and I think the department realized, “People may not know anything about Utah, so they have to get to know the area a little bit.” So it’s not just getting to know the department and the university, but also “What would it be like to live here.” And so I think, what the department at the time did a really good job with as saying, “Well, we realize you come here as a person, not just as an employee, and we really want to show you what it’s like to live here.” I found that very impressive. 15 They did a really good job, and I had done this enough that I could tell. Some departments really had their act together in terms of getting things organized, getting you invited, making things move quickly, because if you can’t make decisions quickly, then you lose job candidates. So I really was impressed with the department. That was actually a contrast to the other university that I had interviewed with. So I basically said, “Well, I think this Utah thing could really work out!” Kind of surprising, you know, like “I’m surprised myself here,” because I had no real expectations. But in the end, the department was really great. I thought, “Oh, they’re going to push you, but they are also going to support you, and it seems like it’s a nice bunch of people.” I liked that. KH: What was Weber State like when you started? DG: I know much more about the University now because I’m on Faculty Senate, and I really see the University from different angles. At the time, of course, what’s really important to you is your own department. I thought Weber State was lots of different things to different people because of where they were housed. The Economics Department, when I came, it wasn’t actually the Goddard School yet, it was just the College of Business and Economics, it wasn’t named. There’s lots of naming that happened after I came. The building was the same, other buildings of course were really very different, so the campus, the physical appearance was different. Still really gorgeous setting, but maybe not quite as pretty as it is now; lots of stuff has happened. In terms of the atmosphere, the Econ Department was sort of the intellectual center of the College of Business and Economics. At the time that was a requirement that fifty percent of the faculty 16 had to do a certain amount of research that came with our accreditation, and the Econ Department carried a lot of the weight in terms of that. In terms of the culture of the Economics Department, it was really known as being one of the top departments on campus, so people were like, “Oh, you have to get tenure there? Yeah.” To me, that was a good thing to have this culture because everybody was working hard. It wasn’t like, “Oh, you just have to do this, we don’t do this anymore,” no, it wasn’t like that at all. It was like, we’re all doing research, and we push each other. We also have this ability to have really good conversations in the hallway, both about research and teaching. I felt we had a very intellectually, pretty vibrant atmosphere in the Econ Department, but I didn’t realize that this wasn’t the case in all parts of the University. Even now - some colleges have come quite a long way - this idea that you do research, and that you are really a faculty member that engages in teaching, scholarship, and service; where you have this portfolio of tasks. That I think, was not as clear in other places. There’s different cultures in different departments, and I want to say that over time, Weber State has kind of converged to what the Econ Department has been for probably at least three or four decades. It’s like, “Hey, Weber State has kind of caught up to us.” There you have it. Well they’re still trying, but no. That’s where you start cutting stuff, I’m just saying. I didn’t want to do that. KH: That’s okay, there’s nothing wrong about being proud about your department. DG: No. 17 KH: What is the process to becoming a department chair? DG: The way it works is that there are three-year terms, when the term is up for someone then really anybody can put their hat in the ring, so to speak. Then there is a ballot, and the department, all faculty, decide, is it a yea or a nay, and “Is this person acceptable?” That’s actually the language of the policy. And then if you get, I think it’s two-thirds, support then the dean can decide among those people who are acceptable to the department who will be department chair. That’s the process. I became chair when the former department chair moved into the position of associate dean. The chair before me was Cliff Nowell. That’s the process. KH: What type of things would you do as department chair? DG: The things you have to do: you have to schedule classes. You have to schedule full-time faculty - so tenured, tenure-track instructors, and also find adjuncts to round out the course offerings. That’s kind of a big deal. Hiring adjuncts, that’s all on the department chair. Also hiring faculty. You don’t do that alone, you form a search committee, but de facto, the department chair is the chair of the search committee. When I came we had a very stable department, so we wouldn’t do a lot of hiring for the first years that I was there, but then our department started to turn over in terms of retirements. During the nine years that I was department chair, I replaced two thirds of the department. We just did lots, when I say “I,” it is as a chair of a search committee, so I didn’t do this single-handedly, obviously. The whole department 18 was engaged very, very heavily in terms of actually hiring. This is a big deal because economists are very organized with their job market, that’s kind of what we study, so that’s what we do. There’s a very streamlined way to apply, it’s all kind of centralized and so, in Econ, for a position, you easily get 200 applications. So every time you hire for a position, you have to screen those applications. Some years we have had two open positions, and we would get 400 applications. For some time, this fell heavily on lots of people in the Department. That was just a big, big job to go through the hiring process, and to bring in new people. You definitely make the scheduling - scheduling has to do with your curriculum - do we need to make changes to curriculum, and then hiring and reviewing faculty. When I started, we didn’t do any reviews of faculty, which as a chair, is like, “Thank gosh I don’t have to do that,” because it’s really not that much fun. Then over the years the administrative work on department chairs has definitely increased. Now you must do annual review, write a letter for your faculty every single year, that’s just what you do every year. Then you also have faculty go through the rank of tenure process. I was actually full professor when I started which I think is ideal, so I was done with the rank and tenure process myself. But then you have to mentor the junior faculty. I would go out, “This is the path,” I would talk about the requirements, and really think about each person in the department in terms of, “What does their teaching look like, where do they need to put their effort, what do they really need to do to be successful in the rank and tenure process?” There’s all of that. 19 Then you have to deal with the crotchety senior faculty who have actually a history in the department which you don’t realize as when you come in, and you’re like, “Wow, you have twenty years of grievances! I don’t know that I can fix that.” But it becomes your job all of a sudden. That’s what you deal with as a department chair. The big thing that happened while I was department chair is that—maybe I became department chair in 2007. Things were pretty stable still that first year, and I also had a very good transition because the former department chair was very helpful. It wasn’t like I was thrown in and didn’t have any help. That was kind of, “Okay, I’m doing this” the first year, but then in the second year we started to plan for—this came through the previous chair and the dean at the time—a program where we would bring in international students to the economics department. The economics department partnered with Shanghai Normal University to bring in students after two years of study there to finish their degree here. Actually, after two years they were supposed to get a degree both from Shanghai Normal and from Weber State. The first students came in fall 2009. The other tasks that I described, they obviously are still there, but then we kind of started to really get more students, and we had to figure out how to get those students graduated who needed all these classes transferred from another university; we had to make a lot of these transfer articulations. This was sort of a collaboration between the dean’s office at the time, but then also lots of staff did transfer articulations, our advising office. This was really a big job to figure out how to get them graduated. But that was one of the 20 successes, actually, that first cohort of students that came from Shanghai Normal. Out of the twenty that came, everybody who wanted to graduate at two years actually was able to do so and twelve out of the twenty graduated after two years with a dual degree. This was sort of like going through their transcript with a fine-tooth comb, and saying, “This one’s still missing, this one; this one, how do we do that,” make sure that really they could finish all their requirements at Weber State in those two years. That was a really big thing. The group of people who did that, also collaboration with the International Office at the time, that was a collaborative, it’s one award that the university awards every year. That was a collaborative project or collaboration award, I’m not exactly sure what the naming is, but that was kind of attached to that. KH: How has the economics program changed over time? DG: The most noticeable change is not so much in curriculum, that’s actually fairly stable. There have been some changes. Probably the biggest change since I’ve been here is that we’ve added a capstone research project. Every single major actually does a thesis. They pick their own topic, they do a research methods class, and it ends with a paper and a poster presentation on a topic of their choice. Kind of applying the scientific method to a topic of their choice. We didn’t have that when I came, but that was started just a few years after I came. Actually I think we started in 2004 that was a few years after I came, so that’s kind of a big change. We then added a one credit hour class to kind of help with preparing for that, to find a topic, because one semester was really scary for students to finish that. In terms of curriculum, I think that was the biggest change 21 that we’ve had. In terms of the basic structure, things have stayed pretty stable that way. We’ve had lots of turnover, so the econ department has really gone from a pretty top-heavy, lots of people in a professor rank to a very young department. In that sense, lots of energy from that turnover. We were able to hire excellent people, so that’s all worked out great. The other thing, the econ department was always the more diverse department in the Goddard School. At one point when I was chair we had fifty percent women and fifty percent international, so really a very diverse department, especially compared to what the Goddard School looked like then at the time. So started out with more diversity, but then built on that. Curriculum, personnel, and then the students. A major change was this two plus two program. That really hit us because we were almost too successful for the two plus two program, and what that did is that sometimes we would have classes that—the students would kind of spread out. It’s a big university, and when it came to Gen Ed, they could find classes and kind of blend in, because Weber State does not have a lot of international students. It’s less than two percent, it’s just not a big percentage. But in the econ department it was at one point maybe ninety percent, so we would have classes that would get really big. So we would have to then start to offer our required upper-level classes a couple of times a year, which we thought was good, because it would benefit the domestic students because now our scheduling allows students to be more flexible and not say, “Oh, missed that class,” or “Didn’t pass this class, I have to wait a whole year to do that class.” So we were able to add more upper-level of the required, and then also some of the electives, 22 just offer them more frequently. Then our classes changed substantially. I think I had one class I had thirty-seven students and three of them were U.S. students, then the rest was from China, from Shanghai Normal. Then we had actually started also a two plus two with another university in South Korea, with Eunji Tax and Accounting College, and so we had just this massive amount of international students going through the program. That changed the class dynamics, what pedagogy are you using. That was really a big change. This has sort of changed, we have now been more deliberate, but we need to really work on trying to mix up our majors more, and I think this has happened. That’s the major changes really in that sense. KH: You mentioned the demographic of the faculty when you were chair. What was it like when you started? DG: I think there was just one woman in at the time. There was a colleague from China, and then there was John Mbaku, who grew up in Africa. As far as econ departments go in the mid-90’s that was actually fairly diverse. The woman who was there when I started left. But then we did hire more women, and also people, like I said, from other countries. KH: What committees or organizations, either on campus or otherwise, are you a part of? DG: I have actually always been engaged with faculty governance, so I’ve pretty much always been on a Faculty Senate committee. As a junior faculty I kind of got in, and then pretty early on I got to chair a couple of those committees. In 23 terms of organizations, it’s probably more campus-oriented, then you are just sort of part of professional organizations but that’s just to keep abreast of developments in your own field, the American Economic Association. Where I really focused is service on campus with Faculty Senate, with Faculty Senate committees, and now of course as chair. I have been a member of quite a few search committees. I was on the search committee for the provost for Madonne Miner, I was on the presidential search committee just recently, I have been on at least three Dean search committees. I have been really involved with academic affairs, and how does this thing shape through bringing in new people. KH: What is the process to becoming the Faculty Senate chair? DG: Each college actually has elections for Faculty Senate. We determine based on how many faculty each college has. There is a process called apportionment, that’s actually the Faculty Senate Committee that has that job and some other jobs that deals with constitution and apportionment. So we basically count up faculty, and then apportion the thirty-nine seats. Arts and Humanities, that tends to be the largest one, let’s say they get eight. Business and Economics is the smallest one, we get three. So you have Faculty Senate, and Faculty Senate is made up of the faculty from the different colleges, but it’s also made up of administrators. There is a total of fifty-two administrators, plus faculty, and then we also have four students on the Senate, and they’re voting members. The administrators don’t get to vote, the students do get to vote. Once you have the Faculty Senate, then out of the senators, the thirty-nine faculty senators, there is a faculty-wide vote for executive committee. Then there’s a Faculty Senate 24 Executive Committee that gets voted on from those senators, that is nine people, and we have to have one person from each unit, from each college, including the library. And then, once you have Executive Committee, then Senate votes on chair and vice-chair. So that’s sort of the process. KH: What are the responsibilities of the chair? DG: The responsibilities of the Senate at large is really to be a voice for all of the faculty, and then to advise the president in terms of academic policies. There is a constitution and so Faculty Senate has the right to make policy in certain areas, like curriculum, and admissions standards for example, and then advises on others - budget, like, we have no power over the money, right? There’s a Salary Committee that makes a recommendation, but curriculum committee comes up and we vote on curriculum in general, and that goes to the Board of Trustees from the Senate. The chair was all of that, so there is lots going on. There are eleven standing committees. The Executive Committee actually staffs all these committees at work, and that happens next week for next year, and for next year we have a different chair. I’m going to stay vice-chair because we don’t have a good structure in terms of transitions so we’re doing it that way this year; so I’m transitioning out. As a chair, you have to organize all the meetings. You set the agenda. Setting the agenda really means that I work with the administrative assistant in Faculty Senate who actually got hired while I was chair. So that was another search, training, and kind of shaping the position, that’s a chair job. The other job is then to set the agenda, make sure that we’re doing the things we have to do. In terms of the 25 things we have to do, we have to nominate people for certain committees, and if we don’t, it’s kind of a problem. As an example, there is a faculty Board of Review. That’s one of the, like I said—it’s technically a standing committee. That gets the nominations of people that then get also voted by the Faculty Senate and if there’s a review process, if there is a grievance procedure, we need to make sure that body is there. There is a timeliness issue of, “Make sure that all the things where we have to staff, that that happens,” and that’s a chair job. I should actually write this down for the new chair, as I think about it, because that’s what we’re doing, we’re just handing off now. So there is this, “Okay, go through the agenda, see what happens each year, and then make sure this happens,” and we have the people, and you need to prepare to make sure. Then you pull the agenda together each month from the various committee meetings. Curriculum is a big one. When I started, we didn’t have a chair for the Curriculum Committee, we found one who was really good, John Cabot. We’ve had so much new curriculum. Not just the econ department, but really all the University. We had some massive retirements after there was an incentive package, so we have lots of new faculty, and there’s lots of energy and just lots of new curriculum happening. Right now, there are two departments they are completely redone, everything, they are back every month like, “We’ll be back, because we’re redoing everything.” So geosciences and also music. You think, “Academia is pretty stayed sometimes,” but there are pockets there is just lots of energy, and they’re redoing everything. Music and geosciences, it’s like, “Oh! There you are again, back with your curriculum, redoing everything.” It’s sort 26 of putting that stuff on the agenda that comes from those standing committees, where are we with the process because we do make PPM, policies and procedures manual, changes. We have had a couple big ones. There is a committee that deals with Academic Freedom, Promotion and Tenure, and they redid our early tenure policy. They do, “Here, let us tell you what we’re thinking,” they go to lots of different other people, they go to Dean’s Council before it becomes policy. It’s a little bit like keeping track of legislation sometimes. It’s sort of like, I don’t do any of those things in particular, but I have to be familiar with all of them, see where they’re at, and then I chair the Faculty Senate meetings. So there’s a debate, then I have to understand what the issues are so I know what people are saying about it. You are also representing faculty on President’s Council, so I go to President’s Council, I go to Dean’s Council, I go to the Student Success Steering Committee, academic planning, task force. It’s really kind of hard because over the last three years, actually a little longer because I represented Faculty Senate for another year on Dean’s Council, because there were conflicts with the other people. I’ve been really involved in a lot of what goes on with the University. It’s been really interesting. KH: Sounds like it. DG: Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed it! KH: What topics have you written about? DG: I mentioned when I started with my dissertation that it had to do with trade and movement of labor, and basically how does it affect countries when you allow 27 more trade and migration. I’ve done things in that area that came from my dissertation. The department has done sort of a project where they looked at, “What do economists think? Where do we agree and where do we disagree?” They had this whole project on consensus. They have invited me in on this project, so I have worked on some of those papers. I’ve done papers on pedagogy. Most recently I actually did one that had to do with the English skills of our international students and how that impacted their performance. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? DG: In 2018, maybe 2017, I got the Hinckley Fellow Award. That is a pretty prestigious award for a faculty on campus. There were a couple of these collaborative, it’s the Exemplary Collaboration Award, we got that for the international program, and then also for the MBA program which was founded in 2002. I’ve taught in that program since its inception. There were these collaborative awards, a couple of those. There’s actually one, it’s up there, it’s called the Rock Star Award. This is a completely made-up award, this is when I was on Faculty Senate the first time. I actually really like this one. I was on the Executive Committee then, that was back in 2009-2010, and for the first time there was actually a program that was supposed to be discontinued. The dean and the department chair, they wanted to discontinue mechanical engineering. That would have meant that also one faculty would have been let go. There is a process in the policy, such as Faculty Senate gets involved in all these things that have to happen, and they have to happen really fast. Basically, we got hit with that in April of the academic year when everybody is 28 scrambling just to finish up the semester. We went through this big process, it just hadn’t been done. We had a policy, but it hadn’t really been played out. It worked out that I had to chair this committee, the Faculty Senate Chair actually couldn’t chair, that was in the policy, it had to be somebody else from the Executive Committee, and I think I was the only full professor in the room when we decided who should do it, so it was like, “Oh, you have to do this.” That was a big scramble for a few weeks, but we kind of worked it out, and based on that, the policy got changed. It was really just pulling it all together and figuring out, “What are we doing with this?” So I’m kind of proud of this one. The other one, this is also a whimsical one, is from the MBA students. They think my course is maybe the hardest, maybe one of the two or three hardest courses they take, and the very first year, the very first cohort of MBA students—there is a concept, it’s how we measure prices in the macro economy, it’s called the GDP deflator, it’s essentially a measure of overall price levels in the economy. They gave me the GDP Ego Deflator Award because they were all cocky, first, “We’re all in this MBA program, we’re doing it,” and they came to my class, and they were like, “Okay, this is hard! We learned a lot, but it was hard.” I thought that was really funny. I really like that. The Ego Deflator Award. That was cool. KH: What type of courses do you teach or have you taught? DG: I teach a lot of the macroeconomics courses that have to do with the overall health of the economy, like “Are we going through a recession, a downturn, or are things looking up?” Actually when I came, I taught a lot of the principles 29 courses. In the beginning I knew almost all the graduates because I taught so many of the Principles of Macroeconomics courses, Econ 2020. I knew almost all the students graduating, which was kind of nice. Then as chair, I didn’t teach those lower-level classes. I moved into the upper-level, International Finance, I did Money and Banking for a long time, my colleague does that now, and then the research methods class, I would take groups of that. That was pretty tough sometimes because when we had all these international students come, we would team-teach the class. Instead of having twelve students in the class - there was maybe two people, or fifteen—we all of a sudden had thirty-seven, or like thirty or thirty-four, and then everybody had to manage the seventeen individual projects, those are pretty tough semesters. We don’t have the groups that large anymore. Then the MBA Global Macroeconomics course I taught almost every semester. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? DG: I think this is part of what you do as a department chair because you have to evaluate the junior faculty, but you also have to convey what they need to work on, and also support them. So in that sense I have tried to think, “Okay, what can we do to support?” In that sense, I think I have been a mentor in my role as department chair. Sometimes also saying, “Well, maybe you should go talk to other people who don’t need to evaluate you.” Part of that would also have been pointing them to other people and encouraging practices that would help junior faculty. We’ve had some of the junior faculty go to each other’s class, just to see, “What do you do, how do you teach?” I thought that was really great, and then 30 say, “Oh, that’s wonderful, go do it.” Sometimes we have had visiting faculty who are looking for jobs elsewhere, so try to be a good support to them, in terms of writing letters of recommendation, to interviewing or giving reference, background for them to try and help them. Sometimes actually tell them, “Yeah, you’re a visitor here, but you didn’t get the job, let me tell you why.” That goes maybe a little far, but “Let me tell you what you could do to be more successful in your job search.” It’s having those conversations. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? DG: Econ’s kind of gotten a lot of bad press in terms of the role of women. There has actually been an undergraduate, she might have been at Stanford University, she did kind of a linguistic analysis of these blogs. I would have to look up the details, but not very nice language when it came to women. There is a sense now that really women have actually not progressed. You think, “Oh, we’ve made consistent progress,” and really, no. Econ is maybe just a third of, they call it the “leaky pipeline.” Even if women start, they may not stick, or get to full professor ranks. So econ has not been great, I guess, as a profession for women. Actually Buffalo didn’t have a single woman on the faculty when I left, and then for even I don’t even know, they have just been one of those departments where, try zero percent of women. In terms of professors, I didn’t have a role model there. We’ve had fifty percent, so in terms of departments, look at the composition of the department, because I think it does make a difference of what people think and who they want to hire. Retrospectively, I have had the chance to meet women 31 who interviewed in Buffalo where I was a graduate student, and they were like, “Yeah, that was weird, and I didn’t want to be the first woman there.” It was like, “I didn’t want to take that position.” So you go, you interview, and you’re like, “I don’t think so. I don’t think I want to work there.” If you like the field, and I think there is lots to like about economics as a field, look at the composition of the departments and see if the department reflects who you are in a little way, not totally, but take that into consideration so that you know you have a role model. KH: What mentors and resources have you had in your career? DG: Probably from the department. There was a faculty member, he is really well-known across campus, and he is known to be the outspoken, a little crusty, Richard Alston, but in terms of teaching, when I had any kind of trouble, I would be able to go and say, “Here’s what happened.” Then you would really feel like, “Okay, you can talk this through.” Sometimes, I think it was with a cheating incident, it somehow involved a student that was also in his class and somehow attached to me, and like, “You want me to deal with this, right?” I’m like, “Yup. I want you to deal with it.” So he was a role model, he was a mentor, but also just little stuff where you have an empty department office, the admin person wasn’t there, student walks in, he’s in there, and he said, “Can I help you?” It was just this sort of, “You always stop whatever it is you’re doing, there’s a student who needs help, that’s what we do.” That’s this Weber State ethos that you kind of absorb. I remember those little things. I think it’s actually those little things of what you do, every day, in terms of how you interact with students, that really shapes 32 the value in what Weber State does. I feel like I did have that in the department with him, but also with the person who was chair when I came in, and the dean, also, Mike Vaughan, who became Provost. At the time also there was Kathleen Lukken, it felt like if you looked at the chain of command, it was like, “These are all people that I admire, whose values I admire, and whose integrity I do not question in any way.” That was sort of like, “Wow, this is a great line-up.” Really, in terms of the whole structure, I was just very impressed, I was just so impressed that a person in the Provost’s office, I think Kathleen Lukken was Interim Provost for a while when I did some things, she would be right there, and just communicate back, and I’m like, “Oh, she actually answers my e-mails! That’s pretty impressive!” It was, “Oh, let me figure out how I can help you accomplish this thing.” That was hard to do with international stuff, Weber State hadn’t done—it was earlier, it was an exchange program, which there’s a lot, “Let me just pull all the people together to figure this out,” and then there were ten people in the room and you’re like, “It takes that many people to do this?” And she’s like, “This is the person who would assign the ID number to the student,” and I’m like, “Oh, there’s a person who does that.” You just learn about the University, but you have somebody who’s like, “I get what you want to do, but I also get what it takes, and let me help you do that.” I felt that Weber State was the place that had people who would help you with that, which I don’t think is necessarily always the case. I had a lot of high regard for people who were in administrative positions, and found that the mentorship was really from all those places. I’m like, “How do I 33 do service?” And it’s like, “Do a good job, and it will all happen.” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that’s how it works!” I felt Weber State was very good, and I also thought that Weber State wouldn’t be frivolous in terms of giving away money, but if you had a good project you could find money to do things. I always thought, “It’s well-rounded financially.” It’s not like it’s just being thrown around, no. You have to kind of fight for it a little bit. But if you want to do something, you can find money to do things. That’s always the sense I had. Of course, I know, I’m in a business school, maybe other people don’t feel quite that way, but that’s how it was. They’re just like, “Yeah, go do it! We’ll help you.” KH: You mentioned the two by two program, is that what you called it? DG: Mhmm. Two plus two. KH: Two plus two. Was that program started in the economics department, was it the college itself, or…? DG: It was actually the “Two Plus Two Program in International Economics.” It’s actually one of our—what used to be emphasis areas—now we just have different major paths. So we had these Two Plus Two students come from Shanghai Normal. They would have done two years of study there. Then we looked at our curriculum. International Economics was the most flexible, in terms of curriculum. The least credit hours because when they come, they still have to round out their gen ed, so there are lots of agreements in terms of, “What do we do with gen ed,” and then, “Oh, you did calculus here, so we’ll accept this for our business calculus class; you’ve done micro, you’ve done macroeconomics, we 34 accept those,” so we would have to transfer in all these individual classes and slot them into Cattracks, and then say, “Okay, this is what you still have to do.” Obviously they all would have to do American Institutions, because there is no way they would have done that, but they would have gotten six credits for Humanities for a study abroad because they studied in another country, so there are lots and lots of these agreements. KH: How was the program started? DG: It actually started with the former chair Cliff Nowell and his wife, Lora Anderson going to China, going to Shanghai, and teaching there for the summer. They did this for many years and got to know the administrators at Shanghai Normal. Then they started to sort of think about this Two Plus Two option. This is actually fairly common, quite a lot of universities do that, I think. Because Cliff and Lora went over there for many years, early on was when this started—we were fairly early with the Two Plus Two program, so that’s how it got started. So Cliff was department chair, then he was Associate Dean, then he worked with the person who was dean at the time, that was Lewis Gale, because there is a cooperation agreement, it’s a contract, University Legal Counsel needs to sign off on it, then there’s all this detailed curriculum stuff. I was really involved with this detailed, curricular stuff to just really make it happen, make sure that they could graduate. It is truly one of those “Exemplary Collaboration” examples because it takes the Department working really closely with the dean’s office, with staff in the school, with faculty, and then with other entities on campus like the International Office, Transfer Office, Admissions, all of that needs to work together to make it happen. 35 KH: What year was the program started? DG: In 2009. KH: Okay. DG: That’s when we had the first students come. Fall 2009 we had about twenty students come. Yep. A couple of those actually were at the International Banquet just last Saturday, because two of them got married, and both of them now work for Goldman-Sachs in Salt Lake. They say, “Oh, well it’s actually this year, 2019, we have a ten-year anniversary,” and there’s another three students that are in LA and they’re thinking of having a little ten-year reunion. KH: Oh fun! DG: Yeah. Actually, I need to talk to my colleague about that. KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? DG: Some of them are sort of professional and some of them are personal. When we moved here, my oldest daughter had just turned three, and then she started at the children’s school. One of the things that is really kind of precious to—I think that’s actually a lot of colleagues—is that you had this wonderful children’s school, that you felt like, “Okay, you can go to work, and you can drop off your kid, and it’s just going to be fabulous for them.” It was Teacher Sherrie over there, she has been there all this time, she’s really one that all across campus, you know, “You guys helped me raise my kids.” My second daughter, she is six years younger, she also went through the children’s school, at the time they had 36 added a toddler program. Just this idea that you could go to work and feel like, “Everybody’s taken care of, wow,” is great. So that’s one thing. This idea that, “Oh, we moved to Utah,” didn’t know anything and now my kids think Weber State is just their playground because they have been on campus for so many events then they have been at the children’s school. My youngest went to NUAMES and got an associate’s degree just last year. There’s this whole life cycle. When we moved here, and that’s the other thing, it felt like there were just so many people who were just ready to embrace you. One of my favorite things, that I did maybe once or twice, the New Faculty Retreat that Weber State puts on. You really do meet this new cohort of people from all across campus. The vice-chair for Faculty Senate, Marek Matyjasik, he is from Poland, and he came the year after I came. They have done this where they invited the second-year faculty to meet the new faculty, so you create this cohort. Going there, and meeting all these people was fantastic. A person I roomed with when I was first-year faculty is now back on the Executive Committee. I’m like, “Remember back, twenty plus years ago?” That’s Catherine Zublin. You start out, and you make all these really close friends. That’s been really great. We felt really welcome and, “Wow! We’ve got all these invitations, making all these friends!” One favorite thing, this is kind of an interesting story, there is another German faculty, Michael Wutz. When I came to campus to interview back in 1996, everybody that I met talked to me about Michael Wutz. I couldn’t figure out why they were telling me about Michael Wutz, because he was saying, “Oh, yeah, he speaks German to his kids,” I’m like, “But 37 his name sounds British,” because I thought they said Woods, W-O-O-D-S, I just couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. Then when I gave my talk, I walked in the room, I have to give my research talk and then saw this person where you kind of think, “He looks kind of familiar somehow.” Then they introduced me to him and they said, “This is Michael Wutz,” and I looked at him, and I said, “Oh. You were Martin Eichertz’s roommate in Würzburg, right?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” Then we were like, “Oh, I’ve seen you, actually,” and we hadn’t seen him a lot, but I’d seen him a couple times at least. It turns out that that person that he lived with got married and they had actually had a picture with both of us from 1985, ten plus years before I came to Weber State. That chance encounter is a favorite memory. At my job interview, it was like, “How can I shake off all these people who want to interview me and just visit with Michael and his wife, and see what happened to them over the last ten years?” We have been really good friends. They were one of the first people, they’re almost like family now. We spend Christmas day because both our families’ live elsewhere. We’re here, so we spend holidays together and stuff. It’s those connections that have been really precious. Then sometimes stuff students do and say, like “Oh, yeah, they did that in class, and now look at them! Yes!” I was just talking to—some students don’t want to talk in class, like they are almost pathologically shy. I had one student who was like, “I don’t ever want to do any public speaking.” I said to her, this was a little snarky, but I said, “You know, at a minimum, you will have to say ‘Would you like fries with that?’” She was like, “What?” She went on an exchange that I 38 had organized with a German university, then she was in my MBA program. She is incredibly outgoing, she has a great career, she is just wonderful. I’m like, “Jean, you can do this, you have to.” You chuckle, like “Why did I say that?” You have these moments with students and class. Lots of good memories. KH: How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history in your community and you personally? DG: I know now why you do that because of the hundred years. I suppose I don’t think about it exactly in those terms, but I have been born in Germany and I am now working on becoming a citizen because obviously if you are not a citizen, you can’t vote. I think, this is maybe not completely true, I do a lot of Faculty Senate work because I feel that voting is just one aspect of democracy. I think it goes beyond that. If we want to have a democratic system, then we have to all practice. Having a Student Senate and having a Faculty Senate are ways for us to say, “Look, it’s not easy work, it’s not like we just say, ‘Oh, we vote,’” it’s not like that. It’s like, “What do we really want to do, what do we want to work on, what is the legislation, the policy drafts that we want to look at and vote on?” In some ways, the work I have done with Faculty Senate, this faculty governance has been my way to help provide a training ground, to try to do a good job with a system that is very decentralized. And sometimes it can be frustrating, but it’s like, “No, this is how we do it, we don’t just have one person say, ‘Here’s what it is,’” we have to come together as a faculty and work on drafts and we don’t always agree, right? 39 That is the other thing you learn, we have faculty voice and here is administration. But for the most part, I’ve really found this to be the case, it’s not a dichotomy. It’s more like, “No, these are just two entities, these are people with different responsibilities and incentives that all work for the good of Weber State.” So we have to juggle those different interests. But I do think we have been very lucky at Weber State in general with the relationships we have between faculty and administration. There are so many stories out there in Chronicle Ed, or inside higher ed. You’re just like, “Whew, that’s not us.” It’s like, “Don’t just say it’s not us, let’s make sure, let’s work on it, let’s be deliberate about it, let’s have good conversations, let’s work on that to keep it the way it is.” People actually would say this during the presidential searches, “Weber State is not broken.” The job is to keep it that way, and to make sure that people work together collaboratively and keep it going. KH: Is there anything else you would like to share? DG: I don’t think so. KH: Okay, great, thank you for your time.