Keith G. Briscoe interview (President of Buena Vista College, 1974-1995), conducted by William H. Cumberland

Keith G. Briscoe interview (President of Buena Vista College, 1974-1995), conducted by William H. Cumberland

"Buena Vista College -- Oral histories"

Briscoe, Keith G.

College presidents--Iowa--Storm Lake

Siebens, Harold Walter

Oral histories--Iowa--Storm Lake

Buena Vista University

29-Sep-89

audio/mpeg

English

Sound

http://bvuarchives.bvu.edu/Audio/OralHistories/KeithBriscoe.mp3

"William H. "Bill" Cumberland"

Keith Briscoe

WHC: [00:00:00] This is WHC: conducting an interview with President KGB: on September 29, 1989. [Recorder stops and restarts.] President Briscoe, why did you come to Buena Vista College? What did you see about the college that attracted you?

KGB: [00:00:24] I know exactly the minute and the time that the trustees, and Darrell Peck, and [Leonard] Martz, and I all knew that it was gelling. They knew what I meant, and I knew I was right because they understood me. I said to 'em, the college has always had such a great potential because of its teachers, and they've always kept their teachers or their candle under the bushel basket. And I'd like to come and take the basket off. And they understood that so well that I knew I was right, and I really had very little evidence except what I'd learned during the day that the faculty were really as good as they were But when I said it and they confirmed it so fast, I knew I was right.

WHC: [00:01:17] How did the college come to your attention? Did you not--

KGB: [00:01:22] I had been receiving many things, and I had had in the last six months before that, probably received-- I no longer can remember--maybe a dozen offers and I'd turned them all down. And-- somewhere through there someone that I knew, knew that I was trying to look for a-- a-- a college in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa. I'd go anywhere, if it was a good college, but my preference was for those three states. And I think they put my name in here and when they called me and said you're a candidate, I didn't know where the school was.

WHC: [00:02:10] But you found out. You got a map out and [both laugh]

KGB: [00:02:15] Yeah. And everything I found here was true except I found one surprise.

WHC: [00:02:21] What was that?

KGB: [00:02:22] I thought the lake was going to be a puddle. I didn't believe there was a lake anywhere in Iowa. We broke over the hill at the airport, and there was that lake, and I couldn't believe it.

WHC: [00:02:35] You might have-- You may have thought Buena Vista was in [laughs] California. [Briscoe laughs] Sometimes I've gone to Colorado-- conferences and they told me they thought I was from California. OK. This is a very basic question. What-- what do you consider your best contribution to Buena Vista College? Do you-- as you look at your career now that spans over 15 years and where you might want to think in the-- in several different areas. In the academic area or in the economic area or of a personnel area or any other area of it comes to mind. What do you consider your best, your your outstanding contribution to Buena Vista College? In other words, in connection with this, what in your career here creates in you the most pride?

KGB: [00:03:33] Still the faculty.

WHC: [00:03:33] But-- what I mean is in what you feel that your administration has achieved? Are you saying in assembling a-- a quality faculty?

KGB: [00:03:43] Half of the faculty when I came were better than any place I've been. I've been in places where they had four or five great faculties. But here, they had half of the faculty that was great, and all of those faculty members, with few exceptions, are still here, and those people have been allowed to do their thing. Then in the process, they've attracted other new faculty member(s) to come and work with them. And I still think the only thing that counts at school is the faculty, and I'm still proud of it. In other words, I didn't screw that up. [laughs]

WHC: [00:04:22] OK. Well that would be, essentially, in the academic area. Is there any--or personnel area. Is there anything else as-- as you look at the achievements of the institution in your-- in your tenure here?

KGB: [00:04:39] Maybe we did something in the first five years that we'll never be able to do again. The school, at that time, was scared enough of its existence that we all worked together without self-interest to build a long-range plan, the COF committee [COF=Committee of the Future]. And that long-range plan became the model until 1982, that we all agreed upon, and it could give me my marching orders for what to go and do in many cases. They ask for a fifty-thousand dollar program, and we've got five million dollars for the program. But in the COF we all agreed that we wanted that program to be part of the-- the college, and so I could go out, knowing that I truly represented the faculty and campaign for something. It'll probably will never happen again, no future president. We got enough money now that everybody thinks they can have their own interests.

WHC: [00:05:50] Would you say, then, the-- this great Siebens gift altered that and it changed the--.

KGB: [00:05:59] No. It-- it was a great miracle happened before the Siebens gift. The great miracle was the faculty had a united goal. We had five--let's see this is '79. If we have-- we had five years of increased enrollment with five years of better students. We had five years of cleaning up facilities that were in a terrible position. We had five years to get the faculty salary from the bottom quartile to the top 10 percent in the state. We had literally made the school sellable to someone that was going to come in and evaluate the campus. Siebens hired an investigator to see if we really did what we said we were doing. And we passed the mustard (sic), and that was the miracle. You took a school that the year before I came, had laid off a number of faculty members, cut positions, and, I dunno, cut budgets. I don't know what all was done, but there was some depression on campus, and in five years, we made it good enough to sell to a guy like Siebens. But better yet, is we knew what we were selling. We had a plan.

WHC: [00:07:15] Well, but you said the COF Committee was effective until 1982. Then did we have another plan after 1982-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:07:22] That's part of our problem at the school or maybe, two (1982?) on, we didn't realize we'd completed our goals from the COF Committee. The goals for COF were to go to the year-- the year 2000, and we all assumed we were working on it. But by then, there were several new faculty members that had never heard of the COF Committee. It was no longer their program. Many people started seeing what the School of Business was going to get out of this and started worrying that they were going to be left out--

WHC: [00:08:01] Yeah. But that's part of the implication of my-- of my question then that the gift-- the very nature of the gift--intentional or not--made some of the work of a COF Committee obsolete or moved the institution in a little different direction than would have been anticipated [crosstalk] in 1975.

KGB: [00:08:19] I would say-- I would say by 1984, everything was in action by '82. By 19-- October 3rd, 1984, Harold Siebens paid for or made possible the raising of money for everything in the COF Committee. The goal was $14,000 per student endowment. We exceeded that on that date-- but things were still rolling, and we were basking in the start of a new program. Next year we did the Lage Communications Center, so we were feeling pretty good there. Then we started the computer program, and pretty soon the unification that we had all towards a COF-type of thing wasn't there. And we've been trying to struggle since then by putting their case statements together, which didn't work. We've been trying to show the institution must re-recognize its new position in higher education and draw up a new COF Committee report.

WHC: [00:09:40] And that means a new design for learning or COF-type of committee would be in process then or in the thinking phase--

KGB: [00:09:49] And the way we're doing it is-- is getting ready for our self-study. We, in a sense, in the self-study for North Central [North Central Association] will be writing the direction probably the school will go in the next hundred years.

WHC: [00:10:04] OK, is there anything else, while we're on that question, when you stop and think--because as you talk about it--as a person talks about these angry symptoms, sometimes things come to mind that you want to put in here as among your best contribution to the college or--

KGB: [00:10:22] The best-- the senior minds among the faculty are still terribly important. And we tend to go to them, thinking that we're still all the young faculty members like, I still th-- I still-- I don't see myself as a 50-year presidency. I see my presidency in its first year and have to reprove myself every year and I get one year at a time to do that. And I still see the Dennis Dykema, the Poffs, the Cumberlands, the Pecks, the Paces, the Slagles. I still see those as the young Turks, because they get things done, and they have a great long history of wanting to make the school better, and they have a great deal of dedication to the institution beyond the department. We haven't allowed the young Turks, the really young Turks, to get in on this process, and I-- There's the Dykemas, the Horneckers, the Paces, and the Poffs, and the Cumberlands among those kids, and so, it's a terribly important time as our centennial comes in, for us to realize that our new position, to being a selective school is going to be guaranteed or denied with this next report. We need to position ourselves solidly in that community of highly selective colleges or we miss it. It's OK, most schools never get the chance to miss.

WHC: [00:12:23] Like most institutions, in the next five, seven years in this country, they're going to be massive retirements, and so the younger people will have to move into the positions of significant leadership in-- at Buena Vista and in other colleges as well.

KGB: [00:12:44] Well, if you look at our faculty, you're saying 10 years--

WHC: [00:12:48] I'm saying five to seven years.

KGB: [00:12:50] I would think on our faculty that probably it'd be 8 to 12 years, wouldn't it? But the-- but the-- but the case is the same.

WHC: [00:12:59] uh-hmm.

KGB: [00:12:59] We [unintelligible] it doesn't make any difference. I started out in the profession when there wasn't enough professors to go around. You did, too.

WHC: [00:13:06] Well-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:13:14] In 1960, professors were very scarce. 1955, they were even scarcer. So, Sputnik went up, we had trouble finding people. All I know is that you'll always have great faculty coming to you if you've got a great program. That doesn't frighten me. What frightens me is not having the program that will attract them.

WHC: [00:13:40] OK. We have only gotten one question. [laughter] Two questions. What are-- we talked about successes and the contribution but what about disappointments? What have been-- what's been your greatest disappointment or disappointments? Is there any area that you have a sense of failure or that you didn't accomplish quite what you thought you could?

KGB: [00:14:11] I'm disappointed with the faculty, I'm disappointed with the academic program, I'm disappointed with the annual fundraising, I'm disappointed in admissions, I'm disappointed in the appearance of the campus. I am terribly frustrated that we've only got half done what we could have done. And I'm terribly scared that I've only got ten years left, that I won't get it done in my lifetime.

WHC: [00:14:48] You know, what you're telling me is that some of these areas you consider your successes, but you didn't achieve what you had hoped to achieve.

KGB: [00:14:59] What we can achieve. We've had-- some times we've had great faculty come in here, I mean, barn burners, and we turned them down because they dominate the department. Sometimes we brought people in here that we realized that they would become the star of the program, and we turned them down. Maybe those people would have been divisive, but maybe they'd made-- taught us how to be better. And I've never understood how to do that. The great failure, you know we have with everybody interviewing as a candidate, is that we're all responsible to make that candidate in there. But if we were a little timid on our job, we can all make sure we never get anyone better than ourselves. And the only way you get better than yourself is to have people hire people who are better than you. So, the department grows, and there have been some cases in every department of the campus, including the president's office, that has failed in that-- that moment of truth.

WHC: [00:16:25] Is there anything-- anything else-- what?

KGB: [00:16:28] You didn't expect that-- You didn't expect that, did ya?

WHC: [00:16:32] Well, I don't-- I don't know. I mean, I've [laughs] there's not many things that surprise me. [laughs] But I know-- but I would say, that's right because I don't think that those observations are unique with you because I've heard-- I've heard others say that, too.

KGB: [00:16:52] You know, old Williams fired three faculty. Now I know he got rid of a lot, and I don't know who they are, but the ones that are left that he hires--

WHC: [00:17:03] Well, he did-- he did that in spite of himself.

KGB: [00:17:06] That's right.

KGB: [00:17:08] Nobody else got in on the process either, did they?

WHC: [00:17:10] Well yes, I mean sometimes-- the truth of the matter is sometimes he brought pretty bad people in, and I can remember, rail-- on one occasion railing the whole division.

KGB: [00:17:19] Boom, huh?

WHC: [00:17:21] And he didn't hire 'em. I mean, you could stand up to him, and he would compromise with your own people. He wasn't-- he wasn't as bad as some people allege, and he wasn't as ruthless as some people think. I mean there was a way to deal with him, and I never felt he really held a grudge, but there'd be a lot of people who would say that I fought with him all the time. [laughs] I still got along with him.

KGB: [00:17:53] I saw him two winters ago. He asked about you. The only one he asked about.

WHC: [00:18:02] Is that right? Now what do you see in the future? We've talked, I think, a little bit about that. But what will Buena Vista be like in 2015? The academic program, the liberal arts, the balance of the liberal arts and the career education program such as business or mass comm, technology and the liberal arts, the buildings? Will private education continue to have a future? How will Buena Vista control costs? I mean these-- all these things are linked to-- together but essentially, what do you see, I mean, in twenty-five-- in twenty-five years, we may both be in nursing homes, and the [unintelligible] to be a person who revises the history at that time may come around [laughs] and ask us how it was. What-- what would you tell them?

KGB: [00:18:53] I want to-- I want to answer this carefully, and I don't have the vocabulary thought up to do it. I see after being on the boards of the highest body and chairing the meetings of the church that we belong to and after chairing the largest organization in the United States for liberal arts colleges and after serving on the board twice of the council of all colleges in America-- American Council of Education, I realized that the most lacking item among the leadership in higher education is the understanding of how great institutions are made in higher education. I see many presidents that can't maintain--many [meaning NOT many] but I've seen a few--percentages of presidents that can't even maintain the school that it's presently at. And then I see the vast, vast majority of schools that the only goal of the presidency is survival of the presidency, which means maintaining the status quo and letting nothing get out of balance. So everyone doesn't organize from the other departments to go after the president for giving it to one department. The main thing for presidential tenure in our country is-- is uniformity on campus, keeping balance. Well, you can't do that with growth. You cannot do that with growth. I can only name eight or ten presidents in the whole United States that have changed the position of their school. It's a terribly hard process The average tenure now of a president in a land grant college is four-and-a-half years. The average for the whole United States for all colleges is five-and-a-half years. The reason is-- is that what you do is you go to a campus. Hold it as level as you can, and soon as you know that the metal is tilting one way or the other that you've got two years to get out. Because if you stay and fight, you can never get another job at another university because the faculty were mad at you. So, there is no reward in staying. So, you do a job for three years because everybody's only there five years and three years you're the longest tenured person in-- in-- among the state, and everybody is talking about how great you are because you're still on your honeymoon. So you take that time to be hired away by someone else, and that's how the presidential career is in this country today.

KGB: [00:22:27] The reason I said I want to word this carefully, with the right vocabulary, is because I'm not talking about you personally or bragging about staying 15 years. I'm not trying to say that. What I'm trying to say is that this college in 10, 15, or 20 years is going to be exactly like it was before I came. It's going to be a struggling little college in northwest Iowa. And then, by then, someone else--Morningside or Northwestern--my guess is it will be Northwestern or Dordt--will be better than Buena Vista. But, why? Because schools start getting scared when they start sticking their neck out and start talking about excellence, talking about greatness, and are afraid to take the risk to letting one school or one department lead, lead, and lead, and it becomes so famous and so great it brings up the rest of the departments. Carleton started with a chemistry program. Lawrence started with a music program. Saint Olaf started with a music program. Oberlin started with a music program. Bates started with a-- a-- a strong, old, traditional, pure liberal arts. Hamilton started with-- [unintelligible] school for exclusive rich kids. It still serves the Fortune 500 company. All of them started with one area that was allowed to just exceed the rest of the school. But pretty soon that reputation was so good that I think Carleton's chemistry department is not as good as some of its other departments now. That brought-- the money came in because of chemistry. It produced-- great students came because it had a great chemistry reputation and it went up. So, we now have, in my opinion, no chance to get there, with one exception. Courage. If we have the courage in the next 10 years to get over the hump, if we have the courage to fight each other and still love each other and still be committed, we can then enter the ranks of the 78, 79 highly selective schools in the state. ??????? Then we won't be number 78. We could be number 50 or 60 'cuz we're already that good. But tradition does not take away the Knox colleges. It does not take away the Lake Forest colleges. It does not take away the Beloit colleges. It does not take away the Coe colleges. Once in the highly touted schools on the list [unintelligible] are never knocked out. [Unintelligible] applications. ????Once you are knocked out but sometimes not respected??? Remember, fifteen years ago, Chicago wasn't as respected as it was forty years ago. Now it had a great [unintelligible] it's back being respected as much as it ever was.

WHC: [00:25:56] Now are you-- are you saying that we should concentrate on one area then?

KGB: [00:26:02] No. No, no. [crosstalk].

WHC: [00:26:03] That's the--

KGB: [00:26:04] What I've really tried to make sure we didn't do and that's why I did work so hard to get a communications school going and a computer program going, separate from the business, not letting it be in the business school, and that's why I worked so hard for in the library, you know, and that's why I worked so hard in the Education Department. I think we gotta let somebody lead but not wag the tail because I-- you can have a great business program but if it's not based in the liberal arts, it's not going to become famous, it's not going to be unique, It's not going to be [unintelligible] Well, you can't have a liberal arts school if the English department only serves the business students.

WHC: [00:26:55] It's not too much to say, but this is the way of it, kind of a theme that I've-- I've developed as I-- as I work on the-- the last decade or so is that we've got somehow to balance the liberal arts component with the business component. I mean that's a task-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:27:17] Or the education department and education's worse than business because of all the state requirements.

WHC: [00:27:23] That 's a task-- that's a task that we-- that we have as we move into the next century.

KGB: [00:27:32] I think it's the whole ball of wax. I don't think it's a "maybe" what you're saying. I think that-- I think that's-- if we don't do that, we-- we're going to be right back in 25 years, struggling.

WHC: [00:27:46] But you don't anticipate that. I mean-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:27:49] I do anticipate it.

WHC: [00:27:50] Hmm?

KGB: [00:27:51] I do anticipate it.

WHC: [00:27:52] You do anticipate it.

KGB: [00:27:54] Yes, because out of-- out of 350 years of history there's only 80 of these schools.

WHC: [00:28:03] But then-- [crosstalk].

KGB: [00:28:04] They all have had a chance sometime in 350 years for excellence and they chose not to take it.

WHC: [00:28:09] But if you're-- you're sitting in the nursing home in 2015 and someone comes in to interview you, you-- you're going to be a very sad person.

KGB: [00:28:19] I am now.

WHC: [00:28:23] You are now.

KGB: [00:28:25] I am now.

WHC: [00:28:26] Because you feel we-- we've stagnated without--

KGB: [00:28:30] I feel your leader is letting you down. I should know how to lead the next step. I knew how to get that COF thing going. I studied that thing ten years before I got here. I knew how to do that. But there's no-- there is not a living president in the United States that has taken the college from struggling to selective that I can go talk to, to help me. I'm in uncharted waters. I've studied how to make a great college all my life. We've got to that threshold, and there's no one that has made a great college. They're all dead.

WHC: [00:29:14] Well, it's undoubtedly much more difficult now.

KGB: [00:29:18] And I-- and I'm struggling.

WHC: [00:29:23] I mean there are too many forces or rather, divergent forces, that are at work including government and including the-- the whole nature of the economy and the cost. When they built this building [Ballou Library?], it was, I think, was four hundred thousand dollars and it would probably cost, what, four million at least, if not more? That's a big difference. And that's the one part of my question [unintelligible] how will Buena Vista control costs and make education affordable? Or will there be private education in the year 2015?

KGB: [00:30:02] [unintelligible]

WHC: [00:30:02] Well, one wonders.

KGB: [00:30:06] I can give you this answer. When I started in college, college cost the same price as a Chevrolet, and, now 35 years later, a Chevrolet costs more than the college education.

WHC: [00:30:28] Well, I've-- I've wondered whether or not many of us were going to be able to buy cars [laughs], too.

KGB: [00:30:38] I-- I know that the higher the tuition gets, the more fundraising dollars we will get, and the brighter students we will get. And the more you deprived students we will get. Is that a contradiction?

WHC: [00:31:01] Ummm--

[00:31:01] Quality is based by many people on foundations, donors, and highly-selective parents, parents that know exactly what type of schooling and the selectivity starts with the cost of the tuition.

WHC: [00:31:15] Well, I think when you have more sophisticated parents, better-educated parents coming in, they're going to look at certain things that unsophisticated, uneducated parents that do not look at. They're going to look at your faculty, and they're going to look at what they've done, and they're going to look at the library--

KGB: [00:31:40] And look at the library. Whole beans [?], not the architect.

WHC: [00:31:45] Right. Right. I mean, that's the first place that I go is to the library. Then I flip through the catalog.

KGB: [00:31:53] I go first to the bookstore.

WHC: [00:31:55] And, well, we go to the bookstore, too. Yes. That's another important place.

KGB: [00:31:59] And if the faculty are assigning outside reading that was popular when they were in graduate and undergraduate schools, it means the faculty hasn't continued to learn.

WHC: [00:32:13] But we're a little bit weak in our bookstore. Most of the-- if it's a good school, they have a book school-- store that is filled with paperbacks.

KGB: [00:32:24] Yup, and so I measure how many that is. I've built bookstores where we required four titles for every student on campus. But the faculty probably read 10 percent of all those titles annually. And they were recommending to the students to buy them, and in fact encouraging that you couldn't get through your class without doing it and they would recommend at this particular school 11, 14 books to a class. [unintelligible] Now, that was back when they were 98 cents. [laughs]

WHC: [00:33:00] Yes. Well, there is-- both things are terribly costly.

KGB: [00:33:04] We're going to have do the bookstore, though, aren't we?

WHC: [00:33:06] Yes, I think so.

KGB: [00:33:08] Which comes first? Faculty assigning outside reading from the bookstore or the other way around?

WHC: [00:33:16] Well, I think the faculty have to take an interest in the library and the bookstore and-- and I think the faculty-- a good faculty will have some interest in doing research, too. Because, I mean, people often say to me when I have written something, "I'm a teacher," and imply that I'm not [laughs] because I wrote something.

KGB: [00:33:42] That would make me hurt, you know, and it would make me angry--

WHC: [00:33:45] Well, it does. [laughs] Well, we better get on here. What were some of the resources on campus--natural or material-- Well, I'm thinking of trustees, faculty, cabinet, that helped you along the way? Sometimes you-- I've heard you mention the-- the inspiration that Jack Fisher provided sometimes, that Leonard Martz was of enormous assistance to you. Are there some individuals or are there some other things that you felt really-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:34:21] --really neat people.

WHC: [00:34:23] Certainly.

KGB: [00:34:25] You know the names, don't you?

WHC: [00:34:27] Well, I know the name your--.

KGB: [00:34:28] [unintelligible] tomorrow I wish I would have said--

WHC: [00:34:31] But I mean, as I-- if I write that, you'll be on tape, but if I what I write I-- I put together in my own way--

KGB: [00:34:38] You helped me, yeah. Oh, OK, in other words, you're going to be writing this.

WHC: [00:34:42] I'm going to be writing it. I'm-- I'm-- I'm-- I'm-- I'm trying [???]-- I kind of have to maintain my credibility. It's history. Not--

KGB: [00:34:48] You're not quoting me as listing people. You're saying, Keith would sometimes talk about this person or that person. You're not going to say, When asked to list five, these were his choices.

WHC: [00:35:00] Not necessarily. I'll-- as I've got this [???] But I may say, Leonard Martz was a major--

KGB: [00:35:14] The only asset I think we had was the faculty. The only negative we had was our expectation. We would not expect to ever be out of northwest Iowa. Fact is the first faculty meeting, I said if I expect you to be the best teachers, I have to pay you like the best. One faculty member stood up and said, "We can't do that. You certainly can't make it public because other schools like Westmar and Morningside won't like it." And if you remember, I said that day, "We aren't looking at Westmar, we aren't looking at Morningside, We're looking at Grinnell. When we come close to that, we're going to look beyond Grinnell." Remember that?

WHC: [00:36:09] I-- I don't remember but-- anyone standing up and saying that but--

KGB: [00:36:19] But I didn't know who the person was at the time. The person was the president of the state AAUP chapter, deeply respected. I had no idea whether the person was speaking for all the faculty [or not??] at the time. But-- and we still sometimes don't think that we [unintelligible] when we get a great speaker on campus. We're surprised they'd come to our campus. They don't realize how lucky they were asked-- to be asked to come to our campus. [unintelligible] we got Blackmun [Chief Justice Harry Blackmun] on our campus. Blackmun got here, thought that he was pretty lucky. He was going back and telling Justice Stevens this is the best place he's ever been, and we've seen the evidence from the writing that he's doing that. I guess nobody believes that home is pretty neat or pretty great. But, ok, the best thing is the faculty, the worst thing was our attitude, that we were stuck in this school, we're going to be here the rest of our life. Our hope is that it doesn't close the door. And I-- I can remember the first three or four years, I wasn't trusted because I always exaggerated. Everybody said I exaggerated what we could become. Remember?

WHC: [00:37:45] Uhm-hmm.

KGB: [00:37:45] We have exceeded every one of those things. And I said [unintelligible] was based on the people. Okay. So who were they? You're right. Leonard Martz came in one time. He said, "Keith, you gotta stop using the word 'excellence.'"

WHC: [00:38:09] Oh, I see. No, we're ok. [unintelligible]

KGB: [00:38:12] "You gotta stop using the word 'excellence.' It's scaring everyone." "What do you mean, Leonard? Excellence isn't scaring anybody. They've been grading people for A's all their life. They've been graded for A's all of their life. Why are they afraid of 'excellence?'" He said, "They weren't hired at Harvard. They came to a school they felt they fit into, and now you're changing it, and everybody thinks you're talking about Harvard." And he knew I wasn't talking about it. I was talking about Buena Vista being [unintelligible] He says, "You've got to stop using it." I said, "I can't." So two weeks later and he'd been up day and night, came back he says, "OK, you can use the word 'excellence' but you have to say before the word 'the elusive excellence'" and he said, "Then they understand that there is no such thing as an ongoing, continuous excellence, that you're not asking for that. They will understand if you mean we've got to be better tomorrow and that sets new goals for the next day and you've got to get better and you've got to get better, but it's so elusive, you'll never be perfect." And, you know, so I started using that word and it worked. I no longer had people coming up to me in the halls saying, "Are we really going to be elitist institution? Are we really going to be a snobbish institution? Where do I fit in a school that's-- it's like that?" It all ended with one word from Leonard Martz. They were-- they were doing-- Poff? You never hear from Poff. Poff has never give me any advice except, "Don't take so much time saying it." [both laugh].

KGB: [00:39:58] But it just keeps producing the kids now. [???} Just keeps producing. So, when I go out in the medical profession and things like, that they all know that our kids all go to medical school, and they all graduate, and they all become real honest, hardworking, caring, doctors. All of 'em. Lampe's known-- Lampe-- Everybody thinks Lampe's a full-time researcher, those people in research. The ones in conservation all think he's a full-time conservationist. Frankly, I think he's a full-time landscape artist for the college. Every time we need something in landscaping we say, "Something's wrong." And somehow, he gets it done. I don't know where he gets the money. I don't know where he ge-- he got one guy that owns the nursery that'll give us 50 maple trees [unintelligible] every spring. All we have to do is pick 'em up ourselves and bring 'em back to campus. I don't know how it gets done, but to me he's a full-time landscaper that happened to win the teaching award. So, somebody thinks he's a full-time teacher because people on campus [unintelligible] [Cumberland laughs] And let me say something [unintelligible], and I may want to say it again. You type it up for me. Let me say-- that you quote exactly what I say so you're not saying it: "Bill Cumberland is the moral conscience, dignity, freedom, and equality for this school, that any time I got crossways with the faculty, I would listen for what Bill Cumberland said, and that became my policy. It would be fair to all, and it would be just to all, and it would be acceptable to all. And we would resolve the issue at that moment."

WHC: [00:42:04] Well, thank you. [laughs] I don't know what to--

KGB: [00:42:10] I've really done that. You know I've done that.

WHC: [00:42:17] OK, was there anything else-- or anyth-- what about trustees? Any one that really provided some-- if you had to pick out a trustee or two who--

KGB: [00:42:31] I would have left the campus early on if there had not been a-- a group of trustees that realized the school could no longer live in the Pierce-- not Pierce-- in the Pierce-- Dixon-Eilers here that the school could no longer wait for the trustees to give permission for the school to plant or take down a tree. The Board of Trustees continued-- gave every issue I brought to them from the faculty they have approved. They never once second-guessed them, and so they became part of the dream and the aspirations of the faculty, and I have to-- I have to say the leadership for that came from Ed Mack, Dick Eilers, Cairns. In a much later period the McCorkles and now I look to people like Harward and Dodson [???], and Fredericksen, and Young.

WHC: [00:44:20] OK. I think I've given Edgar Mack a pretty good place in the-- in what I-- in what I've done.

KGB: [00:44:28] OK.

WHC: [00:44:31] One of the-- one of the problems is there's so many people--

KGB: [00:44:33] I know.

WHC: [00:44:34] You-- you just-- you just-- you have a genealogy when you get--

KGB: [00:44:39] Really [unintelligible]

WHC: [00:44:40] So you-- you have to be somewhat selective and run [Briscoe: Uhm-hmm] themes through with the-- with people.

KGB: [00:44:47] That's the only way.

WHC: [00:44:49] And it's-- I try to get as many people in as I can, but I just can't--

KGB: [00:44:56] Many people, Bill, don't know what my secret pride is, in terms of people. My secret pride was inheriting core vice presidents that really put together everything you and I are talking about today. None of 'em are here now, 'cept Bob, but Bill Cumber-- Bill Wesselink, Charlie Zalesky, Fred Brown, and Bob Siefer, they were the four vice presidents, and they-- a school that's in trouble generally needs to be cleaned out immediately. [unintelligible]

WHC: [00:45:46] OK, I think we can begin now.

KGB: [00:45:52] OK. Usually they clean out the administration and start with their own team, bringing their buddies who already agree with them philosophically. And because the college was so demoralized I felt that no one should leave for three or four years, and we should build our team from the history of the other people. And what everybody had and work strictly from their strengths, and it turned out to be the best decision I ever made in my life. Bob Siefer has raised more money for this school than any other individual. Remember, any other individual. More than I've ever raised. Charlie Zalesky set us up on procedures and that, that have lasted through two other vice presidents. Fred Brown stayed until his own alma mater called him home to be the president and those are the guys that I-- why they ever stayed, I don't know. It was hard for them.

WHC: [00:47:04] Were they also instrumental in the Siebens gift event?

KGB: [00:47:11] Everybody that worked on the COF Committee is instrumental in that gift. Everyone that helped turn the college around from, what, we had 10 years of decreasing enrollment, four years of decreasing enrollment, 900 to 700 or something. Whoever reversed that had a role. Siebens wouldn't have given a gift if the school hadn't been in the position--

WHC: [00:47:39] When it came to courting him and writing the proposals--

KGB: [00:47:43] I was pretty narrow [???}

WHC: [00:47:46] You were prime-- primarily responsible yourself then.

KGB: [00:47:51] I went down with a million dollar gift request. And I saw where he lived, and I ripped it up and didn't present it. I just made a courtesy call. Second year I went down, and a few people helped me on it-- writing a two-- a three million dollar gift. I got down there, and he was just selling his company. I realized three million dollars was less than taxes. And so the next year when I went down with a 15 million dollar request. And in each of those stages--of that million to 3 million to 15 million--different people on campus helped me with it. The person that helped me actually write it in the end was a faculty member at a branch campus. He'd written for The Wall Street Journal. And we wanted it in the language of the journal, [unintelligible] and style. One time you know about the [crosstalk]

WHC: [00:48:58] Who was that? Maybe I should--

KGB: [00:49:05] We don't want to say that. We don't want to talk about that.

WHC: [00:49:12] We don't?

KGB: [00:49:14] Not because he doesn't deserve credit for this. I paid him very well to be a writer. That's all he did was write. We had people that-- Paul Russell's idea on the lounge down here. That's a learning resource room with a TV with the stock market up there and computers in the room. We've never have enough money to finish Paul's whole idea. But that's one of the geniuses of that School of Business is that if the satellites would have everything on them that we thought would be on satellites by now like the gold market in Zurich and London and New York and Bangkok and Hong Kong. If-- if those gold markets were on so the kids could watch gold fluctuation as it goes around the world in a 24-hour period and understand how there's money being made on 24-hour period. All of that was planned in that room. Commodities, the markets the latest periodicals, the computer tied into the national statistics center on population. Which part of this country has the least cavities, which has the most--all those kinds of things. It's hundreds of people that contributed one little segment of that.

WHC: [00:50:36] Did Fred [Brown] contribute quite a bit?

KGB: [00:50:38] Fred worked right along with the Wall Street writer. Bob Siefer worked right along, but the major thing that happened is we hired a man by name of Gunner King (???) from Pacific Group to meet with a number of us in Colorado. One of our donors had a condominium in Colorado and we met out there for three days and Gunner King was a resource person. Paul (?) was there, Fred was there, I was there. A trustee by the name of-- a-- a-- a faculty-- an associate dean of the South Dakota School of Business, University of South Dakota, by the name of Johnson, an alumnus of the school.

WHC: [00:51:29] Oh, Jerry Johnson.

KGB: [00:51:30] Jerry Johnson was with us. And I spelled out everything in the COF report. Laid out the-- you know, I'm trying to choose the right word. I don't see the family I don't want 'em to be manipulated so they don't give us money in the future. I explained the dreams of a donor, and I said, "How do we do those things?" And they talked for three days, and I just took notes. From those notes, I came back and took the COF Committee report, and I started writing right from the start. And that's how the book is organized. The index was the COF Committee, the substance was the meandering and wandering of the speakers at that program.

WHC: [00:52:35] Well, I'm-- I have to put some of that together, and I've-- I've done quite a bit on it. But I-- the problem there is when you have a lot of material is to boil it do-- [laughs] boil it down so that it's readable and understandable.

KGB: [00:52:57] I actually think, Bill, that many people have tried to make that the turning point in the college, the gift. The turning point was the attitude taken to ask for the gift.

WHC: [00:53:11] The turning point was the attitude and the people asking for the gift.

KGB: [00:53:17] Siebens bought into winners; he didn't buy into losers. [Cumberland: Uhm-hmm.] He never invested money in-- in-- in land that he didn't think had oil underneath it, and he thought there was oil here. Now what we've done with it since then is exactly what we told him.

WHC: [00:53:35] He wasn't very-- he wasn't very solicitous of liberal arts, however. Is--

KGB: [00:53:44] He was in the end.

WHC: [00:53:47] Well.

KGB: [00:53:47] You want to know what the latest contract says? Hold on for a minute. [Recorder stops and restarts.]

WHC: [00:53:52] OK.

[00:53:54] In the early stages Dr. Siebens believed that the word "liberal arts" was a political philosophy of a college. A liberal. In the end he understood that a liberal arts education was liberating and he was all for liberating. He wanted all the freedoms he could have. He wanted the least number of government constraints on freedom of religion, freedom of the press, academic freedom, and free enterprise that he so endowed a program for that, and he realized that legislation on any one of those freedoms if the press or a businessman could-- could get a school to have to teach something, but that was taking away the freedom of the classroom. And he realized that was as wrong as legislation allowing him not to do business was-- was hurting his business. He realized that the freedoms were interwoven in a single concept.

WHC: [00:55:04] I need to-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:55:05] I've got something else around. I'll look for it first.

WHC: [00:55:06] OK, I-- this is an important question to me because I'm a little bit vague on it. You-- you mentioned one time that the church-college relationship changed in 1976. Could you explain that change?

KGB: [00:55:26] The [Presbyterian] Church USA. A sign that-- where at one time they had a full-blown Office of Higher Education and their fundraising in the Presbyterian Foundation, all were centered around trying to raise money for its colleges, almost changed to human services away from colleges with one exception I'll come back to and took one of their employees to [unintelligible] to have somebody that could, of course, correspond with their Presbyterian colleges and would help them put on their annual conference, and they made that a half-time position of someone from another discipline whose interest was not in higher education but was in their own discipline. So there was no longer national leadership of an office of higher education much like the Lutherans have or the Methodists have.

WHC: [00:56:35] Well, you say the church relationship is pretty nominal now. It's not really a--

KGB: [00:56:41] Yeah. At that same time, the church decided that it would keep up its capacity to fund the Presbyterian programs at state universities. We no longer get sums of money as we once did from the national or from the synod. The synod has voted, except for some scholarships, to basically be out of the business of giving to private schools. They-- [crosstalk]

WHC: [00:57:24] So, the ties are very loose-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [00:57:26] --so they-- but they still pay for-- to a considerable extent the programs of state universities. They did not abandon them financially.

WHC: [00:57:37] So you-- if I-- if I hear that correctly you can almost say that we're not really church-related.

KGB: [00:57:46] Didn't say that. Church relation has nothing to do with money.

WHC: [00:57:50] Well, but if you don't put any money into it, and you don't have any power, you don't have much of a relationship.

KGB: [00:57:58] You still have a spiritual relationship, which is the center of the entire, liberal arts, Christian curriculum.

WHC: [00:58:05] But there is no control. The church has no-- no control over the college. [crosstalk] In 1953, I mean-- I tred to make some sense out of what happened to Olson, I mean I am assuming that the church deposed Olson.

KGB: [00:58:22] What year did I-- what year did you quote me on?

WHC: [00:58:24] '76.

KGB: [00:58:27] In 1976 I rewrote the constitution and the relationship with the church.

WHC: [00:58:32] And--

KGB: [00:58:35] So that the church could never come back to the-- [Someone speaks to Keith. He says, "ok, ok."] So, the church could never have the power to come in here. And on that day, the church lost its right to approve all trustees and all they were left with is the right to appoint one trustee to represent the synod.

WHC: [00:59:04] But--

KGB: [00:59:07] That's what I talked about '76.

WHC: [00:59:08] '76 is the date.

KGB: [00:59:09] I think it's-- I think that's the date-- [crosstalk].

WHC: [00:59:11] But [crosstalk] is that a public document? Is that in--

KGB: [00:59:15] The church at that time was so far away from its colleges that it did not care what we wrote or didn't write and approved the document with no question.

WHC: [00:59:29] But do we have the document here?

KGB: [00:59:31] That's the bylaws for the college.

WHC: [00:59:32] I wouldn't mind seeing that document sometime.

KGB: [00:59:36] The bylaws you have [unintelligible] document.

WHC: [00:59:41] But I don't have any bylaws.

KGB: [00:59:41] You have the bylaws of the college, don't you?

WHC: [00:59:44] I don't think so. Where would they be? Where would they be, in--

KGB: [00:59:49] You'd better have a copy of the bylaws. [unintelligible] [crosstalk]

WHC: [00:59:52] No, I don't--

KGB: [00:59:52] I think every faculty member has-- [crosstalk] I think they're in the handbook.

WHC: [00:59:57] Is it in the manual?

KGB: [00:59:57] Is there one in there that starts where the vice president?

WHC: [01:00:00] I'll have to--

KGB: [01:00:00] Vice chairman of the board is? [crosstalk]

WHC: [01:00:04] I'll have to look.

KGB: [01:00:05] That's the document.

WHC: [01:00:05] OK. Well I--

KGB: [01:00:08] Yes, you should have that.

WHC: [01:00:09] I'm just trying to get that-- that--

KGB: [01:00:12] Well, the reason I did that at that time is I had a promise to the trustees that the church wasn't going to come in and fire me. They did that to a lot of prestigious people in this town, who never got over that including Edsons.

WHC: [01:00:26] Uhm-hmm. Well, see, I still haven't straightened the Olsons because a lot of people don't like to talk about it, and I'm trying to get it straight, and the last time I was kind of warned not to probe too deeply.

KGB: [01:00:40] Probe-- [crosstalk]

WHC: [01:00:43] Into that-- into that and and now I'm-- I'm trying to find out exactly what happened. Whether there was some kind of natural problem there or what? So, it seems rather mysterious-- [crosstalk]

KGB: [01:00:56] [unintelligible] financial problem. The financial problem was the same problem they'd had for 4 (?) 40(?) years. There-- there was $26,000 of unpaid bills or something like that.

WHC: [01:01:05] Well, that's what I mean. [crosstalk] I know that Fisher opened the drawer and found a bunch of bills, and Tom Eilers opened the drawer and found a bunch of unpaid bills.

KGB: [01:01:15] [unintelligible] Peterson told me that he opened the drawer.

WHC: [01:01:19] Well, that, of course, yes-- [laughs] [unintelligible crosstalk about the drawer]

KGB: [01:01:29] But the truth of the matter is is that the management style of Olson got this thing accredited.

WHC: [01:01:38] Yes. No, I-- I know. I--

KGB: [01:01:40] And he always had a drawer-- drawer full of unpaid bills as did every college in the land that was struggling like us. Maybe Oberlin didn't.

WHC: [01:01:51] Well, the thing that-- that confused me was the-- the debt was supposedly was mastered and then-- and the trustee minutes are pretty lousy, to be honest-- there seem to be big gaps in them. And I called [unintelligible ??Bud Stalcup??], but he told me he didn't remember anything and he represented the synod, and he convened the meeting. [Briscoe: Yup.] I-- I-- I don't know whether he's just getting senile or whether he didn't want to talk about it, but I'm gonna write this minister, Throop? [Briscoe: I dunno.] who, well, Parse [De Jong] had a letter from him that he gave to you the other day, because he was on the board then [Briscoe: Uh-huh] I'm going to see if I can get any information out of--

KGB: [01:02:41] You know, Olson was promised two thousand a year?

WHC: [01:02:44] To be promised. The old board voted him a pension of $200. Then the new board paired it down to $81.00, and then in the fin-- finally there was a lump sum settlement the amount of which I don't know, but I know his sister was very bitter about that. I had originally thought that there was-- because I had run into the $200 figure when I wrote the history last time, but now I've discovered that wasn't-- that wasn't true. He never got $200 a month. He got $500 to the end of the year or to the end of what would have been the academic year. And then they quibbled about the pension and apparently finally they-- they gave him a lump sum settlement which was not a whole lot.

KGB: [01:03:32] I wish I knew who it was, I talked to somebody pretty close to that family, and they said he got the first payment and never got another one.

WHC: [01:03:38] That pro-- that may very well have been true. That may very well have been true.

KGB: [01:03:43] Have you ever-- do you know the Walter Peterson story?

WHC: [01:03:48] No. Walter Peterson--

KGB: [01:03:50] President of Dubuque [i.e. University of Dubuque and former professor at BV]

WHC: [01:03:50] Oh, well-- I know who that-- who that-- who he is, yes.

KGB: [01:03:56] He was-- you hir-- you were hired after him, probably for the same position. He came to teach history, to get accredited. They got accredited and the next day or next week [unintelligible] called him into Olson's office. And Olson said, "We don't need you anymore. You don't teach here anymore." He says, "How come? Wasn't I good?" He says, "Yeah, you were a good teacher. I just needed a Ph.D. for accreditation. We don't need those anymore."

WHC: [01:04:18] Well, that doesn't speak very well [laughs] of Olson, then, does it? Well, they--

KGB: [01:04:30] [Call Peterson if you want him to tell you that story.] And I don't know if we want that in our book.

WHC: [01:04:34] Faculty loved Olson, however.

KGB: [01:04:36] I love Olson to this day, don't you?

WHC: [01:04:38] Well, I-- I-- he seems to appear to have many admirable traits, but I mean if that story is true, I wouldn't think much of that.

KGB: [01:04:50] Walt Peterson hated my guts when I came to this state. We didn't get along for five or six years, and one night, late at night, he said, "You know what I think of your school?" He told me the whole story of how it killed him, and it just broke his heart.

WHC: [01:05:07] I wasn't hired after him. The person I replaced was Kemp Schnell. There were probably a couple in between, don't ya think?

WHC: [01:05:15] Well it wouldn't have been too many but [crosstalk] No, I think probably they was Peterson, Graham, and then Graham replay and I knew-- [crosstalk].

KGB: [01:05:24] Hirsch came in there somewhere.

WHC: [01:05:26] Well, Hirsch came in '46, but Graham was here when I was a graduate student at Iowa, and then he left and came down to Iowa when I was a very young person. I mean, I knew Graham, and I knew he'd been at Buena Vista, but Buena Vista didn't mean much to me.

KGB: [01:05:43] They had three-- then they had Graham, Hirsch, and Reynolds?

WHC: [01:05:48] Well, I mean Hirsch came in '46 and Reynolds came in '37 but--.

KGB: [01:05:52] So, that's two--.

WHC: [01:05:53] And Hirsch didn't teach history; Hirsch taught German.

KGB: [01:05:59] He was German and history.

WHC: [01:06:00] No. He taught German.

KGB: [01:06:02] I understand.

WHC: [01:06:03] Yeah, but Kemp Schnell was here about three or four years, but he was the one I replaced.

KGB: [01:06:09] Did you ever think up our story as a school of helping Hirsch get a job in America?

WHC: [01:06:17] Well I've got his coming in the first book [Cumberland was working on the second edition of the The History of Buena Vista College, and that's why he was interviewing people.] and I've got--

KGB: [01:06:21] Then the second story is the mayor of Havana--

WHC: [01:06:29] You mean Felix Cruz. Well, he was professor at University of Havana. He wasn't mayor.

WHC: [01:06:38] He wasn't mayor. [Briscoe: Oh.] I mean, I never ran into anything that indicated that he was-- And I knew-- I knew Felix quite well.

KGB: [01:06:43] OK, and then-- but we helped him get out from another country. And then--.

WHC: [01:06:48] I've-- I've-- I've actually recorded the most of that. Well, I mean I've got that.

KGB: [01:06:55] And now Dastrange.

WHC: [01:06:57] Yeah, and of course [?? Sun Kan ??] came from Korea.

KGB: [01:07:02] Tell me about that one.

WHC: [01:07:04] Well, I-- he-- I mean I had him here a year or two ago, a couple of years ago. He was North Korean and he-- he fled North Korea. And then he was [unintelligible] Toay-- What is it-- Family? Toay family?

KGB: [01:07:24] Toay. Toay. Yeah.

WHC: [01:07:24] And he got a degree from Macalester and then he went to Chicago and then he came here.

KGB: [01:07:34] Did you mention the history of this school working with people that are displaced like that?

WHC: [01:07:40] Well, I've got all these people in, and I've-- I've done something-- I've done something with that.

KGB: [01:07:44] I never realized that we had that history until somebody said on the Dastrange thing, they said, Well that-- I would have expected that from BV. You've always done that.

WHC: [01:07:54] I got it. I know you want to go, but if-- if I-- maybe, maybe very briefly-- what do you consider the most important tradition on campus? And if we lack traditions, why do you think that's true? I mean I've run into a lot of old traditions that simply went by the wayside [crosstalk]

KGB: [01:08:13] I know-- I know one tradition that has always been well-received and hopefully would be the most mourned of its loss--

WHC: [01:08:29] What is that one?

KGB: [01:08:29] Payday.

WHC: [01:08:29] [laughs] Well, there was never a time in history [when it wasn't a perceived loss.]????

KGB: [01:08:41] I don't-- I didn't find any traditions when I came. And any we have now are too young to be called traditions. Would you agree?

WHC: [01:08:49] Well, I don't-- I don't know. I-- when I came there was the tree planting ceremony, but somehow it stopped. I guess we don't have it-- we can't plant trees anymore or some-- I don't know but--.

KGB: [01:09:00] It was stopped before I came.

WHC: [01:09:01] Yes, it was, it was, but when I came in 1958 they [crosstalk]

KGB: [01:09:05] I tried to resurrect it with Beautification Day, remember?

WHC: [01:09:10] Uhm-hmm. Uhm-hmm. Right. But-- But then there were a lot of other traditions: smoking the peace pipe, pipe of peace. I mean, those were here when I came, and I think they were casualties of the '60s. [Briscoe: Yup.] But I would-- I would say that the-- the best tradition that I can think of now is the Founders' Day tradition. So I feel that's established as a tradition that isn't likely to-- to die.

WHC: [01:09:48] Has the student body changed, maybe in a sentence or two you can tell me--

KGB: [01:09:53] The most significant change in the student body is the attitude. Student body when I came was a very fine student, a nice student, highly-recruited for athletic abilities and today, the student comes to school with a more thought-out purpose of their education. They know where they-- they know why they're going to college and what they want to get out of it. Now, I'm not talking about the majority, but there's a large number of students here that are motivated to excel. They want to be better than their-- their present life. And the most rewarding part of that is that when they have parents that are upward mobile, they want their students to be better than they were.

WHC: [01:10:52] Do you think values have changed?

KGB: [01:10:55] Yeah. I've watched the values-- we have a values test done by Sandy Aston (?) out of California every year, and if you allow swings of 3 percent or 5 percent going towards the direction they were already in, we've had no changes.

WHC: [01:11:15] Well, I don't quite feel that way myself.

KGB: [01:11:18] You've got it more conservative?

WHC: [01:11:20] Well, that's not necessar -- That's not what I'm-- I'm talking-- see, I actually felt that older students I had were-- were more heavily motivated than many I have now, that they were more determined and that they listen better, and that maybe, ethically, they had stronger ethical values.

KGB: [01:11:49] I didn't mention ethics.

WHC: [01:11:51] I see a lot of things today that I would not have believed in the late '50s.

KGB: [01:11:58] I would answer you there by saying you were younger then and you spent more time with your students and thus you had a relationship greater outside-- when it came to the classroom, they already knew of your greatness, and they already knew why they were coming to your classroom, and kids at that time thought they had a greater chance in the humanities than the kids do today. Kids that are goal-orientated [sic] today on communications and computers and business, and some of those kids 30 years ago would have been the students in the humanities. I think the goal-orientated [sic] kids are not in the humanities anymore.

WHC: [01:12:42] Well, I think that-- that's true.

KGB: [01:12:46] But if we don't bring them back, we aren't going to have a great college.

WHC: [01:12:51] I-- just one more question. What do you hope to be able to say to your successor?

KGB: [01:13:01] I can describe it better in another way. I hope my suc-- I hope the school is positioned in such a way that my successor has a choice between being president at Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, or BV. And she picks BV.

WHC: [01:13:26] [laughs] OK, thank you very much.

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