Reflections of ISU with President Parks (AV12799)

I ask you reflection 1965 1975 the last 10 years have been a time of change in growth for Iowa State University tonight we reflect on what has happened and what is in the army this time period coincides with the gears during which w Robert Parks has been president of the university Betty Lou Barnum asked dr. parks what his goals were when he became president of Iowa State in 1965 the most important one was the quality of excellence and I tried my best and I've had a lot of help in this and trying to keep that one go for us and anything we do because any of these other goals are really come to nothing unless you maintain quality but aside from that it seemed to me then and time is I think proved that we were right on this was at this university although it had been a great university from our great College before it was University was in fact too narrowly based for the present times and so an important goal and one half way which I think we have pretty much achieved in this decade is to broaden the base of Iowa State University to fill in and to build up those well we may be called developing areas those academic areas which had been under supported in the past also the goal of diversity which is akin to that one and a public service this is a tremendously important mission of Iowa State University to take our knowledge out to where people are where they work and where they live and we've been doing this ever since the first extension trains pulled out of Ames into the countryside happily also I'm going to let you back in the conversation pretty soon because we don't want Molly without getting her happily to for this this one enunciated goal of public service to improve our service extension function the new seaman continuing education building is beyond all our hopes and helping us now to look at our extension function truly on a world basis we're going to have the world food conference here and so forth and then just to answer your question on goal when I spoke at my inauguration ceremony which was March 22nd 1949 teen 66th University's birthday I mean my talk there and my concern was what I labeled again not in a creative way but the new humanism and somehow it seems to me this institution has great opportunity to blend science and humanism in the way on institutions which started out as being primarily the literary and liberal arts never have had the opportunity because we have it is easier I think to put the humanity other with your sciences than it is to develop the sciences in a later date but however that might be in terms of sequence I have felt and a lot of people have agreed with me happily that this should be a prime continuing goal of us toward a new humanism a blending of science and humanism because this is where society's problems can really be solved dr. Parkes surely one of the most impressive signs of growth is the increase in the size of the student body statistics in 1965 enrollment was 14,000 this year over 21,000 205 students are attending Iowa State 82% of the undergraduates are from Iowa 38% of the students are women 17% are married has the whorl of the student changed during this period it's quite clear that in the overall and in broad terms the role of the student his social environment on campus has changed dramatically in this decade probably more than any decade in the history of this country the American University may be any university because if you just look at the whether we like it or not and whether our students parents like it or not the old concept of in loco parentis is pretty well gone this doesn't mean the students act wildly and irresponsibly but they have been put on their own responsibility they in part are responsible this happening but not entirely because society has agreed that you're an adult when you're 18 for example this has happened in the recent years and so the old rules about hours imposed hours for men and women students just don't seem to be very applicable anymore and they are not applied in most place you're on your own for those decisions whether it's right or wrong the students have much more freedom and making their mind whether they want to consume alcoholic beverages or not and this is not uncontrolled and unlimited but that opportunity exists for them today and they have to be make a responsible decision on their own they've had an impact also aside from the from their social life which is quite a change all these options that are available now then they have to handle then was - a few years ago I think students and now I happily so have a grade they don't think so but I think so you see I have a great deal more to say what their educational experience is going to be like than it was even 10 years ago if you look back at our curriculum just that short 10 years ago there are many more rigidities in it every College I believe without exception of our six calendar graduate colleges have moved not only toward more interdisciplinary or interdepartmental inter college offerings but have moved toward making the curricular requirements much more flexible and the student again have much fewer many fewer I should say required courses I'm not sure this is all that great and these things have a tendency sometimes for a pendulum to swing that way and then maybe swing back I can see some swing back now but student has had an impact the student right or wrong wanted this very much we hear that other universities other colleges are going to limit enrollments yes if that is suggested to you what would your response be well um if it's just suggested I turn it down if it's forced on me I'd be very sorry about it because I think it I noticed this article in The Chronicle Higher Education and you can be sure we're going to be faced with this every time we go in for an appropriation for increasing enrollment why don't you control enrollment but I noticed some of those states were very different circumstances in Iowa for example the SUNY system the State University of New York system is a mammoth system and the state of New York it comes as no surprise and a good deal of financial difficulties at the moment and to restrict enrollment they're really in the Northeast the committment has almost always been to a private higher education but higher education has always been sort of secondary and in the Northeast so I sort of write them off as being quite different at the moment I do Michigan also is having great financial problems and so forth and so on when it gets the Illinois it's a little closer home but you are talking about Champaign Urbana which is a huge multi versity compared to the size of this place now having disposed I hope of some of those example is not being totally relevant I think the more basic and fundamental thing is this it does the state of Iowa or any state feel that it has an obligation to offer higher educational opportunities to the young men and women in the state now if you do you're going have to pay for it somewhere you're going to have to pay for it through giving more money to your state universities to your community colleges through the tuition equalization program for private schools and I support all of those things I support education wherever you can find it but there is no easy way out unless you want to chicken out cop out on your responsibilities and say we don't have any responsibility for educating these young people and this is so totally against the whole land grant tradition which came into being back in 1862 under Abraham Lincoln with a notion of making educational opportunity available to young men and women regardless of their financial status I think we'd be losing something very precious when you say when you have to say in this state and no you can't go to school you want to go to even though you're fully qualified and the state of Iowa doesn't have to do that either the states and took a t-shape and I think it's too committed to higher education to let this happen let's talk about money and the unreality how well we get it what you do with it and what you hope to do with it if you get it okay well this is a very timely topic if we go and it looks we as though we have gone to annual appropriation there's always a timely top because you will be involved in it one way or another year round now the I think at our book of politically responsible agencies that is the executive branch at governor and the legislature has some awfully tough problems to deal with and I'm not unsympathetic and there are so many this is still a very rich country but they're even so there's so many good demands and requests for the state dollar in the federal dollar that I can understand why I'm legislators and governors have tough decisions to make I think limiting our our ourselves to the state of Iowa for the moment I think we're going to have hard time trying to convince the legislature there sufficient funds to do all of the things we want and know that we need to do on the other hand I'm not tall discouraged as I look at surrounding states and states all over the country save Iowa is in pretty good shape and I think there are good portents of maybe good things to come on our appropriation one thing as far as Iowa State is concerned somebody does like what we're doing because when you get an enrollment increase of 1300 21,000 students that's a big enrollment increase although they bring problems this has got to say whatever you're doing students like it compared to whatever else is offered the we do have on this University I think excellent support our alumni and friends this may be a subject we'll get into later but this whole tremendous structure of the Iowa site center plus a football stadium actually in six years without state or federal funding is really quite a success story which doesn't belong to me necessarily but does belong to our alumni and Friends so so people are expressing confidence and us and what may be more to the point the legislature is on several occasions in recent years it has gone out of his way on his own volition to appropriate money which we really hadn't asked for and this is quite a thing to do particularly can do for example the coal research project which the legislature appropriated three million dollars to Iowa State University to proceed with a study of extraction of coal washing it marketing it an economical way and we're proceeding that with that in the field of health tickly animal health this is a word I probably can't say but two years ago before last the legislature came very much concerned with tge I can say the initial it's transmissible gastroenteritis and I think I got tonight among baby pig and they appropriated and small amount seventy thousand dollars a year to Iowa State veterinary school on a continuing basis to research this thing this past year they appropriate again a small sum fifty thousand dollars to us to investigate green storage dust combustion and we're starting on that I love us you can say are really awfully picky small items and a budget of eighty million dollars a year and that's about what ours is from state and federal sources but it's important it shows that the legislature doesn't believe you're an ivory tower they don't believe that this institution is useful I believe you can help on some of society's most and the state's most pressing problems and then finally as I try to be optimistic and I can't be every day but I will be on your program Bailey I thank you for that I think the states and the potential the state's economic potential is very good indeed Iowa's resources are pretty stable sort of we don't have these fabulous ups and downs at the state like Michigan does which is so dedicated to the automobile industry and the the potentials here for economic continued economic growth I think are very good and when all said and done really your appropriation that the public university is going to depend more on that latter element whether there is money or not and on all these other things a tell I've talked about let's talk about the center Eleanor's more in detail and what that has added to the campus both for the students and for people who come to this campus well of course this is our most publicized happening at Iowa State and it's good that it is we have let people know we've done something unique and this is very unique it's resolved happy that in six years and that's how long has taken the CY Stephens is the first of those four buildings in the center was opened up in fall of 1969 so in six years all four of those buildings have been completed but this is not a part of the center but football stadium also so if you take those together 19 and a half million dollars for the center of the four buildings there seven a half million dollars at a minimum what I'm up to about 25 million dollars I can handle them at about that level without too much trouble and this is this is a fantastic story for any public university well the university to bring together that kind of contributions in that in that shorter period and I think it symbolizes a great deal more than the destructor ISM so that symbolizes a a belief in the university a hope for its future a desire to be to be connected with it I think it says to us at least I hope it does we think this is an excellent school which needs a little extra edge you know and maybe it's a perverse or unfortunate thing about American people but we don't always give two places it needed we give two places that we're proud of example you don't give to Harvard University because they need it to give it to them because you're proud to have your name associated with enterprise and I hope that says something of that search for us and the combination of facilities is really unique I think among American universities all of them being there together and I think it's really a handsome aesthetic expression indeed indeed and with the opening of semen of course a furthering of the extension of university to others and extension services seller could we talk about that continuing role of the university oh yes that's a really a nut the first law but one of my real loves is our extension work I think it does so much for us and so much for the state we can get all kind of testimony that's how much it does for people out in the state but it does a lot for us too it keeps us in touch with people so that our own programs can be more meaningful well I think the Shaymin building gives us one badly needed and missing piece in our program that is a facility through which we can do a lot of on campus continuing education work and it is a handsome facility it's hard to pick and choose among those buildings there in the center but if I'd be given a pre choice I would have said that was the most important building to build first when you're when you're getting money through contributions you build it the way the contributions coming in and cy Stevens happen to be really interested in blessed Hardy was in in in theater and in performing arts and so that was first we could bond by use of student piece and helping build at Hilton Coliseum so there was a way to finance that and then comes along bill Fisher a wonderful supporter and a wonderful guy he likes a little theater intimate theater and so we got that and then comes Carl Shima many many other people these were just the name donors of big donors who's willing to talk about continuing education but in terms of University's basic ongoing solid mission that building is going to be possibly most important in the four other other ways that you expect university to increase taking education oh yeah yeah I think this is I hate to use a trite statement again but I think this is a real frontier maybe it could easily be our most important frontier in the next decade is to involve ourselves more fully and more meaningfully with oh you choose your word adult education continuing education extension open learning is a fashionable phrase at the moment but somehow by a whole combination of media and methods including the one we're using now television but by no means limited to it by newspaper courses by cassettes by having Learning Center's out where our area Extension offices are and converting them into learning centers we've got to be and we're going to be doing a lot more of taking a knowledge out to people in a more formal more organized why we rewrite it to threshold it seems to me a beginning to offer programs which lead to off-campus degrees if we may return from off-campus learning and extension back to the campus and another sign of growth and change this of course is the new veterinary medicine complex which is being built under construction for several years and now nearing completion it is located south of the Iowa State University Center south of the new football stadium and it is a massive and major undertaking director parks how important is this project this new addition to the university during a ten year period this would have to be the most important academic cluster just in terms of its dollar value this is about twenty six million dollar building project funding jointly shared by the federal government in the state we were fortunate to get in on just about the very last of federal money available for building in the health science areas we barely got in under the wire prodigious effort by ourselves in the Iowa congressional delegation and anyway you could go to get what we thought was our part of that money but that's going to be a tremendously good facility the our veterinary Madison program if we aren't one of the world's real leaders again I don't know why we shouldn't be not sure we are going to be with that kind of facility it's the oldest public veterinary medicine College in the nation and with a National Animal Disease Center this federal research installation right here in Ames with all these things going for us the future has to be really promising in veterinary medicine this is of course the new football stadium used for the first time this fall we've talked about the center buildings and the new veterinary medicine complex we have not mentioned the many other buildings and additions to existing buildings that have been part of the construction that has occurred on campus the lanes designed to house and to further the teaching and research functions of the university buildings to house the students these buildings certainly constitute the most dramatic and visible evidence of expansion during the period we've been discussing Roger packs let's talk money again what's financial investment is involved I asked John pace in the summer John paces you knows director of our space and schedules here to just item-by-item get it up what we had here in the way of money for cave major capital improvement over the last decade and it's an astounding figure this isn't very politics when we talk about now when we're trying to get the legislature appropriate more money but back to that the astounding figure better than one hundred million dollars this this is this of course does include state funding federal funding private donations it includes the center and so forth but it doesn't include self-liquidating projects such as our residence hall so I guess you know I don't think we have all that many bill because they come hard and you can see how many more you need but I begin to understand when you consider that important figure that why your alumni come back and are even people who've never been in are amazed by all the new buildings but this shouldn't mislead us so we should be grateful and happy and we are that we've gotten this much accomplished but we still have very serious building needs we're teaching music here on this campus in the kind of buildings that no junior high school student in the state of law I was learning studying music and we've got a library here this is again I think are one of our prime success stories how we can crease the holdings of that library to give us a solid base out of which we can have academic axles we've done fine on that in the last ten years but the building wise that place is just way too small anymore every time you add books you have to take out the seats for students and this is a losing proposition so we have in we do need to modernize remodel the old veterinary quadrangle for the College of Education which is scattered here there and everywhere people have a tough time understanding why we're blowing always smoke about the new buildings you need if you had 100 million dollars in last ten years and the use of phrase that I've often used is our problem is we just began too far behind the starting line we had great accumulated needs for buildings in this whole growth area took over and then you have to run as fast as you could to stand still and now I think with some prospect of a more gradual growth and we do face that for the future we do have an opportunity now of catching up and not for growth but for replacing some of these facilities which really do and mustn't be replaced need to be replaced yeah let's be talked at this point about what you see and hope for the future there are some things I see as being important to the future I've mentioned one unless I'm badly wrong we're going to be devoting a pretty sizable effort to open learning off campus education on the levels which are not quite of that magnitude but are important I think I think here at Iowa State we'll be moving and to perfect a new college here and putting the existence out of pieces that are already here I think we've come to the point where we need a college of design and I think our faculty agrees with this a composed of architecture applied art and landscape architecture is a beginning and it be a nucleus around which all kinds of design functions and artistic efforts it can find a happy home this means moving departments which are already in other colleges together and we do have a handsome beginning here because we have authorized a new fine Design Center building and when they're housed together I think this this can come about and it is a kind of an emphasis first like those are two of them at least our monopoly feels again this is the only place that has architecture in the state or landscape architecture and about the only place that really makes a feel out of applied art although some might question that decision so I feel that to have those creative departments together and to give them the prominence and the encouragement which being a second college would do with something which the state needs and which this university needs again to broaden out its image and its and his actual being is something more than science and technology so that that's another development I see for the future I would not want at this juncture to specify department by department but I would fully expect some of our developing departments which now are offering very fine undergraduate and master's degrees to earn their Spurs and be offering PhD degrees and within the next decade in areas where we meet the criteria nor is there a real public demand that we can meet for this because we don't need conflicting and duplicating programs do we have the staff and the library facilities to do this I'm not interested in us giving a whole bunch of PhD degrees just for status or prestige but I am in anything that we do I think any new areas that we go into as for example more graduate programs I must really have a solid underpinning of excellence and we've got to be sure that we have that before we even start the programs last thoughts president parks in looking back over this 10-year period well I don't the question is well intended I I don't take this as a valedictory because I still hope I have some more years around the place visit just know this is just a milestone the 10-year period oh yeah I I think they're they're great satisfactions in this in this position I really get a little weary of some of my colleagues talking about what at rough and trying situation being a university president is it does have those aspects some days but we all knew what it was like before we started it and it's certainly been no worse than I thought it would be and sometimes better but there are real satisfactions at this university I know don't know that much about others it would differ with the place because your satisfactions are in large part indigenous to the place you work I think and I think the president at Iowa State has an awful lot of things he should be thankful for and then most of those things could be wound up in one big ball by saying it's the people you work with because we do have a faculty staff which in the domain are very dedicated people and they're reasonable people are nice people to work with they aren't always happy about things and they let you know it but they're reasonable people to work with and you have a feeling I don't delude myself as how important a present is to a university you don't have a chance of being successful in this you're surrounded by good people and I don't mean only in your immediate entourage I mean good people throughout the organization the kind of people who would do a good job whoever is present or whether there is oppressed or not and I think we have an awful lot of that here at Iowa State woi vbe has presented Iowa State University reflections 1965 1975 and