Interviewee: Adam Herbert Interviewer: James Crooks Date: July 19, 2006

C: Today is July 19, 2006. This is James Crooks interviewing former president Adam Herbert. Would you start with a little background and what brought you to UNF in terms of your professional career before coming here in 1989. H: I came to UNF from Miami. I moved to Florida in 1979 as Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Services at Florida International [University] and became vice president there and was chief academic as well as administrative officer for the North Miami campus of the university. Prior to that, I had been a department chairman at Virginia Tech and had been on the faculty at Southern Cal [USC]. I was a White House fellow in Washington in the mid­1970s between two stints at Virginia Tech. C: And your collegiate background was public administration? H: Public administration and urban affairs. C: Which fits in very nicely with your kind of administration. H: Absolutely. I think it was the perfect background to serve as a leader of an urban campus. My career has been one in which I had worked in a number of settings where I was involved in developing new programs and addressing community needs, having to work in a land grant institution at Virginia Tech, and Southern Cal, although it was private, was still a university that placed a very heavy emphasis on community service, so that part of my background was relevant, I thought, with coming here as well. C: Were you invited to apply or did you see the ad to apply? How did that part work then? H: I knew, just being in the system, I was aware of the fact that the position was open. I talked with the executive vice chancellor about the search. I had been approached earlier, about a year or two before then, when the presidency at the University of West Florida had opened, but I didn’t think that was a very good match for my background and interest. Then this position opened and Roy [McTarnaghan] called me about it. The first thing I asked him was whether or not there was a bias against administrators within the university system. During some years, there’s a tendency to definitely want to go outside the system. That had been the pattern in Florida, but I was assured that there were no biases against the folks from within the system. Looking at Jacksonville, I concluded that it might be a very good match for me in terms of the strengths that I have and what I saw with regard to the future development of the community as well as the campus. C: What were your first impressions of UNF? H: Well, again, I had worked in the system for ten years, so I had a chance to observe the campus. I thought that the campus had very clear potential for further growth and development. It was regarded statewide as being sort of a sleepy institution. The campus was not very aggressive, at least that was the image within the state. The university was not asking for much with regard to Herbert – Page 2

new resources and had a very small freshman class. One of the realities was that a number of our universities were upper division only; this was one of those. At Florida International [University], we very quickly grew our freshman class. The freshman class at North Florida was very small, and the image or impression around the state was that this was not an issue of great priority to grow the campus. What I saw was an opportunity to develop a much larger, more comprehensive kind of campus in a community that was definitely going to grow. What I saw was significant upside potential for the campus. Given the fact that it had not been asking for very much with regard to resources, I just saw some significant opportunities. C: Do you remember roughly what the size of the student body was back then? H: There were about 7,000 students at that point in time. This was in 1989. First let me tell you that when I looked at this, my conclusion was that this was an opportunity for about ten years. I didn’t think that it was appropriate, and still don’t, for presidents to serve much more than ten years unless it’s in a steady state kind of environment. My sense was that, over a ten­year period, we could double the size of the student body, that it could become significantly more entwined into the fabric of the community. One of the things that also stood out, I noticed this reading the newspapers during the search process, was that the newspaper here provided very little coverage of UNF. To the extent that the newspapers focused on higher education at all, the articles were about Jacksonville University but not the University of North Florida. I thought that was very significant. On the athletics pages, there was constant reference to JU. You seldom saw much more than scores, if that, with regard to the small number of athletics programs that were on the campus. Again, there is very little with regard to academic programs. What I saw, again, was a significant opportunity and, really, an even greater opportunity here than existed in many other parts of the state. Those factors were very important to me in terms of making the decision that this was a significant opportunity. I came in with a very definite set of thoughts with regard to the vision for the campus, a sense as to an ideal mission and size. I had lengthy discussions with the chancellor, Charlie Reed was chancellor at the time, about some of the things that I thought were necessary for it. Even during the search process, I layed some of this out because I talked with members of the board. C: You mentioned vision and mission, what were some of these ideas that you brought to the campus? H: Well, first it’s important to understand that I did view this as about a ten­year opportunity for me. That was important because I think it takes that much time to implement some of the kinds of things that I will describe to you. I also felt that it was going to be a period of significant transformation. Just as a student of public affairs, one of the things I understand is that you can only maintain that level of momentum for a time period, definitely not to exceed ten years. You need to have [a] little time where you can begin to consolidate and then you can start over again. That was sort of a backdrop in terms of at least my assessment of how this ought to be approached. The first thing I wanted to do is, over a ten­ Herbert – Page 3 year period, double the size of the student body. I wanted to grow it from a little over 7,000 to 14,000. My view was that we simultaneously needed to prepare the institution over a longer time frame to grow to somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 25,000. I think ultimately, as this community grows, that will be the ultimate size of the campus. That had implications as you deal with issues like land and acquiring additional land. It had implications with regard to the master plan and how that was laid out. It had implications with regard to facilities and how we would go about expanding enrollment in the near term to reach that doubling figure. That was what I was thinking about with regard to numbers of students. The second thing was the focus on the unique character of the institution and mission. In that context, my view was that you had to differentiate this campus within the community, from JU and the community college. We had to differentiate it within the broader context of the state. One of the things that I tried to [do] right away, I wanted to increase the size of the freshman class. It was just a few hundred students at that point. There was very little recruiting off campus. I remember my being very disappointed that we were essentially waiting for students to apply to us. With the limited number of freshmen that we had, it was clear that we, in order to reach a level of the number that I had in mind, about 3,000 freshmen, which obviously is very aggressive when you’re talking about 200­300. I didn’t know that we would necessarily get to 3,000 during that ten­year period. It was my view that that was a number that made sense given one other focus: what I wanted to do was to position UNF such that we would be one of the three or four most selective public universities in the state. It was my view then, as now, that quality is going ultimately to be the driver of enrollment. At that point in time, JU was focused more on survival than on trying to deal with that kind of issue. My view was that would definitely differentiate us in the context of the community, that we would get growing recognition for attracting and increasing the higher quality student body beginning with the freshman class, and then, from there, we would be in a position to recruit not just locally, because we were basically a commuter institution. I wanted this to become more of a traditional residential campus with a number of part­time students as well, but having at its core a traditional college aged student body, very high quality. We focused our recruiters. We added more recruiters. We challenged them to recruit not just in Jacksonville but throughout the state. We zeroed in on particular areas, for example, Chicago. There was a high school there that attracted some outstanding students. We went up there. We went into the Washington, D.C., area. We picked out schools where we had some connections or possibilities for collaborations. I visited high schools, and, in fact, used a model similar to what Florida A&M had adopted as they reached out in a very aggressive kind of fashion. But the goal, again, was very clear: we wanted to become more of a residential campus. That required us to recruit much more comprehensively outside the region. Herbert – Page 4

C: Is this recruiting effort something comparable to FIU? You mentioned FAMU having done this, targeting nationally and statewide. Was it focused on minority students, for example? Was it focused on quality students? H: It was a multi­pronged strategy. First, we wanted to increase the number of outstanding students. What I wanted to do was increase the admissions profile of our freshman class such that it was in the top three or four in the state. I figured [the University of] Florida, Florida State were always going to be number one and number two, but if we could end up being three or four, that would position UNF in a very special way and would enable us to describe our niche as being one in which we focus priority attention on very high quality, undergraduate education in a caring and nurturing environment. I wanted to get us listed in US News & World Report and other kinds of publications. To do that, it was essential that we have a larger, full­time, traditional student body, that we have a larger residential student body, which is one of the reasons we proceeded aggressively to build additional housing. As you looked at the profile of students graduating from the public schools in Duval County, what was clear was that we were not going to be able to grow the university as rapidly as I was hoping for relying solely on students from this community. We had, then, to recruit throughout state. We, on the one hand, were seeking students irrespective of socioeconomic background, race, and the like, but we also did want to ensure greater diversity in the student body. Strategically, what we did was to divide the state up; we had recruiters focusing on every part of the state. I got monthly reports on what was happening in terms of applications from around the state. We built an accountability system to ensure that we were accomplishing the goals that we wanted. Ironically, we also expanded a number of athletics teams and we wanted to recruit throughout the state. One of the strategic lessons about all this is, if you set up women’s athletics programs, you are more likely to get young men from some of those same high schools from which those young ladies were enrolled. So, again, it was a comprehensive kind of approach with the priority on recruiting outstanding students. We set up minimum standards for athletics, for example, and we basically said, if you wanted to admit an athlete to the university, they had to meet our regular admission standards. C: How could you sell UNF down state because we were a sleepy campus? H: The thing that you sell is the fact that this is a special place. We dealt with guidance counselors. We invited guidance counselors to come up from South Florida. I knew a number of the principals from South Florida from when I was there because I was actively involved in recruiting, and so I’d go down and visit. We’d take students down with us. It was a very aggressive recruiting effort. C: Real hands on. H: Absolutely. You had to do that. C: What was special about the special place? This is something I’ve been trying to find out in all my interviews. Herbert – Page 5

H: I think that the basic emphasis, the thing I would tell students, is that it is a very caring and nurturing kind of campus with a great deal of interaction between students and faculty. We don’t have large classes. As a matter of fact, what I point out is that we don’t have classrooms that are large enough to accommodate big lectures like those that you would find at Florida and Florida State. The average classroom on our campus accommodated 30­35 students and the largest classroom at the time held 150 or 200. I said what you’d know is that you’ll come to a place where you are not just a number, where the faculty members are going to know your name, where they’re going to care about you. Simultaneously, you have an opportunity to study in an urban environment with all the incredible resources that are available in an urban community. I think that for many students that was very appealing. Again, every student is not going to be interested in that kind of environment, but I had university presidents within the state that would tell students that they ought to come to us as opposed to going to their institutions because the young person was going to thrive much more in a campus of our size. So what you do is that you develop that kind of niche, and then, frankly, students help to sell the campus. I remember some of the young people that we attracted from Chicago; at one point we had eight or nine kids from Whitney Young High School to come down, and their parents would come down and the students that were here were helping us recruit other students. They’d get together and have dinners with all the kids there. It became a real special kind of thing. The kids from there, from Washington, D.C., part of it was weather that we were selling as we went up north, but it was, again, about a very special caring and nurturing kind of environment that I focused a great deal of attention on. We met with alumni in the communities. We’d get alumni to go with us to meet with the kids, with the young people. I shouldn’t say kids. All of that was part of an overall sales effort within Jacksonville. We did several things. On the one hand, we focused a lot of attention on [The] Bolles [School] because of the large number of outstanding students there. One interesting thing is that, before we started these initiatives, most of the students at Bolles were those that stayed within the state, would go to Florida and Florida State. About six or seven years into this, we were up there with Florida in terms of the numbers of students that we were getting from Bolles. We also hired the former principal at Bolles [Stanton] to head up our recruitment efforts, Lynda Lewis, because she was very aggressive and I wanted an aggressive operation, but also because she knew how those young people thought, and we wanted to make a very significant impact at Bolles. We dealt with dual enrollment programs there, focusing in on attracting as many young people as possible who had the kind of backgrounds that we wanted to enroll here. We admitted those students early with the idea being that that sent a message. There were a lot of psychological things that went into this, but I think the record spoke for itself that we were very successful in recruiting those kinds of students. And, in fact, in terms of the tests that were given at the end of the sophomore year, we were consistently in the top three with regard to the Herbert – Page 6

performance of our students and I don’t know what the mean SAT and grade point averages are now, but my guess is that UNF is still going to be in the top four or so in the state. C: What are the down sides of attracting students? There must be a lack of extracurricular opportunities. H: That was one of the challenges early on. The reality, of course, is that you have to have critical mass. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to grow the freshman class as rapidly as possible. In South Florida, what we did when I was at FIU, we would go to the legislature and ask for money up front to fund enrollment growth. UNF never did that. When I came here, I came with the experience of knowing that it is possible to go after the money up front. We couldn’t afford to admit more students and then hope for the funding. We needed the funding up front. Tom Healy, who was our government relations leader in that context, did an excellent job, but we worked the legislature very hard. I had several friends from South Florida who were in the legislature that I knew from down there, including the president of the senate and others, and so those relationships were very helpful early on in terms of securing money. Every session, we went in asking for enrollment growth money in order to fuel the kind of growth we were talking about, with the exception of a two or three year period where state revenues were down and we had our budgets cut about $2 or 3 million. That really hurt us short term. In spite of that, even, by the end of that decade, we had almost doubled the student body. But with those additional students, came not only new faculty positions so that we could provide both greater depth and breadth in regard to academic programs, but also we had more students that would be enrolled and would take part in various student activities. We increased the number of intercollegiate athletics programs. We started basketball, both for men and women. That, I thought, was a particularly important thing. We had baseball, obviously, but for a campus like this it was important to have men’s and women’s basketball as a unifying factor. We also needed to have a gymnasium. I remember that there were some people who were somewhat critical of the fact that we built a facility that would seat 6,000. I didn’t speak a lot about it at the time, but it could also be expanded to 10,000­ 11,000. We put enough restrooms in there for a facility of 12,000, so it can be expanded, but we simply had to have those facilities. We added a student life building so that students would have meeting space and recreational space with pool tables and that sort of thing. C: Is that the Robinson Center? H: Right. It is the Robinson Center, the addition that we added there. All that was geared to ensure that we had a much more comprehensive set of options for student life. When you have primarily a commuter campus, some of these things aren’t as critical, but as you begin to move toward a residential student body, all of this was absolutely essential and was a fundamental part of the strategy to ensure that students felt good. We did other things: worked out and negotiated a deal for cable television in all of our housing units, for example, [and] added high speed Internet computer connectivity to all the residence halls. And all those Herbert – Page 7

things were geared toward making it as attractive a place as possible for students to study and to live. C: And as numbers, headcount jumped from 7,000 up to 14,000, the FTEs and residential numbers increased at an even faster rate. H: That is true. That was primarily a function of going after full­time students outside the region. Again, that was a function of the fact that there were not enough students from here, from Jacksonville, to not only meet the numbers, but also to help us achieve the enrollment profile. So the interesting thing was that this was a regional campus that was drawing students from throughout the state, the country, and the world. There weren’t, at the time, very many regional campuses doing the kinds of things that we were doing. C: How did you get money for foreign students? H: Some of them were being covered from sources other than our own. We did have some financial aid dollars, but most of them were coming with financial aid from other sources. C: What was your faculty like in terms of comparing it with FIU’s faculty when you were there? Were they the caliber of the faculty at FIU? H: The commitment to teaching, I thought, was very similar. I think that the faculty at FIU had a stronger research focus, and part of that was a function of our having more graduate programs at FIU than North Florida. North Florida had not really placed as heavy an emphasis on graduate programs. Given the size of Miami, in the absence of other public institutions in a community that size, there was a greater emphasis on adding graduate programs, initially at the masters degree level and ultimately doctorate degree programs as well. If there was less focus here on research, there were obviously a number of faculty actively engaged in research agendas. That, I think, was the major difference. Frankly, I think the other thing was that the campus did not place as much emphasis on research. One of the things I wanted to do was to place a higher emphasis on that, but, from a resource perspective, we just could not do it given the other goal of simultaneously trying to develop that reputation on the instructional side. The critical thing is to have that critical mass of students in order to really build the kind of institution we wanted ours to become. We didn’t have enough majors. What I wanted to see was additional majors in the sciences. For example, we were only offering one foreign language with some instruction in a second. In the sciences, we didn’t have a major in physics, for example, and it was important to have that. Not that we were going to produce large numbers [of] graduates in physics, but that becomes an important part of the totality of what we wanted to do. One of the things I wanted was to add engineering at the undergraduate level and there were strong forces pushing against it. C: Was the FEEDS [Florida Engineering Education Delivery System] program in place when you arrived? With the University of Florida? In Electrical Engineering? H: FEEDS was available at the time because it was offered at FIU, but we did not offer an undergraduate degree in engineering. By Board [of Regents] rule, there Herbert – Page 8

was a conscious decision that regional campuses would not offer engineering. My view was that we had to be in engineering at the undergraduate level. C: There was some pressure from the community too. H: There was a lot of pressure from the community. It also was the case that there were strong faculty reactions against it. I recall that very vividly, but this institution needed engineering. C: So it was a case of persuading the Florida regents to go that route? H: Right. When Tom Petway came on the Board of Regents, he was very helpful in terms of ultimately enabling us to do that. He and I really worked that very hard, and then we had to work it hard within the campus in order to get faculty support to initiate into the program. But, ultimately, to have engineering, it was also important that we had physics. One other example of the sciences, as I was trying to enhance capacity for both undergraduate instruction, but also laying the foundation for expanded research, I purchased a nuclear magnetic resonator. At the time, there were only two of them in the city, and it cost us about $250,000 to $300,000 at the time. It was a lot of money. What I felt was critical was that we had to continue to advance our capabilities in the sciences. That was going to help us both in biology and in chemistry. It was critical to make that investment, and, frankly, because it was one of only two in the community, my feeling was that that would also help us develop stronger linkages with the scientific community if we were willing to allow them to have access to the equipment. There the notion was that we would train students to use the equipment and so Vistakon and other companies did come in and took advantage of our willingness to allow them to use the equipment. We had some of our students hired by companies when they saw that we had our undergraduates being trained in the utilization of that kind of equipment. So it had both the undergraduate instructional dimension, but also it was intended to lay the foundation for expanded research. Then, when I stepped down as chancellor, another thing that I was able to do was to get the board to commit $1,000,000. [With that money,] I created a Florida Center for Public Policy and Leadership. The idea there was I wanted to do something that I was not able to do as President: that was to provide a mechanism through which we could support faculty with efforts to generate significantly more grant monies in areas that were more tied to the social sciences than was the case when I was here. When we had the budget reductions in the early 1990s, it really created major problems for us. If we could have maintained our momentum in terms of hiring faculty and generated some additional support mechanisms for research, I think, then, we could have jump­ started even faster the addition of new masters degree programs and also increased the level of support for externally funded grants and contracts. C: Because, again, you had the mass issue. You had to have a certain mass before you could get the recognition in Washington and elsewhere. H: Absolutely. You have to be able to provide support for faculty coming in, in terms of start up monies to create labs. For social science faculties, faculty in the arts and humanities, it was important for us to have even small grant funds that we Herbert – Page 9

could use to jump­start some of the research programs that faculty might be interested in. The other thing, obviously, is that we tried to work in Washington. [We] hired a lobbyist who helped us to get earmarked funds. But you’ve got to have, again, that critical mass and faculty who have the research programs that are tied back to some of those activities. We just did not have that and that was a major challenge. That was one of the reasons I thought it was so important for us to grow the campus as quickly as possible. I felt very good that during the period I was here we added over a million square feet in new space, in the context of academic facilities, residence halls, parking garages, and I know there were some people who did not understand why we built the arena the size we did. There were a number of people [who] didn’t understand why I wanted to build a conference center, but I think now that it was extremely important for the campus. C: And for the whole city. H: And for the city. Absolutely. I think eventually folks will understand why the track and soccer stadium was so important. It seats 10,000. It’s the only facility like it in the city except for something like Alltel Stadium. At that point in time, one of the things that I had to talk to the mayor about is the possibility of doing something that Indianapolis has done and that is to become a major site for amateur athletics. What I saw was an opportunity to position Jacksonville as a place that could be very competitive and attract an event of multiple types, Pan Am[erican] Games type events and those sorts of things. C: NCAA quarterfinal events. H: Absolutely. If we had some of those facilities here, it would just be a natural. It was clear that we couldn’t afford to build a facility that would accommodate 20,000 people. We weren’t there. But, in any event, we explored the possibilities of expanding swimming facilities, a number of other things. Some things worked, some things didn’t, but I think that, without question, it was a period of very significant expansion. We dealt with the need for a new facility for health, for the college of business. We even laid that out so that at some point in time there is enough space to add another wing to that building. C: So, looking at the buildings, there was a basketball arena used for graduation and public events, the university center. Were you involved in the beginning of the Lazzara Fine Arts Building or did that come after you? H: It came after I did, but that was something that we did. I hired the architect and we started to work on that before I left. When I was chancellor, the budget wasn’t large enough, so I got some additional money for the university to expand it. We had the plans to expand the library. C: And the dormitories over by the university center were started during your time? H: The ones, I forget what they’re called now. There is another set. C: On Circle Road? H: It is next to Osprey Hall. That complex there. That is where we started the model for the housing. The strategy was, in order to hold down costs, to develop the same kind of structure using the clusters. We worked out something with the Herbert – Page 10

architect where we could continue to use that same model in multiple locations around the campus. We made a few modifications in it. C: I don’t know what the cluster is. Could you talk about it? H: Essentially what happens is that you have multiple buildings that ultimately form a cluster of units. C: Like a quadrangle almost. H: Except that they are shaped a little different, but that is the basic idea. As you look, what you’ll see is we essentially used the same building plan throughout each of those additional complexes. We built a new police department. We built the expansion of the facilities for all of the plant workers. We added that. We added the new facility for the addition to the Robinson Center. C: Was the physics/engineering building part of this? H: That was on the plan. We also had on the plan when I left a couple of other buildings that have not been constructed yet. The way I looked at it at the time was we had to be as aggressive as possible given the broader goals. I put enough buildings on the PECO [Public Education Capital Outlay] list that it would take about ten or fifteen years for them to finish all of them. The social science building that was just constructed was not on the list. I did have a school of education building on there and also another general purpose instructional building on there. Those things change over time. The key was that when I came here, there was nothing on the PECO list for UNF, and, when I left, I wanted to make sure that there were enough projects on there that we would never again, at least not over the course of the next decade, be in a position where UNF was not positioned to get new buildings. You go from a ten­year list to a five­year list to a three­year list to get your buildings, so you’ve got to have them on the list in order to be considered. Occasionally, politics will enter in. Kernan Road, for example, was not on anyone’s radar screen. I went to the president, chair of the senate appropriations committee, and indicated to her (she was a friend from Jacksonville) that this was absolutely critical for us as part of the deal to get the land for the R and D park. That stipulation was that they had to have an interchange onto J. T. Butler Boulevard. We didn’t have the money to do that. We had to get it from the legislature, so we were able to do that. Those kinds of things were absolutely critical. That land, now, the university will own. We’ve got about 300 acres to the north of the campus. The idea then was to be in a position to have both athletics facilities, housing, and/or academic space up there because we did not have enough land that we could use to actually build upon. I think the challenge for me as president, and that’s been the case for subsequent presidents, it’s absolutely critical to think long term about what this community is going to need. My view, again, was that ultimately UNF would have 25,000 students. I did not expect it would occur during my tenure here, but I still think that, ultimately, as Jacksonville continues to grow, that will be inevitable. I think that we will also see a scenario in which the university will potentially add many more graduate programs. I think that with the high cost of scientifically based programs, the doctoral programs will not necessarily be in the sciences. It is just so expensive today to start those kinds of adoptive programs Herbert – Page 11

and the challenges I’m not sure are really worth it. You’ve got to tie back also to regional needs in a sense, but it’s a wonderful institution and I just felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to serve as president for almost ten years. C: You also got College of Health in there as one of the buildings as well as Business administration. H: Yes. C: Let’s talk sports for a minute. What was the condition of the athletics [programs] when you came here and what changes did you push? H: Well, first it was a very limited athletic program. It was an NAIA program. My belief was that the future of the university on the athletic side was going to be in the NCAA. We had to expand a number of sports in order to move into Division II. I did not think that we had the resources to be a Division I program. Certainly not going from NAIA [to Division I]. The belief I had was consistently that, whatever you do, you do it in a first class fashion. We developed the following strategy. First, I wanted to move into Division II. That meant adding a number of new programs beginning with men’s and women’s basketball. H: We added women’s volleyball. We tried to deal with Title IX, also, so we wanted to ensure we had the appropriate mix of both men’s and women’s programs. Then I pursued and was elected to the president’s commission in Division II and subsequently became the chair of the Division II presidents. C: As part of the NCAA? H: As part of the NCAA. So what that did was to give us national visibility for the program. That had one other benefit and that is, in order to achieve the kind of recognition that we wanted in the context of things like US News, it was critical that the president was visible among other presidents because there is a peer assessment component of all of that and it is geared back to the views of other presidents. I became active both in ASCU [Association of State Colleges and Universities], and was on the board there, and in regard to the NCAA. We decided that, in order to become successful, we had to recruit more broadly. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we did recruit throughout the state and, to an extent, around the country, but to a much lesser extent there. Facilities, that was another very critical component of this. When we built the arena and we made some modifications in the natatorium and we built a new facility for women’s softball, we were able to get donors to give us money to complete the baseball stadium to build a nice facility there. We were able to use CITF monies, Capital Improvement Trust Fund monies, to put lights on the baseball field. That was important. My view at the time was that baseball was going to be our premiere sport. When we put the lights on, through Dusty Rhodes’ contacts, we were able to begin bringing Division I teams here to play our baseball team. During the winter, when teams up north were not able to go outdoors, they could come down and play here and we obviously were very successful with regard to that. We had a very aggressive outreach effort and the athletics program was an extremely important component of what we were trying to do in terms of advancing our reputation. The last thing I would mention is that we worked very hard to get into a conference. There was a Division II Herbert – Page 12

conference within the state and I had to go and visit each of the presidents of the Sunshine Sate Conference to convince them to allow us to get in, but, once we got in, they did not treat us very fairly. We finally decided that it was just not worth it. It was all private institutions plus ours. The group just made it too difficult for us to be a member, so we left that and went into the Peach Belt [Conference] where it was composed of public institutions. It was not as ideal for us because we were a Florida institution and wanted to play Florida institutions, but, ultimately, what we were trying to do was to continue to get better while maintaining our academic standards. What stands out is that we were consistently focusing on admitting students who meet our regular admission standards. In fact, there was something called a Herbert Rule that some of the coaches didn’t like particularly well, but, basically, what I said was that we wanted our student athletes to mirror the academic profile of our student body. Athletics were an important part of the university, but we were not going to allow the tail to wag the dog. C: Is that why UNF did not play FAU or FIU or West Florida in any of the sports? H: No, they didn’t want to play us. Initially, FIU and FAU were Division II. We did play West Florida. The challenge of West Florida was that it was just so far, a six­hour bus ride. We did play them in several sports each year. With FAU and FIU, again, those were distance issues, but, also, they decided, faster than did we, that they were going to go to Division I. C: Another area in which you put a lot of energy was fund­raising. When you came here in 1989, I guess the foundation had maybe $1 million or so. Tell me a little about what is your approach there and what you achieved. H: The bottom line is, and it was certainly true in the 1980s, that a public university simply did not have the resources from the state to achieve the levels of distinction to which we aspired. It was very important for us to pursue externally funded grants and contracts. There were some chairs that had been formed with $600,000 gifts and we had one in the school of music that enabled us to bring in distinguished musicians. We had one that Fred Shultz gave in honor of Andrew Robinson and the Kogers were in the process of making a contribution. What we tried to do was to significantly increase the volume of giving. The challenge there was that you have to have a reputation that goes along with the request for gifts. Simultaneously, what we had to do was to build a growing reputation of the university being a very high quality one. The academic excellence theme was very important as we simultaneously were going after these additional dollars. One of the things that I focused particular attention on was financial aid. In order to attract the kinds of students that we wanted, both in terms of students from around the state or nation and students from inner­city high schools, we had to have additional dollars and so we aggressively pursued that. I remember attending a meeting that David Hicks was kind enough to organize in which we talked about particularly young people from inner city. C: It was helpful that Ann Hicks was a student who told David what the quality of the institution was. Herbert – Page 13

H: In fact, it made a very big difference. I think the more we focused on quality, the more we enhanced the quality of the programs, the students, the more community leaders identified with us. There were some folks who were very critical of my accepting the invitation to become chairman of the chamber of commerce, for example. My belief, then, was for us to elevate the institution to the level that, at least in my belief, we deserved and must play. It was critical that the university be perceived as a major contributor to the life of this city. Having the president of the university serve as chairman of the chamber was a very significant statement because it had never been done before. The thought of an educator being in that kind of a role was just something that was foreign to the thoughts of many people. To have the president of the public university here serve in that role, in my view, was a very significant statement, not so much about me, but rather about the evolving role of the University of North Florida in the fabric of this city. That, in my view, was absolutely essential. All of these things, ultimately, were important in the context of the fund­raising effort because, as a result of my having served as chairman of the chamber, I got to know a lot of folks very well. I think they appreciated the fact that the university was stepping up in the kind of fashion that we were. It is through relationships that you are able to engage in fund­raising activities. It is through the visibility of a leader that you are able to do some of that. Ultimately, faculty and deans are the ones that can get people excited about what’s going on, but what a president can do is both facilitate those conversations, structure a gift, and can follow through on the nurturing and making the ask for the major gift. That was part of what we tried to do. We were able to, at a point in time, for example, in which there was a lot of discussion about diversity and very little was being done around the state to address it, we raised almost $13 million to support financial aid for students from low­income families. Now some of that was outright gifts, some of that was matches from the state, but when I was able to go around Florida and talk about the fact that we raised that much money to support students from inner­city schools to come to this institution, that was very impressive. I remember going to [William M.] Raines High School and Dolores Pass Kessler gave us money so that we were able to establish a million dollar scholarship program for young people from Raines High School where she had attended school. The response that the young people from that school had that next year [was amazing]. We had the president of the student body, the president of the senior class, Miss Raines, the president of the honor society. It was basically the leadership of that high school [that] came to the University of North Florida. It was things like that that I think that really helped us to stand out. The foundation was laid through those initial gifts. Then we were able to really jump­start it in a very significant way, getting people to think even more seriously about their gifts, and we were ready to go reach out to many more people. C: Because you are competing with the rest of Florida doing the same thing. H: Part of this was developing a real sense of pride within the community that this community has a special institution. I remember when we were in the health arena, we had a scenario in which some of the hospitals wanted to set up a Herbert – Page 14

program in physical therapy, and they wanted more nurses. They went to the University of Florida and Florida said, well, we’ll do it for five years and you can pay us for it. It was going to cost them about $250,000 a year and, so, what the University of Florida was going to do was to hire some adjuncts basically to teach over here. I went to those same administrators and said, you have an opportunity here to help make a fundamental decision about the future of physical therapy education in this community. You can go ahead and spend that money at the University of Florida. I said, the way I would characterize that is that you have a choice or you can fund the University of North Florida for five years and then we’ll have a program set up that will continue to produce graduates because we’ll have an enrollment base that will cover all the costs. I said, basically, what it comes down to is you can either build your own in your community or you can hire mercenaries to do it. I said, either model works and you just need to make a decision as to which model you prefer. What I can tell you is that if you make that commitment to the University of North Florida, you’re going to reap the benefits for generations to come. It will cost you the same thing, maybe a little bit more up front, but look at the out year benefits that accrue to you from making that kind of investment, and so they did. Not too long after, we got several gifts from Brooks [Rehabilitation], and those have continued. It is about building relationships. It is about responding to needs in the community. It is about folks seeing that there is significant return on investment from what they’re doing. We try to build facilities like the school of business that have opportunities for naming. Once the gifts are made, then others inevitably follow to the extent that you are actively engaged in stewardship, which is important. C: Let me follow up on that Kessler gift. On $1,000,000, how much of that endowment is available roughly a year for scholarships. H: Five percent. C: Okay, so close to $50,000. H: Right. And, of course, it grows over time. C: And over time, in the years with the emphasis on outreach to inner city and others, did you see a change in the student body? We’ve talked about growth in size, we’ve talked about residential students, we’ve talked about quality of students, but what about the diversity? Did you see that manifest itself in any particular ways? H: I definitely saw us increase the number of African American students in the freshman class. When I came here, the outreach efforts to inner city schools was nonexistent. A student applied and that was about it. We made a conscious effort to increase dramatically the number of minority students that were actively recruited. I mentioned Raines High School as one example, [Jean] Ribault, [Andrew] Jackson, Paxon [School for Advanced Studies], we were very aggressive in all of those. The Pajcics gave us money for a scholarship at their alma mater, Paxon. Another thing that we did, I was very concerned about the fact that students in inner­city schools were not taking the SAT exam. They were definitely not taking it early enough in order for us to get the scores to be able to Herbert – Page 15

make a difference. What we did was set up a partnership with the churches in inner­city neighborhoods. We had about twelve to fourteen churches and we met with the ministers once a year. What we did was to offer SAT prep courses through the churches. We clustered the churches so that we could get more kids and they would attend the prep courses in the larger churches. Then we would hire public school teachers to provide the instruction. We’d teach them and then they would in turn [teach the students]. We paid for all of that as an institution. My point to the ministers is that we want those students to come to UNF; but of even greater importance to us is that we want them to go to college because education is the key to opportunity. We don’t expect that we will necessarily get all of them, but we do want to get our share. That turned out to be very successful. We were able to get in the double digits with regard to African American students in the freshman class within a matter of three or four years after we started these initiatives. I don’t know what the numbers look like now. That’s why we went to Chicago and went to the high school there. I talked with the president of Florida A&M and asked him which high schools was he experiencing the greatest success in recruiting young people to FAMU and he told me that Whitney Young was one of those. I think, in retrospect, he probably regretted that he told me, because we were up there recruiting. In fact, there were several years where we attracted more students from Whitney Young than did the University of Florida. C: I had some students from there in an honors course; they were wonderful. H: The key is being aggressive like that. We did provide scholarships for them in order to help them attend UNF. C: Did it change the character of the campus in terms of the social dynamic? One of the perceptions in the community is that UNF is a white university. H: Well, I think that will always be the case. The challenge is to have sufficient critical mass that you can have social activities that are both of an integrated nature and that are reflective of the desire of some of those students to maintain their own cultures. If you have enough students to have Greek organizations, for example, to have some social life, parties, and that sort of thing, I think all that works out. It’s a large enough community that there is still a whole host of interaction opportunities with young people from other institutions. They have step shows and things like that with kids coming from other campuses. The reality is that the same thing can be said of every predominantly white institution in America. It’s really a question of whether or not you have African American faculty and staff. It’s a question of whether or not there are events that the kids can enjoy. It’s a question of whether or not the student government brings to the campus a wide array of entertainers that are reflective of the diverse interests of the entire student body. I think that just becomes something that student leaders and the vice president for student affairs, in particular, [have] got to be very sensitive to. C: And it comes with time and size, as you mentioned, to have a pluralistic campus with Hispanic students, foreign students, Asian students. Herbert – Page 16

H: Another reality is that I’m on a campus now that is significantly larger than North Florida, but the same issues are there. We have an organization that focuses on African American students, on Hispanic students, we’re creating one now that is called First Nation’s Students that is focusing on Native Americans. The university provides some support for the organization in terms of basic operations and it kind of goes from there, but there are very few Native American students. There may be twenty or thirty. We don’t have an Indian Reservation in the state of Indiana. Nevertheless it’s important to provide some opportunities for the reinforcing of the unique cultures of those components of the student population. C: Another direction I think you provided leadership in was bringing in nationally and internationally prominent speakers, the Presidential Lecture Series. H: Yes. That was something that I’m still very proud of that. I think it was very important to reinforce the point that the university is first and foremost the center for exploration of ideas, whatever they may be. What I wanted to do was to bring in some of the foremost thinkers and names in the world, certainly this country, if not the world. When you think about we started off with Elie Wiesel and Maya Angelou, that kind of set the tone. What I wanted was for this to be a free community event, the university as well as the broader community, and use this as an opportunity, frankly, to showcase the campus as well and to reinforce the important point that we have arrived and that we are able to bring to Jacksonville and to the community these kind of folks. I remember that there was another big speaker series that you had to pay in order to attend that [was] tied to another institution. They brought in some great people. The challenge was to bring in folks who had not been a part of that group of speakers but that would really add significantly to our discourse and to our thinking about major issues of the day. I think all of this is about, on the one hand, exposure to ideas, but also it’s about positioning the institution. C: As the intellectual and cultural center of the community. H: Absolutely. Frankly, I think doing those kinds of things helps the economy. C: Another area I’d like to ask you about is in terms of leadership. Who were the people on campus who were key to helping you develop in various and sundry directions? Did some of them come with the ideas that you implemented or were some of them particularly effective in executing the mission and vision that you talked about? H: The person that I probably worked the closest with in terms of... These things fall into different areas. Tom Healy was absolutely critical for me in terms of implementing ideas because we had to have so much state support in order to get done the things we wanted to accomplish. He was just outstanding in terms of working the legislature. He and I would travel around the state meeting with members [of the Florida Legislature] trying to make our case. He was very effective in terms of the style of working, not only with the members, but with their staffs. We pulled off a number of things that were just incredible. C: Could you give me an example? H: For one, the road money for Kernan [Road]. The chair of the committee said we can’t do this, we can’t get this done. My response was I understand how difficult Herbert – Page 17

it is, but, if anyone can pull it off, you can. That was Gwen Margolis. He was chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and subsequently became president of the senate. The governor vetoed the bill the first time. We came back the next time and got it. Tom was just very instrumental in our getting through the legislature. All of our enrollment growth money, we worked very hard on that, but he was just phenomenal. He was not here very long, but Alan Ling was just incredible. My regret was that he did not have the opportunity to serve in the university for many more years because he and I were, I thought, just a great team. He and I talked a lot about undergraduate education. He was really pivotal for me in terms in thinking how we can uplift the sciences to add greater depth there. We talked about what could be done in engineering and physics and some of those things. C: He was here about one year before his death? H: A couple. Essentially, the way I functioned was I looked for different people. I didn’t focus on any one individual, except for Tom, in terms of a number of these things that were really critical. I tended to use the leadership team to a much greater extent. We talked a lot together about what we were trying to accomplish. There was just a great deal of interaction among the vice presidents and there were some faculty members that we would talk with about issues and there were several like Jim Crooks that had a feel for the community and understood some of the things that we needed to do and would share ideas and there were others that were very well placed within the community to share with us ideas that were helpful. But there was really more of a team approach rather than a lot of specific individuals. Alan was probably the greatest loss we had. And I think [when] Pierre Allaire came, he did a good job helping us to structure the development function, the advancement function, in a more creative way. We were not as sophisticated in that area as I would have liked and so I thought he did a very good job. The other person I think that stands out is Lynda Lewis. Lynda was just remarkable. She played a major leadership role in our efforts to enhance the recruitment and outreach efforts that we had initiated. I relied very heavily on her. She knew the community. She knew the parents. She was very aggressive. We tried multiple models. We had several admissions directors and, when it came right down to it, I remember two finalists for that position. There were some folks on campus who didn’t understand why we would hire a former high school principal to fill that role, and, yet, she was the absolutely perfect person to do what we needed to do, and her willingness to reach out to the ministers, the educators, her ability to talk to the kids, the students in the schools, so many little things. After we built the arena, one of the things we decided to do was to invite the local high schools that were interested to hold their commencement ceremonies in our facility. One of the first things that we said was that Stanton [College Prep School] would always be able to use it. It was a gift. Theirs was a standing invitation if they wanted it. That was tied back to our recruitment strategy. That was something that Lynda and I talked about strategically. In terms of just individuals, she and Tom, over time, were probably Herbert – Page 18

the most influential in their respective areas. Alan, for the time that he was here, now I very quickly came to rely heavily upon him because I just respected him so much, his insights and judgments. C: The thoroughness of your search to hire him was quite extraordinary. H: In fact, I think that that was one of the things I set out in regard to searches, because I had gotten it down to two candidates. Ironically, both of them were in California. I spent a week in California visiting the two of them. In the end, I was just convinced that he was the right person, although I really liked the other candidate as well. C: What didn’t happen that you wanted to happen? Were there missed opportunities in those nine years? Were there any major mistakes or errors of omissions or commissions that, reflecting back, now you wish you might have done differently? There are actually two questions. What were disappointments because of outside forces and what were disappointments because of things that you, on second thought, would have done differently? H: I think that with regard to the former, during any tenured period, you’re going to have budget cycles. The budget reductions that we experienced in the 1990s really hurt us. If we had had those dollars to invest in what we were trying to accomplish... I think those set us back at least two or three years, in promised resources that were really critical, because we were... The formulas changed in regard to allocation of state resources. In the early days, universities... You see evident in the resource base at FAMU that their funding per FTE was just significantly greater than ours. C: Why? H: Because in the early days, the formulas didn’t exist as they do now. Because there were fewer institutions and so they had more money to give, and then, over time, they ended up using formulas for allocation of resources and, as times got tight, they reduced the amount of funding per FTE. At one point, they were going to give us money and what I said was I have no interest in growing our campus if they were going to give us what I called “FTE light” because I knew that we could not hire faculty for that amount of money. My view was, if that is all you’re going to give us, we’ll pass on growth. So we didn’t grow during that period. C: When was that, 1991,1992, 1993? H: Yes somewhere around 1992, 1993. C: There was a recession, nationally, then, too. H: So, you know, I do think that that period was one that hurt us. Overall, I thought that we had a great run. Fortunately we were very aggressive during the good years and were able to get, when I think back to the period that I was chancellor, we got over a billion dollars in capital construction money. That made a big difference. Even though I was focusing at the university system level, I was able to funnel even more money than was on the PECO list to North Florida to help it grow. C: That would have been 1999­2000? H: 2001. A classic example of that was money for the Fine Arts Building. My view was that the university wasn’t asking for enough money for that. So what Herbert – Page 19

happens is that, during a legislative session, in those days, the appropriation chair would call the chancellor in and say, okay, this is what the budget situation is, and you tell me what has to go or what are you willing to do. So I had to make strategic choices. I was able to help the university in that context. During my period as president, in terms of external forces, that I thought was the most significant challenge for us. Within the institution, there was a period in which there were some faculty members who differed significantly with some things I wanted to do. I remember the president of the union came in and talked to the faculty union and said that I should fire somebody. If I didn’t, they were going to come after me. I refused to fire that person. My view at the time... So, and there, there was an effort to come after me. There may have been other faculty as well, but my view is that we all have our turn in the barrel. And that is true. There are very few presidents who don’t go through that if they are willing to make tough decisions. But what I was convinced of at the time was that, if I had taken the action that was demanded of me, that the message from that point forward to every vice president would have been that the president is always going to put himself first and that there’s no such thing as loyalty to staff and that you just can’t put the institution in that kind of position. C: This is the Ken Martin situation? H: Right. It would have been one thing if they had come to me saying here are some issues. We hope you will think these through and resolve them. These are the kinds of things that are happening. Let’s work through these together. If that approach had been used, I don’t know what the outcome would have been. But there are defining moments in any presidency and that was one I wish we had not had to go through. Would I have done things differently? No, because there was a principle. My strength or weakness is that I am a person of principle and I always do what I believe is right. I’m open to compromise, to listen and try to work things through. That was not a very comfortable period. It was one that, if I could live it over again, I would just as soon do that, but the reality is that you always have to do what you think is right for the institution. You’ve got to think about the consequences of what you do or don’t do, as the case may be. Other things, I’m sure that there . . . [let me] think about it a little bit, but sometimes things are blurred. I do think that strategy that we pursued with regard to growth was the right one. I remember the struggle with Sawmill Slough [Conservation Club] over the Loop Road, but on the balance we did not have a choice. We had to put that road in. Now it’s even more evident why that was important, because it has opened up the campus for further development. I wish that we had been able to raise more money than we did. All these things build upon each other, so, on balance, I think that we had to do things in the kind of sequence in which we did in order to get to a point. Even in those days, the thing that was interesting was that if we had had a larger endowment than any of the regional campuses, and I look at the Peach Belt Conference, for example. None of them had the kind of endowment that we had. I think that we were doing it the right way in terms of building the reputation first for quality, establishing the Herbert – Page 20

principle that we are of the community and are committed to being a significant partner in enhancing the achievement of the highest aspirations the community has, demonstrating we are prepared to be partners. I do wish that we were able to do more with the public schools here. The strategy of professional development schools, I think, made a lot of sense. As I looked at the attrition rates in the public schools and at the limited number of young people that were coming out of inner city schools that were graduating from inner city schools as opposed to getting certificates of attendance, I wish that we could have done more there. I’m not sure exactly what, but the focus that we had was on trying to get more kids to take the SAT and that sort of thing. Ultimately, that was not something that was making a significant difference in terms of reducing the dropout rate. I’m not sure what else we could have done. H: I was approached at one point about setting up charter schools. There was another idea about setting up a lab school. I just didn’t feel that either of those would be wise courses of action for us to pursue and, second, the cost implications were such that I just didn’t feel it was appropriate. So those are the things that come to mind. As I said earlier, I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences at UNF and the quality of teaching in the institution has just been outstanding. It really helped the university to have so many of the founding faculty remain on the campus. Of course, now we are beginning to see the emergence of a new generation of faculty members. The challenge is, and this is something that faculty leadership, the president, and others have got to nurture, is to ensure that there is a value system that is sustained, whatever that is. C: When you left for Tallahassee in 1998, did you have a sense that UNF was no longer that sleepy institution that you came to nine years earlier? How would you assess it, evaluate it, compared to other regional institutions here or elsewhere? H: Yeah. I think that we have moved it out of the sleepy stage. In fact, as I talked with Charlie Reed, the chancellor [of the State University System] at the time, and a couple of the regents, the way I would characterize that is that it was a sleepy institution and they invited me to play reveille. That was an exciting kind of opportunity. I think that to almost double enrollment in 10 years, to add well over a million square feet of new space, to generate the level of broader based community recognition, statewide recognition, for the campus that we had was pretty impressive. I think that during that period we clearly passed West Florida. West Florida had more students and a much larger budget than we and that changed. Of course, Florida Gulf Coast had just been created. Florida International, it’s hard to compare that with us because it was, again, in Miami and it was the fastest growing campus in the country. It hit 11,000 students just almost over night. I think with regard to both FIU and FAU, that those were all created in roughly the same period. They are just much larger enterprises in much larger communities. C: And UCF the same way. H: And UCF, that region has just taken off, and they have about 55,000 students or so among all of their campuses. You take a look at North Florida. It’s one campus. There were some conversations, in the early days, about whether or Herbert – Page 21

not the University of Florida would take over, this is before I got here, should take over UNF. Gainesville made a strategic decision that it had no interest in doing that. I think ultimately that was in the best interest of Jacksonville. Although I know there were some folks, at least when I was here, that thought it was a mistake. The reality is that this community needed to have its own free­standing institution. C: At one point, you wanted UNF to be the William and Mary of Florida or the Miami of Ohio of Florida type of institution. Do you think you had reached that goal by the time you left? H: No. In fact, we tried to get a special appropriation for that. [Toni] Jennings was a major leader in the senate with regard to higher education. They ultimately decided to put money in the campus in Jupiter for an honors college for FAU. What I wanted to do essentially is what you just described, was to become the Miami of Ohio equivalent here. I think that, in fact, as we were dealing with the initial differentiation process when I was chancellor, I was trying to do that also. When we brought in the provost from Miami of Ohio to be president here, I must tell you that that did not escape me as a possibility. But, ultimately, that was not pushed at the campus level. I think that could still happen. The key is just how the faculty and administration decide to play that. You can do it, ultimately, through the admissions decision process and through the kind of focus on the sort of national recognition you seek. If this university was recognized in some national publication as being that kind of institution, that kind of thing just kind of plays on its self. Some of it is about how the university describes itself. Perceptions become reality, that is what I was playing out. The related question that the university has to address is, ultimately, what is its role in the context of the community. Miami of Ohio is not in a major urban area and so it does not see itself as having an obligation to serve higher educational needs in that community to the same extent that this university, at least in part, has to address still with a large commuter population. The related question is, to the extent that UNF decides it wants to play that kind of role, is it prepared simultaneously to accept the proposition that a community college would then pick up the slack to address the needs of those students who are not admittable in four­year programs. Because, you know, I’m not following this as closely now, but the trend toward a lot of the community colleges to offer more four year degree programs is a very significant thing with some very important implications for this community and, potentially, for UNF. The reality is that, to the extent it becomes more of an honors­type institution, that may not be as important. You’ve got to draw students clearly from throughout the state and nation, if that’s going to be the niche. C: Were you involved at all in developing the international arm at UNF that Betty Flinchum and others started years ago? H: I was involved in that. That was something that we were trying to emphasize and we brought in consultants to help us do that. While I was president, I insisted on having flags on the stage for every country in which we had awarded degrees, in part to make the point that this is a university that is international in scope. I Herbert – Page 22

don’t [know] whether that is still done or not, but, at the time, I definitely wanted to make that point that it was important. Betty was very helpful in that regard. I thought we did a number of exciting things while she was here. We hired a person that worked with AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] to help us on some of those initiatives as we tried to expand the scope of what we were doing. C: One of your vice presidents of student affairs was from Senegal? H: Sierra Leone. C: As the first African American president of a predominantly white institution, were there racial issues that you had to deal with at UNF? You were also the first African American president of the chamber [of commerce]. And, as a pioneer, because we know this a racist community and state. H: And the first chancellor. The interesting thing is that those appointments [were] made or occurred in Jacksonville. That says something about the evolution of the community also. I didn’t see anything that was overt. I think the times in which we live for the most part focus or tend to be a little bit more sophisticated in terms of hiding some of those feelings if they were there. There were a few incidents in the chamber, a few comments that were made to me, but they were written about. I felt that, on balance, folks, I won’t say were totally accepting, but the reality is that the appointments were made. I don’t think I carried myself in a fashion... Let me put it a different way... I think, ultimately, if... That it was... As I reflect on my life back growing up in Oklahoma in a segregated environment... I went to Southern Cal [University of Southern California] where there were five or six African American students living on campus when I got there. I was president of my dorm. I was president of the student body. I was president of several organizations, president of the men’s student body. Just, over time, I really haven’t focused that much on those things and I have not had an attitude going into it that would generate a lot of feelings. People have feelings they have, but I don’t pay a lot of attention to that. I just focus on trying to do the best job I can. Hopefully, you like to think folks ultimately will judge you based upon performance. If there were incidents on campus, I ignored them, so I don’t know whether or not they were there or not. C: Do you have anything you want to add to this discussion? I’ve kept you for a long time. H: No problem. I think that the university has enormous potential. I reflect back on what I thought it could become. I think that we made remarkable progress towards achievement of those dreams. I was very proud of the fact that we were indeed able to almost double the enrollment in that ten year period. I think it is definitely a more aggressive institution in terms of pursuing its agenda and the continued focus on land acquisition to facilitate longer term growth is important. The addition of the new facilities is increasingly going to be more important. On the academic side, I think that it is absolutely essential for the institution to maintain a focus on quality. In today’s environment, I gave a speech a few years ago in which I think that is being borne out today: institutions that are not focusing on quality, that don’t have a reputation for quality, are going to find it Herbert – Page 23

very difficult to survive, because the tuition that we have to charge today is such that folks are going to really pay attention to what they’re getting for their money. The continued focus on quality is very important. I think the future is just very bright for the institution as long as there is a very clear focus on what the mission of the institution is, how it wants to position itself in the context of the market place. It was a great experience for me. It helped me to grow personally and professionally. I learned a lot that has continued to help me in my subsequent career activities. C: Thank you very much for your time.