Oral history interview with James "Jim" H. Thompson, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: James “Jim” H. Thompson
INTERVIEWER: Anne R. Phillips
DATE: April 4, 1990
AP: —coming to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] and how you happened to get here as a teacher. But then, before that you had happened to come onto campus a good bit—
JT: I came here in July of 1970. I had been the director of the undergraduate library at [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill from 1968 to ’70 and had also been a lecturer of history there and had been an assistant professor at the University of Colorado [Boulder, Colorado] before then, and Southwestern Louisiana [University, Lafayette, Louisiana] before then and a bibliographer and subject cataloger, at Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] before then. So that takes us back to the early sixties, after I got my PhD in history at Chapel Hill in ’61, and then a library degree at the University of Illinois [Champaign-Urbana, Illinois] in ’63.
AP: I see. So what drew you to—what was different or what was interesting, what was a reason you came here? What was the campus like when you got here?
JT: Well, I didn’t—I wasn’t really—I wasn’t planning to leave Chapel Hill at the time I did. I knew UNCG from the late fifties and early sixties when I was in Chapel Hill and had always been attracted to the atmosphere of the campus. It was really an outstanding undergraduate institution then. So the excellence of the place had always been in the back of my mind. But in 1969, Mereb Mossman [sociology and anthropology faculty], who was the vice chancellor of academic affairs then, through some friends in the library contacted me and said that they were planning to build a new library because of the expansion of the graduate programs here. And placed a great deal of emphasis on expanding the library collections and staff and services and wanted to know whether I’d be interested in being considered for the directorship, which had been vacated by Charles Adams, who had retired. And so, provoked my thoughts to think about the opportunity. I came over to talk to people and again liked the atmosphere that was still present there and opportunities for the future. And so I decided to take the job. I had always taught every year I had been an administrator, which had only been a couple years then, and so when an opportunity to also teach at this department here was offered with the job, I thought it was a good balance of what I’d done in my life. I always wanted to retain a position on the faculty and keep my teaching going, even though it was just one course a semester. I liked the idea of being integrated with the faculty here and not just be an administrator.
AP: Those are important skills and not many people have that combination, so it’s interesting 2
that you could do both those things that you evidently liked—seemed you liked to do. What was the physical library like when you got here? Now the year you came, the season was in the fall time?
JT: I came in the summer of 1970. The building was the Old Main, as we call it now, part of the library—the brick structure with the classical facade. It was a nice building; I’ve always liked that part of the building. But where the Library Tower is now was simply a parking lot. Plans were being developed; the money had not been appropriated yet, so I did have an opportunity to work with the architect and change some of the arrangements that had been tentatively agreed to.
AP: What did you change? Or what were some major changes that needed to be done?
JT: Well, there were some changes that needed to be made that would anticipate some of the technology that was coming along in the 1970s. And both were with regard to technical services and also public services—changes with regard to faculty studies that I felt—with the research-oriented faculty that needed more of that kind of thing and some internal rearrangements that I felt would be a more efficient floor of work, and things of that nature. I didn’t like the tower to begin with, but because of space constraints in the back, we had to go up, since we couldn’t go back too far. That’s worked out fairly well. I’ve put more elevators in because of it. And so I think that it’s been a good building over the last sixteen, seventeen years. But the present building has always been a charming building, and I’ve always liked that, but it was jammed when I came.
AP: It must have been.
JT: It was built for three thousand undergraduate women with a collection of no more than three hundred thousand volumes. We were already far in excess at that, and we were shelving books on their edges to get additional shelf space and cramming books into small seminar rooms and so forth. The need for a new building was uppermost in Chancellor [James S.] Ferguson’s mind then, so I always felt I came at a good time. And now the new building is running out of space. So the years go by.
AP: Yes. Two things: the actual building of a new building would have been a mammoth task, but also the moving and the acquisition of books. How did you accomplish all that? Or tell me about staff or staff needs.
JT: Well, I inherited a very good undergraduate library and some really fine department heads especially, so I had a good foundation to work on. But, obviously, with doctoral programs expanding and master’s programs and also trying to keep up with a good undergraduate collection, we really had to expand the book budget. So book funds back in 1970 were $250,000 a year, and when I finally decided to go back to full-time teaching, we’d gotten it up to about $2 million a year. We really had to pay a lot of attention to adding not only monographic material, but serials. I suspect some people who now have inherited what I did here are wondering why—especially at the administrative level, we’re kind of lean and muscular—one associate director when most libraries had two or three, and so forth. 3
The reason was that though we had a big staff expansion, we had to pay a lot of attention to not only automating and computerizing the library, but also building a good book budget. So I paid a lot of attention to that and did not expand the staff at levels where perhaps it needed—but we had such a dedicated staff that we all decided that as long as we’re all willing not to be prima donnas and we all are willing to get into the trenches and give good library service that we could pull together as a group and pay attention to some areas that really needed attention. So we did have an expansion of staff, and we started recruiting nationwide, got a good collection of outstanding professionals that have come from around the country. And we have a decent book budget. And though space requirements now are again a problem, the expansion of space was critical in the mid- and late seventies. But somehow it’s worked out I think; I hope so anyway.
AP: A lot of people have talked about what a pleasant place it is and a good place it is to work and to do research in. I guess, in Dr. [Warren H.] Ashby’s [philosophy professor] book, he talked about the staff and about the library, said there could be no better place to do research. Tell me—
JT: That’s meant a lot to us. Working with people like Warren Ashby and [Dr. Richard] Dick Bardolph [history professor] and Franklin Parker [history professor] and many, many other people like that has been so rewarding for a lot of our staff because they had certainly accepted the staff as full colleagues and always looked upon them as kind of our extended family. It’s been a very warm relationship with both students and faculty here. So when matters such as achieving some kind of faculty status for librarians came up—it’s been a controversy in some universities, no problem here because, you know, the professional librarians have always been accepted as full colleagues with the teaching faculty, and that kind of spirit, camaraderie, makes it very rewarding to work here as a librarian.
AP: It certainly seems quite logical and really wonderful, and perhaps unusual. I think perhaps in other colleges—on other university campuses, you would not have maybe that much colleagueship.
JT: I think you’re right. As you look at, oh, committee assignments, faculty committee chairmanships, even elected positions on committees, not just appointed—you always see a lot of librarians there, to the point of being executive officer of the Faculty Senate, Martha Ransley [circulation librarian] elected for that. A number of positions like that on campus. I think you see a certain respect and feeling of professional relationship between teaching faculty and librarians here that’s a bit different.
AP: So in a way there may have been a climate here—you know, when you got here—a climate of scholarship, of smaller, rather than vast university idea. There was a climate for you to work in and your staff to work in.
JT: Yes, I think so. I came at a time then when much of the flavor of the days of the Woman’s College [of the University of North Carolina], although it was coeducational then, but graduate programs were still there. Many of the really great teachers and scholars of those 4
days were still here.
AP: Tell me more about those times before coeducation in the fifties, sixties, or on back. Tell me about any individual people you think of—well, Dr. Ashby or Mereb Mossman.
JT: Well, I think Dean Mossman, or Vice Chancellor Mossman, is still with us as far as building the tremendous faculty that has been here and still is here, is basically her achievement. I think that asset has been the asset that has made UNCG different from the other campuses across the state, except Chapel Hill and [North Carolina] State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina]. I think that has made this a rather unique campus. Again, I think a lot of that dates back to Woman’s College days—the excellence of faculty, the excellence of teaching especially, and then the excellence of research too, but not without the teaching function. That’s been a thing of major importance on this campus. I think that meshed quite well with the excellence of the student body here in the fifties and sixties. This was, without question, one of the most sought-after undergraduate women’s colleges in the country, so you had a good mix not only of North Carolina students but also students from up and down the East Coast and throughout the nation. I think of— if there was one thing that was eroded a bit, lost a bit, that is coming back now, is the excellence of that student body. And as we grew so rapidly in the seventies, you can detect it in declining SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] scores and the—certainly not the disappearance of the lively the student body, but perhaps it’s dilution a bit. And yet the faculty excellence was not diluted, nor were, you know, the other assets of the campus. I think recent decisions—rather than to continue to grow, the recent emphasis on getting back to the quality of the student body is a good decision.
AP: Question of quality rather than quantity perhaps.
JT: Right. As long as we continue to try to emphasize those assets, I think this university will be different from other “emerging universities” that grow rapidly without careful consideration about the quality of their programs. So those were the strengths of the past that I think we ought to pay careful attention to as we grow in the future.
AP: Do you think it made a difference that there were strong women administrators and leaders, teachers here?
JT: Oh yes. Absolutely.
AP: I guess I’ve wondered about the importance of women doing the leading or teaching, and was it different here from other schools in the state?
JT: Yes, I think it was different, though there were outstanding male administrators and teachers also, but, with regard to women, when I think of Naomi Albanese [dean of the School of Nursing], Mereb Mossman, and Ethel [Martus] Lawther, who built this incredibly distinguished School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation into a scholarly program here. And [Dean] Patty Lewis in nursing, and, you know, I hate to mention people, because I will leave always someone out, and I’ll go home and think 5
about it and think, “My gosh, why didn’t I mention someone else.” But, yes, the excellence of administrators like that who came here and built outstanding programs, outstanding faculty. And also again, women administrators in the library—Margaret Memory and Elizabeth Holder [head of reference department] and Vivian Moose, and people like that who were just wonderfully dedicated and astute professionals, who did not leave me as a library director with an operation that needed radical surgery at the time. I was able to inherit an extremely good collection and good servicers and good professional care and handling before I took it over. And, of course, we needed to expand. The seventies were incredible years in the expansion of library technology. We had to move along with that obviously. We did, but we built it on a very firm foundation.
AP: Such as? Give us some idea of the types of innovations or technical things you did.
JT: It’s nothing really different from what was going on in other libraries at the time, but we automated the circulation system in the early, mid-seventies—really the first automated circulation system among the main libraries of the state. I did that at the undergraduate library at Chapel Hill back in ’68. And then moved into charter membership in the Southeastern Library Network, so started computerized cataloging early on. Decided far ahead that once we opened an on-line catalog, we wanted it complete, and so we started converting records retrospectively, putting it in the computer early on so that what opened just this last year is a complete catalog and not just a catalog which goes up to 1975, and then the on-line catalog that goes beyond it. Ultimately we will discard the card catalog here because we are—I think we together made a lot of long-range decisions back in those years when we were automating various functions. Of course, computerized literature searches and things like this we started in the mid- and late seventies and even early on in the seventies. We put our serials holdings in the computer, along with Chapel Hill and State, to have a combined serials list. So these things needed to be done. We certainly had a very good foundation built to be doing them. So I have always appreciated the fact that I was able to come to a university with this kind of history to it. I think we should always, as we grow, not forget the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s that really provided the foundation for what we’re doing now—made us distinctive and different from some of the other campuses.
AP: And you also brought skills that were extremely valuable for here—your own background in history and your work in library science seems a perfect combination to help the place, help us grow, have the vision we needed to have in the seventies.
JT: I think it’s healthy for a library director to have an academic home that doesn’t set the administrator off from the faculty. I think that’s been a kind of tradition here, too—whether it’s deans or vice chancellors—they tend to come out of the teaching research ranks. So I think we’ve had a group of outstanding academic administrators—you know, Jim Ferguson is a wonderful example of just an absolutely marvelous historian and warm, wonderful teacher who became an administrator: dean at Millsaps [College, Jackson, Mississippi], the vice chancellor here and finally, chancellor, that made him a very unique man. He was a fine administrator and a fine leader, but a very humane and understanding person who went back to teaching before his retirement and was an outstanding, 6
wonderful, much-loved teacher. And Stan Jones, who was the vice chancellor for academic affairs here succeeding Mereb Mossman, gave twelve wonderful dedicated years here, was also another fine scholar-teacher, administrator-type of person. I think that’s been a real asset in building this campus, as opposed to some campuses, where the leading administrators tend to be more business-oriented or lacking really a deep commitment to an academic discipline. Not that they’re not good administrators too, but there’s a difference.
AP: It does make a difference.
JT: It’s made a difference in the atmosphere here, the way the campus has grown—the strengths and emphases that those kinds of people carry out in their programs. I think that’s one reason I’ve been happy here, because of that kind of atmosphere. So I’ve been tempted from time to time to perhaps move on elsewhere, but have always come to the conclusion that, you know, if you’re happy with your present situation and you find it rewarding intellectually and personally, and that, you know, the library’s growing and retains the importance that this library has on campus, why go elsewhere? So I always stayed on, and then a year and a half ago was shocked to find out that I’ve attained the age of fifty-five years and decided, as I told Jim Ferguson when I came here, ultimately I want to end my career as a teacher, the way I began it. I decided that I should begin thinking about doing that or else it’s going to be too late. So I decided that after twenty years in the library world, that’s enough for anyone to be an administrator for a number of different reasons—personally, professionally. I’d like to get back into full-time teaching. Again, fortunately that was possible for me here, and it might not have been possible in another setting.
AP: Well, lucky for the university here, and now it seems that you could wear both those hats and wear them really well. Maybe more than two hats, but—it’s good when our personal and professional interests can mesh, when we have the chance to do that, and I can see that climate was here, that it was possible for you to do that. Lucky all around. Tell me more about the student body. When you came, you’ve talked about the high caliber of student, of young women here in the ’50s and ’60s, and then perhaps some change in the student body once we went coed. Do you want to say more about that?
JT: Well, I think that was carried off quite well here in an era of really exploding enrollments, you know, across the country. And I think developing graduate programs here, with doctoral programs in specific strengths and fields rather than across the board, was a good decision, and emphasizing graduate education without de-emphasizing undergraduate education and keeping the campus smaller than many mushrooming, emerging universities that perhaps were compromising too much quality for quantity. I think that was done very wisely here. On the other hand, any move in that direction, especially in the rapidly expanding years of the 1970s, is obviously going to, by its very nature, cause some change in the type of student body that you have. And so it has been of some concern to people that have been around here a long time that we must be very careful not to let the quality of the student body, the liveliness of the academic life here, diminish, you know, to the point where we’re really no different from other mid-range emerging 7
universities. So that’s a very careful line to have to be concerned with. Sometimes I think we’ve gone below that line, and we’ve tried to come back over the line. I know, as president of the Phi Beta Kappa [honor society for the liberal arts and sciences] at one time, I was quite worried that, you know, we not lose our chapter because the statistics of student performance were not what they used to be back in the fifties. And yet, as I said, I think a very wise decision has been made here recently that we must pay careful attention to the quality of student that is attracted here. I believe that whatever decline we may have suffered, we’re going back in the right direction. I hope that the future, despite the coming of big-time athletics and other things that I guess is also inevitable, that we pay attention to the fact of academics first.
AP: Who made the decision for the school to go coed? Did this come overnight? Or was this an outside decision?
JT: Well, no, I think—I don’t—it’s—it became coed before I came here, but I think the development of the state and the growth of the state and the growth of the Triad area required that there be a state university here that was more than just a women’s college, regardless of how excellent that school was. A school that would develop graduate programs, coeducation, doctoral programs in specific areas. And believed that the excellence of the Woman’s College made this campus the obvious one to be the foundation for building that, as the needs of the state grew so dramatically. I think it was inevitable that what happened happened.
And then in 1972, when all sixteen campuses were drawn together into one university—I believe was a wise decision also, in order to properly allocate limited resources in the educational system that—. So I think that both, you know, coeducation and the development of graduate programs and the restructuring of the educational system of the universities in the state was all inevitable, just by the growth of the state. So it was an evolutionary thing that happened. But again, as it happened, I believe that our history and the tradition of the place was something that we shouldn’t get too far away from as we grow. One of our most distinguished history professors here, who’s still a very lively person, would comment, I think sometimes with tongue in cheek: “We made two great mistakes at this university: number one, we became coeducational and, number two, we started doctoral programs.” But he’s one of the greatest scholars in the country, and I’m sure that he benefitted from that. But the point I’m saying is the fact that he had experienced such intellectual satisfaction as both a teacher-scholar here in the 1950s that he was afraid of the future if we tried to dilute that kind of excellence.
AP: It does take some care and feeding to do that. I guess that brings up the whole question and idea of teaching—solid teaching, in addition to research and publishing—and I’m wondering how we’ve handled that in the past, or how—. What is our vision, what is our need as a university? Well, I was going to say to “publish-or-perish.” How has that worked—the undergraduate teaching versus the publishing?
JT: Well, I think it’s been handled pretty well here. I think both are absolutely necessary, if you’re going to have a lively academic environment. Sometimes I’ll have to admit over the years, I’ve seen some really outstanding younger teachers who have not achieved 8
tenure here. It’s been a loss to the university, I think others would [unclear] say the same thing, despite the fact that those others might be outstanding scholars themselves. But those things happen and they’re distressing when they do, but still I think that the teaching component of what we do here is still important. President [of the University of North Carolina System William] Friday commented one time in a meeting here that—and this has been fairly recently, over the last five or six years—that it was his definite opinion that this was the best teaching institution of the sixteen campus system.
AP: That’s quite something.
JT: And we did not lost sight of that as we developed doctoral programs and placed more emphasis on research and publication. So that’s a tough balance to achieve. Sometimes the balance gets out of balance, and sometimes it’s in good balance, but it’s something we should pay attention to. I do think that the tradition in the fairly recent past of full professors—and it continues today—of full professors teaching freshmen and sophomores is a good idea. It’s beginning to be eroded a bit today in some departments, but I think, you know, those traditions are still active here. I hope they’re not—
AP: It’s possible here, yes.
JT: It’s possible here; in some places it’s not. I guess it’s less possible here now than it used to be. But it’s something that we should—that’s why I enjoy teaching in the history department, because it is still going on there. And some departments, I’m afraid, are drifting away from that concept.
AP: Here and at other universities, I mean, there are horror stories, of course, from other universities.
JT: Yes, and I guess less horror stories here than from others because as my kids go off to college, they come back and tell me these horror stories that are not realities yet here. And I hope they’re not in the future.
AP: I heard someone in this series of interviews—someone said that a visitor came from Harvard [University, Cambridge, Massachusetts]—the visitor and the famous scholar will remain unnamed—but a teacher here said, well, you know, “How’s your schedule?” And he said, “Well, you know, I don’t have to meet any undergraduates. I don’t ever have to think about them at all.” And this is someone who should have been teaching undergraduates. So, that’s—
JT: But having said that, I am now chairing a committee to develop a proposal for a doctoral program in history, which I think could well be done here with the resources we now have—outstanding faculty, good library, and all the rest. So it’s not that I’m opposed to the development of graduate programs like that. I really, as I say, don’t think we should totally cut our links with the traditions of the past here. We have emphasized good teaching, committed teaching.
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[recording error]
AP: Tell me some good times and bad times on the campus.
JT: Well, the good times I mentioned in our discussion—and that is the wonderful people that I’ve had to work with here, their commitment, and the ability of the administrators that I have worked with to build some really excellent programs here on a shoestring because we have not been funded here to the level that a lot of universities that are not as good as this one have been funded at. It’s difficult to build a library or a faculty or a program in whatever field you’re building when every penny has to be very carefully counted and put in the highest priority of concerns that you have. And that’s quite difficult to do. I think Stan Jones; Jim Ferguson; Henry Ferguson, who was the business affairs manager, Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Fred Drake, who succeeded him. And the deans have been—over the years, have shown their administrative excellence by being able with limited financial resources to build such programs of excellence on this campus. That’s really been rewarding to work with.
On the other hand, you know, the tough, agonizing moments that I’ve had are to look at a budget, look at staff needs, look at needs for new technology and collection building and physical resources and fundraising and whatever it might be and to see such limited resources—it’s really agonizing to stay up all night wondering how you’re going to do it. And get together with the staff and colleagues and somehow, it’s done, but it’s not easy. I’d say I think the worst moments of my life have been the frustration of knowing what really could be done if we had the financial resources here that I think we deserved.
It’s not that Bill Friday and the staff have not been more than supportive and helpful—they have. He’s been, I think, the greatest university president in the country, but just the fact that limited resources are a reality of a sixteen campus system. Resources must be spread among them in a balanced way. So those are the tough parts of it—the need for better building facilities, the need for more staff, the need for support for other programs and not having it there when you needed it. Then, in situations of emergency, of recessions and budget freezes and position freezes, and all of the rest—you don’t have that background of either private endowed funds, on the one hand, or massive expansion on the other that you can fall back on—we don’t have that here. So when you have these positions that the university’s in right now, for instance, with budget constraints within the state system, it really wipes you out. That really leads to loss of sleep and all the rest that goes with it—wondering how you’re going to get by until July the first of the next year. Those are the major frustrations of working at UNCG, I think.
AP: They would be frustrations and call for brace that you could muster to survive that and to plan in the midst of those constraints, and to survive, even, in the midst of those constraints, and to have vision—it’s hard to have vision when that exists. What else would you like to say or need to comment on?
JT: Again, I guess I would just emphasize the things that I’ve mentioned in the past. Last night, as I mentioned, I watched that Warren Ashby videotape with Emmy Mills [Class of 10
1962, 1965 Master of Fine Arts] who’s built such a marvelous Special Collections Division here. When you watch that, your thoughts go back and again you realize some of the really marvelous people that—. And I’ve worked on other campuses, with good people in other places, but there is something very distinctive about the people that have been here, some that remain here, that make this a unique place. It’s not just that I’ve been here for twenty years and I want to be able to say that about the place that I’ve devoted a lot of my life to. It’s not that; it’s the fact that it has been unique. You simply don’t find, you know, the Warren Ashbys, and the Jim Fergusons, and Stan Joneses, and Mereb Mossmans, and Naomi Albaneses, and Patty Lewises, and Norman Farrows [music faculty], and Frank Parkers, and the Dick Bardolphs, and the [Richard] Dick Currents [history faculty], and the Bob Watsons [director of MFA creative writing program, English faculty]—you just go on and on—Fred Chappells [English faculty], and so forth. And people that have been educated by these really fine professors that are out of the world, and I think this really makes UNCG a special place.
AP: I want to ask some about Dr. Ashby and about civil rights and about town and gown because I know Dr. Ashby was a leader in the civil rights movement. Also, Dr. Gene Pfaff [history professor] did a good bit. Wasn’t he a colleague and associate of—? I understand that some of the faculty here, well, not only met with other faculty from other campuses, Bennett [College, Greensboro, North Carolina] and A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina], Guilford [College, Greensboro, North Carolina]—and even for informal lunches even before the civil rights, before the Woolworth Sit-ins [series of non-violent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, that helped the United States on its path to desegregation], in ’61. [Editor’s note: Woolworth Sit-ins occurred in1960.] But tell me something of Dr. Ashby’s work and his vision.
JT: Well, I came here in 1970 and saw that, you know, the civil rights movement had made its great gains by then. We still have a lot to do, obviously. I do know—I was at Chapel Hill in the explosive year of ’68 and ’69, and it was, you know, fairly tumultuous at Chapel Hill, all of what was going on, not necessarily the civil rights movement per se, but the whole explosion of ’68, which I now teach about—it’s interesting to teach about something you’ve lived through.
AP: [chuckles] Yes, it is.
JT: But I do know that when I came here, people said it was faculty like Warren Ashby and Dick Bardolph who had been so far out front with, you know, reform, civil rights and all the rest—Jim Ferguson’s ability when things began to explode on this campus in ’68 and ’69, that he was able, through personal intervention, to show his concern, and actually diffuse difficult situations that may have exploded here, but did not. So I think the commitment of people like that to civil rights and participation of students in decision making, and many of the good ideas that came out of the ‘60s were handled quite well here as opposed to some other universities around the country. But certainly Warren was a very committed civil rights leader for many, many years. And after I was introduced to him, after he became a friend of mine, he worked on the Equal Employment Opportunity 11
and Intergroup Relations Committee—he was quite important. His commitment—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
AP: —minorities to be here as students and staff. Tell me about the employment commission. How did that work?
JT: Well, the committee on campus that was responsible for monitoring and advancing minority recruitment was created in the early ’70s. Warren was very instrumental in providing the atmosphere to recruit minority faculty and staff, had always been committed, of course, to minority recruitment—at the student level also. It’s a difficult situation to try to diversify faculty and a student body on the one hand and yet to have a system based entirely on experience, merit, degrees, qualifications and so forth, on the other, and to open up opportunities to students that you have here that would benefit them. It’s been a delicate balance. But I think that we’ve done a good job, and I think, all things considered, we could have done better, and we need to do better. But you know, with the coming of a lot of great minority faculty—Joseph Himes [sociology faculty], people like that early on, long before the days of affirmative action. So again, we were recruiting really fine minority faculty here before 1970, before the days of required affirmative action programs. But certainly the spirit of people like Jim Ferguson and Warren Ashby and other—I hate to use the word “liberal,” but certainly liberal-minded people like that. Liberal-minded southerners, I might add, [chuckles] who were quite concerned about diversifying early on before anyone was even required to do so has made for a good atmosphere on campus.
AP: That is an encouraging and a wonderful part of our history, I think—something we can be very proud of anyway. Thanks so much.
[recording paused]
JT: —fundraising was so important to a university, you know. As the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, for so many decades, the fundraising effort did not center on this campus. So as we became autonomous in the sixties—it wasn’t until the late sixties that we really started building a fundraising development staff. So we entered it fairly late because of the nature of our history, and yet it’s something that’s so important in building a great university. So to have a late start has been to our disadvantage. And to want to do so much in fundraising, to be in an area like the Triad, to have such distinguished alumni who have distinguished themselves in many ways out across the nation, and to have—and again, because of our skating on thin ice financially and the need to allocate limited resources very carefully, we haven’t had a large development staff. So as a library director wanting to do so much, you can’t just go out and do it without the coordination of a development staff. Their resources were so 12
strained that it’s very inhibiting and very frustrating to want to carry out major fundraising development programs.
The Friends of the Library has grown and grown, but not to the extent of having those major gifts and major endowments that really provide the foundation for a healthy university. It’s coming and we’re making progress, but certainly, that’s been a major frustration, not to be able to fundraise and develop endowed funds for libraries and other purposes on the campus to the extent that we could because of the excellence of the place we have here and because of the public service that it offers here. So we need to expand that step. We’ve always needed to have more grant proposals and money coming in, and that again requires a staff in order to develop those. It doesn’t just require the faculty member who wants it; the faculty member’s got to have the staff and the resources to go about getting those grants, and those grants are growing and growing. But we got a late start on that because of the nature of our history. And now, with the contraction of financial resources—the ’70s were great in expansion, but I believe the late ’80s and early ’90s are not going to be those kinds of boom years.
AP: Maybe tough times. How does the legislature think about us and Chapel Hill and State and the other institutions? Have you had any brushes with legislature? [laughs]
JT: Oh, I haven’t had any brushes with them. I believe that General Administration—some people disagree with that. I think they have been very favorable to the development of this university and the expansion of it. And they, of course, relay our needs to the General Assembly. I feel that, again, because of the history of the university that we have lacked the clout of a Chapel Hill or NC State. I think in the growth years of the ’60s and ’70s that perhaps we weren’t taken as seriously as we should have been by legislatures in Raleigh, who were paying perhaps a little more attention to Chapel Hill and NC State. Some would come here and study our situation more, and many would say this is the best kept secret of the state. That’s a frustrating thing to be told, too, when you’re trying as best you can to convey the message. The message certainly was going out, and I think again because of the history of this institution and other institutions that maybe the minds on the other end were not open enough to receive the message. That’s always a frustrating situation to be in too.
AP: I’ve heard Woman’s College described as the little sister. Maybe she didn’t have the status; she was all right; she wouldn’t get in the way; she wouldn’t make too many waves. That’s my wording, but maybe there was some of that feeling.
JT: Some of that feeling, perhaps, but I think the cry on the other side—that UNCG should perhaps move in directions—and I have a lot friends at East Carolina [University, Greenville, North Carolina], and I don’t mean this much in a derogatory way—but, you know, Leo Jenkins was chancellor there, and it was the message of, “Let’s forget the quality and move on and expand rapidly, and let’s slam our fist on the desks of the legislators in Raleigh and get our medical school or whatever without any compromise.” Well, you know, sometimes that’s effective, and sometimes it’s not. And I believe that a more thoughtful, carefully considered approach has led to a deeper excellence here in many ways than perhaps we see it at rapidly expanding, extremely aggressive campuses—13
perhaps at East Carolina as an example, though there’s certainly excellence there too. I believe it’s the proper way to proceed, but it’s not the way to get headlines. So in that sense, perhaps we have been at somewhat of a detriment. But I think the assets of the more carefully considered growth pattern is the best in the end. In the end, I think it works out better.
AP: Many more agonizing, more painful, but perhaps better. Well, that’s good to know; it’s good to have your ideas. Thank you again.
[End of Interview]