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NAU CENTENNIAL INTERVIEW
Dr. William Lyon
Call number: NAU.OH.96.108.7
Poen:
It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to visit with President Clara Lovett. And I am indeed privileged this morning to have a conversation with President Lovett regarding her interesting life, a life of accomplishment. Good morning.
2:04
Lovett:
Good morning.
Poen:
Let’s start if we can at the beginning. I note that you were born in Triest, Italy. And that your father was an official with an insurance company I believe.
Lovett:
Yes.
Poen:
Were you born in the city itself?
Lovett:
Object Description
| Rating | |
| Call number | NAU.OH.96.108.7 |
| Item number | 138784 |
| Creator | Lovett, Clara M., 1939- |
| Title | Oral history interview with Dr. Clara Lovett, ca. 1997. |
| Date | 1997 ca. |
| Type | Text |
| Description | In this interview, Dr. Clara M. Lovett discusses her leadership role at Northern Arizona University and the future of higher education. Born in northeast Italy, Dr. Lovett received her undergraduate education in English and German at the University of Trieste and at Cambridge University in England. She came to the United States in 1962, earning master's and doctoral degrees in history at the University of Texas, Austin. During her twenty-five years in higher education, she has served as professor of history at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, and provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at George Mason University. Dr. Lovett is widely published. Her accomplishments as a scholar have been recognized through fellowships and grants from organizations, such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her extensive record of public service includes work with the Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Information Agency, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges, numerous corporate boards in the fields of banking and technology, and other agencies. Dr. Lovett's awards and honors are many. In 1989, she was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the "100 Most Powerful Women" in Washington, and in 1992 the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women selected her as Educator of the Year. In 1993, the American Association for Higher Education invited her to head a national project on faculty work. On October 15, 1993, Dr. Lovett accepted the presidency at Northern Arizona University, becoming the first woman to hold the top post at one of the three Arizona state universities. During her presidency, she improved campus communication through such initiatives as a university-wide dialogue--under the auspices of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable--about the future of the university. She also reworked, with input from faculty and staff, the institution's mission statement and goals, encouraged innovative thinking in preparation for the twenty-first century, and generated increased support from the Arizona Legislature. Now President Emerita (2001), Dr. Lovett remains active in higher education. She is married to Dr. Benjamin F. Brown, a retired professor of history and senior intelligence officer with the CIA. |
| Collection name | Poen, Monte M. |
| Language | English |
| Repository | Northern Arizona University. Cline Library. |
| Rights | Digital surrogates are the property of the repository. Reproduction requires permission. |
| Contributor | Poen, Monte M., 1930- |
| Subjects |
Northern Arizona University--History Education and politics--Arizona |
| Places |
Flagstaff (Ariz.) |
| Oral history transcripts | NAU CENTENNIAL INTERVIEW Dr. Clara M. Lovett Call number: NAU.OH.96.108.7 Poen: It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to visit with President Clara Lovett. And I am indeed privileged this morning to have a conversation with President Lovett regarding her interesting life, a life of accomplishment. Good morning. 2:04 Lovett: Good morning. Poen: Let’s start if we can at the beginning. I note that you were born in Triest, Italy. And that your father was an official with an insurance company I believe. Lovett: Yes. Poen: Were you born in the city itself? Lovett: Yes, Triest is and was a very compact port city. Not very large. It was about 300,000 people when I grew up and has shrunk a little since then. But yes, we lived and went to school in the city. 2:44 Poen: I remember talking to the Italian ambassador to the United States, I’m afraid I can’t remember his...Ortoni... Lovett: Ortona. Poen: Yeah, Ortona. I was talking to him in Rome about the relationship between Italy and the United States at the end of WWII. And he said that the Italians were forever grateful to Harry Truman for not allowing Tito at the end of the war to essentially annex Triest. 3:25 Lovett: Yes, actually Tito’s troops did occupy the city for 40 days. But in the spring of ’45 when the Anglo American armies moved to the hills just outside the city, they negotiated an agreement with Tito so that Tito withdrew his troops. After that, for several years the city...since it was disputed between Italy and Yugoslavia, the city remained under Anglo American military government. So when I grew up as a child, we had special status as a separate territory under military government. 4:11 Poen: And then I assume you went to public or private schools? Lovett: Public schools. There were no private schools in my city in that time or generally in Italy. Except for a few catholic schools. In this country they are called parochial schools. And going to parochial schools, at least in my generation, were considered inferior to public schools. The kids who weren’t doing well in school might go to parochial schools. 4:49 Poen: That’s interesting because it’s perceived the other way around in this country. Lovett: Yes. In Italy, going back to the 19th century to the time of unification when the public school system developed, there was never a sense that the elite sent their kids to private schools. It was not, and is not, a part of the culture. With very few exceptions. 5:15 Poen: Well, you must have done well in public schools. I know you went on to Britain and took your higher education, part of it in Great Britain. Where did you attend? Lovett: I went first to London for a summer and then I had a scholarship to Cambridge University on a special exchange program. 5:43 Poen: And in that connection regarding your education, there were people who I remember you made a special note to thank them for helping you along the way. There were people like Anna Nella Arnari. Lovett: Yes, she was my...I think I had her from second grade to the end of elementary school. We stayed with the same teacher unless you changed schools or moved. We tended to stay with the same homeroom teacher. And she was really extraordinary. I attended elementary school, this was right after WWII. In our city there hadn’t been much physical destruction, but there had been neglect of buildings. And also many school buildings were used to house refugees who were pouring in from Eastern Europe. So we were in a very dilapidated building, and classes were large. We did shifts that were at least two shifts during the day. So it was a difficult situation for teachers, but I remember Ms. Arnari and others as people who really, really taught us. 7:16 Poen: And where does Guissepi Rabi come in? I know I’m slaughtering the Italian language. Lovett: Dr. Rabi was my mathematics teacher in high school at del Licheo. The reason I remember him, actually he taught us math and physics. And the reason I remember him is that I was overall a very good student but a poor math student. This guy worked very had to figure out why I was doing very well in logic and Greek, which required analytical ability but was a poor math student. There was a disconnect there, and he tried very hard to understand why I wasn’t doing well. And I remained a poor math student till the end of del Licheo. I passed the courses, but always with the minimum grades. So that’s why I remember him, for his efforts to really understand what was going on in my head. 8:28 Poen: I’m almost afraid to bring up the next person on the list, Derek Plant. Now, he was at Cambridge? Lovett: He was an Oxford man who taught English at the University of Triest. So he was my major professor when I was an English major at the University of Triest. And he stands out in my memory as really the person who got me ready for Cambridge University and later who made it possible for me to do graduate work at an American university without much trouble. He was extremely hard on students. In a way almost a stereotype of the old Oxford style. Very aloof. The students were peasants. But he did teach us. There was no question that he knew what he was doing. Not everyone could do well under that kind of pressure, but those of us who could and who could meet his standards were really well prepared. 9:44 Poen: Were there others along the way who stand out as you reflect? Lovett: Yes, there were many others. Especially when I think about the elementary and secondary education. I had...we had very, very good teachers. Many of our, especially at del Lucheo, many of our professors were also teaching at the university. They had the qualifications, but because academic posts were very hard to get, many of these folks had to teach at secondary schools as their primary occupations, but were adjunct faculty of researchers at the university. There were very fine people. 10:31 Poen: And then you came to the United States. And you went to Texas. Can you share with us. How was that decision made? Lovett: Well, my program of study at the University of Triest required 2 years of experience in the countries whose languages we were studying. So in my case I went to England. I could have gone back for a second year in England, but when I was getting close to finishing my degree, I thought it would be more interesting to come to an American university. And incidentally, I had had American professors in my program as well, mostly Fulbright scholars who came on exchange. So I was looking for an opportunity to come to an American university. When I was in Italy, since my family is Protestant, I was connected to an International student center in Northern Italy that had a lot of international visitors. At some point I met a Presbyterian minister and his wife who were traveling through. They along with others were in charge of a student residence on the edge of the University of Texas campus. There was in those days, was the only co-ed and racially integrated student housing on the university. So, this person, Jack Lewis, told me that, when he learned that I was applying to American universities, told me that if I could get admitted to the University of Texas, you could live in our residence house and get a part time job. I knew I could get a scholarship for tuition, but there were other expenses. That’s how it happened. I was admitted to other universities, but I chose U.T. I always joke that I was an accidental immigrant, I had no intention of staying more that one year, but I ended up staying. 13:14 Poen: Was there a cultural shock? You come from a city environment and you find yourself in a relatively small town in Texas. Was there an adjustment? Lovett: Surely there was. But, I guess Austin in those days was probably 200,000 people, smaller than my hometown and certainly less cosmopolitan. There was much more of a cultural difference between Western Europe and Texas in 1962 than there is today. But probably because I was in a university environment, the culture shock was not that great. And I...most of the students I met and I went to class with and lived with were native Texan’s. But I seemed to fit in easily, and I really enjoyed myself. 14:20 Poen: What did you major in in Texas? Lovett: I was supposed to be in the graduate program in linguistics, which even then was strong at UT. And I did take classes, but I realized after a while that that wasn’t what I wanted to do, so later I switched to history, which was my minor field up to that point. 14:49 Poen: European History? Lovett: Yes. Well I took a lot of American history as well, but my major emphasis was on 19th century Europe. Poen: Any professors stand out in your memory? Lovett: Well, my late mentor Nancy Barker who was a scholar of 19th century France and Italy certainly helped me a lot. There was also another person who was very important to my...2 actually. Robert Divine who was then chair of the department. He was a very distinguished professor in US diplomatic history. And a great influence on all of us graduate students because of his...not only because he was a very productive scholar, and a very good teacher, but also because of his integrity his caring. The other one who had quite a bit of influence on me was Wayne Morgan, who is a historian of The Guilded Age, he is currently at the University of Oklahoma. I remember Wayne, because when I turned in my first papers, they came back with a lot of red ink, mostly about my writing not about the content per say. And I was rather humiliated by the experience and I tried to make excuses, you know, pointing out that English is not my native language. And he said, "Even if English is not your native language, you can learn to write without using the passive voice." And the fact is, I did learn to write. And I learned to do research from these people as well. 16:49 Poen: Well, the passive voice causes everyone problems. It certainly caused me some problems too. Ok. So you received your masters degree, your Ph.D. at Texas. And you left there in 1971. I wonder if the Lyndon Johnson Library was under construction at that time? Lovett: It was. And when I went back in the mid 70’s it was done and open. 17:26 Poen: You became professor of history at Baruk College in 1971. So that brought you to New York City? And you stayed there quite a while. Lovett: Till 1982. Poen: 11 years. Did you like New York City? Lovett: Yes I did. I remember when I went to the city thinking this is really exciting and there is a lot to do. And some day I’ll probably be to old to keep up this intense pace. And its true. I think one reason I enjoyed myself was that in those days I was younger and had a lot of energy. I taught at City University of New York. I was one of many junior professors who was hired around 1970 into the early 70’s when they introduced the open admissions policy and the system expanded. That’s why they were recruiting so many of us. Many of us were out of graduate school. Those years at City University had an extremely important impact on me and the way I think about education, on the way I learn to relate to students. It was hard at first, and I wasn’t very good at teaching. Well, at UT, I had been a teaching assistant for a couple of years but you know, I was teaching or helping professors in the honors program. Therefore working with students that were pretty well prepared. Rather homogenous in education and otherwise. And going from there to City University was a different universe, and so I made a lot of mistakes at first. My scholarship was fine, that was never a problem. My teaching, the first two years I really struggled. And I was very grateful to some of my colleagues in the department who were native New Yorkers who had grown up in the system and therefore show me the ropes, and they did. After I learned thought, it was very exciting and rewarding because you really felt as though you made a difference in the lives of those students. 20:09 Poen: What made you decide to move into administration? You become the assistant provost at Baruk in 1980, I think. So, for 9 years you were oriented to the classroom, and then you shift into administration. Lovett: Well, in January 1980, I came back to Baruk College after being away on leave for a year and a half. I had a Guggenheim scholarship and a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. So I spent one year in Europe doing research for my third book. And then I spent half a year in Washington at the Wilson Center in fact writing it up. So, when I came back to college I was just coming off that experience and had just been promoted to full professor. And I wasn’t planning a career shift. But one day I got a call from the vice president for academic affairs who was fairly new to the college at that time, Phillip Austin, who is now the president of the University of Connecticut. Phil had come to Baruk College from Washington where he had worked at OMB and HW, what was then HW. He’s an economist by background and had his Ph.D. in economics. But at that point he had no academic experience. And so as an outsider from the system and as a non academic, he thought he should have an assistant who had roots in the faculty and who really knew the academic side of things. So I was one of 2 or 3 senior faculty, well, I wasn’t that senior, full professors with whom he spoke. And he ended up asking me to be his assistant. And to this date, Phil and I joke that this was a transaction that we entered into with no risk. His thinking was Lovett has been around here for a number of years, she is respected by her colleagues, she is a scholar, she seems to have the attributes I need, but if it doesn’t work out, I’ll send her right back to the history department. And I was thinking here is an opportunity to learn what is going on in the central administration of the college, to understand different side of the institution. But if I don’t like philosophy, or don’t like that kind of work, I’ll just go back to where I was before. But that is literally how I got into it. I do everything else I suppose, out of curiosity, out of a desire to learn. 23:18 Poen: Then you become, oh, then you leave Baruk. And you became the Chief of the European division, Library of Congress. Did you know Harvey Walkell? He was the director of the manuscript. I went to graduate school with him. Lovett: No, the name doesn’t sound familiar. Well, my decision to leave Baruk College was made for personal reasons not professional. I could have continued to work with Phil, I was very happy with what I was doing, but in 1980, a few months after I started this job as assistant provost, I married Ben, Ben Brown. Ben at that point had taken a job in Washington, D.C. So, I commuted from New York to Washington for almost 2 years, that got really old. And so in early ’82, I made the decision to look for opportunities to move. And that is how I ended up at the Library of Congress. Being chief of the European division was a very interesting job. 24:36 Poen: Did you do your bibliography during that period? Lovett: Yeah, I did lots of it. Poen: I bet. I notice you have a bibliography of Italian works. Lovett: I did that and I did other things. I had a small group of professionals in the division who covered pretty much most of Europe in their specialties. And all of them were scholars, so in addition to serving the public in terms of reference work for other people, we also did a lot of scholarly work oriented toward bibliography and other research aids. I had a very strong group. 25:21 Poen: Maybe this is the time to talk a bit about some of your publications. Your first major publication, a biography, and it titled Guissepi Ferrari and the Italian Revolution, and it came out in 1979. And I noticed that North Carolina Press published this. I’ve read most of it. It’s an excellently written, sprightly written biography. And your husband mentioned last night when we were visiting he said, "And yes, that’s in her third language." English is your third language. What’s your second language? Lovett: German. My father’s native language is German. And so he taught my brother and me German when we were small. And it was also my second language of study when I was at the university. English was my first, German is second. 26:33 Poen: What aroused your interest in Ferrari? Lovett: Actually this was my second monograph. The first one was on another major figure in 19th century Italy, Carlo Cantanio. Who was an economist and the chief proponent of free trade economics in 19th century Italy. These people all came out of the same environment. Middle class, business oriented Milanese. At a time when Milan and the region around it were emerging as really the first centers of the industrial revolution and major trading centers as well. I got interested in both the case of Cantanio and Ferrari in the relationship between economic development that was occurring in that part of Italy in the 1830’s and 1840’s. And the beginnings of a movement to free that region from Hapsburg rule and to form a new state in Italy. Ferrari became the chief theorist of a federal state. In other words, he wanted independence form the Hapsburg empire and an Italian state, but not a centralized state. He envisioned one that would be a federation of very strong regions. 28:14 Poen: And a secular one. Lovett: And a very secular one. Poen: And your 3rd book, boy you were really busy in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I can’t believe this. And your third book, Harvard University Press brought this out in 1982. The Democratic Movement in Italy: 1840 -- 1876. Lovett: In effect I expanded the investigation that started with Carlo Catanio and Guissepi Ferrari moving from some of the central theorist to a, if you will, a collective biography of more that 100 leaders in all regions in Italy who were involved in the movement for Italian unification but who wanted a federal and certainly a democratic state to emerge instead of a monarchy of a strongly centralized state. And so that’s what the 3rd monograph is about. 29:27 Poen: Well, it just goes on. You have other publications. You collaborated in a book entitled Women, War, and Revolution. And actually, that was brought out earlier and I took a look at that. That’s an interesting volume. That’s an edited volume. Lovett: Yes, that came out of a conference that a colleague of mine that is still at City University, Carol Burken and I ran in 1978, responding from a National Endowment form the Humanities. And it was very much one of our contributions to the then emerging field of women’s history. We brought together a number of scholars who had written on women in war of women against war. Women in various peace movements on an international scale. And the volume published the most outstanding essays that came out of that experience. 30:39 Poen: Well, while all this was going on, you were publishing...wait a minute I’m forgetting one. 1984 Vitality Without Mobility: Faculty Opportunities Audit. And I notice that came out in ’84, and that was the year you became dean of the college of Arts and Science at George Washington University. Lovett: Actually, there were other publications between 1980 and ’84 where I began to do a shift from writing monographs to doing bibliographic work. And that was influenced of course by my 2 years at the Library of Congress. I also participated in edited works and writing essays on bibliographic topics and research, research tools. So there were other things I did that were published. 31:42 Poen: I see a kind of shift here in your orientation to educational reform. Lovett: By the early 80’s and especially when I became dean at GW, I made a shift to apply my research skills and my scholarly habits of mind to issues in higher education rather than to continue writing history. That was a shift of emphasis if you will and I’ve continued that since the mid 80’s. 32:19 Poen: You became provost, vice president of academic affairs at George Mason in 1988. You know I must confess...is George Mason in Washington, D.C. area. Lovett: Yes. It’s in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. About 20 miles from downtown DC. Poen: How was your experience at George Mason? Lovett: Very exciting. My reason for taking that job had to do with the president of that university, George Johnson, who retired 2 years ago, and who essentially built a new university in an area of Northern Virginia that was booming, that made the transformation during the 1980’s from being basically a suburb of Washington, D.C. in a semi-rural area into a major center of economic activity and population growth in its own right. The university is right in the middle of that whole development. It was very, very exciting. And there was a chance to build new programs and lead a number of interesting initiatives. That’s the reason I took that job. 33:57 Poen: And then you took, I guess, a leave of absence and became the director of the forum on faculty roles and rewards with the American Association of Higher Education. Is the American Association of Higher Education the premier think tank for higher education? Lovett: I think it is. It was founded in the late 60’s, so it’s not very old, but it is I think the foremost think tank. It doesn’t lobby, unlike some of the other higher ed. organizations. It is an individual membership organization, not an institutional membership organization. It has about 8000 members throughout the country in all sectors of higher ed. I think...I know that among its members I have met the very best minds in our enterprise. I became a member in 1980. I became acquainted with double A the time I was in Washington on the Wilson Center scholarship. And I became very active in some of the projects. When I was provost at George Mason University, after I had finished some things that were really important to get finished, I took a leave of absence to start a major project with the association. It had to do with rethinking and redefining faculty roles given the tremendous changes that were occurring in higher education. 35:57 Poen: And then you became a candidate for the president of Northern Arizona University. Had you ever been to Flagstaff or Arizona? Lovett: Oh yes, as a tourist. Poen: As a tourist. When did you decide that you would like to aspire to become the president of the university? Lovett: It wasn’t...I think you can tell from our conversation so far that I have made very distinct decisions at every step. It’s not like I started out with a grand plan that I was going to publish 3 books, or that I was going to become a dean. I have never had that block step, mechanical approach to my career. What I’m looking for, and I’ve been very fortunate to receive, are learning opportunities. That is what intrigues me, what has intrigued me about every job I’ve had. With regard to being a president, when I was at AAHE, doing this project, I was up to my ears in work. In the spring of ’93, I had a conversation with a colleague who was at Washington, D.C. at that time working with the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, but who was a native Arizonan. He called to tell me that the Arizona Board of Regents was getting ready to do a search for the smallest of the 3 public universities in the state. So he told me a little bit about NAU. I knew Flagstaff, but I didn’t really know anything about the University. And since I got lots of those kinds of call, and I still do, I said, "that sounds interesting." I assumed he was calling me to get some nominations or suggestions of people who might be interested. So I said, "give me a couple of days and I’ll get back to you. I’m sure I can find some names." And there was a pause at the other end of the line, and he said, "Well actually, I was kind of hoping you would be interested." And I’m not sure exactly why, but some of the things he said were sufficiently interesting that I decided ok, I’ll do some homework. I called a few other people that I knew in this region of the country, and I read about NAU. And so I decided sometime in the early summer of 1993 to allow my name to be placed in nomination, and well, you know the rest. 38:58 Poen: Well, the rest has encompassed a little over 3 years now is that right? Lovett: No, I’m in the middle of my 5th. Yeah I know time flies. Poen: Especially when you retire. So you came in February 1994. Lovett: Yeah. I was offered the job in Fall of ’93, but I couldn’t drop what I was doing right away, so I actually got to campus in February 1994. 39:33 Poen: Well, so now you moved to a not so small community, but still it’s very different from Triest and London and well, were much smaller that Austin, and we are certainly smaller than New York City and Washington. Has there been any adjustment necessary to live in a less urban area? Lovett: Yes, but the adjustment is not related to the size of community, the adjustment was related to my role as president of the major employer and the largest institution in a small community. In other words if I lived in Flagstaff and I had another occupation, it probably wouldn’t have meant a big adjustment. 40:26 Poen: Well, I thought maybe breathing fresh air might have been an adjustment. There was a...to digress just a little bit, there was an essay by Buckwald some time ago when he visited Flagstaff some 20 years ago, he became very ill and he couldn’t figure out why. And he just got sicker all the time. And finally, he went down to the bus station and inhaled some exhaust fumes and it straightened him right out. We do have different air out here don’t we? Well in your inaugural speech in October 1994, you set some goals for the university and yourself. I thought it might be interesting to see how we are doing. I note in a recent essay that you published, in some ways you’ve responded to how we have done on some of these goals. You’ve published an essay in the International Journal of Humanities and Peace entitled NAU: A Tale of Opportunities and Challenges. I counted 6 goals, there might be more but there are 6. And the first one, if we could, to see how we are doing. The first one was you wanted NAU to be recognized as the premier residential campus in the Western United States. Now that’s a big order. 42:17 Lovett: At least in the public sector anyway. It is a tall order, but it is also one that I think is quite achievable, because we have the two most important assets to make that happen. One is a strong faculty that is taking its teaching mission quite seriously. And the other is a residential campus that is already built. We have infastructure, we can fix it and update it, but we have it. So that we can have...we can not only house a lot of students on the campus, but we can have an academic and social environment for students that is focused on the campus. There is a very practical reason why we need to do our best to achieve our goal. And the practical reason is that if you look at the demographics of higher ed, nationally as well as in Arizona, only 20% or so of the students who are pursuing a baccalaureate degree, seek, want, and can afford a campus of this type. Which means we really recruit a minority within the pool of students who are pursuing a baccalaureate. We recruit most of those students in the urban areas of Arizona where the population happens to be concentrated so we have some peculiar distributions that are peculiar to our state. What does that mean? It means to remain really attractive and really competitive in the years ahead, we have to be better that we’ve ever been historically. Better means the strongest academic programs we can provide, a lot of attention to teaching, and providing a total educational environment that students don’t find elsewhere. That’s why I articulated that goal in that way. And I believe we are making progress in that direction, both in terms of improving the physical assets we’ve inherited from the past and continuing to strengthen our faculty and our academic programs. But it’s an imperitive. If we don’t do it, 10 or 20 years down the road, we’ll be quite sorry. 45:00 Poen: And the second objective that you outlined was enhancing NAU’s rural mission throughout the state. So we have a duality of objectives here. A residential campus and the rural aspects. Lovett: The Board of Regents expect us to figure out ways of serving the rural counties of the state where the population base is too small to support the conventional four year college. So, one reason why I articulated this goal is directly related to the expectations set for us by the Board of Regents. But it is very much in our interest to take that mission seriously to do the best we can with it, to really exploit the opportunities. And the reason is not only that we can bring our resources, our talents, and our traditions to people who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunities, so I think we are doing something that is educationally and socially of great value. In addition to that, we are also earning friends and building support throughout the state. So again there are some very practical benefits that flow from that. One of those things that would not help NAU in the long run is if we became too regionalized in the perception of the public and of prospective students we were only one campus in the state. Maintaining statewide presence is very important to the well being of the university, and we have the opportunity. 47:01 Poen: Well, before we started this conversation, Paul Newman was showing me the new print out of the IITV network, and its very impressive. It reaches all corners of Arizona. Very impressive. The 3rd objective was to center on field based practitioner-oriented teacher training. Have we got away from that? Lovett: To some extent yes. And if you talk to the faculty in the Center for Excellence they would tell you themselves. We are still the leading educator of educators in our state, and that is a huge asset. Our reputation for teacher preparation and the preparation of other school professionals remains high, but we had drifted away from the purposes for which the Center for Excellence was established in the mid 80’s. And we are returning to that with a very strong emphasis on working in the field, working right in the schools. Sending our prospective teachers into the schools early on, not waiting until they do one semester of student teaching at the end of their college career. So, that...around that there really is a larger goal of strengthening and maintaining our lead role in Arizona. As the educator of educators. There is a larger agenda there then might appear from the words we use. And we just recruited a new dean for the Center for Excellence who understands that very, very well, and many of the senior faculty understand that and they want to maintain that preeminence. 49:16 Poen: And then the fourth was to expand NAU’s role in seeking Native American advancement. You mentioned your hope that we could establish an institute for Native Americans. Lovett: And we have. And it will grow and expand. I see us pursuing this goal in 2 ways. One is by having the institute very involved in issues of public policy as they relate to Native American tribes. There is a quiet revolution going on around us in Indian country in terms of how the tribes understand the concept of sovereignty. How some of them are trying to exercise it. There clearly will be major changes in the years ahead in the relationship between Native American tribes, the federal government, and the state government as well. So the institute can be a very important influence as a forum for discussion, as neutral ground that brings together people around important issues. And then the other dimension is the education of Native American students. Among the non-private institutions in the country, we have one of the highest percentages of Native American enrollment, more that 6% as of Fall 1997. It should be much higher than that if you look at the pipeline of students coming through the secondary school system. And so we have a very important role to play there as well. 51:09 Poen: Are we making any progress on the retention of Native American students? Lovett: We have made progress, not nearly as much as would be desirable, but we focused...beginning in the summer of ’94, when I saw what a disaster area I had, in terms of retention, we decided to focus a lot of intensive intervention and staff resources on first year retention. Retention of freshmen, and retention of first year transfer students. And in 4 years, 3 ½, we’ve gone from less than 50% first year retention to 67%. If those students who stay have a good experience the first year continue, in a year or two we should see a significant improvement in graduation rate. But we have a lot of work to do... 52:15 Poen: One of the highlights in this area of reaching out to the Native American community, one of the highlights that I recall a couple of years ago was the dedication of that wonderful bronze statue on campus honoring the code talkers of WWII. Now that’s a nice addition to the campus... Lovett: Yeah, it’s a wonderful work. R. C. Gorman is a very generous alumnus. And we are very proud of his fame as an artist, and he has been very generous with the university. 52:59 Poen: Well with that, we are going to have to conclude this 1st segment. Thank you. 53:04 BREAK_________________________________________________________________ 53:20 Poen: Ok. We’re continuing our discussion with President Clara Lovett. And President Lovett, before we continue on with these various major objectives, I note that Howard Allen in an essay that was published last August wrote, "Lovett is on a mission. Making arts a priority." Is that a fair statement? Lovett: Yes. Lovett and other people are on a mission. I focused on that particularly the performing arts for 2 reasons. One is that NAU already has a tradition particularly in the music program that goes way back. And so it was a way of building one of our strengths. But the other reason was related to not the university per say, but our role in the Flagstaff community. It’s evident to me as it is to other leaders in this community that the future well being of Flagstaff depends on being able to change the way with think about tourism and our reliance on it. As one of my friends says, "we have to stop thinking of ourselves as a motel stop on the way to the Grand Canyon, and think of ourselves more as a destination." In other words, a place where people come and want to spend at least a few days at a time. And the building a strong performing arts program, particularly having significant summer performances is one way to make Flagstaff an arts destination. So in that area I see a good way of combining one of the academic strengths of NAU that goes back in its history with contemporary needs of the community. 55:37 Poen: I note that during your administration Ardrey Auditorium underwent a renovation, and your just beginning to renovate the rest of the arts complex. 5.5 million dollar renovation. That’s quite an accomplishment. We might mention that Wagner’s Ring Cycle has been performed on campus in the summer and there scheduled to perform again. Lovett: Yes. They are coming again in a couple weeks to start rehearsals. 56:12 Poen: Well, getting back these other objectives, one objective that we were talking about off campus...off camera I should say, is strengthening the research component and the graduate program in relationship to the Colorado Plateau. Lovett: Yes. Another strategic goal of NAU is to continue to build research capability and graduate programs in areas that relate to our location on the Colorado Plateau. That relate to the study of the environment, the physical environment, and the cultures of the Colorado Plateau. I firmly believe that a university of our type and size can achieve national and international prominence in selected areas by building on our regional strengths. By selecting areas of study that are appropriate for its particular environment. And in our case, you have the whole gamut of disciplines that relate to environmental issues: environmental science, geology, forestry, ecosystem management, as well as anthropology and archaeology. We already have strength in those areas, and by focusing our resources wisely and shrewdly, we can bring some of those programs to a level of national significance. 58:02 Poen: Then there is the creation as an objective, the creation of teams of faculty across disciplines to undertake large scale research. And in that connection, I think that this quotation is from your essay in the International Journal of Humanities and Peace that we referred to earlier. I have a quote, I don’t know if it’s attributed to you or someone else but it says, Lovett "is allergic to bureaucracy and traditional thinking." Is that something that rings a bell with you? Are you allergic to bureaucracy and traditional thinking? 58:54 Lovett: Yes. I don’t think that I said that, but somebody who knows me pretty well probably did. It’s true. I don’t like bureaucracy in the sense that I think we are more successful, especially as an academic community if we allow the maximum amount of freedom to individuals and to groups of people to be creative and to pursue...as long as they understand the common goals we are pursuing so you don’t have 3000 free agents going off in different directions. As long as people have a sense of what is important to NAU and its future, they should be free to pursue the goals in a way that suits them. And it releases their creativity. I also think that that is best done if we don’t run the university in a very hierarchical way. I like to bring people together around issues and projects, and I don’t much care or I don’t worry a whole lot about what their rank is, or what their title is, or what their salary is. You try to bring the best minds to bear on a situation or project regardless where on the organizational chart people happen to fit. And I apply that rule to myself as much as to anyone else. 1:00:33 Poen: Have you seen then an increase in cross disciplinary cooperation and research. Lovett: Yes, to the extent that I had anything to do with it. I try very deliberately to influence, to move us in that direction, particularly in the selection of deans, who are critical intellectual and managerial players in this. I have made it a point to recruit and retain people who are able to make decisions and provide leadership for their particular schools and colleges who are good storers of whatever resources are entrusted to them. But who also are a part of a senior team who understands that their success...they would not be successful if they work in isolation. They will accomplish a whole lot more for themselves, for their schools, if they find that connection across and that is happening. 1:01:45 Poen: Well, the last one I have on the list is the desire to lay the groundwork for the expansion of NAU’s capital campaign. Now this refers to endowments and all of that. And there has been progress on that hasn’t there? Lovett: I articulated that goal in my inaugural speech because I could see that like all public universities we receive less support from the state than we did 10 years ago. This year only 39% of our operating budget comes from appropriated funds. 1:02:41 Poen: 39%. Lovett: Yes. Another percentage, about 16% comes from tuition and fees that the students pay. I can’t see the wisdom from a public policy point of view of soaking the students. I think it’s good pubic policy to keep tuition as low as we can keep it. And so, if you are not going to get a lot of resources from the state, and you don’t want to put too much pressure on the students, you have to find other ways to provide for the wellbeing of the university. It’s pretty obvious. And in this regard we are in the same boat with most universities of our type. And I could see that our development effort when I came to NAU was, well one word that comes to mind is primitive. It was very small and unfocused. So we have made an effort to build a fundraising operation, and more than that we’ve also made a real effort to rediscover and reconnect with alumni. Especially the ones that graduated in the 70’s and 80’s who are now becoming established in their careers. And we have some results to show for that. The annual fund raising effort has about tripled from a base of 3 million dollars to about 9 million. Very modest in the larger scheme of things, but still for us, quite a leap. And I hope to build on that. 1:04:21 Poen: Certainly important in our review here and our discussion is the NAU centennial. The campus has been very much involved working up to the year of the centennial. We have the year of science, and this year is the year of arts and literature, and next years the big year. And I’ve been involved on the centennial commission. Could you tell us a little about the makeup of the commission and how it came about? Lovett: We established the commission in 1994. If you recall Monty, in the fall of ’94, we had the official reopening of Old Main, which had been renovated and restored. I thought, well, we have five years till the 100th birthday celebration. There are some historical milestones that we can celebrate along the way. We found important moments in the history of NAU that were also important moments in its connection with its community. 1894, when we rededicated Old Main, was also the birthday of the city of Flagstaff. In ’95, we celebrated the year of the Native Americans. That’s when R. C. Gorman produced that work in honor of his father who has recently died, Carl Gorman. And we had the 50th anniversary of the ending of WWII and an opportunity to celebrate the code talkers, and more broadly to celebrate our connections to the Native American cultures in our area. And the following year was the year of science. And the historical milestone there was our connection with Lowell Observatory 1896. So it was an opportunity to celebrate that and also our web of relationships with other science oriented agencies like the USGS, the National Forest Service, the Parks Service, and so on. That was in ’96. Then this year we started the year of arts and literature with Toni Morrison??s appearance and with the Flagstaff Book Festival, which was done collaboratively with the university. So it was really an extraordinary week when we brought to the community a lot of significant writers. So for each of these historical milestones, we found not only an important way to celebrate strengths of the university, but we also found important connections to the community around us. And it’s been a fun thing to do. And now we are preparing a calendar of events for the big birthday celebration in 1999. 1:08:00 Poen: Well, looking around me at the commission meetings, I see that it’s made up of a broad spectrum of people, not necessarily academics. Lovett: No, of course we have faculty and students. But it was important to have alumnae involved, former members of the board of regents like Edie Oslander, now Ester Kaypin has joined the flock. Alumnae, members of the community. We want it to be a very broad based celebration. And it’s also an opportunity for us to remind the people of Arizona what this university has contributed over 100 years, and that we want to remain important players in the future. That’s why we are going to do some events in Phoenix, like a float in the Fiesta Bowl. The alumnae who live in the Phoenix area have sort of taken that on as their project. And then in March in ’99 we will have a reenactment at the capital, at the state capital, at the moment that the territorial governor of Arizona signed the bill that established the normal school in Flagstaff. That will be I think March 11th. Then in July of ’99, we will have a special commemoration here in Flagstaff of the establishment of the original Flagstaff. We’re still discussing with the city exactly where to place it, but there will be a flag flown for the fourth of July. And on and on... the idea is to again remind people of the significance of this university and our contributions over time. Bring back alumnae. Generate support from individuals and corporate donors. 1:10:10 Poen: Isn’t the front of the campus getting a facelift of some kind? There will be a plaza constructed? Lovett: Yes. In conjunction with building the new science labs, actually the whole North end of campus will be reconfigured. There will be a plaza and there will be also a gateway, some kind of Arch or formal entrance at the Butler Ave. end of campus. 1:10:42 Poen: Well, it’s an exciting and significant occasion. To wrap things up I want to refer to your essay that was published last fall. You posed the question, will NAU be ready for the 21st century? And your answer was a resounding yes. And it looks as though we are moving in that direction. Lovett: Yes. I think if we stay with these strategic directions. If the leadership of the university pulls together, I believe that our goals are very achievable, and I believe we can create an institution with a statewide impact and presence that is going to do very well in the next century. 1:11:46 Poen: Well, I certainly want to thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Lovett: Thank you Monty, Its been fun to talk with you. 1:11:53 |
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| Oral history transcripts | NAU CENTENNIAL INTERVIEW Dr. William Lyon Call number: NAU.OH.96.108.7 Poen: It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to visit with President Clara Lovett. And I am indeed privileged this morning to have a conversation with President Lovett regarding her interesting life, a life of accomplishment. Good morning. 2:04 Lovett: Good morning. Poen: Let’s start if we can at the beginning. I note that you were born in Triest, Italy. And that your father was an official with an insurance company I believe. Lovett: Yes. Poen: Were you born in the city itself? Lovett: |
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