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Dr. Frank Brown Interview

This is an interview by Morgan Carraway with President Frank Brown of Columbus State University on February 6, 2008 in his office in the Richards Building. Morgan Carraway: It should be all right. I tested it out before I came over. So, let’s see, let’s start with when and where you were born. Frank Brown: Okay, I was born on January 18, 1941 in a little community hospital in Century, Florida. MC: Alright, and tell me about your family. FB: My family actually lived in Alabama. My hometown was right on the Alabama-Florida line. The closest hospital was in Florida. So, while I’m technically a native Floridian, I consider myself a native Alabamian because I only spent three days in the hospital in Florida and I was back in Alabama for the rest of my childhood. I have one sister who is four years younger. She’s a retired school teacher in Pensacola. My mother is still living. She celebrated her 88th birthday this year, and is doing quite well. She lives in Pensacola near my sister. All of the issues of growing up in a small town were really good for me back then…. MC: Tell me about what your parents did. FB: My dad was a hard working railroad man, a railroad clerk, a member of the union. Some of my vivid memories of childhood were when the railroad workers were out on strike. I used to walk the picket line with my father and his coworkers; we were striking the railroad. Later I came to have less of an appreciation for the union. It had been useful at one time, but had probably outlived its usefulness. MC: Alright, let’s talk about your early education. Where did you attend school? FB: In the little town of Flomaton, Alabama, which had a county school in it; elementary and high school. There was no junior high. Six years of elementary, no kindergarten and then six years of high school. Two separate buildings. And that’s where I went my entire twelve years. I was a city boy and I had my option, I could go home for lunch and come back which I did often…. MC: And how did you decide to go into business? FB: After college I had a degree in business administration and personnel management, human relations. That’s really the field I wanted to follow, but the jobs were not as plentiful as I’d hoped and I ended up working six months for a local bank and then moved to a company called Vanity Fair Corporation, V.F. Corp. It had a large manufacturing complex in Monroeville, Alabama just about thirty-five miles from my hometown. I got a job there as a computer programmer. And spent four years with Vanity

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Fair and then went to the University of West Alabama in Livingston as director of their data processing department. Brand new operation, just started. So that’s how– I was in business first, went to work in education. After the Master’s degree in Alabama I went to work for the IBM Corporation selling computers and had a grand time. MC: I apologize I didn’t mean to skip over your college education. FB: That’s okay. I’m not sure I filled it all in, but– MC: Can you tell me a little bit about that experience? FB: When I came out of high school I was planning to go to college, and had made applications to a couple colleges, been accepted. But financing was going to be a problem. I knew that, so I was planning to work my way through. In the meantime, as I was growing up in high school it was a very small school so you did a lot of different things. I not only played all of the sports we had, but I was in the marching band. Typically the concert season was when we went to Mardi Gras. But that band experience got me a scholarship to a junior college in Mississippi. So I spent my first two years at Northwest Mississippi Community College, near Memphis Tennessee. Two really good years, and after those two years I went to the University of Southern Mississippi. I got my undergraduate degree and came back to Alabama to find employment. MC: And your first job, if I’m correct, in education was with the Alabama Commission on Higher Education? Is that correct? FB: Yes, that was the first job I except for the job in data processing experience that I had at the University of West Alabama and that was pretty much a staff position. The Commission on Higher Education came after I had gotten my doctorate at Florida State. It was my first involvement with policies of higher education. MC: What led you to that switch toward education? FB: It’s really interesting. When I was working at IBM, a great company, a great job, I had several colleges and universities in my territory and as I worked with them on their needs, and helped them to plan their computer systems. I began to really be attracted to the field of education. It was great fun to work with them on projects…. So, I began to think about heading my career toward higher education of some form. So, after a period of time my wife, who already had her Masters as well to teach, and I, decided we would find a university that had a doctorate for the both of us, and we did. We found Florida State, found exactly what we wanted to do. So, we resigned from our jobs and with the firm, clear opposition of our families who said, “Are you crazy? You’re leaving these two good jobs to go back to school?” We said, “Yeah.” So we did. We went to Tallahassee and had two really good years in graduate school, got our doctorates, and came back then to Montgomery and started with the Commission on Higher Education. MC: And what were your responsibilities with them?

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FB: Initially, my responsibilities were as assistant to the director. I was kind of the liaison with the state legislature, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The legislature was of course there at the capital. I did lobbying on behalf of higher education in Alabama with the legislature for about four and a half years. I also then moved into the financial side of education, developing the annual budget recommendation to the legislature, working with all of the colleges and universities within the state to implement the plans and then to report back how we had used the dollars…. MC: And I also saw that after leaving Alabama and the Commission on Higher Education you worked as the Assistant Vice Chancellor and then the interim Vice Chancellor. What were your responsibilities in those jobs? FB: I was working with the state system of higher education and knew that I really wanted to move to a campus. The bureaucracy was good, it was a noble cause, and I enjoyed it, but I really wanted to move toward a campus environment. A friend whom I made during those days was the chief financial officer at the University of Alabama, Fred Drake went to the University of Houston as their chief financial officer. They had experienced a financial problem out there and he was called in to rebuild it. But he hadn’t been out there long before he called one day and said, “I need you to come out and take a look at what we’re doing and just give us some of your thoughts.” [inaudible] And I did that a couple of times, and then one day he said, “You know, I don’t know who I have here I can really trust.” He said, “Would you consider coming as my assistant.” So, I packed up everything I had, including a wife and two very small children and left all our parents and family in Alabama and moved to Houston. And for the second time in our marriage, our family said, “Are you crazy!?” (laughs) So we went to Houston and for about a year or so I was the assistant vice chancellor for business and finance. And then Fred got a better offer and got tired of the campus politics and went to North Carolina. I was appointed interim financial officer for a year. And during that year I began to assess whether I wanted to stay at the University of Houston, which was a long way from home. Wonderful city, enjoyed it, but the traffic almost beat us to death, worse than Atlanta. So, I had an opportunity at the end of that year to come to Columbus College as the vice president of business and finance. We did and it was the best move we ever made. MC: Okay, before I get to Columbus College, how do you think all of these different jobs that you had prior to coming to Columbus College, prepared you for what you’re doing today? FB: It’s just incredible. The sequence of events, I couldn’t have planned it that well. It’s just been– most of my life has been taking advantage of opportunities and not necessarily laying out a strict roadmap…. Every step along the way I think led me to the next step…. All of those things built on my experiences and my understanding of what needed to be done at least from my perspective, in such a way that I never felt intimidated or overly challenged, by the increased responsibilities.

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MC: So, you said in 1981, you came here to Columbus College, and how were you introduced to the school, how did you come here? FB: The campus had advertised for the VP position, had several candidates selected, and they met each of us at the Atlanta airport and I had about an hour interview with the committee at the airport, as did four or five other candidates. I don’t know how many. They decided from those interviews that they would invite me to this campus, for a full fledged two days of interviews. Turns out I was the only one they invited to the campus. I didn’t know that at the time. But I came here had a really good experience, saw an institution that had a lot of potential, that had sort of been relegated to be a small commuter institution with local focus and not much more. I came here with the idea that I could help build this institution, never thinking that I would do anything here other than the financial assignment. MC: What would you say is the mission at CSU or at the time [inaudible]? FB: The mission, the primary mission in my view has been fulfilled in large measure, I don’t mean to say my time is up we need to go home. The city insisted that there be a college in this town. It is a clear case of the leadership of this town rising up and saying to the state, ‘we want a college in Columbus, and we mean now.’ They got it, and from the very start, the mission, though unstated in the beginning, was to build the middle class, to build a professional class in Columbus. Now that we look back after fifty years of operation, we know from the census data, that fifty-five percent of the people in Columbus who have a baccalaureate degree got it here. And I love to say, all the other colleges and universities in the world, combined, do not have as many graduates in this town as we do. That was the building of the middle class, that was the building of the professional class. And it has enabled people to achieve, in this city well beyond what they had accomplished here before. That’s the mission that I think has been fulfilled very, very well and leads us now to the mission of expanding that to cultural, economic, and recreational needs and all the other things that we call quality of life…. MC: Well, when you arrived here as vice president of business and finance as well as an assistant professor of management. What were your responsibilities in those areas? FB: My responsibilities had to do with all of the financial records, the processing of payroll, all the purchasing, the plant operations, keeping the campus maintained, building new buildings, and the campus security as well. Then I was given, after about two years here, the responsibilities for the fundraising side of the college. It was a new experience to me, but it took very well with my ideas, something I was interested in. So, I got to really know the community and got really involved in organizations and such. The capital campaign for the 25th anniversary was 1982. At that time it was the largest campaign ever conducted in Columbus, successful to fifty percent over the goal. MC: So, what exactly was your role in that first campaign?

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FB: I was a, staff person. I worked with our foundation board. We identified professionals from those who could come in and help us. And then I helped mobilize volunteers, kept track of gifts as they came in, and generally monitored the financial side. MC: And what would you say that this first endeavor of this first capital campaign accomplished was? FB: Well, in literal terms, it accomplished some good things. We began to develop an endowment. We had funds to provide a great number of additional scholarships for students; we had some endowed professorships come out of it. And, generally I think it began to make us feel a little bit better about ourselves. There was a case where the museum had had a huge campaign, huge by Columbus 1983 standards, and we followed along a year or so later with our campaign. And we achieved what they had done, and it said, you know people in this town believe we’re important. So it really helped our self imagine as well as giving some needed funds. MC: Now 1981, I have a quote. You were quoted by the Saber saying that your goal was to give a “dollar’s worth of services for every dollar that we pay.” Do you think that has been accomplished? (laughs) FB: (Laughs) Oh, boy. I think I was probably playing to the student newspaper, I was probably quoting for student benefit. But, yes we pay tuition, yes we pay a lot of money to come here, but we try to give you full value of what you pay. I think it has been accomplished. If you look at higher education in Georgia, particularly at the tuition level and at the system structure. Compare that to virtually any other state in the country, you’ll see right away that higher education in this state is a real bargain, financially. I know it seems like a lot of money when you went to pay your tuition bill, but if you compare it to others it really is a good deal, and I think a great value because the University System of Georgia, and this is something that’s becoming very clear since I’ve been around. This is a strong, strong system, and I’m very, very proud to be a part of this university system at Columbus State. It’s strong, it’s intent on doing things the right way, and the evident quality we offer at the system is virtually unmatched in my view in other states. MC: Well, on a more local topic, describe the student demographic when you first arrived here. FB: We were strictly a commuter institution. We had limited housing for some of our athletic students. We had a house over on Clearview Circle, which the softball team used…. We had a very small athletic dorm over on what was then Cody Road, which is now University, and we had very little other housing. So, we were a daytime drive-in school, and an evening program for the local community. If you lived outside driving distance from Columbus and wanted to come to us, you had to come here and find your own place to live, find your own place to get meals, make your own way. That limited a lot of students who might have wanted to come here, but really couldn’t go through that process. So we found a lot of local students, a lot of first generation students who nobody

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in their family had ever gone to college. That’s still true today in many cases. But we also found an issue with– there’s a quote in the Bible that says that a “prophet is never honored in his own country.” It’s so true– we were so close, so local, and so accessible that we were not considered a quality institution, but we were. Students graduated from high school, and by and large wanted to leave Columbus, to go away for college. And we knew once they did that they would likely never come back…. That’s all changed now, and for the better. We’ve become a college choice for so many students, the economy has improved, the city is regenerating itself, and Columbus is coming of age. The average age of our undergraduate in those early days, I can remember was about twenty-seven to twenty-eight, today it’s probably around twenty-five, but I haven’t see any recent figures. Because we are reaching out to the traditional age college students and we provide housing for people to come in from other areas, but it’s changing every day. MC: How would you describe campus life, when you first arrived here? FB: Well, it was good, because we had strong music and theatre; the art program was good; strong and impressive athletics. Our facilities were not what we really wanted and over time we changed all that. But campus life was really strong, academic clubs were strong, and we began to build on that strength by establishing honor societies in several areas. We began to work on better venues for the performing arts, athletics, and international study became a possibility, which wasn’t in place in those days. We were a small size, serving the local needs very well, but probably not reaching out very much days. MC: Now I’ll use the description you use as a drive-in school in our early days. Would you say that, during the early days many students did not stay on campus, were [clubs?] and that has changed through the years? FB: That has changed. They would drive in, go to class, and drive out. Sometimes because they were going back to work, or often they were going home to take care of family. And some of that still happens, obviously we still have a lot of students who are working, get out of high school, want to buy that car, and that means they have to have a job, which means they can’t spend the time on campus you would like them to, always. But we’ve worked real hard to make the campus enticing. We have events from organizations on campus that bring people back at nights, and I think in large measure we have succeeded. MC: [inaudible] Describe some of the festivities surrounding the 25th anniversary of Columbus College. FB: Okay. Strangely, though, the same people are not working on the fiftieth who worked on the twenty-fifth, some of the events are similar. We’re going to have an open house, we had an open house then. We’ve had a huge birthday cake, we had a birthday cake years ago. We had a, maybe you know the Dinglewood pharmacy, famous scramble dog, we advertised the worlds largest scramble dog. And it was, I think twenty-five feet long. It was multiple wieners in there you know, but it was a true scramble dog. (laughs) And

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then we made that thing and took photographs of it, and we chopped it up and ate it. We had a musical entertainment group…. And then an open house, so we invited people to come back and go back to the apartments where they stayed and visit the faculty, and see what was going on….. Those were the kinds of things we did. MC: What was the feeling among the faculty, the community about the celebration of [twenty-five years?] FB: I’m not sure it was, widely attended– our foundation board and our first graduates came by and congratulated us on twenty-five years of service. But, I don’t think it was huge I’m not remembering a large crowd. MC: Okay, during this era we had President Brooke. Can you describe his leadership style? FB: President Brooke was the man who brought me in…. I worked for six and a half years as vice president of business and finance. Dr. Brooke was a very bright man, very smart, and he had a vision for the college, which I think he very badly wanted to, to have people buy. And he worked hard at that. As you drive around the campus, through the streets, in front of the campus, you will probably notice oak trees that are planted, some of them now are twenty-five years old. He was the person with that idea, and we planted a lot of oak trees, alongside the road. Then now, they’ve got this road here, East Lindsey, as it goes over the hill and down towards the interstate, those oaks are starting to touch as they provide a canopy over the road. That was his campus program. Another thing he did is that he really led the capital campaign. When we came here we were a four year school, but we were still organized like a two year school. Instead of having colleges and departments, we had divisions. And he and the academic vice president, worked to reorganize those units and rename them, so that we had a school of business, and a school of education, and a school of arts and letters, and school of science. Very important for an emerging four year institution to have that kind of organization. So we began to work on internal procedures for college rules and bylaws, student policy, standard subjects…. He was– he was a hard man to get to know– but once you got to know him, [inaudible] he was a good person, and he wanted the very best for this institution. Unfortunately, the faculty conflicted with a lot of his actions, and his last few years here were not very peaceful. But his accomplishments shouldn’t be overlooked. MC: I also understand that during this time, there were some, several financial problems. Can you discuss that a little bit? What, given that account of him has been. FB: Our enrollment was dipping during those days…. That was another difficult thing, because it meant we had to tighten up. It was getting harder to get faculty we needed to hire, and we had to actually release some people, had to fire some folks. That was not fun…. And then after Dr. Whitley’s gone, when I had came to campus, we had two very serious downturns in the state economy. Our enrollment had gone up, but we couldn’t control the state economy. We had dismissed people, and those were awful situations to go through. Because, no matter how you style it, no matter how you defend it, it becomes

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personal, and I didn’t enjoy those times. But the thing about it was, we had no choice, and we looked very hard to help those people find other jobs, which were in large measure accomplished, we didn’t leave them out in the cold. And some of them, since they actually, when times got better they came back so some of those people actually here today were dismissed during some of those downturns. So we didn’t create such hard feelings, that was the great thing about it, and I personally met with every person who was dismissed. MC: Before I move on to your presidency, one final question, about this era. Describe the student-faculty relationship at Columbus State. How available were the faculty to the students if the students had problems, and how much socializing was there going on between the two groups. FB: I think that the relationship between the faculty and the students has always been good. The faculty has been very conscientious about regular office hours, about staying after class and helping students…. Some of the departments have organized volleyball teams, picnics, some now, new at CSU are building the departmental curriculum into international studies. There’s always been an international element in foreign languages, but for biology for example, they have annually now taken trips to tropical islands, to Australia, to other points of interest and students come back and give very exciting reports. I think by and large the relationships have been good. In the early days, with a small student body, advising was much easier; we didn’t have the load on each faculty member. Now that we’ve grown, we’ve developed an advising center, to become the group where advising gets done, without having to impose on faculty who have so many other things to do…. MC: Do you think that the relationship has changed at all? On through the years, you’ve mentioned the roles of [inaudible] but in terms of activities that are available on campus, have they changed the relationship at all? FB: I think they have changed the relationship; some of the activities on campus these days are academic in nature. It’s encouraging for me to go to lectures by visiting scholars in the international studies and see a lot of students there from all sorts of disciplines. I was at a function a few weeks ago and after the lecture, you know you have a reception and several students were hanging around, and one student introduced himself I said, “I know your name, tell me where I know you from.” He said “Well, I play baseball.” I said, “That’s it.” So, you meet kids there that, I’ve seen him play baseball and admired his athleticism, and didn’t know him until I went to an academic function…. MC: You were named president in January of 1988. Can you share with me your thoughts during the application process and when you were named president. FB: Yeah, I think it was twenty years ago this past month that I came into office. It had been a period of [inaudible] four or five other candidates being interviewed on campus. I had the opportunities to say to the search committee and to the faculty and staff at large, in large meetings, what I had been saying in smaller meetings…. Somehow, during that

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interview process, and I think before that, I developed a trust relationship with the faculty…. MC: All right. You were our first president to actually have an inauguration ceremony. Can you describe the activities surrounding that event? FB: I can. I came into the office in January; we had the inauguration ten months later in October. And, we had planned a beautiful inauguration ceremony, outdoor festivities, and tents and everything. And it rained like Noah’s arc. (laughs) So, we moved the ceremony into Fine Arts Hall, now called University Hall, and we had some social events under the tents out there, but it was a great, real good time. We had a university system president’s meeting on campus at the same time. So that we had all the presidents of the colleges and universities to be with us at the inauguration so part of the other festivities to the event. Family and friends were all here, and that was a real fun time for me, and people were very kind to me. The inauguration committee commissioned a medallion; it has become one of our artifacts [inaudible]. And they commissioned a mace, which was the long pole that you’re supposed to use to fight off the crowds…. (laughs) So, those provided the tradition and they’re on display in the library. MC: So what are your responsibilities as president? FB: The responsibilities I have here are in several categories. One is the responsibility to provide the resources that everyone on campus needs to get the job done, and that ranges from supplies and equipment to library acquisitions, faculty development, student scholarships, all of those, all of those areas are ultimately the responsibility of the president…. The president does things by himself very seldom; there are a lot of good people working to help me do my job. And then another responsibility I have is to ensure that we are good stewards of resources…. For private gifts we have an obligation to use the funds the way they ask us to use them, and to report back very clearly to them how we’ve done. In the case of scholarships for example, we have annual luncheons and we bring scholarship students to the luncheon and our donors are there as well, and we seat them together at tables. They can see positively what difference they have made in the life of the student. I have many other duties as well, representing the institution and trying to keep it] sound academically…. MC: You sure? Well, um, the campus has grown tremendously during your time as president, and let me get on record. There’s the Lenoir Hall, Lumpkin Center, Coca-Cola Space and Science Center, Center for Commerce and Technology, RiverCenter, Rankin Arts building, the addition of the Spencer International House, along with some other changes as well. How did the university achieve all of this? FB: One step at a time, literally, one step at a time. Some of those were funded by state provisions, and we had support of our board of regents members. But, a great number of them were funded by private gifts to the university. We had the great luxury of being in Columbus, by having a wealthy city with generosity built into the fibers of the community. We had visions what we wanted to do and somehow we were able to get the

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community to share those visions and help us fund them, and it’s just been phenomenal. Looking back it seems like an incredible number of buildings, and unbelievable achievement. In truth, it literally was one step at a time, and while we were working on this grand vision I don’t think any of us stopped and looked around and said, ah yes, here’s what’s happening now, how do we serve the community. So, it’s been, literally, small steps. MC: How would you say all of this growth has affected the university? FB: I think it’s affected us in several ways. We have facilities today, which enable us to do our jobs in remarkable ways. And, the most impressive example I guess is the RiverPark campus. It is literally world class, there are not very many comparable facilities for music, art, and theatre at any academic institution anywhere. That’s because our donors caught the vision. The international program is world class. We are one of only six American universities that has residential facilities in Oxford, England. And it’s great; our students come back just glowing with their experiences. This is true of all our study abroad programs. So, we have had an impact on academic quality. We see it in the College of Business, which now is among the very select few, among the top twenty-seven percent of schools of business in the country. We see it in nursing, where the pass rate on professional exams is almost always one hundred percent. We see it in computer science where our graduates are going into top level positions. We see it in teacher education where our graduates are proclaimed by the school systems which we serve, to be the best they get. It comes down to where we take pride in what we do, and it all comes back to professionalism in the faculty, and in many cases the generosity of those who support us…. MC: You’ve been here for hours (laughs) (overlap) Well, we’ve also had– I’ve mentioned the addition of the downtown campus. How would you say that has affected the city of Columbus? FB: We talked awhile ago about the middle class development and CSU clearly has built a middle class, professional class of people who are adding to the environment of our city greatly. But we see it in our graduates in places of leadership; the mayor is a graduate of our institution, half the council members have been students here. The leaders of the local businesses in our community have in some way come through Columbus State. We’ve had some programs to enrich business opportunities, which has had a dramatic impact, Total System Services, a great company, which at one time was struggling to find computer programmers. They were about to leave Columbus, in fact leave the state of Georgia to move to a larger area to find qualified employees. We worked with them to find a solution to that. CSU developed a program which would provide accelerated training for computer science, and provide them up to six or eight months of intensive study, give them a degree, which is unheard of in higher education. And today we’ve graduated about a thousand computer scientists in what we call the ICAPP program and TSYS not only stayed in Columbus, but they expanded and today they are one of the

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leading employers in our region. CSU played a big part in that, and it propelled the university system in economic development. MC: In talking with some others, during my interview process, some other faces of Columbus State, I’ve heard that there were concerns over the challenges that might be produced by having two campuses, one downtown and one here. What positives or negatives have come out of adding a downtown campus along with the traditional one? FB: The positives are pretty clear to me and the negatives as well. The positives start with the availability of that caliber of space for those academic programs. If we had waited on the state to provide funding for those facilities on this campus, we’d still be waiting, and we wouldn’t be close to getting it built. So, it’s a matter of getting facilities nicer than we would have ever gotten a lot sooner than we could have gotten them. That was part of the impetus to build, and then we began to build a campus environment down there, with loft apartments and building in student services, security, and transportation– a limited student service arrangement, all those things together create a campus environment downtown. Really I think makes it a very attractive place to live and study. The benefit to the city is that downtown Columbus has had a renaissance. It’s alive now, restaurants, coffee shops, and book stores are popping up everywhere, it’s really a neat place to be. We have in downtown Columbus, a true arts district which many colleges would like to have. We have the RiverCenter of course because of the Schwob School of Music Department. We have art and theatre expanding now, we’re starting a dance program, and we’re doing arts in the performing arts center for community programs. Our students are helping the economy downtown; it’s just making a big difference for our community. The downside is very clear, and that is that we have lost, from this campus, the fine and performing arts– they’re not here. It used to be that every concert was on campus and it’s the same way with art and theatre. That was the good part; the bad part was they were competing for space everyday. And all had badly outgrown the building. It was a wonderful building for us in the beginning, but it was outdated and outgrown and it was not feasible for us to continue there. But we miss that, having them on campus, and so we talked regularly about how we can ensure that this, campus periodically, sees some of the enrichment that we get from having those organizations perform on this campus. We also want to be sure our students, have access to programs and professional performances downtown. So, we’re hoping we can get the flow going and remove some of those disadvantages. Another disadvantage of the remote campus is cost; it is expensive to maintain and staff the buildings. So, there’s been some cost involved as well, but overtime that cost will be a natural part of our operation. And the benefits will continue to get bigger I think. MC: Well, before I move on we need to go back. I don’t want to go over you. (laughs) In 1991, we built a clock tower honoring our first president, what would you say is the significance of this clock tower and describe the decision making process leading up to its construction. FB: I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about that. (laughs) It’s a good thing you’re recording it, you don’t have to remember all this stuff. We knew– when I came into this

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office, the long term view that most of us agreed on was that we needed a symbol, our campus had no logo. The only logo we had was the seal of the campus, which is a wonderful seal but not a campus identifier. So, we wanted a symbol and several of us here were intent on some sort of bell tower or clock tower that could be seen from everywhere on campus…..We didn’t know what we were going to build, but at the very moment we were planning, the school system decided to demolish the old Shannon Hosiery Mill where we began our operations in 1958. They decided to build a new elementary school on that site and tear down the Shannon Hosiery Mill. So we said, tear it down, okay, but give us the bricks. So they did, they tore it down and brought tons of bricks with mortar, I mean big slabs of bricks all stuck together and then dumped them out where the soccer field is now, and piled them up out there. And then we had, on successive weekends for months, brick cleaning parties, faculty and staff together on their own time every Saturday out there chipping the mortar off those bricks. And the clean bricks were then stacked for future use, yet unknown. Well after we finally reached a design for the clock tower, and decided we were going to do it and started raising money for it, we had the architects find away to build some of those bricks into the clock tower. In that clock tower, around the base of the arch, you will see darker bricks than the others, a little different color; those are from the old Shannon Hosiery. And I have right here a brick that came from the round smoke stack, you can see the curvature on the side here, imagine how big that smoke stack was if this was one of the bricks in it…. So, the symbolism of those bricks is very strong for the clock tower…. We also felt that Dr. Whitley, who had been the father of this college and served twenty-one years as president, hadn’t really received his recognition, there’s nothing on campus named for him, other than a scholarship fund that bears his name. So, we decided we would raise money to build a clock tower and dedicate it to Dr. Whitley, which we did. Thankfully he was still in good health, and he and his family came for the dedication. It was a great, great day. MC: Well I understand that it was a goal for Columbus College to achieve university status as early as 1990. Describe the efforts across campus to accomplish this goal. FB: We all suffered, we felt, from the name. Columbus College was an honorable name and had a great academic reputation, but to people who didn’t know us, it implied small, private, liberal arts school, not doing very much, just kind of nestled in a corner of the city, and that really wasn’t us by that time…. So we lobbied long and hard to get that name change, and along about that time, Cody Road was a two lane road on the east side of the campus– I don’t know if you know that or not, did you? It was going to be widened and they were going to tie it into Manchester Expressway, so we said, “While you’re widening the road, why don’t we change the name.” We’d suffered many years from the classic term, “Cody Road High.” (laughs) And we said, “lets remove Cody Road from that equation.” So we petitioned all the businesses and residences on Cody Road for a name change. People generally endorsed changing it to University Avenue when it was widened to four lanes. There was one hold out who eventually went along with us because he eventually came to realize it was a better deal. Even though we were still Columbus College, we wanted to name our major entrance point University Avenue. That was accomplished with a lot of leg work. At one point the chancellor of this university

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system noted that we had changed the name of our location, our address was now University Avenue, and he said, “are you trying to tell us something?” I said, “we’ve been trying to tell you something.” And, eventually we were able to, along with other institutions in the system, get that designation as university. MC: Well I was actually going to ask about Cody Road next. What physical changes were caused by that widening of the road, I believe three inches? FB: This entrance out here adjacent to I-185, East Lindsey Drive, was at one time the major entrance to the college. The gateway there was built by the alumni association, and that was the entrance into Columbus College. As the campus grew and the city grew around it, the front door slowly shifted, and buildings began to show up on the east side of campus, and particularly with the widening of University Avenue, that became our front door. So we developed that gateway over there as a major entrance, and the result was that we had already found our sales pitch, not much access through campus. If you want to go up to the north side of campus, you need to go outside, go through each parking lot, no matter where you go. And, we have a plan that will get us out of that eventually, but that was one of the impacts, people come in the front door and we direct them through parking lots, and the side parking lots, and park in front of this building, into a parking lot, out of the parking lot, and back in one of the buildings, it’s a one way street. (laughs) The internal vehicular access is still not what we’d like, but we’re moving forward finally. We’re going to have more parking decks in the future; we have a master plan that shows the separation of vehicles, pedestrians, and academic buildings for this campus, we’ve just been really excited. The road change enabled us to have a true front door on campus. You knew it was a top college when you came in on campus, and found a major entrance. MC: Well, another major change, in 1998 we switched from quarters to semesters. FB: Yes. MC: What effect did that have on our university? FB: Well, it caused enrollment to dip, for one thing, and it cost the system. People were accustomed to paying in three increments a year for the quarter system. Three payments then became two, which was a lot more expensive. And then work schedules didn’t adjust properly to the semester, people were working quarter to quarter to have their work schedules planned, but when we went to the longer semester, their schedules were different from their job schedules. All sorts of issues came into play…. I think, long term, it was good for us because we got in line with most of the colleges and universities in the country and we got to rethink requirements. All of the faculty, as you can imagine, had to rework their class schedules, which they’d been teaching for a long time. So, it caused a lot of work in the part of faculty, at the same time, over the years we had programs that required more and more courses in order to graduate, so eventually we were requiring students to go four and a half years sometimes five years for a four year degree. So we pulled all those requirements back and forced everything to a hundred and twenty

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maximum hours for a semester degree. And that was helpful I think. Our students were able to get out on time and in the long run saved time and money. END SIDE A START SIDE B MC: [inaudible] I was saying that we talked about dormitories; many have been added during your career here at CSU. What affect do you think that the new dorms had on our university and the type of students that come here? FB: I think they’ve had a very positive impact. In our record growth years, which were four and five years ago, three, four, five years ago, we were attracting a lot of students to our institution because they came to visit us and they saw our housing. Other institutions at that time weren’t focusing on apartment style housing, they still had a lot of the old style dorms, and even the apartments they had were not as advanced as the ones we built. So our student housing helped us in big, big ways to grow our student body. The other thing that housing has done, is that it’s brought in students from other parts of the world, not only states but throughout the world. We have some arrangements in housing now where we group international students with American students, and so there’s kind of an international relations dorm…. And students have come to us from other parts of the country and the world and bring perspectives that we haven’t had before, so, and they gain perspective from us. So housing really is a wonderful, small piece for world peace, I think you could say. It’s an understanding of other cultures and other people. Housing also has produced a core group of student leaders for us, we find that a good number of our students each year who run student government, publish the newspaper, active in our clubs and organizations here, honor program and servant leadership, are resident students in the dorms and they sort of lead the way for us. They live here twenty-four hours a day; they have a natural vested interest in what happens on this campus…. MC: Well, you’ve mentioned international education, so let me ask– I understand that international education was one of your focuses in your 1989 inauguration speech, describe our international program in coordination with the Spencer house and what opportunities are available to students. FB: Okay. We’ve had study abroad opportunities for several years. Our Spanish faculty and our French faculty have taken students to those countries. In fact, we’ve alternated between– the Spanish students for example have alternated between Spain and Mexico, and the French students have gone to a variety of countries. And we’ve had students studying in Italy and South America too, so we’ve had a good program, we just didn’t have a lot of students involved in those days. So we developed an intensive program to provide scholarship support, and to build our international studies program on campus. We were fortunate to get a local foundation to fund the position of director of international studies, which communicates our size. And Dr. McCrillis has just been terrific in his building the program and encouraging students to take part. He was a key part of our movement to the Spencer house, in Oxford. He and Mr. Spencer, who funded

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the project, and I went to Oxford once, at the same time, six or seven years ago. And we were literally driving through the streets of Oxford looking for the right property, and I thought, “Here’s a man who’s going to buy what we find,” and he did. It’s a beautiful English home on the bus lines not far from Oxford University, and it houses up to five of our students, for real long study, and we also take in several Oxford students from the college with which they’re working at that time to live with our students in the Spencer house. And it’s a great arrangement with a year long study; it gives students tremendous potential because it’s so different from what they’ve had here. The tutorial system is almost a one on one with the faculty member, it’s a very demanding thing, you don’t hide in the class, you are the class, and it’s a great university. But in addition to the year long study, we are able to take a group of students over at other times during the year, and we have housing available and have shorter periods of study. We have faculty who go for study in Oxford as well, some use the house and some stay in Oxford dorms. But it’s created for us an opportunity to be a part of the world’s oldest English speaking university, and the city of Oxford is just magical. Have you been? MC: No, I haven’t. FB: You need to go. I’m going back in March to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Spencer house; we’re going to have Mr. Spencer go over with us, have a little ceremony and put up a plaque there, in the house. But the city is so full of history, many great writers that you know about studied at Oxford. And when you go there the place is just full of, of landmarks and the pubs where they were known to sit and debate for hours. The dorm rooms they occupied when they were in Oxford, you stand in those dorm rooms and look through the same panes of glass, out into the courtyard, that these internationally known literary figures– all the Harry Potter stuff and all the rest, it’s grown larger than Oxford, so it’s a, it’s a wonderful history where many prime ministers have been, it’s almost like separate countries, in Oxford. Some have gone to Cambridge but it’s really a magical place. For us to be a part of it, I think it’s something our students sensed very quickly when they go that it’s a special atmosphere. MC: Well, let’s talk about the flip side of that, the role of international students here at Columbus State. I’ve heard, doing different interviews, about the Iranian students here at Columbus State at one time, from what countries through the years have we drawn students from, what are some of the more common? FB: There were a lot of Middle Eastern students here in the eighties. Their government would pay their way, the Iranian students were here, this was after we had the problem with the hostages and President Carter was in office, he was in office from ’76 to ’80. So that was after, there were still a lot of Iranian students here. They were visible, generally good students, and as far as I know we didn’t have any real issues on campus, though we had students of Jewish descent on campus as well, having the Palestinian– the Iranian contingent has caused no problem, we didn’t have any situations where that was an issue. Over the years, we’ve drawn more students from South America and Central America. We established a relationship with an arts-music school, arts and music school in Honduras, it’s a high school, and they were especially competent in stringed instruments

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that we use on campus, the violin is the most important. So we had a lot of those students drawn here with a standing agreement. So our faculty going down, improving them, and bringing them up, and working with them on English skills, which they accomplished pretty well. And still today around Columbus I see a lot of those students who came in those days, I see some of them in the Columbus symphony still playing their instruments. You know, you graduate from here and you work in the various areas around the area. But that was the focus then. Today we are getting a lot of terrific students, for music especially, Chinese students, and really kind of the cream of the crop of students from across the globe. Our reputation as a music school especially, has really, really grown. It’s exciting when they come here and they work with our world famous faculty for a few years, they receive all the rewards. It’s really great. We’ve got an international outreach in other areas too, tennis and golf especially. Our golf coach is Mark Immelman who was one of our players years ago from South Africa. His brother’s on the pro tour and thanks to Mark, his connection to South Africa, naturally, and we had a lot of South African players on our golf team along with the Americans and other great players. Tennis, we have students from Scandinavia, and again South Africa, places where tennis is very, very good. They represent us well, they’re good students, and then they take the word of Columbus State across the world when they go back home, so it really benefits us I think. MC: Let’s discuss our involvement with Fort Benning. What role has the base played with CSU through the years, and what’s available at our Fort Benning campus? FB: We have a limited operation at Fort Benning, and one reason we have a limited operation out there is that there are several colleges and universities resident at Fort Benning. And, frankly, some of the schools who offer courses out there, are doing some things that we don’t think are educationally sound, yet they are very convenient for the students. In order to be competitive, we would have to do some things in terms of granting academic credit for work experience, transferability of courses, cutting tuition rates those kinds are things that are being done to attract the student are things we can’t do and we won’t do, we’re not going to compromise the programs we have out there. And so consequently we don’t have a big program out there, we do have a strong program out there, and an even stronger program here because we refer students from Fort Benning to the main campus for the programs they want. So we do have a presence, but we are not a huge program like we were at one time. MC: How would you say, military families, spouses or children of active duty service members, do we receive many of those? FB: We do, we do. In fact I think that’s probably where the benefit for having a presence at Fort Benning really comes in, the family members learn about us and make their way to this campus, many of them live in town anyways. So we have a lot military dependents who come to school here, and I’d imagine that they are serious about their education, and we’re proud to have them. We also have a good, strong ROTC program because of what we have with Fort Benning, and we get a lot of retirees who come out of the ranks, maybe not retirees, younger, noncommissioned officers, who want to be officers, and

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they come here and get their degree in the ROTC program and go back into the Army as officers, which is a pretty good career move. MC: Well, sort of a different subject let’s talk a little bit about CSU athletics. In a broad sense, what’s available to students here at CSU in terms of athletics. FB: We play Division II, NCAA athletics…. We play schools our size, we play schools who have our academic philosophy, we play school like us. We don’t aspire, at least this president does not aspire, to be on national television every week with football or basketball, I think you pay a price for that, and it’s a price that I have not been willing for us to pay. Instead we’ve invested our money in academic programs. We wouldn’t have the RiverPark Campus if we had a football team, because our priorities would have been different. Division II athletics is designed for students who love to play athletics, but in most cases not having full professional goals, they play for the love of the game, they play for the scholarship that got them to Columbus State. And remind you that’s the closest arrangement to what was originally intended when intercollegiate sports began. I like it, and I think it’s right for us. We have all kinds of sports. We have men’s basketball, baseball, tennis, golf, and cross country, five men’s sports. We have women’s basketball, softball, soccer, tennis, and cross country, five women’s sports. There is a thing called Title IX, which is a federal regulation that says you have to have equal opportunity for men and women on your campuses proportionally to your student body and their interest of having sports. If you have a contingent of women students who come to you and say “We’d like to have a volleyball team” the interest is there, then you have to pursue that seriously. As it is now, our numbers are good and more importantly our budgets are pretty evenly divided too. We have a little bit of tension there because our student body is primarily female, something in the neighborhood of sixty-five percent women to thirty-five percent men. A purist would say that we ought to have sixty-five percent of the sports for women and thirty-five percent of sports for men, well, that is one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is, what is the interest level, and are we meeting the needs as expressed to us by the students. Clearly, if we had an outcry for another woman’s sports we would pretty well have to do that. So far we haven’t had that. MC: Well, what is your personal greatest memory regarding sports? FB: I guess the single greatest memory in athletics was a few years ago when our baseball team won the national championship three years ago, that was a good time. MC: Alright, well let’s talk about the School of Business. You’ve mentioned that our School of Business has been accredited by one of the top or the top national accrediting agency. What affect has that had on our university? FB: It’s had a direct impact on us, and some of the impact is stressful because we brought the school to a level of excellence and had the knowledge of meeting our standards, the prime factor is you have to keep it there. And that means dictations from the agency about some of the faculty we have, what kind of core program we offer, how we run our operations, how much research they do, how much teaching they do, tightly regulated and

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you reach certification levels you become a slave to the accreditors and that’s okay because it keeps us up to speed…. On the good side, we know that our program is good quality, and we know that our students who have gone through those programs are getting an education that equals the best in the country; we are accredited at the same level as the major institutions in business. It’s been good for our image as well, because in this area there is no other business program accredited like us. In state there are, my last count was, four or five of the thirty five colleges in this state have reached this level. So it’s rare company…. MC: What opportunities would you say that business students here at CSU receive that they may not receive elsewhere not just [military?] living in the state but even nationally? [long pause] FB: That’s really hard to– to say–. We have a relatively small College of Business and that means that there is exposure to faculty for students who are considering a major vocation. Our faculty not only teach the course and do research, but they do advising, and students in the College of Business have better standards to reach. We work to provide internships for our students, we have a business advisory group, which is made up of leading business people in the region who meet regularly with our dean, and talk about what they need in their businesses, about what they see in our graduates who come to them. And we take that information and customize our– accustom our programs to better serve those needs. That’s not something that’s done everywhere, particularly in the major schools it’s hard to do that. But institutions located in a more rural environment wouldn’t have the Fortune 500 companies that we were able to pack into Columbus. I think we have a real advantage there. And the reputation of our graduates in the work place paves the way for those who come later, to get the good jobs. MC: Well our– this is a different subject. Our second capital campaign was very successful, raising over a hundred million dollars. How has this benefited the university? (laughs) Major topic for you. FB: (laughs) Well, it’s benefited us in several ways. It has raised our stock considerably at the Board of Regents in Atlanta. Here’s a board of business people, charged with governing thirty-five colleges and universities in Georgia, one of which is us. You can imagine they have very little knowledge of individual institutions, they don’t know much about any institution except maybe University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. This has given us visibility, you’d be amazed at the number of times that the Board of Regents, our governing board, the board that determines how much money we get to operate, the board that determines who the president is, the board that determines how we– what programs we offer, when we go to offer doctorates, they’ll be the ones who approve that. All those issues are in their hands, and if they don’t know much about us, which they ordinarily wouldn’t, then we have no standing to make those requests and be successful. But the fund drive was so successful for an institution like ours it put us head and shoulders above all our peer institutions in the state. We are forth or fifth out of thirty-five now in the state in terms of fundraising ability, behind only the four major

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institutions. The regents know that, the regents know that we have built world class facilities out of that capital campaign, they know we have a place in Oxford, England, they know that our study abroad program is one of the strongest in the system, they know about our success in our College of Business, and they know about endowed scholarships and endowed faculty positions that come out of the capital campaign. They know that we have enhanced our library, added special equipment, funded faculty development, we set out a customer experience program, we have developed an advising center, all out of private money that they didn’t have to provide, that we raised locally. So how important is that to the Board of Regents and to us? I think it’s defined us. We go now with our budget request, we get their attention, because they say “These people in town know where the good school with their money and we need to pay attention to what they say they need.” I think I’m leaving a good position for my successor. MC: Why do you think the university decided to promote “change in the community” as its goal for the campaign funds, in this last campaign? FB: You know, that’s a very insightful question, and I appreciate it, because typically a capital campaign is all about the institution. It’s we want to be bigger and better, quicker, and stronger, whatever, as an institution. We said, “that’s a worthy goal for an institution, but what could be the ultimate result,” the results wouldn’t be that we got bigger and better, the results would be that we improved the lives of those who depend on us for higher education. So, to start the campaign we did a community region survey; we identified needs across the region, which appeared to have some relationship to our mission. If there were needs of additional educational offerings, if there were needs of cultural enrichment, if there were needs of more and better prepared business graduates, more nurses, computer scientists and all the rest. We built that into the campaign and we said “the goal is not for Columbus State to be bigger and better, only, except only to the extent that being bigger and better helps us serves the needs we’ve identified in the region. This campaign is about the region, it’s an investment in the people, not only our people but the people who live in this part of the state. That was a theme that resonated with our donors, who then carried the vision with us and helped us to be more successful than we would ever thought we could be. As a result we’ve seen in the community enrichment and development, economic development like the TSYS ICAPP program, and for the schools, teacher activities in the schools, better business graduates, and more opportunities for the students, which has drawn more students to us because of those opportunities. Did that answer your question? (laughs) MC: Yes– (laughs) Well let me ask what role has the community, not just in fundraising, but in participation, played in the history of Columbus State or Columbus College? FB: The college would not be here had it not been for the leadership of the community, and many of those people were business people. They were raising money for a college in this town in the 1940s, and the college wasn’t started until 1958. So you can see they had been working and planning for a long time. Across this campus, if you look at the names of the buildings you will see an honor roll of leadership through the years of Columbus State. Most of the buildings on this campus, back in the early days were named for

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business leaders who put themselves into the building the college and not their money. There was little money given to the college, but most of the buildings on this campus have their family names, but they gave themselves. And I think that’s an indication of how important their work was to establish a college, to work together, to acquire the additional properties, even to building the first capital campaign. But also working with us to use our students as interns, to provide scholarships for our students as part of the financial, we knew that was an important part of the early development. People who’ve personally given of themselves the gifts of ownership of Columbus College from the start, and that encouragement and moral support was probably as important as financial backing in the early days. MC: Well, a bit of a different subject. FB: I don’t know how you’re staying awake. (laughs) MC: (laughs) No, it’s very interesting. FB: I’m just droning on and on. (overlap) MC: Well, let me ask, you’ve received many awards during your time here including the Governor’s Award in Humanities and the Volunteer of the Year Award from the Lung Association of Georgia. What award are you most proud of? [long pause] FB: (laughs) I really do, I really do try to downplay personal awards. You know, this is not a job you can do by yourself, and much of what we’ve accomplished here has been so overwhelmingly the responsibility of a large number of people that I am always hesitant to accept any award. I don’t know that I could single out any award. I was recognized at the Martin Luther King Community Breakfast a few weeks ago, unexpectedly, for– given the “unity award”, which says that we’ve done something at this college to draw the community together, that we have, we have provided educational opportunities without regard to race or ethnicity or any other factor. And when you think about that middle class development again, a large number of those middle class professional people in this community are African American, and they came out of Columbus State University. I said that in my impromptu, quickly made up acceptance speech. I don’t think I said it very well, but we do feel we’ve played a role, and it’s a role we’ve gladly played. I guess that’s probably one of the awards of which I’m proudest. They didn’t give it to me because they needed to. We just do our jobs. But I think it gives it validity to what we’ve done before. MC: Well I think I have a few more questions to raise [inaudible] narrow it down. FB: Let’s go with the longer two.

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MC: Okay, alright. What are your thoughts on being the longest serving president in the Georgia University System? FB: Well that’s as of today, other people have served longer in times past; they’ve served more years than I have. But of the president’s serving today, I’ve been in office longest, five years at least. It’s one of those things that sneaks up on you, because it’s not a goal I set. It’s just the result of having been fortunate and having found a place of service I really love and enjoy. So, it’s been day to day. MC: Well, let me ask, despite being offered several career opportunities outside of CSU you have remained here as our president. What’s kept you here? FB: I think what’s kept us here as a family has been the community. We came here twenty-seven years ago almost, and the children were just little guys. One opportunity that I had a few years ago was to move to a much larger institution in another state, and as I was there, in the interview process, I was getting really strong vibes that they were very interested. They were responding to my questions and to my answers, and we had a really good dialogue in all of the subjects. And I went back to the hotel that night and I said, “You know, if I come here, I’ll have to start over, and I’d have to get to know the community, get to know the people, the institution. It would take me awhile to get to an understanding of what we believe are the ingredients that we need to be successful.” But I said, “On the other hand we haven’t finished all the projects that I’ve identified in Columbus, especially in support of the downtown campus. The RiverCenter was missing, it was an imaginary building for us at that point, and that kept me in Columbus. One of the things that I’ve found, feeling that we really have to reach out. That’s the reason we stayed, and that’s the reason we’re staying…. MC: Well, I’ve [inaudible], I’ve have to ask about; obviously you announced that you’re going to be retiring in June of this year. What are your feelings toward leaving the university? FB: Oh, I still have mixed feelings, I love this job, I love this place, but I timed it purposely with a lot of thought so that I can step aside while we’re at a really good point in our history. We our now in the process for planning for the next ten years of this institution, and my strong feeling is that the person who leads that planning effort ought to also be the person who’s going to see it through. And I know I’m not going to stay ten more years, I could go two, or three, or four more years easily still feeling good and think I’m still feeling accepted, but it wouldn’t be the best for the institution in my view…. Those are the reasons for retirement, the time is right. MC: What do you see for CSU in the future? FB: I see a great deal of growth and development. This capital campaign has been interesting because it’s been very successful, and you think that when you have that kind of success that you’ve reached the pinnacle and enjoy the fruits of your labor. When the truth is it’s moved us to a new level of activity, and a new platform from which to launch

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even grander plans. So we can’t rest. We have to now build those plans, and they involve academic programs, they involve traditional housing; they involve other partnerships with the community. I’m leaving notes for my successor, which he or she may ignore at their own pleasure. But the institution has a bright, bright future; the best days are truly ahead. MC: This is my last question. FB: Alright. MC: Why would you recommend CSU to a prospective student? FB: I do often, during visitation days with large crowds, and I do on an individual basis, but I also say to them that we aren’t the only institution to look at; we want you to shop around. We say to them here are the reasons that we think that why we have all these things going for us, and we point out how we work to make students successful. Those are important things but as you look at colleges, we want you to compare what you see here to other institutions. We think you’ll find us in a favorable light, and if you do we’d like to have you study here. But if you find a college that matches your needs and your interests better than we do, then by all means go in that direction, because this is a very important decision. I wouldn’t tell you to come here no matter what. I don’t want to tell you to come here if it’s not the right thing for you. We think it is, we hope it is, and we’d love to see you on campus. We wish you good luck. (laughs) MC: (laughs) Alright, well is there anything I’ve left out that you’d like to mention? FB: Gosh, I can’t even imagine. Thank you, I’ve enjoyed talking about this. MC: Oh, no, I’ve enjoyed learning from this. Thank you. END OF TAPE