Oral History

Goals and Objectives for Oscar Rose Junior College

Dr. Joe Leone, President

August 19, 1976

Thank you very much, Nancy. Good morning. Hoped to come down and have coffee with you this morning, but we had a little accident in one of the buildings last night and it’s taken up our morning.

Before I start, I guess you’ve been introduced to new faculty and staff and academic affairs and students affairs. Mr. Dunlap, do you have any new people in the business affairs area? (response away from microphone).

OK. I would like to at least recognize the people that work on the president’s administrative team. Of course, you have met and know about Davis. Mr. Dunlap is Vice President for Financial Affairs. Of course, Dr. Packnett was just introduced, Vice President for Student Affairs. Then, on the president’s staff, Dr. Larry Nutter who serves as first assistant to the president. Of course, you know Dr. Knox. She has a dual role in Academic Affairs and the office of the president, where she heads up institutional research. Milton Boydston – I don’t know whether Milton is here this morning – there’s Milton, who, is, of course, the director of the computer center. Dr. Holman – Marshall Holman who works in Academic Affairs and has responsibility in the president’s office now where he heads up the facility planning and development and he’s over in the new building. Dr. Bill Curtis. Bill is here and he is the director of the office of equal employment opportunity and I don’t believe Carrie Lewis is here this morning. She’s on annual leave. She is now heading up the programs for women and at the same time she has responsibility for Title IX. Most of you are aware of Title IX. It has to do with sex discrimination. And George Johnson – I don’t know whether George has been introduced, but George is in charge of the public information office now. George is here, of course, with the student newspaper, and handled all the photography, and he now heads up public information. And Dr. Packnett introduced Jerry Brad. We’re delighted to have you, Jerry. Jerry is a special administrative assistant this year and is being sponsored and paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. Indeed, there’s seven interns in the United States and in the 1200 two-year colleges in the United States, and we’re delighted that you chose to spend your time with us. We hope to make it a meaningful administrative internship. Jerry has a lot of good experience. He’s on leave from the University of Oklahoma, where he heads up the American Indian Institute. We’re delighted to have you.

We’d like for you to relax and I’ll use the prerogative of my office and waive that no smoking sign, and Dr. Lazalier and others can get their pipes out. Smoke if you like. (laughter) I would like for you to make yourself comfortable. I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes here about some of the things that we have set as goals for fiscal year ’77, and maybe a very brief progress report on what happened in fiscal year ’76. At the same time, I’d like to reinforce something that you probably already know – that we have  a unique opportunity in higher education simply because of the period that exists – there’s many, many changes coming about in higher education and we’re probably entering one of the most exciting periods in the history of higher education. And we’re entering that period in outstanding position – we have an outstanding position. We are new. We are ideally located. We have a hand-picked faculty and staff that has no equal in any two-year college that I know anything about. And at the same time, we have the resources to build something here that few people ever have the opportunity to participate in in a lifetime. And it’s just extremely important that we each understand the responsibility and the unique contribution that we have to offer in this building process.

I have three booklets or publications that I’d like to just mention and then I’ll put them aside. But the Oklahoma higher education system just went through a fairly comprehensive review of the plans for higher education in Oklahoma for the remainder of the decade of the 1970s. This book looks familiar to you because it has the same cover, the same design, the same wording of our Plan for the 70s. It’s different. It’s a revised supplemental copy of the Plan for the 70s. The legislature in 1970 suggested that after about five years we review the Oklahoma Plan for the 70s, and see what progress we’ve made and then redirect or refocus our attention on areas where we don’t think we’re accomplishing the objectives that have been set. Many of you served on state committees as this was revised. This document is in print. It’s available on campus. I’d like for you to become familiar with it. And certainly it’s in the library.

The second document or booklet many of your are familiar with, but each year we write an annual report and it’s in the division chairpersons’ offices. It’s in the library. And their copies with the entire administrative council. This report gives you the progress that was made on the fiscal year that we just finished on the institutional goals and objectives. And then, of course, it sets the institutional goals and objectives for the fiscal year that we’re now into. These goals and objectives, of course, were developed through annual reports that come up through each of your departments, your divisions, and the administrative units of the institution. That document will be available again. I’d like very much for you to be familiar with it and to know what the progress has been on the institutional goals.

The third book that I recommend for your reading – many of you that read in the field of higher education know that Alexander Aston is probably the most distinguished researcher that we have in the field of higher education. And he just made a comprehensive study of higher educational institutions in the United States on why students drop out of college, why they don’t continue toward their degree objective or whatever educational objective they have. I’m going to talk some in detail about this book, this study. And I was going to say it was in the library, but it really isn’t – I have it! But they have a card in it, so I suppose they expect to get it back and it will be in the library, either this copy of another one. Those three booklets or publications I would like for you to be familiar with and I’d like for you to read them.

Let me very briefly now talk some about what happened in fiscal year ’76. You’ll recall that each year for the past five years that I’ve been here, that in addition to the long-range goals and objectives that are in our self-study – the institutional self-studies that were done for mainly for the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities – that we set short-range goals and objectives for the year. And they not only really just consist of what can be accomplished in the fiscal year that we’re in. As you recall, in the spring I made a progress report to you at the general faculty meeting on the progress that had been made, and so I won’t go into any detail because you will be able to read it. But I do want to mention a few things.

We talked about, as the number one objective a year ago, the improvement of the quality of instruction of education that’s being provided to the students of our college, and in addition to the improvement of instruction, we talked about faculty and staff making appropriate contributions to their profession. There is no single measure of quality and we talked some about that. But we do have some indications where we can measure what’s happening at this institution, what’s happening to the students, and how well do they compare with students that are receiving their educational training in other higher education institutions. We do have an opportunity to compare our students’ progress in colleges and universities that our students transfer to. We get great grade-point information from most of the major receiving institutions. And we are, then, able to, through Dr. Knox’s efforts, to compare progress as measured by grade points and as measured by progress toward bachelor’s degrees, mainly, with other two-year colleges in Oklahoma, and, of course, around the country. So the students that come here and are interested in our college-university transfer programs, we do have some measure, some indications of progress.

Of course, we have measures of our own where we compute grade point averages and see if they measure up to being retained in the institution. We do have a retention policy. It’s all in the computer now, and we just yesterday received a run on all students that were veterans here for the spring semester and for the summer session grade point averages and how many of them do not meet the retention policy grade point average-wise to continue at this institution without being on probation. I was delighted. The number wasn’t near as great as we thought, but there are 85 – 90 students that were put on academic probation. Of course, the institution probation for general throughout the institution is a little different criteria. This is much more rigid that we’re talking about because it has implications for student GI benefits. But we also having a qualifying person in the admissions office now that is working on academic records. So the improving of the quality of education starts with determining where the student is and what kind of progress he’s made. And so we’re getting more information on that that we can use internally within the institution.

Of course, we know that many of our students are career oriented. They leave here and go directly on the job and the new office of student employment has the responsibility of following up these of our students that go out on the job. And of course job performance then becomes a major to give us some idea of what’s happening to our students that have this as an educational goal. And that is going out on the job, and of course, job performance.

Of course, we know that there are external evaluations. Many of our health programs have national boards and other types of examinations that compare your students and what happens at the end of the their training program with students through the state of Oklahoma and throughout the nation. And of course, we have all that information. I mention only a few of these simply to indicate that we do have measures. Although it’s very difficult to define how much quality that you’ve got in your educational programs, there are good indicators. And if we say that we can’t measure this and just turn our back on it, then we really don’t know much about our profession.

In addition, of course, you have accreditation teams that come in and give you an external view of your institution – the strengths and weaknesses of your institution as they see it. You have self-studies. You have indications of acceptance by your service area – the communities that you serve. And of course you have faculty that are writing articles, books, and publications. The confidence that publishers and others have in the material that’s being developed here is an indication of the strength of the faculty, which, of course is an indication of the strength of the education program at the institution. So we feel that there has been a lot of progress made in that area during the year.

We talked about, as an objective last year, assuming some state-wide responsibilities. This is a state institution. We started out as a local college and we had local concerns and local responsibilities. We did take on some state-wide responsibilities, and I’ll mention a couple. One is the environmental science area. We just met Mr. Cox who’s going to coordinate that. The Waste Water Technology Training Center, that will be located here on campus, will be the only one in the state of Oklahoma, and will have statewide responsibilities. There’s about 2200 operators in Oklahoma. The Early Childhood Education Childcare Area. We are the administrative institution. We provide leadership to nine two-year colleges that participate with associate degrees in the area, and several other four-year colleges and universities that participate with a particular type student’s progress through the Early Childhood area. So that is a statewide responsibility. And two-year colleges and four-year colleges are going to have take some area of specialization and become very competent in that area because we can’t all be doing the same thing. We should not all be duplicating one another’s efforts.

We talked about the improvement of the teaching and learning environment on campus. I guess the most visible signs to you would be the two new buildings, the Humanities and Social Sciences Buildings where we have 52 new classrooms and about the same number of new offices. And of course that, I hope, developed a better physical climate for you to operate in. I don’t know where all those offices went to because we’re short again. We added all of those and we still are crowded. And I know you are. We need to count our people, because we should have been in pretty good shape with 52 new ones, but we did make progress there and, of course, you all participated in that.

We talked about developing more extensively and for a broader range of students a basic studies or developmental studies program. We made some progress on that, but we did not accomplish that objective at all.

We talked about new approaches, like cooperative education programs, working closer to the business industry, work-study programs, and we made some headway there. We talked about expanding the already successful veterans education program. I think we made some headway there. And we talked about continuing to offer adult continuing education, public service activities to the citizens, and we have a very comprehensive program there. Maybe as any two-year college I’ve seen. And we talked about – to improve the interpretation of this college to the public. And we’ve done some work there. Still, there’s too many people that don’t understand how comprehensive this higher education institution is. There’s too many people that don’t understand the quality of the faculty here. There’s too many people that don’t understand that this is a state institution with state responsibilities. So we had to continue to work on that. And we can’t say, “George Johnson, you’ve got a big job to do.” Or Nancy Knox, who works some in that capacity. I think each one of us have to take some responsibility. You’ve got to understand everything that’s going on at this institution. You have to understand that we do have one of the finest undergraduate faculties in the country, and I think you would have to be positive about this and recommend it to anyone. And if you can’t recommend this institution, and the courses at this institution to the public, then I don’t know who can.

Let me stop with what happened last year, because it’s important, because we need it to give us direction for the fiscal year that we’re now entering, but I think it’s very crucial that we talk some and think some together here this morning about fiscal year 1976-77. We have as the highest priority here to provide the operational framework and support – the psychological support, the financial support, the physical support – to upgrade and refine the programs and services that are provided for our students. Now the improvement of the quality of the academic instruction and the services to students is the number one priority for this fiscal year. And I think it’s appropriate for the age and maturity of this higher education institution. See, we’ve been the developing institution, and what we’ve been doing is simply trying to stay ahead of the numbers that were coming to us. Now this is very typical in a new and developing institution. But we’re not a new and developing institution anymore. We have reached maximum size. We’re beyond maximum size. We’re in a refinement process now. We no longer can talk about, “well, we’re growing too fast.” We can’t use that anymore.

Well, what do you do? What do we mean by refining process? Well, there’s many things that you can do. I mentioned awhile ago we were working very seriously in regard to our retention and academic probation system here. We’re getting it computerized so that it will be available immediately. Up until now it has not been available. It was very late when we got all the grades in from all the faculty, and got them on the transcripts, and then got them calculated. The student had enrolled for the next semester. Now this is true at many institutions. It’s true at any institution that is of any size unless it’s totally computerized. And we do that now, and we are ready now to develop a system that will enable us to identify these students and work with them. Now our objective is not to see how many of them we can get out of the institution. Our objective is to see how many of them we can counsel with and work with and get into the proper developmental studies programs to recover their talent. And so that’s one thing that we can do.

The evaluation and revision of all our course syllabi will improve academic programs and instruction. And we’ve been in that process for quite some time. And I know that you’ve worked on it all during the year. And Dr. Knox tells me that by and large we’re in pretty good shape. If you’ll recall the external evaluation that was here three years ago didn’t think much of our course syllabi. I’m talking in very general terms, now. And, they thought we needed to do a lot of work on it. And we have done a lot of work on it, and will continue to do a lot of work on it. And they are fundamental to what happens in that classroom. The evaluation and revision of a system of evaluation of instruction is a means or a mechanism for the improvement of instruction. And I know a faculty committee has been working on that for the entire year. I know you’ve made a number of recommendations. And I know those recommendations are now in the refinement stages. And so that is a critical area – a very important area to the improvement of instruction.

Of course, the improvement of our counseling and academic advisement system is important as we talk about improving services to students. And we must improve our services to students. Now I’m not saying that we aren’t doing a good job with students – we are. But we all realize our shortcomings and I’m sure we all have recommendations on how we can improve this.

I’ll mention one other. The systematic in-service training program for both our professional and supportive personnel will improve its services to students and our instructional programs. And, of course, Dr. Knox, Dr. Davis, and division chairpersons, and our committee on the in-service training has been working on this. I think you are sufficiently funded. You are able to do practically anything that you want in the way of in-service training and development. And I’m very interested in seeing some things done here. I would be delighted to see some (garbled), and I would be delighted to see some courses or seminars where we work with people on instruction strategies. And I’d be delighted to see some courses or seminars on the assessment and evaluation of student progress (garbled).

So those are just some areas where I think we’re establishing the operational framework now to improve our services to students and the academic programs within the institution.

The second objective, and from here on these are in no order of importance or priority, and I simply submit them to you, is that during this year we will be involved in a very comprehensive self-study of this college and our long-range plan will go through 1980. Now there has been an institutional correctional task force that’s been having breakfast with me for a couple of years and it’s a good group of thinkers and many of them are in this room. I won’t try to identify this entire group, but they have been thinking and planning and having consultants come in and asking people to come and appear before the group for almost two years. And this group, then, will become kind of the center or executive committee of this long-range plan if they are agreeable.

This long-range plan, of course, will be modified later to be submitted to the North Central Associations of Colleges and Universities as the official self-study of the institution. The institution comes up for periodic review. The next review which will be not this year, but we will be preparing this year, will be for a 10-year accreditation, which is what all higher educational institutions strive for. We’re new and young in that respect. We are, in my opinion, ready for the full ten-year approval. And I hope our self-study is such in that we find that we’re ready so that we can ask for the external evaluation in fiscal year ’78. But that planning has to go on now. It has to start today.  

Of course, at the same time, the Plan for the 70s that I mentioned to you for the state of Oklahoma has to be reviewed. We have to understand where we fit in to the accomplishments and the goals and objectives in that plan. And of course, we will be asked to write a response to it in the very near future. So it will have to be a part of any comprehensive self-study or long-range plan that we do for this college. We can’t go our own way. We are part of the higher education system. Just like you can’t go your own way in your courses or your department because you’re a part of a comprehensive college. And we’re a part of a comprehensive system. So our planning has to coordinate with the planning of the state regents of higher education. We are no stronger as a system than the weakest institution. So, again, we have some professional responsibilities for assisting other colleges and universities if we can, and certainly to be positive toward what they are doing. We are all together. All the higher education institutions in the state system of Oklahoma. We should not be in competition because we are all in the same family.

The third objective has to do with the continued planning with more importantly the implementation of this developmental studies program that we’ve been talking about for two years. We’re ready, we think. We’ve met a number of times now and some of you have been involved in this planning. The decision has been made. It was, I think, the opinion of the majority of the people doing this planning that it should be a service and a part of the Learning Resource Center because the hours that students go the Learning Resource Center are so much greater than the hours that they might get services in any one division. Dr. Davis, Terry Britton, of course, Dr. Knox had some consultants in from Tarrant County – we’ve looked at a lot of programs and the ones that we feel are most effective are services out of the Learning Resource Center. But a comprehensive developmental studies program it will have, of course, the typical counseling, testing, evaluation services. It will have a tutoring service. It will have alternative methods of instruction. We hope we’ll have program instruction – hopefully some direct studies eventually. We’re thinking and planning now on an international language center that would also be a part of that operation. We’re more and more involved in dealing with the educational programs of students who come from other countries. And they do bring unique problems. I see Terry seems very nervous, so maybe he didn’t understand that, but . . . that’s the proper place for it. And that’s where both the software and hardware will be located.

I’m very excited about this. And if you haven’t read the statistical information, in two year colleges in the United States, 40% of them are in need of some kind of services out of a developmental studies center. Either remedial reading or basic mathematics or some kind of help our of a developmental studies center.  Now that’s a tremendous number of people and I’m not saying this now to be critical of public schools, of what’s happened in the public schools. I’m simply stating a fact to you and with an open door policy of admission, you know, it’s not at all surprising that many of these people would get into a two-year college. Now that provides some very unique opportunities for you to work with students that haven’t yet simulated the background for being successful in college. It’s an opportunity and certainly a challenge to you, and we’re going to provide some assistance through this developmental studies program. I fell pretty good about the planning that’s been done for that center and it’s not there yet, but it will be during this fiscal year.

The fourth objective will be a systematic process for following up students and to evaluate the success of this college in assisting students meet their educational objectives. There are basically four points where this will be centered. In institutional research, Dr. Nancy Knox will be doing a considerable amount of work, especially with the college/university transfer student. Dr. Evans in Student Services will be concerning himself with students that drop out or stop out of this institution. And Dr. Holman will be concerned about students that go through the (tape skipped) programs, whether the graduate or just start through and go out on the job. And, of course, Dr. Curtis will concern himself with students that seek employment even while they’re still with us or graduates. We’re very interested in what happens to those individuals and how well they perform on the job. So we do want to follow up our students. We have to know more about them. And that’s another area where we have not really put the attention and focus that we should.  

The fifth area is to receive the final approval of comprehensive employment and affirmative action plan for both supportive and professional employees at the college. I introduced Dr. Curtis to you. He is in charge of employment opportunity (tape skipped), the equal employment opportunity guidelines a series of goals for the institution that are a part of our affirmative action plan. Now that has been submitted to the appropriate agency in Dallas, the regional office, and we have not received approval yet. To my knowledge there’s only one approved affirmative action plan in the state of Oklahoma and that’s over at Chickasha. I don’t know. Maybe we need to go over to Chickasha and look at it. But that’s where it is. There are some goals now where we have areas of underutilization. Underutilization by race. Underutilization by sex. We’re interested in these areas, and the person that has responsibility for reviewing the progress, well month to month, and certainly year by year, would be Dr. Nutter.

At the same time I mentioned Dr. Curtis’ responsibilities there, then Carrie Lewis will concern herself and make sure that we have the proper balance of male and female. And it could be either way, and it is. We do have some underutilized areas where we have too few males and we have some areas where we have too few females. And those things have to be a concern to us. We hope to get our affirmative action plan approved during the year, but  we may have to revise it some. We have not received any information back from them, except that they received it.

Another objective or goal for the year would be to develop an extensive cooperative education program where the college will join with business, with industry, and with governmental agencies to assist students to receive the kind of educational and work experience necessary to move them toward some career goal. We have some evidence of success in that area. I think in the business area June Goss and Willie Peterson’s work in the CETA program has just been outstanding in my opinion. Many individuals that were unemployed and had been unemployed for a number of years are now in permanent full-time jobs after having gone through a training program in the general area of clerical office work.

We have an opportunity with Tinker Air Force Base that’s unparalleled in the history of higher education in two-year colleges. We have some on-going discussions with this group that could lead to this institution taking its place not only on a statewide basis, but on a national basis. They’ve got labs out there for machinists, electronics, logistics that you can’t believe unless you’ve been there. And they are interested. We’ve got a working relationship with them and we’ve got some really unusual opportunities. We’ve been working with Western Electric. They’ve been here and we’ve talked and discussed possible cooperative relationships and now we’re going to their plant so that they can show us (tape skipped) and how we might join together.

We have an unusual opportunity in environmental science and I can’t stress enough the importance Dr. Parks and Mr. Fox and others that’s going to be involved in the development of that environmental science program how important it is that those individuals that are going to work in the cities and study with us, that they get the kind of experience that will enable them to be effective and successful in those jobs because they’re operating multi-million dollar installations. And they are testing and returning to our fields and streams and to our supply of drinking water the wastewater that in my opinion they just must know exactly what they are doing. So the training program there has to be very precise

. And we’re in the process of building a really outstanding facility for this. It will be in the old universe building and will have about 16,000 square feet. It’s going to be an outstanding facility. There’s nothing there for you to see right now, but eventually we will invite you to come over and we’ll dedicate that building and you’re going to see really an outstanding state center in environmental science. Eventually we’re going to have a lot of people coming in here from every city in the state of Oklahoma. Now that’s going to take a lot of work because they aren’t used to (tape skipped), except for a one-day conference or for a few hours where there’s someone talks to them. And Commissioner Carpenter, Commissioner of Health here, was out last week and we were talking and he said he thought that this training center could probably be the number one improvement in the environmental science waste water technology area in the history of – the environmental area having to do with the waste water field – in the history of Oklahoma. So look at the opportunity that we have. Very unique opportunity. Now that is a cooperative program. We have the financial support for it to be a successful program. Financial support is no problem if you have something that is needed by the public. So cooperative education programs where we join with cities, with industry, with business is a very, very important area for us during the year.

Another objective is to expand and extend our high school relations program and I think we ought to give some consideration to developing programs, services so that we can share the resources that we have on this campus with public schools in the area. And I know George Johnson has a journalism workshop where he brings a couple of hundred journalism students on campus and we provide outstanding speakers. And it may be the only exposure some of those students get to professional journalists. And it’s been very successful and I’m delighted with what I’ve seen. And I mention that and there are many who are doing other things that are just as important. But I mention it because of the effectiveness that it has.

Another possibility, Mr. Beavers, is that we are developing really an outstanding library on this campus. And I would like for you all to think about writing library cards for all the seniors at least, maybe juniors and seniors in the public schools in the area. I’d like for them to be in our library. And those who come to the library, I’d like to have in our classes. Of course, we wouldn’t recruit them (laughter). We could talk about it in (garbled); we could talk about it in art; we could talk about it in music; we could talk about it in any area.

Another objective is to develop additional scholarships for students. And this is critical. And we are developing a college foundation. It’s a corporation outside the regular structure of this institution. The board of trustees have been appointed. The articles of incorporation have been written. But there’s some approvals – the secretary of state and others – that we haven’t received yet, but we’re developing a foundation. It’s a long, drawn-out process, but we expect it to be done this year. The primary goal will be to develop programs and to raise money for scholarship purposes.

Another objective is to implement a comprehensive program that will be, we hope, recognized nationally in the general field of environmental science. Now I’ve been talking about environmental science with a concentration in waste water technology. We’re just as interested in fresh water. We’re just as interested in health as it relates to workers in hotels, motels, restaurants – any of the general areas that the health area is short on training. They don’t have a training center. And so we’re starting in one area, and we start there because we were advised to start there and that’s where the immediate need is. But that’s certainly doesn’t include our interest in the general health environmental area for the state of Oklahoma. We have tremendous interest in the fresh water field. And so during the year, as we implement this specialty program in waste water technology we will start our planning and our work for expansion into other fields of environmental science. We have a degree program, as most of you know, that has several options. Those options were put in there because we had broad interests and we’ll be working on that during the year. We have good support for that area. We have $250,000 in construction money that’s being put into that building on the first floor and part of the second floor. We have a substantial grant from HEW to get a cooperative education program in environmental science, Mr. Fox coordinating. And we’ve got another grant to buy materials and supplies, I believe to run a prototype at one of our training programs with about 40 people to test it out – test that center out and see what we’re doing (tape skipped) the second semester. We intend to be in there, by the way, in January.

Another objective is to participate in the process of reordering our priorities here now. Are we concentrating on the proper areas? Are we concentrating on the areas that really reflect the needs and the requirements, the hopes and aspirations of the people in the service area of the college? This can be done in many ways. The institutional self-study, long-range planning, advisory committees that we have that are going to become very active now that we’re in the refining process. Our work with the state system of higher education as we review together the Plan for the 70s that’s been revised. The work that you’re doing here in this in-service workshop. (garbled) tomorrow Dr. Cox comes out and talks with you about the Plan for the 70s. If you haven’t heard, Chancellor Dunlap is going to speak to you next Thursday night – a week from this Thursday, and he is going to discuss the future of higher education as he views it after, like, 40 years in the US and more specifically for the state of Oklahoma. So we’re going to listen to a lot of people who are very knowledgeable and we’re going to be involved in several processes to help us to reorder these priorities.

Of course the task force – institutional task force for the restructuring of the faculty council where it reflects a relationship with the faculty association. The administrative council restructuring, the academic affairs committee is being looked at to be more representative of the institution. (garbled) committees are being looked at to be more representative of faculty. All of those things will help us as we reorder our priorities.

Next, we plan to, during this year, plan and construct the Administration Building just to the east of the south side of the Student Center and the Humanities Building. We have been approved. We do have the money. And if we had the time, we’d go to work on it. And we will have the time in 80 – 90 days, and we’re going to build a building there about 18,800 square feet and we’re going to move out of the Business Building (laughter). That’s important. The administrative side (garbled) scattered out now. Students are sent here and there – everywhere. You can’t be efficient when you’re scattered out the way you are. We have to have duplicate sets of personnel folders. Duplicate sets of academic records for students. Duplicate runs on the computer to get retention, grade point averages, because they have to be used by many, many offices. It will be much more efficient when we get moved. We did get financial assistance, as I said. We got about $300,000 from the state legislature this year, and couple that with about $550,000 we had on hand, so capital money (garbled) that we can put into your program or your salary or anything else. It’s money that don’t mix, like oil and water.

But we are ready to do that. We have a planning committee that’s been working on that for quite some time. The architect has been chosen. The schematics have been done. They requested about twice the number of square feet that we can get in the building with the money that we have, but that will be pared down and we build that. It will be about a nine or 10 month project and I say in September of ’77 that this building will be complete and the Business Division will have their own building. That will allow every division to be located in a building, hopefully, and centralized and that will improve your efficiency and certainly improve services to students. The Humanities Division, of course,  will still have some areas in the Fine Arts Building, the Little Theater, and so they’ll be somewhat scattered, much to their liking I think, once we get situated.

The last general objective that I have here is to implement a systematic and comprehensive holding-power program to reduce the number of drop outs and stop outs during their first year at this college. And I wanted to develop this extensively, but I think I won’t get into the Engineering and Science Division time. I will simply say that there’s quite a number of very sophisticated surveys that’s been done in this field. I mentioned but one that was done by Alexander Aston. That was a national survey, of course, and it was over a four year period. They started in 1968 and the original sample size was very large. They had 240,000 people in it – students. Four years later, of course, they came back, since it was a (garbled) study, they asked the people that had continued toward a bachelor’s degree to respond again, and return questionnaires. And this time they had 41,000 undergraduates. That’s a sizeable survey and very representative at two year colleges (tape skipped) universities (tape skipped) 358 institutions that responded. And of course over a four-year period you get a pretty good view of student progress (tape skipped).

There’s a lot of things that cause students to drop out of college, or stop out, and

I’m going to mention just a few and then at a later date I’m going ask to appear again with the faculty and talk in some detail about what we can do. It’s easy to talk about. It’s more difficult to implement holding-power programs. But with this very comprehensive study, I think you need to know, there’s 12 areas that they indicated were the primary reason that they drop out of college.

            Number one, the highest percentage recorded was boredom with courses. Now you probably wouldn’t agree with that, but that was the number one reason. Thirty-two percent of all people picked that as one, two, or three. The second highest percentage or great cause was financial (garbled). The third was family responsibilities that might include marriage, pregnancy, need a better job or whatever, but they tried to define it so it was basically family responsibilities, 23%. Poor grades causing them to leave or stop out, 22%. Dissatisfaction with requirements or regulations, something that either faculty put on them as a requirement or the institution put on them as a regulation, 22%, same percentage as poor grades. And change in career goals, 19%. The reason those percentages, of course, don’t add up is they could pick at least three – nor more than three, pardon me, reasons why they dropped out of school.

            There are others, of course, like good job offer, illness, accident, difficulty commuting, disciplinary problems – those go way on down, like 2%. So an extremely comprehensive study now has pinpointed some areas that we can do something about if they exist on our campus. Keep in mind these are national surveys we were part of, by the way, but so were 357 other institutions. But I think it’s important we understand this. Now we can predict why students drop out. We know there’s areas in academic background. We know of family background. We know there are areas like religion that makes a difference, parental income, the education of parents, race, hometown. There’s a tremendous amount of information here – tremendous amount of information. You may not agree with all of it, but, ah, if you’re Jewish you have a much better chance of being successful in college as found in this comprehensive study. If you have Protestant parents and you have no church preference, 40% of them left college in that category. Now, I’d want to see that over a long period of time, you know, like 10 years or 12 years or 15 years. But I’m just reporting some things that hopefully will cause you to want to read some of this material.

            At any rate, there are a number of things that we can do and we have developed the holding-power program for this institution. And I won’t go into it at this time. I would like for you, though, to think with me now about what can be done. What should be done. Why do students drop out of your class? Why do they stop out of this institution? It isn’t your problem, now, and it’s not just in your class – we’re all together at this institution. We’re all together, and if you’re not successful, the person next to you is not successful and this institution is not successful. We’re all together. We have no interest at all in saying, “Well, Jim Lasalier’s too hard. That’s the reason I dropped out.” We’re not interested in that at all. We’re interested in broad institutional reasons why students drop out. If you have ideas on this, then I’d like to know, and I’d like to examine them and (tape skipped).

I will hold (tape skipped) until next time, and simply end by saying we’ve got an unusual opportunity now to serve the students and the communities in this general (tape skipped) Oklahoma, and maybe to serve the higher education needs for an area much broader even than the state of Oklahoma. We have the resources here (tape skipped). You just look around in this room, and if you’ve been at other colleges (tape skipped), and most of you have, I know of no other college that has a lower division faculty that is stronger than this. I say this in all seriousness. And most of you know that I (tape skipped) evaluate three or four (tape skipped) a year (tape skipped) Central Association in a 19 state region. I’ve (tape skipped). (tape skipped) institutions that’s called me twice this week trying to (tape skipped). We’d like to have him as an applicant, but he’d just be an applicant (tape skipped). About all he can hope for is be an applicant because (tape skipped) could not receive the top priority or the top recommendation for a job because their top person will be (tape skipped). So we do have an unusual faculty, and we’ve got an unusual opportunity. We’ve got more human resources here to give to the students than maybe you realize or (tape skipped) realize.

Now what I want us all to do is to rededicate ourselves, (tape skipped) sure that we leave here at the end of this in-service training person with a (tape skipped) state of mind and the proper attitude about the students and the educational programs that we (tape skipped) work with here during this year. Anything that you need to make you more effective, we’d like to know about. (tape skipped) have the kind of materials, equipment, (tape skipped) support (tape skipped) the media center and other places (tape skipped) devote all (tape skipped) time and energy to helping students get the maximum out of their educational experience while they are with us. And I (tape skipped) overemphasize that. That’s what we’re all here for.

I’m delighted to see you back. Dr. Davis mentioned that we miss you – we do miss you. Each and every one of you, and I have kind of an unusual opportunity. I may be the only one in this room that knows every single individual in this room, because I get to talk to each one of you. I’ve read and looked at your credentials. I’ve read your philosophy and it’s very important to me to know what you believe. And I hope you all spend some time writing these (tape skipped) philosophies that you put on the back of your applications because I read them. If you think I don’t, you just stand up and I’ll tell you what you wrote. (laughter) If you wrote anything. Most of you did. But I really consider it a privilege for me to have the opportunity to talk with each one of you and hope that you will try to take as much time as you can, now, to meet people in other divisions. And find out a little about (tape skipped) their division and what they’re teaching. And if you don’t know some of the people in this room, I would encourage you to get acquainted. There’s probably 10 or 12 people now that we’ve added to the faculty this week, and will be joining you from time to time. Dr. Davis, Dr. Knox, and the division chairpersons, I hope you will make them (tape skipped) acquainted with the people in other divisions.

Again, thank you for your attention. I’m looking forward to a very successful year. We’ve got some plans – I can’t – we really don’t have them (tape skipped) yet, but some things that will be coming back to you during the year. And I hope to spend much more time talking with you in division faculty meetings or general faculty meetings during this year. (tape skipped) we are trying to decide whether (tape skipped) institution even has the proper function assigned to it. (tape ends abruptly)