Scarpino: Today is February 24, 2017. My name is Philip Scarpino, Professor of History at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis, (IUPUI). Today I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Jack M. Ryder in a room in the Sheraton Chapel Hill Hotel in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This interview is sponsored and funded by the Administration of IUPUI. We will place a more complete biography of Jack Ryder with a transcript of this interview.
Briefly, Jack M. Ryder served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1946 through 1948.
He earned three degrees from Michigan State University, a B.S. in Biological Sciences in 1952, a Master’s in School Administration in 1955, and the Ph.D.
in Educational Administration in 1962.
Between 1955 and 1961, he served as Superintendent of Schools for Brady Community Schools near Saginaw, Michigan, and then as Superintendent of Schools, Cassopolis Public Schools, Cassopolis, Michigan.
After earning his Ph.D. in 1962, he spent about 12 years working first for Purdue University and then after the merger in 1969 for IUPUI.
September 1962 through May 1963, he was Assistant to the Dean of Purdue University’s Extension Administration holding the rank of Associate Professor;
May 1963 through July 1966, Director, Purdue University’s Indianapolis Campus holding the rank of Professor of Education; July 1966 through July 1969, Dean and Director of Purdue’s Indianapolis Campus; February 1969 through May 1970, Vice Chancellor and Dean of the newly created IUPUI;
and finally, May 1970 until 1974, Vice Chancellor and Dean for Administrative Affairs.
From November 1974 through June of 1989, Dr. Ryder became the second President of Saginaw Valley State College, holding that position until June 1989. He worked to have Saginaw Valley College raised to the status of a University. He oversaw construction of several campus buildings and was instrumental in raising private gifts for construction of buildings on campus.
In December 1991, the Board of Control of Saginaw State University named Jack M. Ryder as President Emeritus.
As I mentioned when the recorder was off, I’m going to ask you for
permission to do the things that you just agreed to in writing so that in case we ever lose the paperwork that we still have a viable interview. So I’m asking you for permission to record this interview, to prepare a verbatim transcript of the interview, to deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript with the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives with the understanding that the Director of the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives may make the interview and the verbatim transcript available to patrons, which could include posting all or part of the audio or the transcript to the Archives website. Are you okay with that?
Ryder: That’d be fine. That’d be fine.
Scarpino: Okay, thank you. I want to get started and as I mentioned again when the recorder was off, I’m going to sort of start with a big picture question. You have had considerable experience in administrative and leadership positions.
You were Superintendent of two school systems, Director, Dean, Vice Chancellor, first for Purdue’s Extension Programs and later for IUPUI, and also President of Saginaw Valley State College. All of those positions that I just named all have leadership responsibilities. I’m wondering how you would describe or characterize your leadership style?
Ryder: Well, I think that in any public institution or organization utilizing the
contributions of the people around you, your team of administrators and so on, as well as the faculty which is different than a business organization to a considerable extent. So you have to take it into consideration because of the nature and role of faculty. Obviously, the extent to which you can gain support from not only the faculty but all of the people on a campus in terms of direction, where you’re headed and so forth, the easier things can be. They can be tough to achieve if you can’t do that, so you make that effort, at least I do.
Scarpino: So how did you go about doing that?
Ryder: Well, all kinds of way. Obviously have meetings – like say to the institution- type things and just like you’d have at the national level and the president, or if you’re Superintendent of Schools where I was. It’s all pretty much the same, administratively. Typically in the public schools, the faculty are not as demanding, if you will, as they would be in a university, which is appropriate.
I don’t see any problem there. But, anyhow, to me, gaining that support from the custodial people and physical plant people to the people that do the food service and administrators and all elements, you hope that you can chart a path with them and talk about where you would like to see things go and so forth. Hopefully you gain that confidence on their part and then things can move. Now obviously, there’s a community out there too, and there’s a community of donors, and there’s a community of government, and so forth.
All these things have to be brought together and focused. There are the newspapers and the media and they can really screw you in the long run if you don’t deal them in a positive way, and you make an effort at that. You don’t always succeed, but anyhow I think I do that, or did that when I was involved. I believe that I tried to call any decision I made one which I did for the benefit of the institution and the people of the State of Michigan in that case, as President there. Now I was Superintendent in, I was Superintendent in Michigan too, yeah, two different places. So and you know we did a lot of different things when I was a Superintendent in a small eight-grade system. I learned a lot there because I had a small staff, but the building needed painted inside and I got the stuff together and I helped paint the building and bought the equipment to clean the floors and all this sort of stuff. I learned a lot that I could use when I didn’t have to do that anymore to be closer to the people who did do it, and so in the bigger institutions. Then when I went to a 12-grade system, obviously you had the whole thing with the athletics and the educational program as well. Not only that, but you might be interested in knowing that in the Cassopolis superintendency, we were in an area of the state where there was a township that was probably 90% black. This had
become an Underground Railroad stopover point during slavery, and so it became solid, you know, pretty much black. They sent their high school students to it but they would have – and junior high, I think it was K through 6 that they had in their own little schools, one-room school, or two maybe, I don’t remember exactly, one or two-room schools. And you had a bunch of these around the institution, around Cassopolis Public Schools. Now we reorganized 17 districts, in other words, brought them in together so we’re all part of one thing. Then we had a major study which I spearheaded and brought in people from the community and so on. We concluded that we needed to build schools and one was a major elementary – 20 classrooms – and another elementary on one side of the area we covered, the district, and another was to deal with this community out there, the one-room school, where it was virtually all black. We took our Board members out and we went out in each one of those areas and talked about what the people saw as their need and so forth, what they wanted to do. It was pretty straightforward when you got into a mostly white area. In this black area, the conclusion that the Board had going in, and myself as well, was that the school represents a focal point for that community; therefore, we ought to do something there and that that would then benefit them as a community center. When we had the meeting, we were surprised that a number of black men and women got up and said, “We don’t want that. What we want” -- well, they said, “Although this Board might be very positive about that, we can’t look into the future and know that other Boards and Superintendents are going to be this positive.”
So they said, “We’d prefer to be integrated.” So basically what we did was, using some natural barriers in the area, we separated part of the students and they came into that 20-room school and we added onto another school that was primarily white and brought the other half of the students there. It kind of worked out geographically so you don’t just say okay it’s here, but it’s kind of the way that people’s lives were working anyhow. We bussed for the first time after this decision was made, the federal decision. As far as I know, I had the first bussing system in the country to get racial integration. But, anyhow, maybe I’m way off.
Scarpino: You’re talking about Brown versus the Board of Education?
Ryder: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. This was probably, let’s see, did I go there in ’60? I don’t know. It fits in anyhow. We built the schools. We built a complete new elementary school in another area that was primarily white. The school in town, the 20 is mixed, and this other one, but part of them that went one way, that was mixed, and everything really worked well.
Scarpino: Later on, as you move through your career, there are repeated references to those studies that you did.
Ryder: Oh, really?
Scarpino: What do you think you learned from doing that?
Ryder: Oh, ah…
Scarpino: Because I was going to actually going to talk to you about this later on because it comes up over and over again in the records.
Ryder: Is that right?
Scarpino: Yes.
Ryder: Yeah. Well, to me, I supported the decision. Even when I was at Michigan State before I graduated, I worked with minority groups – blacks and others – to integrate them into the life of the institution at Michigan State. My first teaching position out of Michigan State was in Athens, Greece. I don’t know if you picked that up.
Scarpino: I did; I was going to ask you about that. Seemed like a great gig.
Ryder: Well, it was interesting because when I first went – well, when I graduated, I graduated early by a semester I think, or a term at that time. I went into the Placement Office to be interviewed with the Principal at Three Rivers, Michigan, and this was for a position there. I was sitting there and 20
minutes went by and he never showed up. I was about ready to leave and all of a sudden he came in and he apologized and, you know, things happen.
So okay, he sits down and he starts talking about the position in Athens. I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute; are you talking about Athens, Georgia, or Athens -- where are you talking about?” He said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “I should have explained myself. I am the Principal at Three Rivers High School and I’ve just been appointed as Superintendent of the Anglo-American Schools in Athens, Greece, and I’m looking for people. I need somebody to teach biology and math and physics and general math and stuff of this sort, and you’ve got a pretty good background in that area.”
Scarpino: You were a biology major as an undergraduate.
Ryder: Yeah, right, yeah. Not only a biology major, I diversified my coursework in such a way that it cut across a lot of different things that -- I’d taken
microbiology or whatever. It was not part of what I had to do, but I took them so that I would have as broad a background as possible. And if I can take the first course then I can use that first course and it’s language and everything and understand other areas. So anyhow, I went there for two years. The first year I was there, we had a Principal who was a Canadian and she went by the old rules of how to teach and what to expect and so forth. One of the things she did, to give you an example, just looking at mental health and all this, those of us who’ve had a concern about that, and I did, just coming out of school. She would have an assembly at the marking period and she would get up and basically chew out the kids who – and in front of everybody – who didn’t do well and then commend people who did do well. I tried to help her.
I tried to work with her. We were good friends and so on. She was an outstanding history teacher who took us down to the Parthenon with the students, and different, you know…
Scarpino: What a great place to study history.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. It was fantastic. And she was good at it too, really good.
Administratively, in terms of the American psyche, it wasn’t too good. Well, the people got upset about her and she left and they made me the Principal.
Now I’d had 50% of my Master’s in Administration completed by the time I went there, so I spent that last year as the Principal and the basketball coach, head coach, and also taught probably physics and biology, I think.
Scarpino: So that was your first administrative experience then?
Ryder: Well, even when I was a kid, we were playing touch football. I became the quarterback. So really…
Scarpino: I guess you could see the quarterback as an Administrator.
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: I’m going to back up and ask you about being a kid here for a minute, just some basic demographics. When and where were your born?
Ryder: Well, I was actually born in Covington Kentucky Hospital.
Scarpino: Right on the river.
Ryder: Right on the river. We lived, the family lived in Newport, Kentucky, and so my birth certificate says Newport, but actually it was in that hospital over there.
Scarpino: And when were you born?
Ryder: 1928, December 2nd.
Scarpino: And who were your parents?
Ryder: My father’s name was Eamon (spelling???) McBride Ryder, my name is Jack McBride, and my mother was Mabel Esther Harris Ryder.
Scarpino: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Ryder: Yes, one brother and he died when he was about 53. Wasn’t that right? I think so. Her brother died, you know, not too much older and he had cancer extensively throughout his body when he died. He was not a college
graduate, but he was a skilled machinist and worked for Ford, I think it was, for quite some time in that area, was building probably bombs for the Vietnam War and all that kind of thing. It’s a high tolerance, or low tolerance I guess for anything going wrong. But anyhow, and so he had his own life. He’d been in the military. He did go – I don’t know whether it was Air Force or not – I think it may have been Air Force, up in Alaska.
Scarpino: As were you, right?
Ryder: Yes.
Scarpino: As age 18 when you graduated from high school? Didn’t you go straight into the military?
Ryder: Well, here’s the situation. I went in the military when I was 17. I didn’t go to the last year of high school. I don’t know if you have it that way.
Scarpino: Well, I have you graduating from Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Kentucky.
Ryder: That’s right.
Scarpino: Yeah.
Ryder: What happened was that I went to summer school plus I had a certain number of credit hours and all I needed was two additional credit hours to graduate. So when I went in the service, the high school said they would give me two credits for basic training that I did in the service. So I went back and graduated with my class after having served one year in the service.
Scarpino: You went in the Medical Corps?
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: How did you end up there? Did they assign you or did you ask?
Ryder: This is kind of interesting. When they have you, in the early stage after your fundamental training, they come out and say, “Well, now we’re going to be assigning people to different things and here is a movie and all that of all the different components that you might want to choose.” I was really intrigued by the – I can’t think of the term, but explosives and getting rid of booby traps and stuff like that.
Scarpino: Yes.
Ryder: They said, “Now if you take this area, then you get hazard pay,” and so that could…
Scarpino: Sounds like it would appeal to a 17 year old.
Ryder: Well, so that’s what I chose, and I ended up in the Medical Corps. The interesting thing about it is that part of it had to do with that I could type. The only problem with that is, in high school I was willed in the yearbook by one of the girls in the high school her typing capabilities because I needed it. I could type 32 words a minute and that was really slow. Now, she is super at this kind of thing. But when I – and this is another thing I have to point out – here I am in this – well, they assigned me to the physical exam section. This is to take care of all the people coming back from other places before they get out of the service. It’s for, well, all kinds of units and so on, they have to take a physical. Some of them have to take it every year and so forth. So I was assigned along with two other fellows to this physical exam unit. The director of it said, “Well, I’m going to be leaving in a month and so I’m going to, you know, need to have you guys ready to go by then.” So he said, “Now, what
do you, how fast do you type?” The guy says 50 words a minute, another guy said 60 words a minute, and he said, “How about you?” “32 words a minute.” He said, “Okay, you’re going to be the administrator. You’re going to take the interviews, meet people, talk to them. These guys are the technicians and they’re going to be cranking out the stuff.” So I became an administrator by default because I was the poorest typist.
Scarpino: You must have been a Private?
Ryder: Oh yeah, at that time, sure. Well, I ended up with what’s called a T-4, which is a Sergeant’s stripe with a T under it. But in that month, he put me in charge of the place and left. Well, something happened and he ended up coming back and, thank God, because it was a fairly complicated role. I did well but I really appreciated his being there for a little bit longer, but it wasn’t like another month or something like that and he left. The other interesting thing is that I don’t remember the real number, but one of those two guys that was doing the typing was a little genius. I mean he was just fantastic and I really appreciated that, but he was good at typing too.
Scarpino: As you look back on that, what did you take away from your military experience that stayed with you?
Ryder: Well, first of all, obviously, I don’t know, I think I was fairly disciplined anyhow, but they require a certain discipline and physical fitness and all that kind of thing, although I never had a problem with that because I was in athletics prior to that. So when I went in I thought, you know, this is not too bad.
Some of these people were really struggling but I’d just come out of football practice and basketball and so forth, and so I didn’t have a physical problem.
But you have to put up with a bunch of stuff in basic training that goes beyond what you’d think it should be, but you put up with it anyhow.
Scarpino: I remember that.
Ryder: Yeah. Then I was assigned to that job I mentioned and that became and eight-to-five job, five days a week. So we were off in D.C. or wherever we wanted to be. We were in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which is close to D.C., and so on. And then I got a buddy – now I participated in athletics during that time. I played touch football, and this was a league and we won the
championship of the Fort Belvoir league. And basketball, I don’t remember where we were with that, but we did well, and then baseball, I think, that may have been it. But I participated, I was quarterback of that team I mentioned there. I had a good buddy that was from Michigan. We had an opportunity to – do you remember USAFI? Does that ring a bell with you?
Scarpino: No.
Ryder: Okay. USAFI was the United States Armed Forces, I don’t know – it has to do with – the University of Wisconsin had a program of collegiate work that people in the service could do and they would send their work in to the professor and then they respond, and so forth. So we got all the books and materials in the areas that we wanted and we read them and worked on
them. Then, in addition to that, they brought in faculty from the surrounding universities to teach courses.
Scarpino: You were basically taking college credits while you were still in the service?
Ryder: Well, I forgot, I had like 22 credits earned by the time I left. However, when I went to Michigan State – and now, well actually, go back a little bit. This buddy of mine, Bill Boyer, who’s still alive, he and I decided to go back to his home and go deer hunting in Michigan, and on the way we wanted to stop at Michigan State. He was either accepted there or – I think he was probably accepted. I had sent in an application to Michigan State and they denied it.
So when we got to Michigan State, I went into the Admissions Office – well no, they wouldn’t even send me an application. I don’t know why, because maybe they were against out-of-state people at the time because they were growing like crazy. So I go into the Admissions Office and said, “Could I have an application?” and they said, “Yeah.” I was applying as a non-resident and so I took it, filled it out, turned it in, and they accepted me.
Scarpino: On the spot.
Ryder: Well, I don’t know if it wa on the spot, but they…
Scarpino: Well, I was going to ask you how the boy from Covington, Kentucky, ended up at Michigan State.
Ryder: Yeah, well now you heard. Now the probably was, here I got these 22 credits, I think it was, and they said, “Well, we can only accept those at a grade of C, even though you got a B or an A or whatever, we can only take it as a C.” I wanted to get – at that time, my buddy and I both were going to go to veterinary medicine – and I said, “I’m not going to take that. That’d be stupid. I would not get into veterinary medicine with those.” So I said, “Just forget it.” I went on and they changed their policy about one year in and I came back and said, “Well, what we’ll do is we’ll accept nine of the credits, but they will not hurt your grade point average.” I said, “Okay, put them on the thing.” It doesn’t matter; I’ve already taken the courses and stuff like that anyhow. So they did that. Then later on, I decided in that two year, couple years of that period, decided that I wanted to help change the world and go into education as opposed to going into veterinary medicine.
Scarpino: How did that happen?
Ryder: Well…
Scarpino: Vet, biology and veterinary work to changing the world and education?
Ryder: Yeah, I don’t know. First of all, I had the whole integration thing that was on my mind and we were discussing…
Scarpino: You grew up in Kentucky, which is not exactly noted in that time period for its enlightened attitudes on race.
Ryder: That’s right. Oh, it was pretty bad, yeah.
Scarpino: How did you become an outlier?
Ryder: Well, partly it probably had something to do with the college, that is Michigan State, and I worked with blacks and others to enhance integration. Then when I went home in the summertime, I would work usually or try to work in the something. I did different things. We even tried to – we had a Lutheran pastor who was kind of on the cutting edge and he worked with us in trying to get integration moving and so on in that area. Like you say, it exactly was that way, but…
Scarpino: I mean, I think of the University of Kentucky digging in its heels and not wanting to play black basketball players.
Ryder: That’s right, yeah. So it was all still there, but we were trying to make inroads into that. I think we did some good things, and at Michigan State we had a Center for Integration or something – I’ve forgotten what it was called – but I got involved in that. But then also some of the coursework I took – at that time, Michigan State had a basic, what do they call it, basic education or something. Basically, in the first two years they made you take history and psychology and different courses that a person going into a scientific area wouldn’t necessarily take if he had a choice. As a result of some of those courses, I responded positively to and recognized that education is crucial for future development in our society and throughout the world. So…
Scarpino: Do you think you made a difference?
Ryder: Oh, I think so.
Scarpino: In what way?
Ryder: Well, I guess that I feel that everywhere that I went educationally, I made a contribution, and part of its administration. That goes all the way back I think to leadership exhibited as a younger person, whether it be in athletics or other kinds of things. I remember at Michigan State, I was in Kappa Delta Pi.
That’s an educational honor society, and I was recognized there.
Scarpino: You said Kappa Delta Pi, right?
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: Okay. I’m saying that for the transcriber.
Ryder: Okay, yeah. I was sent to a conference down at U of M, I think it was, where you had a meeting and they had topics and they had separate groups and all this kind of thing. We’d start talking about the particular topic, whatever that was, and what I determined there was that everybody there wanted to say something or contribute something, but nobody had an idea about how you organize to do it. But I did. It was that kind of thing, where I became the natural leader in the group because I was willing to kind of coalesce the
inputs and say, “Well, this what we think.” That was a simple kind of thing.
That’s what I think an educational leader has to do is to incorporate that.
That doesn’t mean he may have a position of his own or a feeling of his own or a thought about direction, but you need to bring – in bringing people together, you have to take the inputs and hopefully gain their support.
Scarpino: You graduated from Michigan State. We talked about the fact that you were at the Anglo-American School already. But you then went back to Michigan State and earned a Master’s in Administration in 1955. It occurred to me, as you were talking about issues of race and so on, that that’s about the time that Emmett Till made headlines.
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: Did that have any influence on you?
Ryder: Well, I think overall, yes, but one of the sociology courses I took was by a professor who was a consultant to the Supreme Court, I think.
Scarpino: Of Michigan or United States?
Ryder: United States.
Scarpino: Gee.
Ryder: Before the decision…
Scarpino: Brown versus the Board of Education.
Ryder: Brown versus the Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall was a friend of the professor and he invited Thurgood Marshall to come to Michigan State’s campus. There were about eight of us who met, had lunch with him and talked.
Scarpino: That must have been a thrill.
Ryder: Oh, it was, it was. It was really, really great. So I had that kind of thing. I took other courses that were unconventional, like History of Christian
Thought. I didn’t have to take that, but I was interested in it. Another thing I’ll point out too is that while I was at Michigan State, I determined there are a number of different organizations, student organizations – some were almost like from communist to right wing. So, I thought, well, I needed to find out what they’re thinking. So I’d attend their meeting and the next thing you know, I’m getting all kinds of literature from really way off-the-wall people, right or left, which I didn’t appreciate but I got it for a long time. They just kept sending it whether I wanted it or not. But in any event, I went to these
different groups to gain perspective and I think I did. I hope that, I think that influenced my overall perception of how things work.
Scarpino: At the time that you were doing that, did you realize that that was an unusual approach?
Ryder: Not really. I never, I was the only…
Scarpino: I mean, I’d like to think all my students do that, but they don’t.
Ryder: No. Oh, I never really worried about that. I never consulted with anybody.
No professor even told me to do that, but I just came to that conclusion that this is – why wouldn’t – you know, if you’ve got all these different disparate views, why not listen to those and see where you come out on it.
Scarpino: You got your Master’s Degree in Administration and you then, as we already mentioned at the beginning when we started talking, you held two positions as a school superintendent. Now, just to get this in the record, you’re Superintendent of Schools for Brady Community Schools which is K through 8?
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: Then you went on to Cassopolis, which is a 12-year program?
Ryder: Yes, yeah.
Scarpino: Through high school. I will admit that I really don’t know what the
requirements are to be a school superintendent, but a guy with a brand new squeaky Master’s Degree seems a little on the green end. How did you manage to get yourself two positions as school superintendent with a brand new Master’s Degree in hand and not a whole lot of experience?
Ryder: Yeah, at that time in an eight-grade system, obviously they would require less. You don’t need a Ph.D. to that. Most of the people today, the school districts are bigger and they typically hire Ph.D.s. At that time…
Scarpino: That was really before the major consolidation move, right?
Ryder: Oh, yeah, that’s right. So that was not unusual because we had other people from the program at Michigan State. Michigan State had one of the best programs in educational administration in the country I think at that time.
There were some others that we really good, too.
Scarpino: You got lucky then because you went there as a biology major and then…
Ryder: Yeah, except I had a year of experience as a principal of a school.
Scarpino: Right.
Ryder: By the way, that school was the – the students that went to that school in Greece were from all over the world because they could take -- the school could accept students who were children of ambassadors from all over, military people, and so on. The only people they couldn’t take were Greek citizens and that was based upon the Greek government saying, you know, you can’t do that.
Scarpino: Later on in your career, you really manifested an interest in international studies?
Ryder: Oh, yeah definitely.
Scarpino: Did that begin in Greece?
Ryder: Oh, yeah, definitely it did. Tell you what, I’m going to run to the restroom. I don’t know if you want to stop…
Scarpino: I’m going to hit pause here. Let me make sure that I’ve done this correctly.
(PAUSE)
Scarpino: Let’s see if I can get this thing rolling again. Okay, we’re live here again. We took a break and we were talking with the machines off a little bit about your experience at the Anglo-American School. Your wife was sitting here and pointed out that I asked you what you took away from that experience and you didn’t answer the question. So let’s just be direct about it.
Ryder: Let’s be direct. Well, what I took away from that is that it would be highly desirable that every college student have an international experience. I’ve made a case of that not only there, or in high schools where I was
superintendent, but also as President of Saginaw Valley. We developed, I think, for the size of institution, a significant interaction internationally. We had faculty and staff teaching in different places. My Vice President for Academic Affairs – I’ve had, well actually I had two, one went on to become a president of universities – actually North Florida and out in California. The other one was a Taiwanese and he stayed with me and when I retired he continued on then with a new President. He’s still working. He retired from Saginaw Valley, but he headed up a program with a Taiwanese university, Ming Chuan University, and they have now established a location on the Saginaw Valley State campus – Ming Chuan University. Those students who come there can continue studying Chinese, but then they can take classes at Michigan State as well. It’s a cooperative kind of initiative.
Scarpino: You mentioned that you think it’s important for, I assume, American college students to have an international experience. Why?
Ryder: Well, because…
Scarpino: Because everything costs money and there’s only so much in the way of resources and if you put resources into international studies – so why do you think it’s important enough that it should be a part of every college student’s experience?
Ryder: Well, because understanding the world and how people think and how they’re different and yet the same, all of this makes a difference I think in how you make decisions about things. If people are insulated or isolated, they can’t make very good decisions when they’re called upon to make them otherwise.
That international experience in Greece was the beginning of that for me
because not only – I went, while I was there, I traveled in the Middle East and so forth. I actually – one thing there -- in that travel in the Middle East, we were in a car and we were going from – I think we were headed for Beirut, I’m trying to remember now, but that was after Israel had been started, which was about ’48, I think, and so this was ’52, ’54, somewhere in there. We passed an area and you looked out and there were huts. There were like clay huts and stuff like that, I mean by the hundreds, thousands. It was huge.
I remember thinking, God, we’ve got to do something to help alleviate that situation. This was not by a nice river or lake or anything like that. The concern I had was that those people are going to grow up and they’re going to cause problems in the future if we don’t, you know, settle, do some things that are going to deal with this…
Scarpino: This was a refugee village?
Ryder: Well, yeah. I don’t know whether that was part of those who left Israel, even though Israel said you can stay and be, you know, Palestinian and be in Israel, but you’re part of the system where you have to participate and so forth. But even though they got out, and you can understand you have leaders of the Palestinian group saying stay away, we’re going to come back and get them and take the land back and all that stuff. And here you had huge areas like that and you could see what’s going to happen. Well, it’s kind of happened, as I see it, in any event. But it’s one of the things that
international experience, you know, seeing other places, interacting with people. In fact, we had a scary thing on that trip; the driver bumped into a person in a crowded situation and it was one of these circumstances where it could go awry. Fortunately we got out of there without any incident, but it was tenuous. Anyhow, well, I believe that particularly when I went to
Saginaw Valley where I had more influence as the President, we developed these international programs in South America, in Europe. There was a little bit of it there, but I pressed on this issue, made the same kind of statement I made before, and with a Taiwan Chinese as Vice President for Academic Affairs, he was very supportive and he spoke Japanese because they’d been controlled by the Japanese. So we got programs in Japan, in Korea,
People’s Republic, Taiwan, let’s see, that’s about it over there, but then Mexico and other places in Latin America. Another thing too, when I was in that role at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, I was on the International Committee because of interest, for one. So I traveled to Argentina and Mexico on educational trips to help them develop some things that they admired about our system and so forth. Those gave me other perspectives. And then we had people come from those countries to Saginaw Valley in groups of 20, 25 people, from Japan, from Argentina, and so on…
Scarpino: As students? They came as students?
Ryder: Students, students, yeah. They came there and they’d be there for maybe a month or two months, something like that. We hosted them and they
attended classes. We took them all over the State of Michigan, anyhow, and different places like that. So that kind of solidified. We had leaders from Japan. There was an institution – I can’t think of the name of it, but it was a
women’s institution, I can’t think of it, but I will. It’s one of the islands and it’s a women’s institution, and so they were sending women. Later on it became coed just like a lot of institutions in this country. The leaders came over to our place and then they sent faculty, and then we sent faculty to them. All this happened all over the area, all over those other countries that I
mentioned. Lila and I went to Korea, Japan, People’s Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong.
Scarpino: What a great experience.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. It really was and we were negotiating too. That’s another thing, negotiating with the Chinese, that was really interesting. They would have the Chinese leader or the President of that university or whatever they called him and me sitting alongside of each other. And they would have Lila, you know, women, they go over here and that sort of thing. We should throw in about the one where we met with the Minister. This is interesting, and it reinforces, well, something else. We asked for a meeting with the Minister of Education in the People’s Republic. Well, they sent an Assistant Minister and we went to this room and they had me here and he was here and they had an interpreter right here and Lila and so on. They had a few other people. And so there was discussion and he asked -- I had a copy of our catalog and we were talking and through his interpreter he said, “Well, I see you have a lot of people with Ph.D.s, and I said, “Well, yeah, predominately Ph.D.s and
lecturers,” and so on like that. So he kind of didn’t know what to make of that.
So I said something and the girl interpreted it and the guy said, “No, that’s not right, it’s this.” (Laughter)
Scarpino: He didn’t need the interpreter.
Ryder: He was silent in terms of English until this gal made a mistake and then he comes out and says this is what he meant. Well, the long and short of it was that when we asked for the meeting, I think we were called, we were called College – Saginaw Valley State College. They viewed that as community college or something less than university. So when I got back after all of that, I developed a two-page proposal on why Saginaw Valley College should be a university. I had my research person do a research on the United States and what was happening and what it took to be a university. Well, it so happens that among the presidents, there’s the Presidents’ Council in Michigan.
There’s no board over everything. But there was the Presidents’ Council and as President I was on that council, but I was named as the head of that council – this included Michigan, Michigan State – for a two-year period, and usually after two years you moved it on to somebody else. The smaller schools, like we were not even 10,000 then, they didn’t necessarily get selected, but they did select me to do that, my colleagues did. So I had familiarity of a different level of nature with everybody – Michigan State, Michigan, Central, Western, all that. So I prepared this two-page thing and I went to visit with all these presidents independently to get their response, their commitment, or their whatever. Well, the long and short of it, the legislature started dealing with it with the support of enough people that would say that it should be done; and instead of just doing it for us, they did it for three other institutions – in other words, four at once – and the rest of the
institutions, state institutions – Grand Valley, Lake Superior, Saginaw Valley, and what’s the other one, Lila? Do you remember?
Mrs. Ryder: Are you talking about the institutions that…
Ryder: That become universities…
Mrs. Ryder: … became universities – Ferris State.
Ryder: Ferris State, yeah.
Scarpino: My son went there.
Ryder: Oh, he did? Yeah, Ferris State. I had a good buddy who went to school with him in undergraduate, who – Bob Ewigleben.
Scarpino: But all this was originally pushed along from your perspective by realizing the Chinese undervalued the worth of your institution because of the name?
Ryder: Right, you’re right, you’re right, yes, that’s right. If you want to have this international connection, you’d better have what it takes to get it.
Scarpino: We have talked some about your time as Superintendent of two school systems. You then went back to Michigan State, got the Ph.D. I wrote down the title of your – took me a while to find it – of your dissertation, “A Study of Personal Practices and Policies with Relation to Utilization of Teachers from the Negro Minority Group to Certain Michigan Public School Districts.” Was your time as a Superintendent part of your research for your dissertation?
Were you studying the schools that you were in charge of, is what I’m asking you?
Ryder: Well, obviously, I gave you the little story about how we integrated schools.
So that was there, but, well first of all, yeah, I had the experience of hiring the first black elementary school teachers – the first. We had one or two in the high school, but we didn’t have any in elementary. Now there were black teachers maybe out at the black school. There could have been one, but they were their own school district before reorganization. After
reorganization, I was the one, and I remember, well this is a good story. I remember that I went up to Western Michigan to interview people and I met this black woman. I mean, she was just graduating, and she was the typical black person – the big lips, she didn’t look Caucasian, I mean she was black.
And I mean she was really black, you know, not light black but black, but she was sharp. I said, “Okay, I’ve looked at your credentials, I’ve talked to your people, they think you’re great and I’m willing to offer you the position.” So I employed her to be in this 20-room elementary school, which was a mixture of students. When the year started, this woman came in and said, “My daughter” – I think it was a daughter – had been assigned to her class. She said, “I don’t really – I’m uncomfortable about that and could you reassign her somewhere else?” And I said, “Well, would you do this, would you have her attend, with her, for” – I become a mooshula (spelling???) about that kind of thing but anyhow – “for three months and if you’re still not happy, we’ll move
her.” She said okay. When she came back she said, “I want all of my kids to go to her.”
Scarpino: It’s kind of amazing that you were in a position where you had to offer her that choice in those days.
Ryder: Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Scarpino: I mean, nobody would do that now.
Ryder: No, no, I understand that. Right. But that was just the first step of that sort of thing. If you’ve got good people, what difference does it make?
Scarpino: So, now we’re going to, I’m going to…
Ryder: Okay.
Scarpino: … talk about Purdue and IUPUI. You spent part of your career at Purdue University’s Extension Program in Indianapolis and later, of course, you moved after the merger to IUPUI. In September of 1962, you joined the staff of Purdue University Extension Administration in Indianapolis as an Associate Professor and as Assistant to the Dean of Purdue University Extension. His name was Charles Lawshe. You had just earned your Ph.D. How did you end up in Indianapolis? So far as I can tell, you didn’t have any experience at the college level as an Administrator, you had a brand new Ph.D., and they gave you the rank of Associate Professor, so what was going on there?
Ryder: Well, first of all, when you look at my background in administration…
Scarpino: You have a lot of administrative experience.
Ryder: I have a lot of administrative experience. Also, while I was working on the Ph.D., I was assigned to a group that went out and did studies of public school districts. The districts would pay the university to do those studies and I’m talking about all the way from where new schools would be built, how many personnel, all the aspects of operating a school. We did those studies and made recommendations.
Scarpino: You were basically serving as a consultant…
Ryder: Oh yeah, yeah.
Scarpino: … while you were a graduate student, yes.
Ryder: That’s right, and not only that, but, well, let’s see, what it would be, I’m trying to remember that school district down in Detroit. It’s one that’s kind of a wealthy district and our team would go down there and we would do all this study. Well, then another district up in the northern part of Michigan, more rural, like Petoskey area, if you know that, I don’t know. Anyhow, they assigned me personally as the person heading up the operation and I didn’t have many people. I just had one or two that would assist, but I ran that
whole study by myself. So I guess I had administrative experience and Lawshe knew that. He made me Assistant to him so I was kind of close to him in terms of how he functioned and what his objectives were. By the way, this is a guy who, I’m trying to remember, he was an industrial psychologist and he wrote the handbook on industrial psychology. He was highly respected in his field and he was a very, very solid administrator which appealed to me, and also I probably appealed to him because of my background and experience in administration.
Ryder: I mean, I assume that you were interested in having a job, but what attracted you to that position and to Indianapolis?
Ryder: Well, this buddy that I mentioned who was president of Ferris State visited with me. He had taken a position with that system. I’m trying to remember where it was. Oh, Fort Wayne I think, wasn’t he? Ewigleben originally was at Fort Wayne.
Mrs. Ryder: Oh, well I thought he was originally in Ferris at Grand Rapids.
Ryder: No, that’s where he ended up as president.
Mrs. Ryder: The question is, why did you want to go in a role like this?
Scarpino: I assume with your background and training that you could have had multiple job offers…
Ryder: Yeah, but…
Scarpino: … why did you decide to go to Indianapolis?
Ryder: Well, okay. Well, I had to decide when I finished the Ph.D., or I hadn’t finished it quite. I really just had to wrap up the thesis, in other words write it and put it in the hands of my people so that I could graduate in December. I think it was July 1st that I took over my role with Purdue. I think Bob
Ewigleben, who was part of the system, said, “You know, they’re expanding down there, they’re developing these regional campuses and I would suggest you at least interview.” He probably told Lawshe about me and they brought me in and offered me the position as Assistant to Lawshe. So I was on campus for not very long. Do you have the date when I went to…
Scarpino: 1962?
Ryder: … as head of the Indianapolis campus of Purdue?
Scarpino: It was about a year later, 1963, you became Director.
Ryder: Yeah, that’s what I thought, yeah, ’63. I was with him until that time. I went back and took my, you know, went back on the Ph.D. and finished up and that was it.
Scarpino: Your program was located at 38th Street near the Fairgrounds?
Ryder: Well, no – well, we started with him as assisting. The fellow who was head of the Indianapolis campus of Purdue decided to go elsewhere. He really did decide. It wasn’t that they said well you’ve got to leave or anything. I had had international experience and I had talked with him about it and he got very interested and ended up going to Indonesia or someplace else. But in any event, Lawshe called me in and said, “Would you take the Indianapolis job?” And I said, “Okay,” and so there I was.
Scarpino: When you were in Indianapolis in ’63, what was it like?
Ryder: Well…
Scarpino: It was a very different place then than it is now.
Ryder: Yeah, but 38th Street, actually we had one building and the programming was limited, but there was a need for expansion because the community was developing. You had a lot of different industries and so on that needed help.
They needed help in administration and other areas. So they wanted programming and so forth. When I went there, I established an
administrative council of major leaders from major industries. We would bring them in and we would talk about what their needs were, how we could help satisfy those needs for the whole community. Obviously, you get involved with the government too because they have some bearing upon things.
Scarpino: With city government?
Ryder: Yeah, city government. And then Lugar was Mayor and he got Unigov established. We went to the hearings on that kind of thing and a lot of people got up and yelled and griped and all this about all that. He’s a very sharp guy. I don’t know how you found him, but he’s an astute character.
Scarpino: I would agree with you. He’s a very sharp guy.
Ryder: Yeah, yeah, and he always has been. We always call attention to the fact that – well, there’s an organization called the Indianapolis Scientific and Engineering Foundation, I think, in Indianapolis. I think that’s the name of it.
I participated as a member of that and then was elected president of it. While I was president, we invited Lugar to come and speak about the White River and the pollution and all that stuff and how things could be changed and so on. Most of the people that I associated with in that organization were engineers or scientific people. Not may historians were in there.
Scarpino: Probably not, no.
Ryder: So here you have the Mayor of Indianapolis, a politician – I’ve forgotten what his degree was. I don’t know whether it was political science or…
Scarpino: Political science.
Ryder: Is that what it was? Okay. So he comes and speaks to this scientific group.
When he got through, he got a standing ovation. He had obviously studied it
and had solutions, ideas, things that they could understand and he came away from there with a very positive support. So that was one experience I thought was really good. And then, of course, like I say, in my judgement, he made the impetus that got Purdue and IU together.
Scarpino: When you first came to Indiana, and you were Lawshe’s assistant…
Ryder: Yeah, yeah.
Scarpino: … were you based at West Lafayette or…?
Ryder: Yes.
Scarpino: Yeah, okay. What were your responsibilities? What did he hire you to do?
Ryder: Well, I’m trying to remember.
Scarpino: But it was with the Extension Program?
Ryder: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Well, the whole idea was regional campus development.
Scarpino: Right, right.
Ryder: Indiana had Richmond and had one up in near Chicago, and so on. In fact, that’s where Jack Buhner was. By the way, is he still alive or not?
Scarpino: I better be careful with this one. I don’t think so, but…
Ryder: I wouldn’t be too surprised…
Scarpino: … given that I’m recording myself here.
Ryder: As old as I am, there’s a lot of people who aren’t alive anymore. But anyhow, they wanted to develop some in Fort Wayne, and there’s another school up further north I think – oh, Michigan City – and so forth. Obviously they wanted to respond to the needs for higher education in Indianapolis. And also, I’m just trying to think, no, that’s another….
Scarpino: So both Purdue and IU were expanding.
Ryder: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Scarpino: Was there competition there?
Ryder: Lawshe, I think, I don’t know whether, is it Ryan, John Ryan was it? What’s Ryan’s – the president, the former President of IU?
Scarpino: His first name?
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: John.
Ryder: John, yeah. John Ryan and Lawshe were pretty good friends and they didn’t want to step on each other’s toes. They wanted to serve the state and the best way to do it was to decide on who’s going to do what where and not get in the way of somebody else. So there’s an element of competition, but it was, you know…
Scarpino: In 1963 then, when you were named Director…
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: … of the Purdue regional campus in Indianapolis…
Ryder: Right.
Scarpino: … down on 38th Street, IU was growing down around the Medical Center.
Ryder: Yep.
Scarpino: They had hired Charles Hardy to buy up land, which he did for many years as he was moving people, consolidating land down there. What were your responsibilities when you assumed that position? What did they expect you to do?
Ryder: Assume the position in Indianapolis…
Scarpino: Of Director of the Purdue program in Indianapolis.
Ryder: Well to, obviously, interact with people in the community including the people at IU. It was not a negative thing. They had their role, we had ours.
Obviously, Purdue is known for its engineering and technology.
Scarpino: But you had a history department and other things like that too.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. Well, you had to have some support for these and they have it at Purdue too. So it’s not, it’s just a lesser quantity of people and programs, you know, and IU is kind of the other way – lesser of technology and all that, other than if you take out medicine and dental school.
Scarpino: You were charged to grow those programs?
Ryder: Yeah, well, to assess, with I think the community helping you assess the need. I’ll give you a good example. Data processing was just coming in and do you know what I think it’s called a 409, it was the thing, you know, the card punch and all that sort of stuff.
Scarpino: I remember card punch, yes.
Ryder: At that time, it was coming in. The federal government and, of course, IBM and others were encouraging use. They asked me to study this new area of development as a potential program for the institution and to come back with
this assessment for the benefit of all the other regional campuses of Purdue, which I did. I concluded that at least at this time there should be an
Associate Degree program in Computer Technology, I think it was called Computer Technology. So not only did I in Indianapolis start such a program, they started it at other places too. Now, IBM and as I say, maybe federal grants even, helped get that started because this is a new area and they wanted it to move and so there’s support out there. You didn’t have to pay a lot to do it and so we did it.
Scarpino: Well, that was a technique that you also used when you came to IUPUI, that was getting somebody else to pay for the programs.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. Anytime you can, that’s right. I assume you’ll be asking too about IUPUI and Columbus.
Scarpino: Yeah. I will want to ask you one more question about Purdue though. When IUPUI came into existence, the News Journal issued a press release. A part of that press release was touting your accomplishments while you were with Purdue. One of the things it said was that on the Indianapolis campus
enrollment on your watch went from 1,700 to 3,900. That’s significant growth in a few years. Was that one of your intents to actively and aggressively increase the size of the student population?
Ryder: I never look at that kind of thing, like there’s an objective of adding a thousand or two thousand or whatever in a year. I never really looked at things like that. I looked at it from a point of view of what are the needs, what do people want, how can we serve those needs, and are we the right
organization to serve those needs. As I said, I brought in an advisory group of people that focused on organizations like Purdue’s organization. So we incorporated programs and initiatives. We incorporated not only that, but programs where people could come and take Master’s level work and brought professors down, in engineering for example from Lafayette. Then people in these organizations could come and take Master’s level work that their organizations – let’s say it’s Bell Labs or, I don’t know, there’s all these different companies.
Scarpino: So you basically established graduate programs on a continuing education basis?
Ryder: Yeah, yeah.
Scarpino: And continuing ed is another one of the things that’s been a hallmark of your career.
Ryder: Yeah, well, I’m really high on that and my…
Scarpino: I’m going to hit pause here for a minute. I’m sorry, but…
Alright, so we’re live again. We were talking about the fact of what you were doing when you were directing the Purdue Program in Indianapolis. You mentioned how you were really looking to serve the needs of the various
constituencies in the community and you had the advisory group and so on, but advisory groups also generate buy-in.
Ryder: Generate?
Scarpino: Buy-in.
Ryder: Buy-in, oh, yeah, sure.
Scarpino: I mean…
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: It’s not just a matter of serving needs but getting them to feel as though they’re a part of what you’re doing…
Ryder: That’s right.
Scarpino: … and contribute, and so on and so forth.
Ryder: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, exactly right, and they did that. Now being part of the Indianapolis Scientific and Engineering Foundation, providing
leadership there, all that gives you entrées into these people at the top who are going to be funding the programs, you know, that the institution can provide. You’ve heard of Lou Jenn, haven’t you? Jenn-Air?
Scarpino: Oh, yes, yes.
Ryder: Yeah, well, here was this company, the guy invented Jenn-Air…
Scarpino: Right.
Ryder: … and he was on my committee. The guy that builds all the coffins down in Batesville, he was on my committee. So I had some top-level…
Scarpino: So basically you had a Board of Directors composed of people with talent and money.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. That’s right, that’s right. And of course, Lafayette people like that too, your potential contributors, and that helps and so on. In that program – well, let me tell you this little story about this. When we started the
Associates Degree program in Computer Technology, I was looking for people. This guy comes in and he’s got real long hair, moustache, beard, long sideburns and stuff, and I looked at his credentials and they really looked good. He says he wanted a job. I said, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go home and change all your appearance and come back in several months and maybe we’ll give you some more consideration.” Well, the guy did exactly what I said and he came back, no beard, his hair was nice and all that, and…
Scarpino: It’s amazing how many people got haircuts when it was time to get a job.
Ryder: … and he came back and I hired him. Two months later, he had it all back and I couldn’t fire him because he was too damn good at his job. (Laughter) Scarpino: Well, that happens, doesn’t it?
Ryder: So it was my mistake, but, you know, those were the times. Those were the times when – you could tell an IBM representative by how he dressed, what kind of shoes he had on. I mean, they required that the people get an IBM look.
Scarpino: But IBM also helped to fund your Associates Program.
Ryder: Oh, sure.
Scarpino: In addition to student enrollment and so on, that same press release that I read that was touting your accomplishments indicated that you had grown the faculty and administration in the Indianapolis orogram from 34 to 140, and…
Ryder: Well, I don’t even remember that, but…
Scarpino: … I mean, the exact numbers are less important than the fact it was a significant amount. To what end?
Ryder: Well, in service, this whole area of adult education and so on, I hired a Purdue Ph.D. I haven’t talked with him in a while, but he’s in really bad shape. He’s going to die, you know, pretty soon. Unfortunately, he’s got – what is it, Lila? What do you call that? The disease? Ebbert?
Mrs. Ryder: I feel like you’re referring to all…
Ryder: Ebbert.
Mrs. Ryder: Parkinson’s.
Ryder: Parkinson’s, yeah, he has Parkinson’s disease. We meet him off and on and it’s not good. But anyhow, he was fantastic. He was a real go-getter. He worked systems, he knew the area, and lived up north of Indianapolis. He and his wife moved to Indianapolis. They’re not far from Keystone, you know.
Anyhow, then I hired – well, we got interested in Columbus because the people in Columbus – now, did I have a Columbus member? I don’t think so.
Columbus was a town that’s been interested in education. It’s a town that they provided the money to all the churches down there so that they could build…
Scarpino: Oh, Cummins Engine, yeah, paid for the architectural design, yes.
Ryder: Yeah, really good facilities and artistic ones. People would come from all over to see what they’ve done. This fellow was hired – his name was Emerson Gilbert – well, I hired him, but Marv Ebbert recommended him to assist him in the adult education pro – is that what we called it? I’ve forgotten – or continuing education.
Scarpino: So who was Marv Ebbert?
Ryder: Marv Ebbert, I appointed as head of this continuing education aspect and then he hired this fellow who had either – I think he had part of his Ph.D. at Ohio State done, but he hadn’t finished it. As time went on, we developed an interest in this Columbus area. So I brought him out of that role and put him in charge of studying the Columbus situation and determining whether that should be a satellite campus of IUPUI. In other words, was there something down there that we should be addressing? We thought there was because we were having communication with the leadership people down there…
Scarpino: And, of course, IUPUI did establish it.
Ryder: Oh, yeah. Then we established it.
Scarpino: So you expanded the student body, you added administrators and faculty, you also added physical facilities.
Ryder: Yeah.
Scarpino: Right? Were you surprised by the merger? Did you see it coming?
Ryder: Well, I would say that when…
Scarpino: Because it sure looked like you were planning for Purdue to have a presence…
Ryder: Oh, yeah.
Scarpino: … as IU was doing the same thing.
Ryder: Yeah, yeah. When Lugar came out with that position, basically what he was saying is he was getting the feeling, and it may have come more from IU really than Purdue, that the state was not adequately supporting the units in Indianapolis.
Scarpino: Right.
Ryder: And that’d be a good thing for him too as a politician to have a university named Indianapolis University.
Scarpino: He was definitely an advocate of a major university in the city, yeah.
Ryder: Oh, yeah, yeah. Well now, I can’t tell you whether underneath he was just looking for more collaboration or whatever. I think he would have been happy if it became independent. Now, you could have accepted medicine and dentistry and law…
Scarpino: Lugar actually gave a speech at the legislature advocating a university and then the two presidents of IU and Purdue basically sat down and put this merger together. When did you find out about it?
Ryder: Well, actually I don’t, I may be exactly clear, but I think that I was in the meeting with Lawshe and Ryan, I think, and I don’t know whether there was another IU representative – I don’t know if, what’s his name…
Mrs. Ryder: John. John Buhner, was he?
Ryder: No, no. He wasn’t there. He was not there. Who’s the Chancellor?
Chancellor…
Scarpino: Herman Wells?
Ryder: No. Chancellor, no, I’m sorry. There was no Chancellor. He was Dean of the Dental School and that is…
Scarpino: Maynard Hine?
Ryder: Maynard Hine. He may have been there. I think maybe he was. So there was a discussion about this whole thing. Here we have the Mayor of
Indianapolis proposing this; do we want to have this happen? If so, what we would do. But maybe there’s a better way, and if we collaborate more that might have the same impact, but would have the strengths of both Purdue and IU and their name. So they concluded that we’d like to do that. And I’m not even sure that this is correct. But, I thought, but I said, “Well, why don’t we just call it Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis?” And somebody said, “Well, that sounds good.” Now, I don’t know whether I was or whether I was just feeding off somebody else or what, but…
Scarpino: So you were at this meeting when IU and Purdue decide to cooperate and merge.
Ryder: Right, yeah. I know Lawshe was there and I think it was John Ryan, but I could be wrong. But in any event, the conclusion was that that’s what they would call it and they would use the terms IUPUI. We got all kinds of stuff, PUI and, you know, in Indiana people didn’t want PU in their name, or
whatever, and all that kind of stuff. But they also concluded as a result of the fact that Indiana had a dental school and the preeminent medical school that would all become part of this, although they are kind of fiefdoms of their own, that this would apply to everything. But under that, you know, those medical schools didn’t lose their identity or the law school or the dental school. The Dean of the dental school would become the Chancellor because you had more economic impact than Purdue did in Indianapolis, that he would be the Chancellor and I would be the first Vice Chancellor, and that’s how we started out. Maynard Hine was a great guy; I liked him a lot. He was a good
administrator. He functioned in a very positive way. Now, how do you then bring these two things together?
Scarpino: That’s what I want to talk to you about. How did you do that?
Ryder: Okay, okay.
Scarpino: I’ve got some questions, but let’s just start with the big picture. How did you did you do it?
Ryder: Okay, how do you do it? Maynard and I talked about that, how do we do it?
Here we have Indiana with its liberal arts strength and here we have the science and technology strengths with the Purdue faculty. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong people in liberal arts, but this is where the
reputation is. Reputation for the arts at Purdue is not anything like their technology, you know, that kind of thing. So we said, “What if we were to say that” – first of all, we have to decide what programs would get a Purdue degree and what programs would get an IU degree. So we just carved that out along those lines that I just mentioned. We had the science, math, and engineering or technology and IU had the music, or whatever all would be there under liberal arts. We said, “Well, how do we get our people in liberal arts with Purdue to be with the people over here with Indiana?” I can’t say that this was all done just by us. We probably consulted with the people, with the guy who headed up the program at IU and, of course, I was the one heading up the program at Purdue.
Scarpino: And it was Jack Buhner who headed up IU?
Ryder: No.
Scarpino: No?
Ryder: No, he wasn’t on board then.
Scarpino: Okay.
Ryder: But in any event, that’s what we decided to do and so here’s what we said, is the faculties from let’s say English in both places would get together and they would talk, evaluate, and appoint a Chair. And believe it or not, and I’m talking about academic areas now, there were one or two occasions where the IU people appointed a Purdue person, but many more of the areas were IU because they had either more people and so forth. So that’s the way those started out. In the science, IU didn’t have as much as we had in science and technology – and they had no technology or engineering – and so typically there it fell to Purdue. Now, there was another component. We had administrative areas to put together. Well, how would we do this? And this is interesting. We said okay, we’re, we’re going to combine two units; the strongest person should be put in charge.
Scarpino: And who got to decide?
Ryder: I have a hunch that that was the two of us at that time. The other thing is that the perception was, not just between the two of us, in my judgement, in general in the institution, that Purdue – meaning me and my colleagues – were the administrators and the other people from IU were more academics who were assigned administrative roles, some of which they didn’t know a damn thing about, but they took them. So Purdue’s people got more of the administrative roles because they were more experienced and capable,
frankly. That’s my judgement. So admissions, registration – what am I thinking of? I don’t know, maybe the adult education program, you know, continuing education, and things like that – those got leadership mostly from the Purdue side. And it’s because of the tradition of this sort of thing between the two institutions. There was a newspaper article that came out and it basically said, well, about Purdue and IU getting together, he said how we can bring together these two organizations when one, Purdue, is basically a corporate kind of organization. You know, they have a person in charge and people underneath them, and they tell them what to do, and then they tell them. They have an organization chart, and everybody understands what their role is, and it’s all carved out. Indiana University – this is in the newspaper now – is like mesh bag organization; you push it in here and it pops out over here and you push it in here and pops out over there. You never know who’s got charge of anything.
Scarpino: They certainly had different institutional cultures.
Ryder: Yeah, different cultures. And I thought, well, you know, that pretty well represents what I’m seeing.
Scarpino: Well, you know, if you think about it, you had a chance to do something that almost no one ever gets the chance to do…
Ryder: I know, I agree.
Scarpino: … which is create a place from scratch.
Ryder: Yeah, yeah.
Scarpino: I mean, there were things there. It wasn’t completely scratch…
Ryder: Oh, that’s right, that’s right.
Scarpino: … but you created a university.
Ryder: Right, and I felt very good about the whole thing, not that our people got all these administrative roles. They were just better, I think, at it. They had more experience, they were more knowledgeable and so forth. They’d studied in the field and a lot of these other people, who were academics – they’re good academics – but they were assigned administrative roles and they maybe had never taken a course in administration. So anyhow, it went on and obviously it’s been a success. You have to look at the results over a long time and the institution has…
Scarpino: You had to combine faculty, you had to combine administration…
Ryder: Right.
Scarpino: You had to combine physical facilities, there was that long-term goal of moving things down to the downtown campus.
