VT Stories Oral History with Nick Moga, November 20, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: Good afternoon. This is David Cline for the VT Stories Oral

History Project. Today is Friday, November 20, 2015, and I'm here at the Alumni

Center. If you could just introduce yourself, and if you would just so we can

use this later start in a full sentence, my name is… Tell us your name, your

year of birth and your year of graduation.

Nick Moga: My name is Nick Moga. I was born in 1954. I graduated Tech in winter

of 1976.

Cline: Nick, just start if you would a general description about where you were

born and raised and a little bit about your family.

Moga: I was born in Hubbard, Ohio, actually near Youngstown, Ohio. My mother and

father are both of Romanian [00:00:54…tion]. They were first generation. 00:01:00Grandparents came over around the 1900s, 1899. Grew up in Ohio, lived there

until I came to Tech.

Cline: What were your interests growing up, family life like?

Moga: My dad was an engineer kind of and my mom was a nurse. I enjoyed sports. I

enjoyed reading. I was a raucous reader. My mother had the Reader's Digest, and

I think they were not true, they were abridged books, but you had every one of

them, and I started reading probably when I was 5 or 6 and finished them by the

time I was 10, which was like 50 volumes. I loved to read.

Cline: Worked your way from one end to the other.

Moga: Yeah, and I still love to read. I read differently now with an e-book, but

I had that love from early on.

Cline: Did others in your family go to 00:02:00college? Did you have a sense that you would?

Moga: Yes. My father went to college and my mother went to nursing school, but

not many others in the family did that. They were kind of the first ones on both sides.

Cline: As you were getting through your high school years and thinking what you

would do next how did college and then Tech sort of enter your…?

Moga: College was always you were going to go. It wasn't kind of an option, and

I did well in school, so it was what I wanted to do. I knew early on I wanted to

try to do aerospace engineer. I had the bright lights. I wanted to be an

astronaut. You know kids want to be a fireman, want to be a policeman, I wanted

to be an astronaut, and so I wanted to do something in that. My dad told me

about aerospace engineering, that was indeed in engineering, and so that was an

interest even in the later part of high school.

Cline: Can I ask you about, so in your growing up what sort of the role of 00:03:00 space

was, the space program at that time and what that did for you?

Moga: Yes. I lived it. I grew up with it. You know John Glenn circled the earth

when I was about I guess 8 or 9. They landed on the moon in '69 when I was in

high school, so the program, you know we stayed up. I watched. I was enthralled.

I wanted to go. [Laughs]

Cline: So that was very much of your time.

Moga: It was living and breathing and hearing wonderful voices on the air about

wonderful things we can do. I think you know John Kennedy challenged us to go

there and challenged the generation to really move technology forward, so it was

not just going into space, but everything in technology. It probably was the

foundation for everything, a lot of the stuff we have from our cell phones to

this recording device.

Cline: So you had a goal in mind it sounds like at some point in high school and

starting 00:04:00looking for colleges that would offering you an engineering, aerospace

engineering program?

Moga: That's exactly correct and that's kind of how I was led here. I had a

wonderful guidance person at high school and she took me under her wing and she

said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to be an aerospace engineer."

And she said, "Well you've got good grade, let's find some of the better ones."

So we did and at the time I guess Tech was in the top 10, but I applied here,

MIT, Case Western Reserve, Ohio State, those type of places.

Cline: Had you ever been to Virginia?

Moga: I had never been to Virginia, well maybe Washington, DC, but I had never

been to Virginia and certainly had never been to Virginia Tech. My parents were

good at this and wanted me to vet it quite… And so the summer before my senior

year we visited at least several of them. We went to MIT. We went up to

Cleveland to see Case. We did not come to Virginia Tech. However, that fall I

had sent some 00:05:00correspondence to the University here…my guidance counselor

about the program and talking about the different things you could do. In the

Aerospace Department Professor James Marchman wrote me a letter back in the

letter days and invited me to come to Virginia Tech. They said you provided

transportation we would take care of you for the weekend. He was an assistant

professor here, kind of ran the wind tunnel, so I thought that was great. And so

I got an extra day off school and worked up some money so we could fly down from

Cleveland to Roanoke. Dr. Marchman picked me up from the airport. How about

that? And brought me in and showed me around, handed me off to an aerospace

engineering student who lived in Pritchard, for a weekend. It was a basketball

game weekend or something like that, and spent all the time and did that stuff.

At 18 years you know and you're in a 00:06:00college dorm I had a great time. It was

wonderful. [Laughs]

And that was a better than I've had. MIT was very very clinical and I had some

questions like what can undergraduates do? Undergraduates don't do anything at

MIT. You know when you're in grad school we let you do some stuff, you're

supposed to be here to learn. Well when I came to Tech undergrads were doing all

kinds of research and all kinds of wonderful things, and Dr. Marchman just

showed me all these things that were going on in aerospace and that was great.

My other choice Case had a lot of stuff going on, but it was in downtown

Cleveland, and even today downtown Cleveland is revitalizing, but it's just

really kind of scary. It was in Little Italy, which was not the best of the

times back then. That was kind of another thing. Whereas you come down to

Blacksburg, gosh, you're in God's country. I grew up in an urban area, so this

was just kind of really great for me.

Cline: Can you remember what that was like being driven in by a future professor

and seeing this place for the first 00:07:00 time?

Moga: Oh, the first time I saw Tech I said man, it's way out here. And you see

the barns coming in here and I'm saying well, what's going on? But when he drove

me around the drillfield before he took me to Randolph Hall, which didn't look

as nice as all the rest of them, but you see around the drillfield, all the old

Hokie stone and everything which is gorgeous. I kind of had the stars in my eyes

already before we even got to the red brick building.

Cline: That weekend of coming here was that was sold you?

Moga: Yeah yeah. But my parents wanted me to go through the whole process, so we

went through the whole thing. MIT had a vetting process where you went and met

one of the graduates who was local and had the interview process with him, and

that didn't go real well. He forgot about it and left me sitting out there for

about a half an hour. We finally got through all that. Case had me up for a new

student thing or had something open house that we went to. And so I did not

decide that I was coming to Tech just 00:08:00because it was so far away until the day

you had to put it in the mail and it had to be there. I took my acceptance

letter to the post office to get it stamped, but it was that day.

And my parents talked to me about all these things, and at the time Virginia

Tech out of state was going to be less expensive for me than Ohio State,

in-state, and certainly much less than Case Western Reserve, even with some

scholarships and MIT was, I think my dad said, "You need to know Nick that MIT

costs more than I make in a year." [Laughs] So it was scary back then. He said,

"We'll work it out," but the price back then was just marvelous to come to Tech.

And so I did. I said I was coming and I've been the first one from my high

school to come to Virginia Tech. I wasn't the last. In the class right behind me

a fellow who was in Key Club with me, John Heinemann came to Virginia 00:09:00Tech. He

joined the fraternity I was in. He was my little brother, so we've had several

from high school since then.

Cline: Great. Started the Ohio connection.

Moga: Yeah.

Cline: So what year was it that you arrived on campus?

Moga: '72.

Cline: Tell me how things were for you when you first got here and moving in

that first year.

Moga: Lee Hall out there by the tennis courts, which I thought was great. My

college roommate they assigned me, another guy with the name of M. Tom Moffatt I

believe was his name. He smoked, I did not. He was a Virginia boy in theater, a

lovely guy. He was a good friend of mine all through college, but he smoked and

I didn't and that was just kind of…eh. We were up on the 7th floor of Lee

Hall. I met another guy, David Morris, who was on the other end of the hall

whose roommate left I think, and he said, "Hey, I've got room." He said, "If you

want to get away from the smoking come on over." So we moved over and had a nice

view of the tennis courts on 00:10:00Washington Street, so that went well.

Class was quite the shock. I had always done things you know without much

studying really. I did not have good study habits, and I got thrown into a

couple of large classes and a couple of classes that everyone else seemed like

they had already had it before, so I struggled. It was an interesting fall

quarter. I got saved by another professor, a wonderful guy by the name of Dr.

Luther Brice. You might have heard of take it twice Brice in some other peoples'

recollections. He was just the most wonderful guy.

So I was taking honors chemistry from him. I qualified for honors chemistry and

it was a four-hour class when we were doing quarter systems. And about I would

say a third of the way through the first quarter he called me in after class,

and I had not really talked to any of the 00:11:00professors. It was freshman year; I

hadn't gotten into aerospace. I was just taking all the calculus and English and

everything else everybody else was. The professor actually called me into his

office and I was doing maybe Cs in the class, which was not what I was used to,

and he sat me down and he said, "Mr. Moga I've looked at your file and you're

not doing as well as you should be doing in my class. What's going on?" Which

was a good question. "I'm having a good time here but it's studying." He said,

"Well I'm going to help you with that." He says, "This weekend we're going to my

house on Claytor Lake and we're going to do a little studying. We're going to do

a little sailing. Do you know how to sail?" "No, I don't know how to sail," he

had a sailboat, "And we're going to do that and I will pick you up at 5 o'clock

on Friday." Boom. Well I went out to the place. I met his family, talked with

him. He worked on some things, on habits on how to do things and put it in a

chemistry type setting.

He had me come to his 00:12:00office once or twice a week. I remember going a lot more

than I should have to try to get help and to try to understand what he was

talking about. It changed my career from then on. That quarter I did eh because

I really hadn't studied, but from then on I did a lot better. He was the one

that really kind of got me focused and it was just wonderful. He was a friend of

mine until I graduated. I think he picked one or two students every quarter and

they were his projects.

Cline: I was going to ask that because it's such a remarkable story of someone

choosing you out of a big classroom, but offering a kind of mentorship.

Moga: I don't think you could get it anyplace else. I think back about Dr.

Brice's doing that and I said how did that change my life. I could have been

like a lot of people, I was in engineering, aerospace of course, and engineering

at Tech is very 00:13:00tough. I've taken grad school at a lot of other places and I

learned stuff here undergraduate that a lot of other people don't get until grad

school, so I know it's tough, and I know it's a very good program. I might have

been with some other people where we used to call engineering pre-business,

where you just ended up someplace else, you couldn't hack it. But he got my nose

to the grindstone so I could figure out how to get through and did well, so I

will always thank him for that.

The other professor, Mr. Marchman who brought me here, I would hike over to the

Aerospace Department where he was and ask him if I could be doing stuff and he

found stuff for me to do. I did work study with him all four years. As he

promised we could do research. I worked in the wind tunnel. It's still here, the

big wind tunnel over there on campus. Back in the day when I first got here the

wind tunnel had been given to them by 00:14:00NASA Langley and it collected data. It had

of these instruments and tubes and everything else, and it would come back to

this big long, I think it was about 4 feet or 5 feet long and it was just

numbers on a roll, just like those stamps that you would get to put the date

down. Do you remember those? And they just would just roll. So what happened is

the numbers would come in. The instruments would do whatever things and it would

put numbers here, and the numbers would come down onto a carbon paper, and then

on regular paper and go boom, every so many seconds. And then the undergrads we

would take our rulers and we would mark off numbers and that would be the

measurement and there was a key code that would measure it for each one of these

things. Now you can imagine doing that on any kind of trial that they had there

which is incredibly labor intensive. And so my junior year project Dr. Marchman

gave me was to computerize that. Let's stop doing all this 00:15:00marking, let's put it

in this…

And there weren't any laptops or desktop computers, it was a mini version of the

IBM 360 that we had there, but we got it so that we would come out and say now

what we're printing out it would give you the pressures and the drag

co-efficients and everything else. That was my claim to glory at the Aerospace Department.

Cline: It is remarkable to think back and think how things were.

Moga: Oh yeah. It's quite the change, and they got me really interested in doing

hands-on type stuff, which I've done all my life.

Cline: Can you tell us more about that? We can come back to Tech too, but what

did you go on to do? Did you get to do your aerospace here?

Moga: I did. I did my aerospace, graduated in March of '76 and took a job with

the Navy in the Naval Service Weapons Center, well, actually with Indianhead

Maryland. First I was an aerospace engineer GS7 00:16:00something, or whatever the

starter was, and did some nice projects. I had met my wife here. She was an

undergrad and we met our junior year. We weren't married at the time, but she

got her first job teaching in Stafford County Virginia, and so I kind of looked

around and there was this other Navy base not that far away and I got

transferred there after eight or nine months, and so we were in close proximity

and then we got married.

But I was in the aerospace group there and we were in charge of missiles and

rockets, anything that we put on a ship. I did computational fluid dynamics

there with them, took some classes from Tech grad school there and ultimately

went to NC State as a graduate in computational fluid dynamics. I wrote a

program to optimize missiles and rockets and shells so you could put in some

kind of 00:17:00criteria, how big things you wanted it, if you wanted to make boom this

thing would tell you what is the most optimized shape for that thing. It was one

of those that were written, and what written in IBM cards. At the time at NC

State which was the same was here, we had the hanging [00:17:18 chads] you hard

one card with one thing hanging and the whole thing, I had a nightmare, I my

thesis was the program that we do this was like four boxes. To run it you had to

take it to a computational center in the triangle between Duke and Carolina and

NC State, and they would only let me run it at 2 in the morning because it was

so intensive. You parked on one side of the street and then walked to the other

side of the street, so I had nightmares and I still have nightmares to this day

of walking those cards and a car coming by and they go flying. It never

happened, but, and I had the same nightmares here at Tech when we would have to

go to the basement at Burruss where the big computer was, the old IBM 360 we had 00:18:00 there.

So I had an interest in computers, okay. I went to grad school, finished up with

a master's and actually mechanical and aerospace, and went back to the Navy.

After that I got a job offer related to my graduate work with a company called

Ethyl, and they wanted me more on the fluid dynamics mechanical engineer. They

had their project engineering group in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So we were living

up near [00:18:30 Dolvin] in Fredericksburg and moved from there to Baton Rouge

where they stopped doing aerospace really because they were a chemical company

and made plastics and things.

And became a project engineer which kind of was a management thing and kind of

got me into management for a while. I worked for them for four years and decided

Baton Rouge while it was a lovely town and had great people there it was too far

away for both of our families. Mine were in Ohio and my wife was a Virginian in

Virginia, so we came back to Covington, Virginia with another plastics company

called Hercules, where I was a project engineering manager and then production

manager 00:19:00 there.

Along the way I started a computer business back in '85 right when personal

computers were starting. All I did was supply software to the big papermills up

there. Some of my friends who worked there in town, neighbors said, "Well we

have to call these people up to get software, can you do it?" And so I found out

how to do that and set up a company so I just supplied software with them. Well

it grew and grew and grew because you know how computers are and it's the old

disk computer company now up there and we work mainly with small businesses.

That's how that all got started, but it was just by knowing computers and loving

computers. I bought my first computer, it was an Apple 2, so I was right there

on the thing and a neighbor had a Trash 80, we called it TRS 80 from Radio

Shack. You had to write all the programs, there weren't any programs. I used to

subscribe to magazines that would be nothing but written programs and you would

type these babies in and see what they would do. And they were anything; a lot

of them were 00:20:00games, but a lot of them were like doing a lot of the stuff like I

had done with the Navy that would optimize things. I remember when we were

living in Baton Rouge and I had my Apple 2. My neighbor came over and was doing

an auction okay, and I wrote a database for him for the auction so we could take

all this stuff in and we could put it in and we could put a price tag on it.

When it sold, we could tell who it was and we could print out labels for all

that. He thought I was a genius. It was basic programming about 100 lines of

code and that was it.

Cline: Well you could have started eBay right there.

Moga: I could have. I missed that, oh. [Laughs]

Cline: Did you have a sense though, because I do remember those times too of

what this would all become?

Moga: I thought I did, because when I got back from like doing my thesis which

was four boxes, the first thing that happened to me when I went back to work was

I ended up with a desktop computer. Now it's not what you guys call a desktop

computer today.

It was a Tektronix 00:21:00things and it had 64k of memory and it cost over $50,000. But

one ended up on my desk because the government [00:21:06 has more] stuff. And I

translated my four boxes into that 64k and figured out how to make it work so

that you could go to the screen and everything would be there. Remembering the

horrible days here at Tech when we were getting the number and having to do it

to make the data easily readily available to you without having to do all the

hard work. So, I knew that that was a go. It was like seeing the Graduate movie

where they said plastic…, it wasn't plastics in the future, the future was computers.

Cline: You saw that and you saw how rapidly it changed.

Moga: Oh yeah. And the nice thing about being in it from the beginning is

because I got to meet a lot… I met Bill Gates when he was a young guy. I met

several other of the computer people, just going to conferences and they come.

They were just desperate at this time to get anybody to 00:22:00listen to what they had

to say. They were all very preachy. They all had a vision and you had to do it.

Steven Jobs was the worst of them. His vision was very you know, it was either

this way or no way and other people had other ways, but obviously they all did

very very well.

Cline: So let's go back to Virginia Tech. We talked about school, but I want to

ask about socials.

Moga: Okay.

Cline: Obviously, you met your wife here and you mentioned a fraternity?

Moga: Yeah, I belonged to Sigma Phi Epsilon, which was up on Clay Street. I was

playing tennis right outside my dorm room and a couple of guys came up and

played doubles with myself and another fellow from the dorm. And they said,

"Hey, why don't you come out to happy hour? We do that on Friday, 15-cent

beers." At the time drinking was legal. You had to be 18 years of age. I think

in Virginia all they had was [00:22:53 3-2] beer. I came home from Ohio where

you could have get everything [for 18], but when you're in 00:23:00college all you had

money for was beer. You didn't have money for anything else. That 15-cent beer

sounded good to me.

And so I went out there and I haven't come to Tech, I think I made friends

pretty easily, but I didn't have a large amount of friends and a lot of the

people at the fraternity had gone to schools in Richmond or in Northern Virginia

where they knew a lot of people. But they were very opening and the guy I ended

up playing tennis with became my big brother and he said, "You need to join,"

and we pledged class together. They were on the first nationals on campus. They

also were the first ones that had a no-hazing which I thought was kind of

important. I didn't really want to degrade myself in front of other people for

whatever they did. And their pledge period was more or less about knowledge,

learning about the fraternity, learning about the way to do things.

It made a big impact on my life during those years. Quite a few people from the

fraternity made a big impact on this University. One of my fraternity brothers,

Johnny Lawson, has served as rector and many other things 00:24:00here, and a lot of

people have gone on and done well from a group of us that were here back in the 70s.

I pledged in the spring of '73 and finished up that summer, went home and worked

in a steel mill. I drove the forklift truck and learned how to weld, good stuff

there. Made a lot of money. Steel mills back then paid a lot of money, and came

back and did not have a place the live. The way they did housing was a lot

different. There was a lottery and I'd lost, so there was an opening in the

fraternity house, so I went in the fraternity house. They immediately made me

social chairman. [Laughs] An engineering social chairman is an oxymoron; I can

tell you that. [Laughs] Had a wonderful time. Tougher on grades, but 8 o'clock

classes weren't my favorite during that year. I had a great time socially there.

I did a lot of things with them athletically. Intramurals were very important at

the time. I 00:25:00played tennis which I played in high school and played racquetball.

I learned how to play platform tennis. We had a platform tennis court out Castle

Coliseum. T. Marshall Hahn was the president, loved the game and put in a

T-court. Lord knows how much this thing cost. How you ever seen a platform

tennis court?

Cline: I don't even know what it is, no.

Moga: It's an elevated court and it looks like a mini tennis court except that

there are wire walls that go up 10 or 15 feet, and you play with a paddle that

has holes in it. Have you ever seen one of those paddles?

Cline: I have seen those, yeah.

Moga: The ball is like a spongy rubber ball and you play tennis court rules.

Tennis rules you on get one serve. Other than that, they are scored the same,

but you can play it off the walls being that they are wire, so if you hit one

hard and it comes off you can play it off there and play into it, so that was

wonderful to learn how to play that. Won an intramural championship and got the

t-shirt. It was 00:26:00fun. [Laughs]

But being part of a fraternity, you had to do some kind of intramurals, whether

it was [00:26:08 C team] softball on the drillfield or something else. You had

to do something and that kind of get me into it. And they were also big on

leadership. A lot of the people do leadership things on campus was encouraged. I

was president of the AIAA, American Institute of Aerospace Engineers while I was

here, and did a lot of projects with them. My junior and senior year did

projects where we would take them to a national conference, and even back then

the Aerospace Department was always being first, second, or third in all that

stuff, so it was very rigorous and good stuff that we were doing back then.

I met my wife through the fraternity. Going sophomore to junior year there was a

downturn in the economy. There was no more steel mill 00:27:00jobs for guys coming back

for the summer time, so I said well I'll go to summer school.

So I went to summer school and was living out [00:27:04] fraternity brothers and

one of them had a party and my wife was in Slusher also and coming to summer

school, and a couple of the girls on the hall dragged her over. I met her then

and was interested and said hello. She said, "Well you need to know one thing

about me, I'm going off to New Zealand on a study program come this fall." And

so she did and I wrote her and kind of kept her up… She may have the letters,

I don't have mine, but she wrote back and we corresponded over that year, and

when she came back from New Zealand after I think two quarters we started dating.

Cline: What was going on on campus in those days in terms of that particular period?

Moga: Oh lots of wonderful things. It was the Vietnam War and protests were

weekly it seemed like on the 00:28:00drillfield. Anti-war, anti-everything, it was a

time of drugs, a lot of experimentation with drugs in the world. A lot of people

not wanting whatever their parents had done, so it was a turbulent time. Russell

would have it seemed like to me every month or so an explosion on over at

Radford. They would blow something up there and it would shake the campus over

here, which was interesting. That's the company I eventually went to work for,

Hercules that ran the plant over there, so that was interesting.

When I was young and impressionable we had a group and in the house fraternity

we had a group of fraternity brothers from Seton Hall New Jersey come down. And

of course, we had a nice long evening with some beer and some other food and

stuff and around midnight they said, "Okay we're going to go streak the

Hardees," and I 00:29:00didn't know what streaking was. I had no idea. I'm the social

chair. I'm the one that's supposed to shut the bar down. And so they drag me in

and we streaked Hardees. It was the first streak on campus in 1973, fall.

[Laughs] Mark it down.

Cline: Historical moments, yes.

Moga: And it made the paper. There's an article that Hardees got streaked at

about 1:30 in the morning. Hardees stayed open until like 2 or 3 in the morning

on Main Street and Clay. Then people starting streaking everything. I mean

during one of the protests I was trying to go to a class and there was a protest

on the drillfield and signs were being held outside Dr. Hahn's office and

someone streaked by and there was a policeman chasing him. It was interesting times.

Cline: Did the protests around there divide the campus or was it just something

always going on?

Moga: Well because we had a real small contingent of Corps at the time, I would

say they say they were probably at their smallest, maybe 3 or 400, someone can

give the 00:30:00 details.

They were one thing and one of our fraternity brothers was in the Corps, and a

lot of my aerospace engineering classmates were in the Corps. Of course their

opinion of what's going on versus a lot of the War, the protests… I didn't see

the purpose of us being in Vietnam. My father served in World War II, all his

family did and a lot of the people on both sides of our family served in the

War, but War just seemed to have a purpose. Fighting communism, fighting the

political… I didn't see that danger as much as maybe some of the other people

did. But I went and worked for the Navy and certainly was proud of the work we

did protecting the United States during that time. But yeah, I would say it was

divisive definitely, but for most 00:31:00students there was a very I would say minority

of students who were real excited politically. Most people were here getting

good grades and going to class. I would say engineers had very little time for

politics. We were taking 18 hours a quarter trying to keep our head above water

and get a beer on Friday.

Cline: What do you think Dr. Hahn's influence was?

Moga: Oh, he was an interesting man. I didn't know him like a friend of

anything, because of the aerospace engineering thing, and we had done some

things with him, he had a vision for the University. He had definitely grown the

University. From the time I entered until the time I left it went from like

12,000 to 15 or 16,000 students, and so he had a vision of making this a true

land grant institution, which I think he felt it wasn't before. It was a small

military school and that he was going to do those other things.

He encouraged the 00:32:00research, which I thought was good, as Dr. Steger didn't in

his years to a large extent. So I can see him doing that, but he was probably

better off where he went, Georgia Pacific as a great leader of industry. He

tended to I think treat the University type thing as an industry. He was

definitely here and we definitely knew he was the president. He left while I was

here and Dr. Lavery actually I think came my senior year and that's who signed

my… I did not know Dr. Lavery at all.

Cline: So obviously you saw a great deal of change as you said at that time and

we've seen a great deal of changes since then, so what is your opinion? Can you

believe it walking around here now and what do you think about the change and

where we might go?

Moga: Yeah, I am ambivalent, I think a lot of students and alumni would think

about the same thing, I am very proud of the 00:33:00instruction, the family, the home

thing we do.

Certainly we didn't have on the academic side the number and choices that we do

nowadays. I think there were more departments doing very well. Having come from

which I consider and I think the data shows is one of the best in engineering,

there are now lots of really good ones. Our business program was probably eh,

average when I was here, but it's much much better now. So the rising tide of

better academics, and also the student base is much better. When I came here if

you were breathing and a Virginia student you got into Tech. That's no longer

the case as we well know. I've done a lot of stuff with the alumni associations

and scholarships and the kids are very very sharp coming in here with the

average grades of 4.0 and stuff. So that in itself will raise a lot of the stuff

[that is done here].

The overall, I'm very proud of the overall expansion that we've done in

buildings and how we've kept to the 00:34:00Hokie stone type of architecture. I saw them

construct this building. My wife was on the design team. She was on the Alumni

Association Board for this building, and so that was a wonderful thing to have

the alumni…really have their own building where they did not have that before.

The Torgersen Arch right there by the drillfield just sets off that part of the

campus. I love that we haven't become a bunch of Slusher Towers. I think that

was probably a mistake. That got finished while I was here, but having the five

or six story buildings I think was a great architectural move, so I really like

that. And we haven't lost the beauty. I mean you can walk around the drillfield

and see the duck pond and it was just as glorious as when I was here.

Cline: 00:35:00We've covered a lot already, changes you've seen and what you would like

to see.

Moga: I'm hesitant on us growing too fast. I know Dr. Sands has a vision of

huge, you know, high estatish almost, and I'm hesitant that we go there and not

lose. When I was here a large class was like 120, and I know the classes can be

4 or 500 on certain Sociology 101 or something like that. I know you can take a

class to do well in it, but I didn't really get much out of those classes. I

enjoyed being in aerospace where I our classes were 30 or 40 people with an

instructor, and that seemed to work out pretty good, so I worry a little bit

about that. I am thrilled that we have a medical school, that we're going 00:36:00 there

and look forward to us doing all the professional schools eventually.

I'm in favor of all that. I think to be a comprehensive university you need to

have all that and you need to have those resources among your alumni. I'm pretty

proud of the Alumni Association here. Both my wife and I have served on the

National Alumni Board. I'm an alumnus of NC State, my wife is an alumnus at the

University of Virginia, and there's a difference. Like the NC State alumni are

constantly asking for 50-bucks to join the Alumni Association. I just love that

Virginia Tech you're an alumni after you've got your one semester in and you're

an alumni for life and it doesn't cost you a penny, and they are not

fundraisers, but they are Hokie nation raisers. I belong to our local Alumni

Association in Fredericksburg in Baton Rouge and here in Covington and we do

good stuff. We raise funds for 00:37:00scholarships and we do ut prosim. We generally

live by that. I knew what ut prosim was when I came here as an undergraduate.

Even back in the 70s you were here to serve and that's what we're going to do,

and that's one of the things you learn. And I just love that over the years

we've kept that. The Relay for Life thing that goes on here which wasn't here

when I was here, I'm just so proud of the undergraduates that do that.

The Tech people that I meet and that have moved to our community or I meet

outside of here all have that thing. They all want to help out. If they get

involved with the Alumni Association they all ask what's our service projects.

What are you doing to help in the community? It's so important that whether it

be a Tech graduate or any graduate that you have that feeling of not of

entitlement but of giving back. Because you know, people that come through

college are going to be at the upper end of income and other things that go on

in life and they need to 00:38:00balance that out for those that aren't.

Cline: Is that sort of kept you connected?

Moga: I think so. I think so. The Hokie nation kind of developed while I was

here and stuff. I think people who are grads from the military days and then who

were grads when I came were not required to be in the military had a different

interpretation of what the Hokie nation was. You know they were talking about

their companies and doing stuff which is great and wonderful, but we more less

talk about what we can do and where we're going and more focused on the

University I think, just the way it's changed to what the Hokie nation is.

Certainly I was on the alumni board April 16th and that was very of course tough

for everybody, but it was very unifying and gratifying to see how we all came

together during that time.

00:39:01 Very sorry that that's what we're 00:39:00coming to that something like that

happens now quarterly it seems like.

Cline: Can you tell me a little bit about what that was like about coming

together in that way?

Moga: Um, you know April 16th happened and we had a board meeting a couple of

weeks later, so we were here, the television trucks hadn't all left. You know of

course it was very sad, and you just can't imagine anything like that happening,

but it certainly scars you to the fact that it can happen, and that it's not the

event that defines you, it's how you respond to the event. And I'm just so proud

of how the Hokie nation did respond, whether it be Nikki Giovanni's wonderful

speech, Frank Beamer's wonderful thing, but the Yankees coming to town that's

what it's all about. 00:40:00Horrible things are going to happen. A college this big as

you well know there are students who start…don't make it. I lost a fraternity

brother while I was here. It's a large number of people and the odds are against

everybody coming out and how you respond to that and how you do that, you know,

that is going to be more defining.

Cline: You mentioned Frank Beamer. I was going to talk about sports. I would be

remiss if I didn't do that on this particular weekend, which for the record is

Frank Beamer is going to be coaching his last home game tomorrow. Can I ask you

about what you see is the role of sports here, it's part of the Hokie nation and

all of that.

Moga: Yeah, I'm not a big… I enjoy sports, I have season tickets to both

basketball and football. I come here and enjoy that as a social event. I think

it has a place and it certainly can raise the profile of the 00:41:00University. I decry

when it becomes the thing at the University. Now I think we're wonderfully

blessed to have Frank here, though after his third year you wouldn't have had my

support to keep him here, and I've told Frank this several times. [Laughs] After

the 2 8 and 1 season I didn't know. [Laughs] But he was a wonderful human being.

I've met him a couple of times and have met him many times since then. All the

flatitude that you hear about him are just so true. Sometimes on famous people

and famous people I've met who they are in the press and who they are in real

life are generally two general things. It's not with Frank. He's a Hokie. He

went here, he knows. He came in just after we opened up and you didn't have to

be in the Corps, '67, '66 timeframe, so he knew, he was there at the beginning

of the Hokie nation and feels all that.

I think sports are 00:42:00positive in giving people opportunities to come here. I think

that's a good thing and maybe Tech has emphasized is that we're going to try to

graduate you and we're going to try to… You know you're here first to get that

degree and then do all the other fun stuff, because so few make it to

professional sports. And especially in the minor sports, the Olympic sports I

think it's a wonderful opportunity for people to really kind of see it

differently. I'm thrilled that we have the academic back-up to help people

because I know it's a tough tough tough life to work 40 hours a week at sports

and another 40 hours at your academics, because it takes…[00:42:40] engineer

architects [00:42:43] sports. There isn't enough time.

Cline: Well anything that you were expecting me to ask that I didn't ask you or

that I should have asked you?

Moga: 00:43:00No. I think that the transition from the '70s to 2015 has been a real

gradual and there's been no big jump shift. It seems to be a smooth line. I

think when I talk to kids from our area that come to Tech after they've been

here a semester or two we have so much in common, as opposed to having 40 or 50

years not in common. When I see somebody and ask them what they are majoring in

and what they like they know I really care. I really want to know what they are

doing and I really want to hear what they like and what's going and what's not

going good. So I think that's very important that we keep that going and that we

have a good relationship between the alumnis and those becoming alumni.

Cline: 00:44:00Anything else I forgot to add?

Moga: All talked out. [Laughs]

Cline: All right.

Moga: I've got to save some scream for tomorrow.

Cline: Well thank you so much Nick. I appreciate it. That was a lot of fun.

Moga: Okay.

Cline: Thank you.