00:00:03Tamara: I am Tamara Kennelly. Today is September 25th, 2014. I am here today with Dr. Sandra Sullivan. If you don't mind, begin by giving us your name and the position that you had here at Virginia Tech.
00:00:35Sandra: My name is Sandra Sullivan. Many people on the campus call me Sandy, and I retired from the Vice President of Student Affairs position at the end of June 1988. Or, stepped down, I didn't retire.
00:00:54Tamara: I would like to begin and go back a while. Would you tell me about your family and how you grew up?
00:01:04Sandra: I grew up in Washington, DC. I went to public school throughout. My family worked for the government in Washington. They were socio-economically classified as blue collar. I was the first one in my family to go to college. My family, my mother made that possible by really being careful with her money. When I was at high school in Western, my chemistry teacher was Louise Jacobs Stull, who was in the first class of women to graduate VPI in 1921. She and her husband took an interest in me. The other university I looked at was University of Michigan. Because of my own socio-economic background, it was much more feasible for me to come to Virginia Tech, well, VPI back then, than it would have been for me to go to University of Michigan. The decision to go to University of Michigan would have meant that I wouldn't have seen my family. It would be difficult for them to finance a flight back around Christmas. So, although many international students leave home and never see their families for years, I was more comfortable being in a situation where I could get home. I was impressed by Louise Stull and her husband. They both were [Virginia] Tech grads, and they were very positive about Virginia Tech and the education that it offered.
00:02:46Tamara: So, your mother was working full-time just to…
00:02:49Sandra: My mother was a single parent, and we lived with my grandparents. In my family, people had to work to have enough money to take care of things. Back in those days, for a single parent, it was very difficult for a woman to make enough money on her own to raise a child. My mother made the decision to live with her family so that she could provide me with an opportunity. I announced very early on that I wanted to go to college. I saw education as a way of earning an income, because I certainly could tell from my mother that you couldn't be sure you wouldn't have to earn an income. She had to work very hard and worked her way up over the years. However, my family was aware that education opened doors that would allow you to have a good life. The American Dream, if you will.
00:03:59Tamara: Just going from your high school days, and your elementary, were athletics important to you?
00:04:06Sandra: Now what would take you there?
00:04:09Tamara: Well, I think it was something I read about how you were active in athletics. I just wondered if that was something that gave you a personal confidence.
00:04:20Sandra: You know there weren't organized athletics for women back then. The only kind of athletics you did was with the children in the neighborhood. I mean, there were organized sports for boys, but there weren't those for girls. Yes, as part of PE, I did play sports. I was well coordinated.
00:04:44Tamara: I had some impression that you in high school were playing on the basketball team, and that the team won the championship? You never know what you read in the newspaper. [Laughter].
00:04:59Sandra: Well, no, the only thing about my high school… we didn't have the kind of organized athletics. Basketball went from two dribbles to open dribbles and one roamer while I was in high school. However, there were no inter-school athletics where I grew up. I was successful within the parameters that were available. I was the youngest woman to ever earn a high school letter in my first year of high school. But that's not playing inter-school athletics, you know? It's sort of irrelevant, but that's what my friends and I did. I also was in Job's Daughters; I don't know if you know what that is.
00:06:00Tamara: No, I don't.
00:06:01Sandra: Well, you know the Masons. The women are in the Eastern Star, and the children either go into DeMolay if they're boys, or Job's Daughters if they're girls. I did go through the leadership equivalent of that organization.
00:06:20Tamara: What do Job's Daughters do?
00:06:23Sandra: It's a philanthropic effort, sort of along the lines of Masons and Eastern Star. You know, the Masonic Shriners and Shriners Hospitals. It's a community service kind of organization.
00:06:39Tamara: So that was before you came to college?
00:06:40Sandra: Yes.
00:06:41Tamara: I'm sorry about my misunderstanding.
00:06:45Sandra: Well, maybe they had me confused with somebody else.
00:06:47Tamara: Well, you never know what you read in the paper! [Laughter] I wonder if you could take me back to your first impressions of Virginia Tech when you came as an undergraduate. Does anything stick in your mind from when you first arrived here?
00:07:02Sandra: Yes, well VPI. I don't know how much frame of reference you have for the commons, but all right. I am in freshman orientation. There are 1,750 freshmen; 1,400 are male cadets. Three hundred fifty are what were then known as civilian students, and fifty of those were women freshmen. All the women lived in Hillcrest Hall. It was the only women's hall on the campus; we had our own dining hall. You only came to VPI if you were majoring in engineering, science, or home economics. I was a chemistry major, like Louise Stull. That's how I got interested in chemistry. She was an excellent teacher, and I loved it.
00:08:09Tamara: And so, the women…
00:08:12Sandra: Oh well here! What's the first impression? You have to imagine a Drillfield where three thousand men drill in beautiful formations. Every day they would practice. It was like being on a military post.
00:08:31Tamara: And fifty young women… Oh my goodness.
00:08:34Sandra: I mean you couldn't… the curricula and classes were organized around the Corps' schedule, and they drilled every day at four o'clock. Labs ended at four o'clock, and you would be coming out of lab and you would see them getting in formation to start practicing. The Highty Tighties would practice, so a lot of times you would come out and listen to the band. There was only a post office in Squires Student Center then, and everyone had to walk to it to get their mail. There were certain patterns, just built around life on the campus, primarily driven by the Corps of Cadets at that time.
00:09:21Tamara: There probably weren't too many women in chemistry.
00:09:25Sandra: There were two of us [freshmen] in chemistry, and there were nine total. I think.
00:09:34Tamara: Was it difficult to be one of the few women students as far as being in classes? Where you the only females?
00:09:49Sandra: What would you guess? Just take a stab.
00:09:52Tamara: [Laughter] It might have been kind of hard, but exciting too I suppose.
00:09:56Sandra: Well, Louise Stull prepared me well. She was one of five women, so I knew how it was going to be. I came for the education. It always had a strong reputation for its undergraduate education. It was very affordable, and I got to live away from home. I could have gone to the University of Maryland. There were other schools in my neighborhood, but it would have been more expensive if I had tried to live there and have housing than if I came here. If I just went to GW or Georgetown, I would have been a day student. Financially, it would have been an enormous sum. Now I will give you a figure because I remember it clearly. My roommate who was from Richmond, Virginia, her room, board, and tuition, for the year was $900. As an out-of-state student, mine was $1,200. Even in those years, compared to what you would have paid to go to the University of Michigan, let alone the transportation to and from, whereas the cadets would do carpools so you could get back home for about five or ten dollars. It was very affordable and it was a friendly campus. The students, now there were faculty who thought that women merely came to identify a husband and marry someone graduating from [Virginia] Tech. But there were also faculty, Dr. Furtsch [Edward Frank Furtsch] comes to mind. When I first went to my chemistry lab, there was a graduate assistant who was less than welcoming to me in the lab. I went to see Dr. Furtsch, Dr. Furtsch put me in his lab, E Furtsch was a wonderful faculty member, both as a teacher and as a human being. So he put me in his lab, and I did very well. But you did have to be cognizant of the circumstances in which you found yourself. There were faculty who felt less than warm toward the fact that women students were on the campus.
00:12:53Tamara: I guess at that time… The VPI-Radford merger was dissolved in 1964. But the women at Radford would be those who were in other kinds of disciplines.
00:13:11Sandra: Yes. Virginia had an education system where there were male schools and women's colleges, and they had sister schools. Radford was sort of the sister school to VPI, and a lot of the cadets went over to Radford to date. Radford had events to bring them over. That was actively pursued. That sense of here we're a women's college, you have all men, fifty women isn't all that many when you are talking about thousands of males. There was an active pathway back and forth. Same thing--UVA didn't accept women either, and Mary Washington was the college that they regarded as their sister college.
00:14:06Tamara: I believe that as a student you served as the only female member on the Student Affairs Council.
00:14:18Sandra: That's right.
00:14:22Tamara: Were there any issues that come to mind that were being considered at that time?
00:14:31Sandra: Well, I'm sure there were. Unless you produced an agenda from that time and gave me the issue, that is way too far away in my collective memory. I do know at the time that I was a senior, the administration was on the brink of a large expansion of women in 1967. I graduated in 1966. In my senior year, they had renovated one small hall that used to be used by Home Economics. They'd increased the freshman women's class, I want to say by a hundred, but it could have been less than that. In 1964, when Marshall Hahn announced that the Corps of Cadets would no longer be mandatory, simultaneous with that, they brought in a Dean of Women, Audrey Rentz, and I can't remember, but I believe she came in 1965. However, the person that I worked with in that capacity as a student leader was Dr. Jim Dean. I met Audrey Rentz, and I wasn't involved in her selection. But I do know that it didn't take hold; she was here a very short time. It's in Warren Strother's book, The Hahn Administration [Warren H. Strother and Peter Wallenstein. From VPI to State University: President T. Marshall Hahn Jr. and the Transformation of Virginia Tech, 1962-1974. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2004.] Even before I graduated, there was some small increase in the number of women. The upperclassmen could move from Hillcrest down into that hall, and the freshman were brought into Hillcrest. I stayed in Hillcrest my whole time. Then, the following year in 1967, they opened another hall. I can't remember if it was Campbell, but one of those halls became a women's hall, and they increased it even further. You would have to go into the files and see how the expansion numbers ran. I could look it up, but I didn't.
00:16:56Tamara: That's okay. So, after you graduated, you served as assistant dean of women at Mercer University in Georgia for a year. Does anything special stand out from that experience?
00:17:14Sandra: I think what was clear to me was if I wanted to have a career, I had to get another degree. Mercer University was a small, private, Baptist college. It was a great experience because it was private education, it wasn't public. It was an interesting year for me to see the differences, since I had always gone to public institutions prior to college. I went to a public institution in higher education. So, I had never been in a private school. It allowed me to contrast the differences in how governance occurs, and the role of presidents and other segments of the institutions. When I knew I had to get another degree, I applied for an assistantship at UT Knoxville and at Georgia. I was accepted at both. I went to both campuses. Decided that UT Knoxville was closer to my interests in terms of how it felt as a campus. I remember at summer orientation that I would say to any student that the most important decision is to select an environment that is comfortable. When I went to both, even though I was fond of Louise McBee, who was the dean of students, and later vice president at Georgia, as a campus, as a state, as a place to be, Knoxville felt more comfortable for me.
00:18:57Tamara: What were you studying at that point?
00:18:59Sandra: Well, because I had been a student leader, I decided I wanted to go into higher education administration. It was a very significant period of time in the evolution of higher education. You have to go back to what was going on. Up until the '60s, if you wanted to go into administration, you went up the traditional ladder in an academic department. Then you would get into administration. In the '60s, there was an enormous expansion of universities and colleges, right around the late '60s. If you look at the history of JMU [James Madison University], which used to be a teacher's college, you will see that all of the legislatures started changing the names of places and making them universities instead of colleges, expanding the curricular offering. There was a report out of California that encouraged the expansion of opportunities in higher education. You've got the community college coming into being. Well, it's very similar to World War II in that when you suddenly have all of these institutions in need of administrative officers, just like when America went into the war and had to have more officers to lead the troops, they created OCS [Officer Candidate School]. This was another way of getting a commission. Prior to that, you had to go to one of the academies. Same thing happened in higher education. Universities created the opportunity to major in higher education administration, and not go up the traditional ladder.
00:20:53Tamara: Although in fact, it seems you did go up; you had many positions along the way going up the ladder in a sense.
00:21:06Sandra: You mean before I was the vice president?
00:21:08Tamara: Yes.
00:21:09Sandra: Yes, because people have different philosophies. I always felt that I should get every degree at a different place so that I had a broader experience in terms of what I understood about a university. Some people stay within the same institution. It is driven by different factors, but yes, I wanted to have a broader view.
00:21:39Tamara: Just to make sure I got this right. You went to University of Tennessee where you were a Head Resident…
00:21:51Sandra: Yes, because that helped me finance my degree and also gave me work experience.
00:21:55Tamara: Yes, and earned your master's. Then you came back and for three years worked as administrative assistant for the Vice President of Student Affairs, who was Jim Dean, and he was the first vice president.
00:22:12Sandra: He was the first vice president. When Hahn changed the name of the university, he restructured his administrative officers to reflect a model more compatible with a university. For example, the commandant of cadets, who was sort of the chief Student Affairs officer when there was a Corps of three thousand, went from reporting directly to the president to reporting through the vice president for Student Affairs. It signaled a power shift if you think about it. Now the enrollment of the Corps was decreasing, while the enrollment in, I want to say student body, but then it would've been the civilian student body because it's still pretty new, was increasing dramatically once the requirement to be in the Corps was lifted. You have an enormous amount of change going on. To even try to capture it, you know they recently renovated Davidson Hall, but they preserved Davidson Hall in a certain way without destroying Davidson Hall. They wanted to maintain its character, but still change it to meet the needs of a modern-day university. Well if you go into building construction, anyone will tell you that it is easier to build new construction than to renovate existing buildings, and even more difficult to try and maintain and incorporate its original look so that you don't alienate people who are attached to what it symbolized in its earlier days.
00:24:48Tamara: People get very attached.
00:24:50Sandra: Yes, all of us, we say we want change, but I think we could look at many things that go on in our country. We want change if change is something you do differently, as opposed to something that I have to do differently. Then if I have to do something differently, what is it exactly that you are trying to take away from me? Because I know automatically that most of us, if we move out of our comfort zone, begin to wonder where we are, what it all will mean. But as long as we are in our comfort zone, we are comfortable with any change you wish to suggest. Are you familiar with VMI [Virginia Military Institute]?
00:25:43Tamara: Yes.
00:25:44Sandra: we are more similar to VMI when I came here than we were to the University of Virginia. So suddenly, with the decision to change the name of the university, to establish different colleges, different departments, and to expand the non-Corps student body until it was the dominant force--that's really what it meant. I don't know how else you could interpret it. If your sense of self and success were rooted in the Corps, and someone is now announcing that it will no longer be the fundamental structure by which the university is known, and nor will we be referring to it as VPI anymore… it's unsettling at the very least.
00:26:59Tamara: And I think difficult for many people. I know there was pushback on Hahn.
00:27:05Sandra: Yes, Hahn was exceptional--it took a very insightful, committed, strong leader to effect the changes that he did. The first aspect of change is that you have to announce it. You have to say, we are going to change these things. The minute the change is announced, the people who are not comfortable with it also go to work and say, I'm not sure I want to do that. It took real commitment on the part of the Board of Visitors and Hahn and his administration, Warren Brant. It was a really bold move. Clearly, when we look at it today, everyone can look back and say that it was essential. But at the time, it could have been argued, why are we doing this?
00:28:15Tamara: For people who loved the Corps it would be difficult.
00:28:22Sandra: Very difficult.
00:28:31Tamara: When you were at Florida State, you were the administrative assistant to the vice chancellor for Student Affairs?
00:28:40 Sandra: Of the system, yes.
00:28:42Tamara: Do you recall who was the vice chancellor at that point?
00:28:47Sandra: I could have looked it up; I can see him. But I frankly cannot remember his name. I was there for two years getting my doctorate. I worked there to help support myself and to gain an experience. Florida's system of higher education is run more like California's and very differently from Virginia. Virginia has a coordinating board, and Florida has a governing board. When I was in Florida, the institutions didn't have their own Board of Visitors. Subsequently, they do, but they didn't back then. They had chancellors, and the chancellors met as a board with the governing body, but policy was set at the state level, not at the campus level. It was also an interesting time because the way Florida had designed its system. They had a very elaborate community college system where you would go get your first two years, and then there were institutions, which were two-year institutions where you then were to transfer. Central Florida was one of them. Central Florida is now one of the largest universities in the country. It's like sixty thousand. It is a four-year school because over time, all of the two-year colleges wanted to become four-year institutions. They were in areas with very powerful legislative delegations: Hillsborough, Dade County, some of your most powerful legislative delegations in the State of Florida. The administrators were able to make these institutions four-year institutions because with only two-years, they couldn't develop enough political support to get the resources they felt they needed to be truly competitive.
00:31:02Tamara: So then you earned your Ph.D. from Florida State University. What was your dissertation concerned with?
00:31:12Sandra: I used Easton's political model to describe decision-making in higher education in the State of Florida. I did an interdisciplinary dissertation that involved a model out of political science and applied it to decision-making in higher education administration.
00:31:33Tamara: Then you returned, I believe, in 1975 to be the assistant director of Institutional Research.
00:31:41Sandra: Under Jim Montgomery, yes.
00:31:42Tamara: So that was kind of a move that would be in another area after being in Student Affairs.
00:31:52Sandra: Well, there's a logic to it. We were going to undergo an accreditation. Institutional Research studies how universities are put together. Their job is to study things like the composition of the student body, the composition of the faculty, and the allocations of positions. The accreditation was coming up, and I was assigned to that. The accreditation is when everybody does an in-depth study and produces a report on their area and then you work with a visiting team. It is sort of like a self-study of the whole university. I thought it was important. If you are going to function within a framework, it is always helpful to know the framework.
00:32:50Tamara: We still have those accreditation studies.
00:32:53Sandra: Well they are mandated.
00:32:55Tamara: …in our archives. I guess running parallel to all this--you were active in educational concerns at the state level as well as …
00:33:09Sandra: Right, I was the first state coordinator for Virginia in a program out of the American Association for Higher Education--let's see it was at DuPont Circle. Let's see, the Virginia Identification Program for Women in Higher Education.
00:33:27Tamara: I wonder what that was, or what you did?
00:33:31Sandra: I founded the Virginia Chapter of that initiative. I was selected by Emily Taylor among others. They wanted one person from each state, and I was selected from Virginia to form an organization to identify women in higher education in Virginia and use the organization to establish a network among them to try and help each other advance in our careers. This was a time when women were just beginning to get into visible positions of administration.
00:34:21Tamara: Was it a time when it was difficult for women to advance in higher education?
00:34:27Sandra: Yes. Initially. It's always the same. For one person to advance, someone else thinks they would have advanced if the other person hadn't. Concerning women, the structure was viewed as taking positions away from men because the government, through affirmative action, had mandated representation of women in structures to reflect the same representation in student bodies. The same thing was true in civil rights if you look back in that period of time. Now affirmative action or the advancement of people of color is more accepted. In those years, the Civil Rights legislation started with Johnson. It's a trickle down. There were no women's sports teams at Virginia Tech. You have to go back--all of that evolved in the '70s. That's when you had the March on Washington, you had the Southern Freedom Riders. It was a real period of change in America.
00:36:00Tamara: Did you have mentors that were helping you develop professionally and personally?
00:36:10Sandra: I recognize the question. Now when I went to Florida State, my major professor was a woman professor. She was a woman who had a nationally recognized program that she had built. So she certainly would have been one. She also had men students, because her feeling is that for women to be successful, men have to participate. It can't be an either-or. So, I went to that program because it was one of the highest ranked in the nation at the time, and I thought having a woman role model was important. She certainly was helpful. When I came back to the university, Laura Harper was the dean of the College of Home Economics. Within limits, I would certainly say that Laura Jane was helpful to me. I could call on her to talk. There weren't that many women, and it wasn't a peaceful time where you had free time to go see Laura Jane, you know.
00:37:44Tamara: Right, just get a cup of coffee.
00:37:46Sandra: [Laughter] It was a very dynamic time. There was a lot going on, and we were very busy. Remember that we were trying to change from one style of environment to another. Once you start that renovation, it is just a part of every day. It was a very active time.
00:38:20Tamara: I can imagine it would be. So you first served as acting vice president of Student Affairs starting in September of 1981.
00:38:34Sandra: Yes, because Jim Dean moved over into a different position.
00:38:37Tamara: Then in 1982, after an eight-month nationwide search, you were named the first vice president for Student Affairs at Virginia Tech. You were also the first woman to hold a university-wide executive position on campus. Your appointment made you the highest-ranking female administrator at Virginia Tech, so that was a big one. I saw a quote from President Lavery saying, "She wants very much to bring the division closer to the faculty of the university, and I am confident that with the support of all of us, she will succeed in that endeavor." Was that a goal that you were working on, to bring the division closer to the faculty.
00:39:33Sandra: Let's go back in time, because you can't look at the university today and see the university then. First off, I don't know how familiar you are with Bill Lavery or his administration. He was first and foremost, a man of integrity and a gentleman. He was very humanistic. Also, he was involved in an aspect of the government in Washington. I believe in Extension. I could look up all the exactness of it, but it is just too long ago to remember. Bill Lavery was a good choice by Marshall Hahn to continue his efforts. You have to bring peace to a campus in the midst of tremendous change. Lavery was very focused on trying to bring the campus together in the midst of following some decisions that had created a certain level of unsettlement. He had a very difficult job, and the faculty was reacting. If you have one group of faculty who have been here a long time and is prominent, but now you are expanding and creating more, it's sort of like if you were an only child and you were suddenly told, we are going to be a family of three or four. If you were five or seven years old and had a pretty good life going, you might not think having sibling was the best news because you might think to yourself, gee. That might mean I won't get all the resources directly. If I am one child, and you walk in with something, I'm not going to have to share it with others. Or they're not going to affect my life. With that expansion, we went from courses that were foundation courses supporting certain academic disciplines to creating departments. They would then have their own chairs and would want to bring in their own students. For instance, English, when I was a student, was just a foundation course for your major, even for chemistry. With the decision to create a College of Arts and Sciences, the English Department was going to evolve into an English Department, and you could major in it. When you change, you have to have senior faculty as well as junior faculty. You bring in a full professor to be a department chair who has an established background in the discipline who knows how to hire and develop a curriculum. Lavery was presiding over all of this change. The new faculty wanted a lot of resources to get their job done faster. They needed positions to fill aspects of the curriculum. That means that the traditional areas are less likely to get all of the new faculty positions. So there's tension. My generation, or the school of training when I went through, and again this is almost like imagining football before ESPN. When I was a student here and even during the Lavery administration, football games were on Saturday. You were just going to get a slot on the Saturday. Even if it was televised, they weren't doing college games throughout the week, or from 11 a.m. until… [Laughter] There was no ESPN until about 1978 or 1980. Virginia Tech didn't have a televised game on Saturday until the '80s. So now if you look at it, they're televising games on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They don't do Sundays because the pros are on. You know, it is like a whole different world. In those days, Student Affairs defined itself as supporting the academic mission. So did athletics. These were not quite in the role they are today. The first commitment of any student was to get their degree. Our services were to try and complement the academic mission of the university. So, it was a different way of presenting it. Now, universities have to recruit students. For example, if we were sitting in a room looking at statistics, Virginia Tech, I can remember it happening--JMU was growing tremendously and becoming one of the top choices for students in Virginia. Well that was a new factor for the university, for Virginia Tech to deal with. Long before that, students would either pick UVA, Virginia Tech, or College of William and Mary. JMU was a major competitor; so once you have to start competing for your students, you have to realign yourself again for the task. It was a way of saying to you… it was almost like a city. Something that is constantly redefining itself, changing its services. Its citizens want different services as it matures then they might have expected. Coming from the Corps, expectations for amenities were not the same as they became when a student was comparing coming to Virginia Tech to going someplace else. Suddenly you had to care about how the residence halls were built, what type of student activities you offered, what amenities were made available.
00:48:16Tamara: So, there must have been a lot of change then in that period too, as far as what amenities were being offered, even if you think of when you were a student from that time. I wonder what was under your purview as vice president of Student Affairs.
00:48:43Sandra: Health services, counseling services, housing, co-op, student activities, Corps of Cadets.
00:49:02Tamara: And so that would have been a major thing… like the Corps.
00:49:10Sandra: The general who oversaw the Corps reported to Jim Dean. So these weren't a shift. Those same units reported to him.
00:49:25Tamara: But these were things that you had.
00:49:27Sandra: Placement, that was another one.
00:49:28Tamara: Had Squires Student Center been built then? Or was it just--
00:49:39Sandra: As you know Squires Student Union did not exist. That was developed… I worked with the architects and was the principal client, along with Warren Clark who was the university architect. We worked with SOM out of Boston to design the student union that you see today. In our opinion, what was a critical decision, if you notice, alumni react to the fact that we preserved the old Squires student center entrance within the building.
00:50:15Tamara: Right, right they like that. Sort of like the Davidson Hall.
00:50:24Sandra: Yes. Because you don't want to lose your alumni. You're not trying to send them a message that that was then, this is now, and they are no longer important. You are trying to bring them along with you. At the same time, you have to design for where you are going, not from where you've been. With Hahn, with Lavery, we wanted to become a major state university in every sense of the word. In terms of the kinds of curriculum we offer, the kind of activities and programs available. We wanted students to feel when they were looking at us that they were going to a university that was now competitive with a Florida State, a University of Virginia, a University of Tennessee. See, Tennessee always was a university. Florida State was an interesting place to go, because it was a women's college that became a university. Although you didn't have to morph it from military to civilian. You just had to morph it from a women's college by adding men, which in some ways I think is an easier transition because a military college is a cultural lifestyle, and it is very different. For instance, if you look at the residence halls, you had to persuade people that the design of the barracks was a little Spartan and that we needed to put more amenities in them to be more attractive to students coming to study here.
00:52:37Tamara: So, it really was trying to broaden the appeal and to bring… it was really looking at a place in a different way than if it's a Corps where they expect it to be the barracks.
00:52:51Sandra: Exactly. So, imagine the uproar when… and it was Van Dresser [William R. Van Dresser]. We served with Bill Lavery, and I can say without hesitation that we worked very hard to move the university to where it is today. I would even go so far as to say that we built the foundation for the university that you see today. A lot like buying a house, when you buy the house and it is finished, you don't see the foundation unless it isn't well built, and starts falling apart on you. Then if your plumbing, your electricity, if your concrete wasn't poured correctly, if your foundation wasn't solid, when you go to live in that house, it won't stand up. But at the same time, you can't see it because it had been covered over, and the walls are finished. You can't see how much insulation is in your walls. You'll only know once you look at the electricity bills.
00:54:03Tamara: Well that's taking on a huge task.
00:54:05Sandra: It's a hard thing. Because, again, when you are doing renovation instead of new construction, and you take a wall out, all of a sudden, you might find a type of wiring that isn't sufficient. I am sure they encounter that now since technology is advanced. But it is always easier to build new construction that can tolerate electrical requirements. In fact, one of my friends who retired from faculty here said that a decision was made to tear down one of the old Corps dorms on Upper Quad and build new construction, rather than try to renovate it because it would have been just impossible to upgrade it with the level of electrical requirements and things that code requires. That's an example of what I am trying to convey.
00:55:21Tamara: So, when you first started working, a lot of it was part of this big picture of the building itself.
00:55:30Sandra: Where we were going, and what we had to do now to set the stage to be that over time. In other words, you got to set the foundation to support the structure that you hope to put in that place.
00:55:56Tamara: So how did you decide on your focus? There's so much to do.
00:56:01Sandra: The first task I had was reorganizing Student Affairs and bringing in people from the outside who could contribute to this mission. Now if you look at it, I hired Ed Spencer. I hired Lanny Cross. Now Lanny and I came here in 1970 together and started in Student Affairs. He did some other things. He was at North Carolina State, and I knew North Carolina State. Again, that is a state institution not dissimilar to us. I needed to bring in people who were comfortable with where we were going. I also, as any administrator must, had to take some people who were here and relocate them. You give an opportunity to try and see the new path, but some people, and I might be one of those today myself, get to a point in your career… Okay, I will look at Michael Jordan. There was a point at which Michael Jordan, when Phil Jackson left the Chicago [Bulls], said that he wasn't going to gear up and learn the system of a new coach. I don't know if you remember that. He had been very successful.
00:57:51Tamara: Oh yeah, I'm from Chicago so [chuckles].
00:57:55Sandra: Alright so if you remember that, sometimes you reach a stage where you are willing to let somebody else deal with it because you don't want to chase the new vision or learn the new playbook. So there was some restructuring that I had to do because the people were comfortable with the way it was and didn't necessarily share the administration's enthusiasm for what was ahead.
00:58:35Tamara: Well, it is hard for people to change.
00:58:39Sandra: hard working, ethical. I mean it is a good university.
00:59:04Tamara: Yes, and they take the Ut Prosim seriously.
00:59:07Sandra: Right, and to this day I still do volunteer activity. And Bill Lavery was like that too, as well as the people with whom I served. We were really committed to doing the best we could. That doesn't mean that everyone who was here agreed. Sometimes you just have to do what you think is best, and not everyone will agree with you. If you are familiar with this transition in time… I think at the time, a lot of what Lavery accomplished was under-appreciated for what it really meant in the long term for the university. Now eventually, these things occurred for both Hahn and Lavery. For example, we knew that we would need to have more success and a different level of an athletic program. Well again, if you are diverting resources into building an athletic program, some people feel you are taking resources away from them. If you need to expand the footprint of the campus, something that exists has got to move. Well, the people who aren't moving aren't going to be nearly as upset about that as those who feel they are being overlooked because something needs to go where they are.
00:00:59Tamara: I am aware of the problems with the athletic program and NCAA violations. Did that affect your job as VP of Student Affairs?
00:01:17Sandra: Of course, because you have the faculty in it, the students play off the faculty. If the faculty is upset the students are upset. If you have turmoil, it is almost impossible to be in the community and not react. As an American, do you find yourself reacting to whether we go into Syria or not? Now you personally aren't going to go, are you?
00:01:49Tamara: [Chuckling] no.
00:01:50Sandra: But do you find yourself reacting as you see it play out on the national stage?
00:01:56Tamara: Of course.
00:01:57Sandra: If you are in a community… I mean, what is Blacksburg? Virginia Tech. Is there anything else here? When you think of Blacksburg, what do you think of? Virginia Tech. Most of what exists here supports the university. If you are attending meetings and you hear people talking about decisions we're going to make, and what we might do, and you're a resident, and even if it isn't specifically related to you… If I am in the military and I am hearing them decide about what we are going to do about Syria, I have a different take than I'm a retired person. I know I am not going, but I do worry about what happens in our country. You can't live in a community and not be affected by change.
00:03:06Tamara: I wondered about your perspective on the whole land swap issue. We really have no documentation about it. Kentland Farm, to me, is a wonderful place to me as a place that has a lot of possibilities. I have done some work out there and wonder if you have any perspective on that issue?
00:03:35Sandra: It wasn't the only thing happening in the moment. We also, if you recall, that was also a time when people were questioning the athletic program. They were totally separate issues. I mean it is like talking about ISIL and Syria, and then throw in Turkey. I mean, these are related but they're not related. Both represent sums of money; both represent who's running what. Football. Let's talk about that. When you are in big time football, resources have to go into it. It may affect how faculty feels about the priorities of the university.
00:04:41Tamara: I think it still does.
00:04:44Sandra: If you are looking at a land swap, some faculty are going to say, why are we doing that? Sitting here today, do you think anyone would say, I'm sorry they built the shopping centers and services out there? I think most people would be grateful that they live in Blacksburg and have these services available to them. However, at the time, none of that existed. What people are seeing is this part of my interest is going to be moved way far away. I know what the overarching issues were, but agriculture was going to lose land here and get some land there. So all of a sudden, when I was used to just walking out of my door and getting to some facility, I'm not gonna have to take my students. Now we're going to have a shopping center, what's wrong? We've always driven to Roanoke. I mean, is this really necessary? But that is all in the moment. But you're sitting here in 2014. You can see that the university has really developed nicely. I am pleased I don't have to drive to Roanoke to go to Barnes and Noble, I am grateful we have so many choices of places to eat. But at the time, it didn't exist. Now, part of the land swap was who benefitted from it as individuals. You have to get land from the people who own it, and who logically owned land? People who had made investments and were part of the university. Obviously, if you do any kind of swap, individuals who are related to the university will benefit. That doesn't necessarily make them Jean LaFitte. They made a good investment. They own something. In fact, probably… you would have to do this as a research program. My impression is that many people offered a fair price even out of commitment to the university. They didn't try to take advantage of the university. They did own what they owned, and they did want a return on their investment. It's human nature. I know the names of the individuals involved, I also know that if you look at their careers, they gave tremendous loyalty and service to the university. Perhaps, as is true in humanity, there were some who were not as gracious or as giving or as generous, but do I think they were evil people trying to take advantage? No, I don't. I think the land swap--they had to buy it from someone who owned it. If we look at it today, we might think it as a good deal.
00:08:49Tamara: Kentland Farm has a lot of possibility out there, and it is being used quite a bit, I believe.
00:08:56Sandra: But it was a big change.
00:09:02Tamara: And with the athletic program they did a lot of restructuring.
00:09:13Sandra: When Bill Dooley… people for the investment wanted to have success immediately. He had some good seasons; he was here for ten years. He also wanted to be football coach and athletic director. People will debate whether that's ever a good idea. However, the university was trying to play on the national stage. Dooley had been Coach of the Year three times in ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference]. The university was also trying to be affiliated with the ACC. Back then, you could tell that being in the television markets, you could sense what was happening and how you could get attention from students. If a student can go to a university in the ACC, there were traditions. There were natural rivalries. They were also geographically close, so that you had a different scheduling plan than if you were having to schedule independents. A conference by its nature is guaranteed a certain number of games against those in the conference. Getting in a conference, and I know we were in the Big East, but our students were more localized and knew the other institutions. It would mean more to them to watch the teams play that they knew that their friends went to, that they could communicate around. They could schedule teams like Rutgers or Pitt. At the time, the focus of the students were in the neighboring states. They knew UVA, UNC, NC State… their friends either went here or there, and they would bond around it. Just as an example, one of the things I tried to get the administration to embrace orange and maroon--I did my office in tones of maroon and orange, and I tried very hard to get the students and administrators to wear it. At the time, they weren't comfortable in it because they weren't identified with the success of the program. Now when I come in here, it is everywhere. It just shows you how it has changed. I couldn't… we weren't far enough along that they were comfortable being a university. It was an awkward transition. When you ask someone to envision the finished product. The irony, there was a great human cry over Bill Dooley and issues, well that happened to coincide with his best season, if you recall. Now you would know administratively, the decision had been made that he would not continue as football coach, and he knew that. But then he went on to have one of his best seasons and went to the Peach Bowl. The thing about a community--now let's go back to Syria. If we are sitting here and let's say you aren't enthralled with the decision made, but then suddenly there's a huge success, you may change your opinion. And all the human cry… then it might shift to, I wonder if we made a mistake--but it's too late. Once you have tried to fulfill wishes and you go out on a limb, then that person is now noticed and will make other plans. So he left us and went down to Wake [Forest], had a winning season and ended up coach of the year down there. It is sort of like getting caught in a card game, and you played a bad hand, but you didn't "have a choice." Life goes on. The rescue of the Navy Seals when they went in to get Bin Laden--suppose it hadn't been successful. People would have felt very differently about it. Sometimes you can't guarantee the outcome, even when you are moving forward with the best intent.
00:15:36Tamara: Going back to your career here… what would you regard as the biggest challenges that you were faced with?
00:15:51Sandra: Moving from the past to the future and building a foundation for what the university would become while minimizing the destruction to the past.
00:16:13Tamara: So that people would still have that connection.
00:16:17Sandra: Yes, to try and bring them along while you are changing the look and the direction and what they really knew as university life. At that time, all of the alumni had been in the Corps. They had very fond memories of it. I was here when the Corps was prominent, and the Highty-Tighties were the band. They were at least one hundred members in the Highty-Tighties, and they could do precision formations like Ohio State does. If you saw, they were remarking on how great the band was in formations. The Highty Tighties could do amazing formations while playing songs, and at that time, because it was acceptable in America, one of their songs was "Dixie." And they have a lead in to "Dixie", and the minute you heard it; you knew what song was coming. There were two songs, the Fight Song had a lead in, and so did "Dixie." When you heard them play certain notes, you knew what was coming. To this day, when I hear that lead in, I can in a heartbeat remember seeing the Highty-Tighties play that song. I heard it every day when I was a student on this campus. We used to wait at the end of drill to march off the field because they would march off in this song. They were fantastic. Even though you have a vision of the future and you are living in the present, if you grew up with it. Some things will take you back to another time and place. If they are still playing it, I would say to you, it is a way of striking an emotional note with those of us who were here when it was VPI. Yet, it is part of the present. It's no longer part of the past, but It pulls us into the present by acknowledging our past, just like seeing those steps at Squires Student Center when you walk into the Student Union.
00:19:14Tamara: Well of course "Dixie" is more controversial.
00:19:16Sandra: Now they don't play "Dixie." No one knows that but those of us who recognize the lead in. But it does affirm the part of our past.
00:19:27Tamara: Right and that's something people really connect with.
00:19:31Sandra: I am not saying to bring back "Dixie," but I'm saying it is very subtle how you pay homage to the past.
00:19:41Tamara: This is a side question, but I want to ask. Was the bowling alley in there, or was that added in there?
00:19:51Sandra: It was in there.
00:19:53Tamara: Because I saw a picture of Irving Peddrew, the first Black student in 1953, and I saw a picture of him bowling. I figured that was the same place. I guess that's another part of the structure that was preserved.
00:20:13Sandra: Yeah.
00:20:14Tamara: And that was probably a big deal recreationally for the students.
00:20:20Sandra: Yes, it was a way of students coming together and doing something. The pool room was another one that was built. I haven't been to the Student Center in a long time.
00:20:40Tamara: So that was part of the original building?
00:20:45Sandra: I can't remember without going to the plans, but I want to say yes. There were new things if you go back, the first franchised food service came with the opening of the Squires Student Center. Until that time, no franchise operation had ever been allowed on campus. It was I believe Hardee's.
00:21:15Tamara: Well then, they were serving alcohol in the Student Center for a while too, right?
00:21:24Sandra: They were not; I fought that fight too. I felt that was one that I wasn't successful with. If they serve it now, they have added it.
00:21:38Tamara: They don't serve it now, but they used to.
00:21:42Sandra: Are you sure? I believe you, they didn't serve it when I was here.
00:21:47Tamara: They didn't?
00:21:48Sandra: They did not feel it was appropriate.
00:21:52Tamara: Because there was a question I had for you about students pushing for voice. One of the things I thought they had, and this is from the Collegiate Times, which as a source, you know… My impression was that the students were pushing to serve alcohol in the Student Center starting at lunchtime.
00:22:34Sandra: There was going to be in the new Student Center, a place where they could come for hamburgers and gather to eat. The students wanted to serve beer there. On other campuses for an alumni function, because at that time we didn't have an alumni center, I was hoping to move events into the center. There wasn't equivalent space anywhere else at the time. To host major alumni functions, we wanted the alumni to be able to serve wine or beer with a license. That wasn't accepted. At the time, others didn't want alcohol outside of Donaldson Brown.
00:23:55Tamara: I know I read somewhere that at some point they were serving it at the Student Center, at the same time as University of Wisconsin and Madison used to serve a 3.2 beer. But that wouldn't have been in your period… I must have gotten mixed up or misread.
00:24:27Sandra: We wanted the Union to be well used and to optimize the facility, so we wanted to expand the nature of events held there.
00:24:39Tamara: So, I guess the ballrooms had been there previously?
00:24:46Sandra: Well again, your interest is in old traditions here. For Ring Dance, they would transform the ballrooms into elaborate sets. We were about to spend a lot of money updating the facility and making it attractive. You had to change the type of decorations that went on. They used to transform the War Memorial Gym when I was here. It would be an elaborate event. In a modern facility as a finished space, you are not as keen to have that transformation because it would tear up the facility and close it down for periods of time.
00:26:18Tamara: It is a different approach.
00:26:21Sandra: But you see, it also changes the tradition around Ring Dance. They used to have German Club and Cotillion Club formals. All of a sudden, the university controlled the space and didn't offer it for a week at a time to a club for an event.
00:26:53Tamara: There would be resistance… moving forward but keeping the past with you. You founded Order of the Gavel in 1984 to recognize the contributions of leaders in student organizations, and I guess it was originally founded for undergraduates, but later expanded to include graduate students. How does the order promote leadership development?
00:27:30Sandra: It wasn't to promote it; it was to recognize it. I knew someday these students would be alums. First off, they were wonderful student leaders. They worked hard, and they contributed. I felt they needed to leave a fingerprint that twenty years later, when we want their children to come to Virginia Tech, I was hoping they could come back with their children and point to themselves. It would be part of who they are. They worked hard. This was extracurricular activity. They received no credit for it; they did it in addition to their studies. The students with whom I worked were very dedicated to advancing the university. Bill Lavery was a very involved man and made himself available to students. He was not a distant parent. He had four children of his own. His son Mike was in a fraternity; Laurie was in a sorority. He also knew what a university needed to be. He was very interested in making this a good place for a student. Part of that is that you want them to be able to show that they were here, and not disappear without a trace. That to me was the way to do it, so they could leave a piece of themselves.
00:29:36Tamara: So I guess then the graduate students wanted to have that too.
00:29:41Sandra: Well if you look at the expansion, it was a natural outgrowth. At the time, the graduate students weren't as organized or involved. As time went on, it was just evolutionary.
00:29:57Tamara: Did you work directly with students?
00:30:00Sandra: Yes. There was still the Commission of Student Affairs. Working with students to Lanny and I was sort of the dessert of the meal. It was one of the reasons you went into Student Affairs. The student today is the leader of tomorrow, as well as the alum. You feel that it is important that a student learns behaviors beyond the classroom. You can take courses, but that doesn't prepare you for leadership or develop your sense of ethics. If I am sitting with a student SGA [Student Government Association] president, there is a high probability that they see themselves as a lawyer, creator of their own business, or legislator in a prominent government position. It seems to me a university has a responsibility to convey knowledge and to develop a sense of student professionalism. It can be done in many ways, and students can come at it in a variety of ways. You can develop leadership in athletic programs, through academic organizations, through student organizations that contribute to the governance of the university. The Division of Student Affairs was responsible to students who chose leadership through residence halls, student union, so that's where we focused. I believe now if we went into colleges, we would see they have leadership roles developed for students who choose to run. What is important is conveying what leadership is. To me, it requires integrity and how you present yourself. Working in Student Affairs is an opportunity for students to present themselves and to negotiate and be persuasive, then go onto other careers.
00:33:17Tamara: What kinds of things were worked on out of the Commission of Student Affairs?
00:33:25Sandra: residence hall policies, student activities.
00:33:38Tamara: And students could bring up policies they wanted to….
00:33:41Sandra: Change, expand, eliminate, introduce. One of them was, as you mentioned, serving beer.
00:34:01Tamara: I think this person brought twenty proposals.
00:34:07Sandra: I don't remember, it may have occurred after it reopened. I was in on the planning and shutdown, but it had not reopened when I stepped down from the position. It opened about a year or two later; I can't remember.
00:34:28Tamara: What happened when it was shut down? Where did people go?
00:34:34Sandra: They had to meet in other areas. There was nowhere to go, but you couldn't renovate the building unless you shut it down.
00:34:47Tamara: It must have been difficult.
00:34:51Sandra: It displaced functions. And it broke the continuity of the campus.
00:35:02Tamara: Yeah, that focal point where you come together…One of the things I saw in the papers was a discussion of the x-rated movie policy. Would you like to comment on that situation at all? Apparently, it all started off with the American Society of Landscape Architecture Student Chapter wanting to show Fritz the Cat, and it was refused because [of the policy that] films x-rated or non-rated had to be viewed by a group that wasn't existent any more…
00:35:48Sandra: Well, remember this is like another little skirmish at the same time as the land swap. Squires was closed. But yes, I do recall it. A philosophical question that one has to think about is what is the role of student services and facilities on campus, and how does that interface with off-campus services and facilities? A traditional approach is to assume that when you approved a service on campus or an activity on campus that you are providing something that relates to the mission of the university and that doesn't compete with private enterprise off campus. We were a small town. There were businesses that had been in place forever, like the Lyric Theatre, that depended on the student body to go there. Certainly, whenever we did something on campus it wasn't with the idea of taking customers away from the Blacksburg community. If anything, it was an enhancement or a compatible move. But it was never to overshadow an existing service. Now when you come to x-rated movies, an obvious question is how it fits into higher education. What is the net gain from showing films on the campus? Parents, even though legally the law prevents the university from dealing directly with them when the student is of a certain age, it is still more often than not, they are paying the bill for the child to attend the university. Universities do not typically identify with x-rated movies, pornography… it is a tricky situation and a fine line. So if you were saying to me as a professor of English that you're teaching a class and a certain movie matches the curriculum, that is academic freedom. Showing x-rated movies to generate income just as making it more convenient and available, rather than allowing an off campus, private company to offer it… that's where people have different opinions. I guess that at the time, showing x-rated movies on campus was not an issue universally embraced by alumni or the general public. So, it became a point of contention. It is a whole different headset that you bring. If I want to go to an x-rated movie, I should be able to go to an x-rated movie. Just like when you hear about people who are signing up to go to a terrorist group because they want a purpose in life. I mean, it is harder when you're older to see it exactly the same way, but it doesn't make their perspective any less legitimate. What I would say to you, even as I sit here today, is that I would be hard pressed to see the enhancement of the educational mission of the university by showing x-rated movies in the student center.
00:41:09Tamara: All right. I am going to switch it up a little now and talk about the Gay Alliance and Lambda Horizons. I think the first Gay Alliance way earlier in 1971 that mentions your name.
00:41:31Sandra: I was the secretary of Student Affairs at that time.
00:41:33 Tamara: And your name is mentioned about… this is about the recognition of the Gay Alliance on campus. I don't know if they're talking about a letter from Martha Harder. Whether or not it was going to be recognized. There's something about reading a letter like this and wondering what it meant at the time. I don't think they were recognized.
00:42:07Sandra: I have no memory of it.
00:42:10Tamara: Okay, so later on, and recently we have been working on a project with a professor here who has students interviewing LGBTQ.
00:42:27Sandra: I know LGB, but what is TQ?
00:42:36Tamara: Transgender, and I think there is Queer. Anyway, Mark Webber who was a member of Lambda Horizons in the 1980s, he mentioned your support of AIDS education. He wrote in a letter that--we got some of his collection recently--and that he thought the university took an extremely responsible stand on the question. How were you supporting AIDS education?
00:43:16Sandra: I have no memory of that. I am sure I would have no memory of because there was so much going on. Generally, just thinking about how I usually think about things, I am sure that I would have seen it and so would the director of health services, Dr. Schiffert, and so would Tom Cook, the director of counseling services. I believe by then that the American Psychological Association had accepted the position that these were no longer psychic disorders. I think as a general approach we'd feel that any health threat to sexually active age groups would need to be addressed in a proactive way.
00:44:23Tamara: I think that's what their group did. They sort of got their group in '84 and jumped into AIDS education. He presented you a proposal for a university designated staff person for gay student concerns at the university counseling center.
00:44:45Sandra: Well what I imagine… here is what I would say to you about times back then. Resources were scarce. One could certainly appreciate why a group with a specific concern wanted visibility. However, you don't always have the kind of resources where you can afford to take a full-time position and acknowledge it at that point in time. When you have a lot of territory to cover, and you have a fairly limited staff… because again everyone was fighting for resources as we were expanding. We were getting thousands of students. Every year a new residence hall was opening. It was all you could do to get your basic services covered. Once you start leveling off… imagine a graph where you have a steep climb, but you hadn't gotten to the plateau. As the climb was occurring, you were doing everything you could to provide basic services. You can't even begin to get to extras. While logical to the person asking for it, one just simply doesn't have the resources to respond. But it doesn't mean you don't acknowledge the need.
00:46:46Tamara: I saw another thing. Was alcohol a problem that you had to confront?
00:47:06Sandra: I was recently at a meeting at FSU. Alcohol problems have existed forever. They are never not present, nor drugs. These are age-old issues that never seemed to go away. It is like leaks in a structure. There was always tension around alcohol in a college environment. We always worked to address it, and I am sure they are doing so as we speak on this campus right now.
00:48:00Tamara: There have been vice presidents that I have talked to that have been a major concern.
00:48:08Sandra: Well it is never not a concern. It's because of their age group.
00:48:14Tamara: Could any programs be offered?
00:48:18Sandra: It's always a concern.
00:48:23Tamara: What about the town/ gown during your administration? I see that there was a point where you went to Town Council as a university representative in support of group housing in Knollwood proposal on Ramble Road. I'm actually not even sure if that is still there. Did you have any perception on the town/ gown relationships?
00:48:54Sandra: It's like the comment I shared with you earlier when we watched nationally the debate on what our role should be during this time in the Middle East. The town and this university-- there is no separating it. You can't live in the town and not feel the university. It is like being in a family. It will always have its ups and downs in terms of how the town reacts to the university and how the university acts to the town. At its best, they are both on the same side. This university will forever be in Blacksburg. More people come in working for the university, or in services that support the university. The hospital… do you think we would have a hospital that size if there was no Virginia Tech? So, there is no separation. One's intent is always to do what is right by the university and the town, but there will be times of disagreement. If you look at major universities founded from the beginning as a public institution open to both men and women, you will see that fraternities grew up much earlier and were already there or located in a certain spot. They were just part of the evolution. Here, when we moved from Corps to a university, first off there were no alumni to support fraternities and sororities. We're talking about Alpha Beta Data that wants to have a chapter, they need an alumni support to get them up and running. But we didn't have alumni support for Greeks. Some of them originated off campus, even when I was a student. When other nationals were interested in colonizing here, they didn't have alumni to provide the financial and leadership support to start a colony in a house. One of the things I am curious about--I drove by the Greek housing on campus, and that was a proposal that was part of my group. But it hadn't gotten approved, because we didn't know how else to do it. We felt that the university housed a lot of students to begin with, so we tried to develop a plan. We were looking to provide a place for them to live to help stabilize the system.
00:53:33Tamara: That one location is good because there isn't the kind of conflict that you would have with neighbors. Not to say they're noisy, but yes. Why did you resign your post?
00:53:52Sandra: Well, Lavery was stepping down, and so were all the people with whom I served.
00:54:01Tamara: I think you were the tenth person of upper administration who decided to step down.
00:54:09Sandra: Well it is sort of known that when a new president comes in, they select their own administrative officers. A few will continue on, but over time, you know that the probability is that they will want their own person in the position. Because there was so much going on, it was hard work. We were tired. To me it is like asking someone returning from the Middle East why they didn't want to go back. There is a point where you have done what you can do, and that it's time to go where it isn't quite as hard.
00:55:13Tamara: Yes, and you worked on the big transition period with the end of the Corps as mandatory.
00:55:25Sandra: I mean we worked on making this a university, and there was a lot of resistance. There comes a time when you want to serve in a more peaceful environment.
00:55:43Tamara: What did you do when you left here?
00:55:48Sandra: There is also one other fact that is germane to my vice presidency, but over the course of the turmoil of the university, I had buried every member of my immediate family. My mother died of lung cancer, and she fought that battle for eight years. My grandparents died, one within a year of her. So, it is interesting that at the time I had buried my family, I had used up a lot of my personal reserves and felt that I needed a simpler life than to be on the front we had been on. I wanted to pick where I lived rather than be where a job took me. You have to make that decision. I moved to California and worked for the University of California, Berkeley. It was a wonderful experience. Berkeley is a well-recognized, established institution. Its identity was firmly established.
00:57:29Tamara: What were you doing for them?
00:57:31Sandra: Well there, I went into academic administration. At Berkeley, they have a different model for their academic departments and students than Virginia Tech. It offered me an opportunity to work for the faculty and students and be with them as opposed to trying to change where we were headed.
00:58:11Tamara: Were you out there for a while?
00:58:14Sandra: Fourteen years, and then I retired. I retired from Berkeley.
00:58:20Tamara: So, it wasn't like being in Student Affairs here; it was more academic administration.
00:58:28Sandra: We were well respected and well funded.
00:58:32Tamara: Well, that's nice.
00:58:33Sandra: It was nice. I think you can only fight the good fight for a certain amount of time, and then someone new needs to come in.
00:58:51Tamara: So you overlapped with Dr. Torgersen for eight months while he was acting president. Did you have any sense of his managerial style?
00:59:08Sandra: If you recall, Jim McComas was selected for the role of president.
00:59:14Tamara: Right, but just for that one period, I guess being the acting president isn't the same as being the real president.
00:59:19Sandra: Well no, never. An acting president you …
00:59:24Tamara: You are just keeping the ship afloat. Is there anything you would like to add?
00:59:38Sandra: No, I hope I have conveyed to you something of the time of transition of the university.
00:59:46Tamara: Thank you very much for speaking with me, I really appreciate it.
00:59:51Sandra: It has been enjoyable, and I appreciate your interest.
[End of interview] NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END
