Oral history interview with Dr. Walter Beale, 2016

Lacey Wilson: Is your cellphone off?

Dr. Beale: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. Today is Friday, October the 28th, 2016. I am interviewing Dr. Beale from the English Department and previous Dean of Arts and Sciences. So, we'll just sort of start off at the beginning, biographical things. So, when were you born?

Dr. Beale: I was born in 1945, but grew up in a little village in east of North Carolina that nobody knows the name of called Potecasi.

Lacey Wilson: Potecasi.

Dr. Beale: Potecasi, population 300. And in Northampton County, which is a very rural county of small towns, several of which are larger than that, but not much larger.

Lacey Wilson: Sure. What did your parents do?

Dr. Beale: My parents; my father was an officer in the North Carolina National 00:01:00Guard who eventually moved to Raleigh, but that was after I had graduated from high school. So, I grew up right there in that little town.

Lacey Wilson: And did you have any brothers and sisters?

Dr. Beale: I have two brothers and both of whom are younger than I am.

Lacey Wilson: Both younger than you. What do they do?

Dr. Beale: One owns a State Farm Insurance Agency and the other works with the City of Raleigh.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. And where did you go to high school?

Dr. Beale: I went to high school in the little town next door, Woodland right there in Northampton County.

Lacey Wilson: Sure. What colleges did you apply to?

Dr. Beale: I applied to the University of North Carolina and to Wake Forest 00:02:00College, which was where I wanted to get in, but UNC was my backup school, and I was accepted at Wake Forest and I attended there.

Lacey Wilson: You attended there. Did you know what you were going to major in immediately when you went in?

Dr. Beale: Yes. I knew I was going to major in English. I thought I would either become a journalist or a novelist or maybe both. As it turned out, I went to a graduate school and became an English professor.

Lacey Wilson: Was that unexpected?

Dr. Beale: It wasn't too unexpected after a while. I knew I was very much in love with English studies, and I knew by the time I was a sophomore that I was going to be fairly successful at it. And my professors were already talking to me about going on to graduate school and becoming an English professor.

Lacey Wilson: Where did you go to graduate school?

Dr. Beale: I went to the University of Michigan and I was there for four years, and I did my dissertation in Medieval Studies. Excuse me. Although at Michigan at the time, there was a good deal of emphasis on linguistics and language studies and rhetoric, and that was the direction that eventually my work would go in. And that's what brought me to UNCG. UNCG when I was looking for a job was looking for someone with expertise in the study of the English language.

Lacey Wilson: Do you remember when you first came to UNCG?

Dr. Beale: Certainly. It was in 1971. I was 26 years old. And it was my first 00:04:00job as a professor. And I stayed here throughout my entire career.

Lacey Wilson: What was it like when you first came here in '71? What do you remember?

Dr. Beale: In 1971, UNCG was a smaller place and, although it was no longer the Women's College of the University of North Carolina, the student body was predominantly women still. And it was still known at that time as the place for a very smart young woman to go in the UNC system. And it still had that identity, although campus leaders knew that we were transitioning out of that, and in a way, that transition from Women's College of the University of North 00:05:00Carolina to what UNCG is today was a part of, I think just about everything that took place in the next 50 years until I retired that is to say in 2016.

Lacey Wilson: Congratulations on retirement.

Dr. Beale: Well, thank you.

Lacey Wilson: So what classes did you start off teaching?

Dr. Beale: As I indicated earlier, I taught a wide variety of courses, most of us did at that time, but primarily in English literature and then the study of the English language. And that included a required course in the English language and English linguistics for English majors who were going to be English 00:06:00teachers. And that was one of my special assignments at the time.

Lacey Wilson: Do you enjoy teaching?

Dr. Beale: Certainly in that teaching was something that we all took very seriously at that time. And we also engaged in a fair amount of service to the University. A lot of things that are done now by student services like advising of various kinds and student activities and student clubs as well as the administering of the University, a lot of things that today are done by people 00:07:00in administration were actually covered by faculty.

Dr. Beale: And so service to the institution in that way was an important part of being a faculty member. And then everybody was expected to get a research program started and to continue that kind of professional work, which in the humanities means primarily the publication of books and articles in learning journals and with the university presses. Although there was somewhat less emphasis on that when I came in 1971 than there is today.

Lacey Wilson: It grew into much more of an emphasis later on?

Dr. Beale: Yes. And part of UNCG's transition from Women's College of the University to UNC Greensboro has been the transition to a research oriented as 00:08:00well as a teaching oriented university. And that transition has been a successful one. Although it has been rocky from time to time because many faculty had different sorts of expectations about the kind of place that they were hired to be in. And because people were hired at different times, and as I said, I was 26 years old when I started as a faculty member here.

Dr. Beale: And many of my older colleagues were already in their 50s and 60s, and they had definitely been hired as professors at Women's College at the University of North Carolina. And they considered their jobs to be primarily 00:09:00that of teaching. And it was the younger generation that was sort of designated to usher in that transition from a smaller a college to a larger University of the sort that UNCG is today.

Lacey Wilson: You said that transition was rocky. How so do you mean that?

Dr. Beale: Well, I mean that anytime an institution changes its identity that strongly there are going to be conflicts of expectation and conflicts of outlook. And when changes are required and when changes are needed, there will be people who are resistant to some of them because they seem to be, well, 00:10:00destroying the identity of the institution as well as expanding it. And a lot of alumni felt that way as well. And so, the leaders of the University had to be very careful and they had to steer a kind of middle course between the desire of the state of North Carolina-

Speaker 3: I'm sorry.

Lacey Wilson: It's okay.

Dr. Beale: ... for UNCG to grow in the way it has grown and just the character of the faculty and the student body and the alumni who are important for the support of the institution. All of those things had to undergo changes that brought about conflict between administration and faculty and between different parts of the faculty as well. And we also grew into a much more diverse student 00:11:00body. In 1971, the student body was primarily women, and it was primarily white, and it was primarily from North Carolina. Today it is a much different and much more diverse place.

Lacey Wilson: When it was going under the transition to a more research oriented university, was that like a direct statement, was that being stated directly to faculty in that sense, or did it just sort of be ushered in that sense? I'm trying to figure out how that transition was told.

Dr. Beale: It was certainly stated directly. There wasn't any ambiguity when I came here about that. There was an older faculty that was not geared up in that 00:12:00way. And the institution itself, in the way it was structured with the teaching loads, the way they were, the expectations for university service, and other kinds of activities. It wasn't the environment. The environment some people felt wasn't as ready for the change or it wasn't as conducive to the change as it could be.

Dr. Beale: And so as I say, when you make that kind of transition, all sorts of changes have to take place. And the simple statement that, "Okay, this is now the expectation of faculty," wasn't enough. The institution had to undergo the transition. And given the nature of that kind of transition, it happened in a 00:13:00remarkably fast period of time. By the 1980s, there was no questions at all about that. And an older generation of faculty who had been here with a different set of expectations had retired.

Dr. Beale: And so there was a change in that way. And there were also other changes taking place, like changes in teaching loads and in the kinds of participation that faculty had in the running of the University. And that change was difficult in two ways. First of all, it was difficult for many faculty to spend a great deal of time doing research on the one hand and serving on 00:14:00committees that were running the University on the other.

Dr. Beale: But the other part of that was that many faculty felt, and continued to feel, that it's the faculty who are the primary agents of management ought to be the primary agents of management in the University. And many faculty were beginning to feel left out. And the takeover of many of those roles by administrators and professional administrators was not only difficult and expensive for the institution, but it was also something that a lot of faculty 00:15:00resisted as well.

Lacey Wilson: Can you be specific about the kind of managerial administration positions faculty used to hold here?

Dr. Beale: Well, almost all advising, for instance, was done by faculty, and students continue to have faculty advisers, but a great deal of the assistance to students that you now see going on in, well officers of the library and in the Office of Student Affairs, those were much smaller operations back then because faculty were doing a lot of that work. At the same time, everything from long range planning of the University to grounds and facilities, they were 00:16:00faculty involved in making decisions about things of that sort as well.

Dr. Beale: And the idea was that everything that went on was related to and subordinate to the role of educating students. That was the primary role of faculty. And so the management of the university ought to be a primary role of the faculty as well. Today faculty are much more acculturated to being involved in teaching and research, and not so much in the management of the University. But there had been, from time to time major conflicts when major changes were 00:17:00being made.

Dr. Beale: There was a feeling of faculty, many faculty, of being left out of that process, not being consulted, and that that wasn't good for the University. This, by the way, is the change that's taken place not merely at UNCG, but all over the nation -

Lacey Wilson: That was going to be my next question.

Dr. Beale: ... in colleges and universities. And any critique of the modern university system you read ... anywhere will discuss that transition that has taken place.

Lacey Wilson: So, that transition is not just a UNCG faculty culture?

Dr. Beale: Not at all. That's nationwide. Although I think in a way, we're 00:18:00sharper at UNCG because, as I said, the changes at UNCG were of a more drastic sort. To go from what is primarily a small liberal arts college to a large diverse research oriented university in a period of 30 years is very difficult challenge.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, I can imagine. So, what was the English Department like when you came in?

Dr. Beale: The English Department I think has remained remarkably stable throughout that period. The English Department is one of the strongest departments in the University. It was when I came here, and it still is now. It's larger, it is more diverse, like the student body itself. And the 00:19:00curriculum itself is more diverse. In the 1970s, the curriculum of English and American Literature was primarily the traditional classics of England and America, and did not include things such as a Women's Studies, African American Studies, various kinds of political orientations to literature relationships between literature, and literature defined as literary works on the one hand, 00:20:00and literature as the broad set of important writings in a culture. A broader notion of literature itself today exists than existed back in the 1970s.

Lacey Wilson: How did that transition come about?

Dr. Beale: That transition came about through a variety of means. I think it was something that many of us knew the discipline needed to be widened to cover, first of all language, but second of all what's now referred to in the English Department as rhetoric, and rhetoric involves two things. One is the 00:21:00professional study of writing and the teaching of writing. And the other is what we would call rhetorical literature. That is the study of philosophical and historical and political writings out in the culture as well as historical.

Dr. Beale: Things that were not considered really literature in the early years of this discipline. There's a much broader notion of that. And I think a much ... I was, by the way, instrumental in that change. I consider my field to be that of rhetoric when I was in the English Department in the 1960s. Nobody even used the word rhetoric very much except in the derogatory sense of political 00:22:00propaganda. And I was basically the only person doing that kind of work, although I was teaching medieval literature as well.

Dr. Beale: But today there are five or six, I can't quite remember the exact number, people in the English Department who considered their primary field to be that of rhetoric. And they were hired as rhetoricians. The advertisements that went out said we are looking for someone in the field of rhetoric. And also 00:23:00during this period, the teaching of composition has become professionalized in the sense that the theory of writing, the theory of the writing process has become an academic study.

Dr. Beale: In 1970, there wasn't an academic study of writing and of composition. Composition teaching was done primarily by instinct. You told students to write certain kinds of essays and then you graded them and corrected their mistakes. And today there's - I'd say much broader, more professional understanding of that activity. And the people who do it, the teachers who do it, it's primarily done teaching at the freshman level.

Dr. Beale: And as with teaching at any kind of higher education institution, a lot of that teaching is done by graduate students and by lecturers who are hired - people within MAs rather than PhDs - to teach lower level kinds of things. That work is still done primarily by graduate students and lecturers, but they get a much higher degree of training and work shopping in that area than they used to get. And that's been part of that change as well. So I'd say the English Department has grown. Excuse me. This'll have to be edited out.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. I'll work on that.

Dr. Beale: It's an alarm on my telephone.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. That's fine. At about 25 minutes, I'll get to it. So, did you start teaching rhetoric classes at some point during this?

Dr. Beale: Yes, I did. I actually introduced the first courses that were taught in rhetoric and they were of two types. One was of the sort that was involved in teacher training. We actually introduced a course in the teaching of writing for students who were going to be English teachers. And we also introduced a course in the teaching of writing for our own graduate students. And then the other kinds of rhetorical study that became really important were theoretical and historical.

Dr. Beale: And I introduced the first graduate courses here in the history and the theory of rhetoric. And it's actually a professional field of study that goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. It just wasn't considered part of the discipline of English until, I'd say, the 1960s and 1970s.

Lacey Wilson: What discipline was it in setting?

Dr. Beale: Primarily the discipline of speech. When what is now called the Department of Communication Studies was at the time when I came here a section of a broader department called Theater and Speech. And the speech courses that 00:27:00were taught were primarily Communication 105, courses in speech making, and most of the professors in that department were Professors of Theater. There were only two or three Professors of Speech. Now, the field of communication itself has broadened.

Dr. Beale: And there's a good deal of overlap between communication studies on the one hand as done in the Department of Communication, which has now broken off from theater to its own separate department and that of English. It's that, I would say rhetoric as studied in English departments has focused primarily on 00:28:00writing, whereas in the Department of Communication, it is a focus primarily on media. That is to say not merely speech making, but of course radio, television, and today, digital media. Now those are highly related and there are people in communication doing work that's a very interesting to people in English and there's a lot of dialogue back and forth.

Lacey Wilson: When you started with these beginning classes in rhetoric, was there any communication back and forth with people who were doing it in the 00:29:00School of Communications at the time?

Dr. Beale: Sure. Some, but not quite as much as you would think because simply there weren't that many professors. There weren't that many professors in either department who were doing that kind of work.

Lacey Wilson: And how did the students, not relate to, but this was a new class, a new kind of subject matter for them and for the English Department entirely. How did that play off with the students in the beginning?

Dr. Beale: Well, keep in mind that most of the courses were graduate courses. And this was ... the English curriculum at the undergraduate level remained pretty much the same except for the addition of those courses in linguistics and in the teaching of composition. And that was a very important change in the 00:30:00English curriculum. But most of the changes, most of the courses, and the theory and the history of rhetoric were introduced at the graduate level.

Dr. Beale: And I'd say that there was a good deal of excitement. There was a good deal of excitement about that. It was not only a broadening of the discipline, but this was also a time in which it was not easy to get a job teaching English in a college or a university, and that's still the case. Getting a job as a professor is a very difficult thing to do. And having that extra field of expertise was exciting to our graduate students because they knew that graduate students from other institutions weren't getting that.

Dr. Beale: And the field itself is exciting. So, I would say that that part of the transition of our curriculum has been, for the most part, a very exciting and happy one. And as I say, there are now I'd say at least six people in the Department of English who have that field as a specialization, whereas there were none when I came here.

Lacey Wilson: Right. So, as rhetoric became an additional broadening in the discipline, aside from the course that you introduced, when did that further bring in? When were other professors who were interested in rhetoric get hired?

Dr. Beale: Well, I think beginning in the 1980s.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. So, that was probably 10 years later.

Dr. Beale: Beginning in the 1980s. And I would say we didn't really move up to where we are right now until the first decade of the 21st century, beginning of the 2000s.

Lacey Wilson: And then the changes in linguistics, that was at the undergraduate level?

Dr. Beale: Yes. There were some changes there. Although, linguistics remains a separate field. At UNCG, there isn't a linguistics department. And so linguistics is done in the English Department, and also there is some linguistics done in the Department of Communication Studies. But linguistics is 00:33:00a highly specialized field and you won't find departments of linguistics except at very large universities like the University of Michigan.

Lacey Wilson: Sure. The other change you had mentioned was not linguistics and it was composition sort of in the way writing is taught. Was that on the undergraduate level?

Dr. Beale: Well, I would say it was on the undergraduate level in the sense that the new professionalized field of composition began to inform very greatly the work that was being done in the teaching of composition, which has been an English Department function ever since its beginning. It's just that it was considered what used to be called a service course. People taught composition, 00:34:00not because they loved it, but because they had to. It was part of what every English teacher had to do. And what you hoped is that by the time you had to have been here a few years, you didn't have to do that anymore.

Lacey Wilson: Was that a sort of seniority process at some point?

Dr. Beale: Seniority. Certainly, yeah, that's right.

Lacey Wilson: Interesting.

Dr. Beale: It's also hard work.

Lacey Wilson: Well, of course.

Dr. Beale: The teaching of composition is difficult. Is more difficult and more time consuming than the teaching of literature simply because you're reading more student papers, helping students with their writing, conferencing with students, and doing things of that sort that's in a more intensive way than you are when you teach literature.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. I imagine there's very structural difference in the way you're teaching it.

Dr. Beale: That's right.

Lacey Wilson: You said that one of the things that faculty used to be very involved in were just sort of, I think you mentioned it, sort of above hand, but like student activities, were you involved in any of the literary magazines on campus?

Dr. Beale: Certainly. Yeah. And those things were done out of the English Department, although I would say was the Creative Writing faculty who were more involved in that kind of work and still are. Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: What was your involvement?

Dr. Beale: Well as I say, I was very busy doing the things that I was doing. I was never really called on to work with the Greensboro Review. The Greensboro Review, our Literary magazine, was always a project of our Creative Writing faculty. And one of the strengths of UNCG historically has been creative 00:36:00writing. There were strong creative writers here even in the 1970s, and we already had a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and it was the only one in North Carolina.

Dr. Beale: So that's the traditional strength of UNCG, and it's still is a strength. The Creative Writing faculty in the English Department is one of its strongest faculties. And UNCG is known, not only in the state of North Carolina, but throughout the nation as a strong institution in creative writing.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. What sort of research were you involved in? Your own research.

Dr. Beale: My own research as I said, began in Medieval Studies. And I did some 00:37:00writing in topics in Medieval Studies early on simply as a way of reworking some of the work that I'd already begun in graduate school. But my most original work has been in the study of language, and in the language and in the theory of rhetoric. And I've written three books in that area and published numerous scholarly articles in that area. That's my primary field of study. And even, I'm retired now, but I'm working on a fourth book in the history and theory of discourse right now.

Lacey Wilson: Very cool. And then you transitioned, I don't have the date written down, to become Dean of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Beale: Right. I, at a certain point became Head of the English Department.

Lacey Wilson: Right. That was right. I'm sorry.

Dr. Beale: And it was while I was head of the English Department that unexpectedly, the person who was serving as Dean stepped down to go to another institution. And I was asked to step in as Interim Dean. I liked the job very much, enjoyed being part of the administration at that time very much. And I became a candidate for the job and actually got the job. And was Dean from 1990 until I stepped down in the year 2000. And that was 10 years as Dean.

Dr. Beale: And I would say 10 years in that kind of position, any Dean will tell you is long enough. I wasn't fired or asked to resign, I just knew it was time. 00:39:0010 years was enough and I needed to get back into teaching and research if I was going to be able to do anymore of that during my career. And I did spend the last 10 years of my career back on the faculty teaching and doing research. Yeah, primarily.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. I want to backtrack a little bit and talk about when you were Head of the English Department. What was that like?

Dr. Beale: That was a fun experience. The English Department has always been a very collegial department. There were no major feuds or disputes or anything of that sort going on. The Head of the Department was expected to provide leadership in two forms. One was in simply managing the affairs of the 00:40:00department, but looking after it's curricular needs as well. There are always changes that need to be made. There are things out there, there are challenges to be met, and it's a Department Head's role to get people working on those things within the Department and to lead the discussion about work that needs to be done, changes that may need to be made.

Dr. Beale: And the other role of a Department Head is to advocate with the administration for the needs of the Department. And that means talking regularly with the Dean, and letting the Dean know about our needs for resources, sometimes in the form of new faculty, sometimes in the need for more money for 00:41:00faculty support, student activities, those kinds of things. And I enjoyed doing that. And so when I became Dean, I already knew about some of those activities. It's just that I was now in a different role.

Dr. Beale: I was on the receiving end of request for resources primarily, and I had to advocate for the college. Keep in mind that being Dean of a college was simply being Dean among seven or eight other Deans. There are other colleges besides the College of Arts and Sciences in the University. As you well know, there's the School of Business and School of Health and Human Sciences, the School of Nursing. And a major change that has taken place is that there is now 00:42:00a School of Fine Arts that includes departments that used to be in the college.

Dr. Beale: The Department of Drama for instance used to be in the college or part of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art, which was up until just this very year, was part of the College of Arts and Sciences. Now the College of Arts and Sciences is also the largest of the college because it's primarily that the general education portion of the university curriculum is taught, that is, required courses in sciences, in history, in social sciences, 00:43:00in the humanities, in English, philosophy, communication.

Dr. Beale: All of those required courses, courses that are taken primarily at the freshman and sophomore level are taught out of, primarily, Departments of the College of Arts and Sciences. And so the College of Arts and Sciences is also in a way the most important of the colleges in the University in that sense as well as the largest.

Lacey Wilson: Was it always the largest college?

Dr. Beale: Yes.

Lacey Wilson: Were any departments added to that over your time as a Dean?

Dr. Beale: No. We didn't add any departments. We did split the Department of Drama from the Department of Communication because their interests and their 00:44:00activities were increasingly different even as their roles and their faculty became larger. And so, it made more sense for them to be separate as faculty and as administrative units as well. The Honors Program was not a separate administrative unit at the University. It was part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Beale: And the Dean of Arts and Sciences was responsible for managing the Honors Program as well as many of the Interdisciplinary Programs of the college. Most of the interdisciplinary programs, programs in Women's Studies, for instance, in African American Studies, in, what am I thinking of, in Ethnic 00:45:00Studies. All of those originated in the College of Arts and Sciences. And were taught by faculty out of the various departments of the college.

Dr. Beale: And the Dean was responsible for funding and finding faculty and finding faculty to lead in an exciting way these new kinds of studies that were emerging. So, that was an exciting part of being Dean at the time that I was Dean. Now as you are aware, a number of those studies are managed outside of the 00:46:00college now. And so, the responsibility both for Honors and for Interdisciplinary Studies is not as great now on the College of Arts and Sciences as it was then.

Dr. Beale: Although, it is still primarily college out of the faculty, out of the college, that teach in those programs. But today, the Head of the Honors Program is an administrator, like a Dean who was hired by the Provost and reports directly to the Provost. And so, the college was different at that time 00:47:00in that the responsibility for interdisciplinary studies of various kinds, and those can be very exciting things, were the primary responsibility of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Beale: And part of my role was to grow those programs, to support them, to keep the Provost aware of the costs involved and the need for resources to do that. And the Dean was also .. another primary role of the Dean is a money manager, business manager of the college. And so, there are daily, weekly, things taking place that involve securing money to support programs and dispensing that money to the people who are responsible for managing them.

Dr. Beale: And I enjoyed that role as well. I enjoyed it more in the beginning than I did in later years simply because ... for two reasons. Number one, it is a very difficult job, and also by the time I was in my seventh or eighth year as Dean, Deans had become administrators who were expected to raise money as well as dispense it. And every Dean today is involved very much in activities that 00:49:00the Dean was not responsible for when I first became Dean.

Dr. Beale: And one of those is raising money through development, that is securing gifts from outside the University. Every Dean now has on his or her payroll at least two development officers. That is, people who are responsible for securing gifts from alumni and also organizations outside the University. And that's a difficult job. That's a difficult job as well. And I'm not as much an expert as I was expected to be.

Dr. Beale: By the way, the person who is my wife, Lori White, after I retired as Dean and went back to the college, she had been a lecturer in the University and someone working with the Honors Program, she became a development officer herself for the College of Arts and Sciences. And so, even though I was no longer Dean, I remained helpful to the College simply as a person who sometimes accompanied her on trips to visit alumni, to visit the Presidents and Executives of corporations who were making gifts to the University. And that has become a 00:51:00much more important source of income for the University today than it was half a century ago.

Lacey Wilson: Sure. You'd visit alumni who had made gifts?

Dr. Beale: Who had made gifts and who we wanted to make gifts. And I can remember sitting in front of individuals with my development officer saying, "Would you give us $30,000 to support this program?" And they would typically say, "Well, I'm sorry, I can't give you 30, but I can give you 10." And we smiled on the way out the door and were happy to have that $10,000.

Lacey Wilson: Of course. It's still $10,000.

Dr. Beale: Yes.

Lacey Wilson: So, when you're dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, you had previously been Head of the English Department, and so you were dealing with 00:52:00faculty below you on that level who were needing resources and support on that level. But if you're a Head of Arts and Sciences, you're getting it from the arts and the sciences from my understanding.

Dr. Beale: And the scientists too. And it was part of my responsibility to educate myself in the ways, I of course could not become a scientist or a philosopher or an anthropologist, but I could educate myself in the different ways in which those departments, ran themselves, in the kinds of needs that they had, in the kinds of faculty conflicts that sometimes would occur. And it was my job to be a resource, not only of funds, but also to help lead their discussions 00:53:00among themselves, and with other departments of the University.

Dr. Beale: And when you have a college as diverse as the College of Arts and Sciences, you have a humanities faculty, a social sciences faculty, and the sciences faculty, there's going to be competition for the resources that are available. And the Dean is the person who has to engage the leaders from those departments in the discussion about where the most urgent needs are. And in some cases, it's the Dean who has to make the decision and that doesn't make everybody happy.

Dr. Beale: And it's the Dean's role to be as fair as possible in those 00:54:00circumstances and to make as wise a decisions as possible about where the most urgent needs are. And humanities faculty typically think that the most urgent needs are in the humanities, whereas scientists have a different idea about that.

Lacey Wilson: What were some of the urgent needs that you saw during your time?

Dr. Beale: I think the most urgent needs came in the form of support for the sciences. UNCG as primarily a liberal arts college for women historically. Okay?

Lacey Wilson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Beale: Was not as strong in the sciences as were other institutions in the state. Certainly not as strong as UNC-Chapel Hill, certainly not as strong as NC 00:55:00State. And not as strong as some other institutions simply because sciences and the pre-science professional fields were not fields that, with the exception of nursing, women typically went into. And so most of our majors were majors in the humanities and the social sciences and not in the sciences.

Dr. Beale: And that situation began to change radically in the 1970s and 1980s. And we had to grow in a very fast and determined way into an institution that was just as strong in the sciences as we were in the humanities and the social 00:56:00sciences. When I first came here, UNCG was known as the best institution in the state in the humanities. Now as time went on, other institutions became stronger in the humanities even as we had to put more resources into the sciences.

Dr. Beale: And so, we had to make a determined effort to support that growth in the sciences while maintaining our strength, you see. Maintaining our strength in the arts and then in the humanities and in the sciences. And that was a very difficult job for the institution. Not merely for the Dean of Arts and Sciences, 00:57:00but for the Chancellor, the various Chancellors of the universities. Their primary role was to usher in that transition to a larger, more diverse place. A place that was more oriented toward research and a place that was stronger in the sciences. And it was not an easy job to do.

Lacey Wilson: I imagine you had to bring in more and different faculty, I imagine, as part of the start up?

Dr. Beale: More different faculty and more in different students. And we've doubled in size during that period. And it was necessary for us to grow in enrollment for three reasons. Number one, we needed to become a more diverse place. We needed more men, we needed more minorities, and we were competing with 00:58:00other institutions for the best students. And that meant in the initial stages, lowering the admission standards of the University somewhat. And not everybody was happy about that.

Dr. Beale: And I think that was a major source of conflict and disappointment among some of our faculty even as they recognized that need. Another reason was that the support from the state of North Carolina is largely dependent upon the size of enrollment. And so, we had to grow in enrollment in order to gain that 00:59:00level of support that we needed to make the transition to the kind of University we are today.

Dr. Beale: And there is a third reason, and that is we also needed to grow in out of state enrollment. And that's not only out of state but out of country enrollment because out-of-state students pay closer to what it costs actually for their education. And that's true for students out-of-state and it's true for students outside the country as well. And we've had to grow substantially in 01:00:00out-of-state and out-of-country enrollment.

Dr. Beale: When you become more diverse, you become a stronger place in many ways. And I think you see it simply in the broadness and excitement of being at a place that's as diverse as UNCG is today. You also create new sets of needs, new levels of student services. And that means not only those services that help students to succeed, but also the kinds of services and activities that attract students to the university. You know, our new $91 million health and fitness center is a testimony, not only to the size of the place, we need facilities of 01:01:00that sort to serve the larger and more diverse student body that we have. But we also need that kind of attractive facility to attract students to the university. And those have been part of the transition.

Lacey Wilson: What are the kinds of conversations that are had when you went in to invite more people, get out of state and out of country students?

Dr. Beale: What are the kinds of conversations?

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. What attracts out of state and international students to UNCG? What do you bring out to do that you think?

Dr. Beale: Well, first of all, the quality of the programs. Second of all, the desirability of being here from the standpoint of the kinds of facilities that 01:02:00are available, special programs that are available, and simply the overall attractiveness of the place. And you're in competition with a lot of other institutions for the best students that way. And that has become a major focus. Student enrollment and recruitment is a much more intensive activity than it was. In 1971 we waited for the best students to apply and they did.

Lacey Wilson: That was the process, just waiting? Interesting.

Dr. Beale: I'm not saying that there wasn't, there were. There was a Director of 01:03:00Student Enrollment and all of that. But student enrollment and recruitment has become a much larger and much more intensive set of activities. And I think that that requires a new emphasis on student success as well. And if you go to the library today, you see a very busy place with lots of students taking advantage of a lot of facilities that are there that are oriented toward student success.

Dr. Beale: Getting the kinds of information that they need, getting the kinds of help that they need for understanding various aspects of their disciplines. The 01:04:00library is now much more oriented through the computer revolution has made possible. Access to information of the sort that simply wasn't dreamed of two generations ago. And all of those things have been major changes. I must say, I spend most of my time now as a retired faculty member in the library. And I'm just delighted at the level of activity, and the level of student services, and the level of orientation to student success that you now see coming out of that library organization.

Lacey Wilson: I want to fast forward a little bit. Did you notice any changes in 01:05:00teaching when you would transferred from Dean back to being on the faculty, or changes in the English Department?

Dr. Beale: Not too much really. I think that teaching in the humanities has become a different kind of job in the sense that class sizes at the old UNCG were smaller. Okay?

Lacey Wilson: Sure.

Dr. Beale: And so, teaching has become a more difficult job, in that respect, because even as simply lecturing is widely recognized as just one of the many 01:06:00ways that you make contact with students. The necessity ... many humanities faculty are frustrate by larger class sizes because they would like to do more of those student intensive kinds of things with students that are conducive to student success. And it remains one of the jobs of the Head of a department like English to keep the Dean and the Provost reminded of the necessity for smaller class sizes.

Dr. Beale: And because from the standpoint of money management, one professor teaching 70 students is a lot better than two professors teaching. It's a lot 01:07:00more economical than two professors. That's the thing I noticed immediately when I went to the University of Michigan back in the 1960s. I was educated at Wake Forest, a small liberal arts college at the time. And I went from a place where class sizes were 20 to 25 to sometimes they were 35 to 50. And that's a different situation.

Lacey Wilson: Entirely. So, I'm going to ask you about various Chancellors that you remember during your time here. I think you came in under Ferguson.

Dr. Beale: Yeah. I've admired most of our Chancellors that I have greatly that 01:08:00I've worked under. And Ferguson was a very admirable man. I think all of us admired him. He was a person of great dignity and poise. He understood the liberal arts. He himself was a well-educated historian and he belonged to that earlier era. And he shared, with the faculty, that liberal arts college outlook, and we all admired him greatly for that because the faculty knew that changes were coming and not everybody was happy about it. Ferguson understood it, 01:09:00although he was not himself the kind of administrator who was going to lead that change. And so it was the job of his successor to do that. And we all recognized a difference right away.

Lacey Wilson: With Moran?

Dr. Beale: Yes. Bill Moran was also a person of great dignity, person whom I admired greatly as a person of integrity and strength. Bill Moran understood 01:10:00very well the changes that needed to come about at UNCG. And I'm sure the chancellor of a university is hired by the university system which is governed at of Chapel Hill. And I'm sure that the people who hired Bill Moran let him know that that was his job. And it was Bill Moran's job to, I think he understood, to make UNCG a place that was stronger in the sciences and stronger in the area of what we call development. The course term for that is fundraising. But it also has to do with making contact with ... are we about 01:11:00running out of time?

Lacey Wilson: No. I'm just making sure it's still going. It had run out on me last year. Last interview it cut off.

Dr. Beale: I myself, I have to go in a few minutes too.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. We'll keep wrapping up. No problem.

Dr. Beale: But it involved making UNCG a place that was much more in contact with the city, and the region, and with its alumni in the area of garnering support. And that required building a stronger development organization and hiring more people as fundraisers and spending more of your own personal time doing that. And that was not the easiest kind of transition for UNCG to make. It 01:12:00also meant growing the enrollment, although that wasn't seen as strong as an imperative right away.

Dr. Beale: But that was Bill Moran's job and he did it with grace and dignity and determination, and I admire him for that. And it brought him into conflict with faculty who were resistant to that change. And I myself, I was a young faculty member at the time. I liked UNCG the way it was and didn't understand as 01:13:00well as Bill Moran did, at the time, the kinds of changes that were needed. You know where that plaza is out there, where the large science building is?

Lacey Wilson: Yeah.

Dr. Beale: That science building did not exist when I came here. And every time I walk past that science building, I think of Bill Moran who was responsible for growing the sciences at UNCG. That building came about as a result of his foresight. You don't build something like that simply with money that's given to you by the state of North Carolina. Now you advocate for that. And part of his 01:14:00job was to advocate with central administration for that kind of support. But you've got to go out and get support for that through gifts to the University.

Dr. Beale: Not only from individuals, but you have to make the City of Greensboro understand that Greensboro itself will be a stronger city with a university that's stronger in the sciences. Now the thing that I'll say about Bill Moran was he was a person of great dignity and great integrity. He didn't have the kind of vibrant TV happy kind of personality that made everybody understand and love his projects. And that's why I think it wasn't as happy a 01:15:00job for him as it might've been simply because he was, as I say, a reluctant communicator sometimes of that need to the faculty.

Dr. Beale: But in the aftermath of it all, I recognize Bill Moran's leadership is very important to the University. And I was happy, I was part of the panel on the inauguration day of our new science building. And it was my happy task to ask Bill Moran, our former Chancellor to stand and to receive the applause of 01:16:00that group for his foresight and his determination in bringing about that change to UNCG.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, very true. And then the next chancellor we had was Linda Brady. Did you have any interaction with her?

Dr. Beale: I did not know Linda Brady very well. I only met Linda Brady, I was not Dean when Linda Brady was here. And I was more concerned with faculty kinds of things. And because of the various changes that I've been talking about, the chancellor of the university today is not as connected on a daily and weekly basis to faculty as the chancellor was back then. And so, I didn't get the 01:17:00chance for that reason to meet Linda Brady.

Dr. Beale: Also, I think Linda Brady was even more determined than Bill Moran was to build UNCG into a larger and more diverse kind of place ... the kind of place that would attract more students and more external support to the University. And so, more of her time went into that. And I would say that she devoted most of her time to that. And that's the kind of thing that wasn't appreciated by all of the faculty.

Dr. Beale: And I would also say that Linda Brady was even more determined to 01:18:00make it happened, and she was willing to be in conflict with the faculty about that, and to go ahead and do things, and to simply go ahead and do things and get things done. And I think that that is what brought her in conflict with the faculty and eventually with the alumni. And it's one of the reasons why her tenure as Chancellor was not as long as that of Bill Moran. Now I don't know whether you want that in your ...

Lacey Wilson: It's the truth. It's what you said.

Dr. Beale: Yeah. Right.

Lacey Wilson: I did ask the question. Have you met our current Chancellor?

Dr. Beale: I have only met him on ceremonial occasions twice. I don't know him 01:19:00at all. I wish I had more of a chance to meet him. All the things that I have heard about him have been good. And so I believe that UNCG is in a good place right now, both with regard to where it is as a larger and more diversity University than it was a half a century ago, and with regard to the relationship between the faculty and the administration. So, I'm feeling good about that.

Lacey Wilson: That's good. Do you have any other administrators you want to 01:20:00touch on?

Dr. Beale: Let me see. Yes, I think that the Provost of the University, whose former title was the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. All right. The Provost of the University is the person to whom a Dean reports. And so my boss, while I was Dean was the provost. The first of those Provost was ... all of a sudden I'm having a memory slip. Please edit this out.

Lacey Wilson: Okay.

Dr. Beale: I think we'll leave out that whole part out of, okay.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. Take out the whole ...

Dr. Beale: Of the administrators.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. All right. Let's switch over to then professors. Do you have any Deans of English you wanted to discuss? Did you come in under Richard Bardolph?

Dr. Beale: Richard Bardolph was Head of the History Department when I came here. All of the heads of the English Department have been, that I have known, ever since I was hired. The man who hired me in 1971 was Bill Lane. The Department Head after Bill Lane was Bob Stevens who was a specialist in American literature. And then after Bob Stevens, I came in as Head of the English 01:22:00Department. All of those people were individuals of integrity and strength. I think that we all loved Bob Stevens as an older gentleman who understood everybody.

Dr. Beale: And we liked him for that reason. I think I was a success as Department Head, although I was involved in some of the changes that we were talking about. My successor as Department Head was Jim Evans. All of these people had been and continue to be friends of mine. And the Department Head 01:23:00after Jim Evans was Denise Baker. All of these people came out of the faculty. And were just dedicated to the work that they were doing. And I have a special place in my heart for those people. Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: All right. Any additional English professors that you have memories of during your time?

Dr. Beale: Well, I was a very young man when I came into the department, I was 26 years old and I received good guidance from people like Bob Stephens, Fred Chapel who was an important creative writer. Our first ... along with Bob 01:24:00Watson, they were the strong creative writers of the department. We all got along very well and I feel that they helped me as a young faculty member understand the kinds of things that I was expected to do.

Dr. Beale: And also Bob Stevens, I think in particular, who was Department Head, when I was involved in getting the department more involved in linguistics, composition, rhetoric, those things, he was a man who, though he was not brought 01:25:00up in a tradition in which English departments were doing that, he was supportive of moving in that direction. And so, I felt good about that, and I think that the English Department and the Department Heads after me were, I don't know, I'd say I don't want to use the word wise, that's a little bit too strong a word for it.

Dr. Beale: But they were both understanding and people who had the best interests of the department at heart. And so when I was Dean, working with them 01:26:00was a pleasure simply because they were such reasonable, good leaders.

Lacey Wilson: Did you have any sense of campus culture during your time here?

Dr. Beale: Well, as I say, campus culture has changed simply because the student body is larger. It is more diverse. I think that there's more of a focus, overall, simply because of the addition of various activities and institutions 01:27:00and offices on campus, there's more of an emphasis on helping students. That is, what am I saying? Student activities that are oriented towards students' success simply because in the older days, there was a stronger set of expectations about what it is you're supposed to do.

Dr. Beale: The student body was smaller. Faculty were more confident that students could do work at a level that was fairly high. And they were not, what, they were not very tolerant of students who didn't meet the level of 01:28:00expectation. Okay? I wouldn't say that the faculty culture is that much different except that the overall emphasis on student services and student success is greater. Now, the older faculty might not say that it was a better place for students.

Dr. Beale: It's now a better place for students to be. What they would say here is that there was a stronger sense of community, you see, that was among 01:29:00students, and a higher level of academic expectation and a stronger sense that the faculty's role was to say to students, "Here's what you're supposed to read. Here's the work you're supposed to do. Here's the level at which I expect you to do it. Go out and do it." And not that that isn't there today, but I just think the campus is a busier, and as I say, a more diverse place.

Dr. Beale: And to my mind, I would say in a way that's better. It's what UNCG needed to grow out of being Women's College at the University of North Carolina. And you know, keep in mind that the civil rights revolution had not fully taken 01:30:00place by 1960, by 1965 when I graduated from college. And the world itself is a different place and UNCG has, I'd say, grown along with that, you know.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. So I'm going to ask you one more question then we'll do wrap up questions and then you're do with it.

Dr. Beale: Then we'll be through.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. One of the things you had mentioned when you emailed me back is the phrase "administration culture."

Dr. Beale: Administrative culture.

Lacey Wilson: Yes.

Dr. Beale: I think I've said something about that. I think that the administration is larger now. And the proportion of people doing administrative work to faculty is a greater proportion than it used to be. The faculty is less 01:31:00involved in the week to week, month to month, running of the management of the University. And so there's been a necessary kind of division between people in administration and people on the faculty.

Dr. Beale: It was not uncommon in the old days for a faculty member to be an administrator as well as a member of the faculty. There are many more people in the administration today who are not themselves faculty members and who are engaged in purely managerial kinds of things. Administrators themselves, at the 01:32:00level of Dean and higher, are expected to do things that are less like the kinds of things that faculty do.

Dr. Beale: When I was a Dean, I taught a course. I taught one course per year, and I was the last Dean to do that simply because Deans are now expected to be involved more in activities that we would call business kinds of activities. And that involves, as I mentioned, development. It also involves the emphasis on research, is one in which it's not simply that research itself is a valuable 01:33:00thing. It's that a good deal of the support that comes to the University comes from research organizations, organizations like the National Science Foundation for instance.

Dr. Beale: The National Science Foundation makes grants to scientists in the area of three to $500,000. Now when a faculty member gets $300,000, let's say, to do her set of experiments in a particular area, it's understood by the National Science Foundation that roughly a third of that should be paid directly to the University because it's University resources, buildings, facilities that are being used. And so a $300,000 grant for research, from a business 01:34:00standpoint, is a $100,000 worth of support for the university.

Dr. Beale: And so every Dean's job now is to go out and assist faculty in getting those research grants and in making the applications. In some cases, some institutions that make grants are not purely grant making organizations simply on the basis of the quality of the application. In some cases, granting 01:35:00institutions are corporations who need research in a particular area. And so pharmaceuticals industries for instance are looking for research in particular areas.

Dr. Beale: One of the things that the research orientation means is if we don't have a faculty member doing research in that particular area that would get grants from granting corporations, maybe we should hire somebody to do that or encourage faculty members who are already here to develop research projects in particular areas. So, every Dean now has an Associate Dean for research whose job it is to go out and help faculty members make those connections.

Dr. Beale: And if the granting agency, let's say is a corporation, maybe we make a visit to that corporation, and make contacts with people at that cooperation, make contacts with the individuals who are responsible for making those grants and develop good relationships with those people. Yeah. Okay.

Lacey Wilson: All right. We're going to do a couple of quick questions for wrap up and that'll be it. So what do you think your proudest accomplishments or contributions to UNCG are?

Dr. Beale: I think that the things ... I think I would say in helping make that transition of English studies to rhetoric, to the study of language and 01:37:00discourse and rhetoric. I'm proud of that. I am also proud of developing our program in writing and speaking across the curriculum. That was an activity that did not exist at UNCG or at very many other places in the NC system when I came here. And I talked to the Dean, who was my predecessor as Dean, about our need for writing across the curriculum as an activity.

Dr. Beale: And the primary thing that students see as a result of the writing 01:38:00across the curriculum, and speaking across the curriculum program is the requirement to take certain courses that are marked writing intensive and speaking intensive. When you have courses that are taught writing intensive and speaking intensive, you need faculty who have been trained in teaching in a writing intensive and speaking intensive voice. So, that means to setting up structures of a faculty education and work shopping in that area.

Dr. Beale: And that's a substantial job. And then the other thing that's very conspicuous about that is the existence of a speaking center and the writing center. Writing Center is a place where students can go and get help with the papers that they are working on. And the Speaking Center is a place where people 01:39:00can go and actually practice making oral presentations. And the Writing and Speaking Centers will expand to areas of digital communication as well as simply writing and speaking. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing as well. So I'd say that's my proudest accomplishment.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. So last one. So these interviews are part of the 125th anniversary of UNCG, which is an excellent opportunity for reflection, but also helps think about where we're heading in the future. What is the future for UNCG? Where do you see us going as an institution in the next 25 to 50 years?

Dr. Beale: I'd say in the directions that I've already outlined. We've become a larger, more diverse place. A place with a greater emphasis on student 01:40:00recruitment and student services and student success, if you want to put it that way. Well, we've become a much more research oriented institution, and we've become a place that is more articulated to the region and the city. That is we've become more of an urban university.

Dr. Beale: I would like to have seen us go sooner and more strongly in that particular direction. I'm talking about that mother of two, that divorced mother of two who never had a chance to finish her college education, and has to find a way to get to work in those courses at night. We're becoming a kind of place that is making offerings to people like that. And we're also becoming a place 01:41:00that is more oriented toward the needs of making connection to the city and the needs of the city.

Dr. Beale: And making it possible for the citizens to do kinds of things like that means making connections to city government and to corporations in the city where these people work, helping to create opportunities there. I'd say those are the positive directions that UNCG is going in. And I think that all of that is to the good right now.

Lacey Wilson: All right. I don't have any other formal questions. Is there anything else you want to add to this interview?

Dr. Beale: I've talked too much already.