Oral history interview with Dr. Thomas J. Martinek, 2017

Brittany H.: My name is Brittany Hedrick and today is Tuesday, February 7th, 2017. I'm in Parish Library with Dr. Thomas Martinek, Professor of Kinesiology, to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection. Thank you, Dr. Martinek, for participating in this project and sharing your experiences with me.

Thomas Martinek: My pleasure.

Brittany H.: I'd like to start the interview by asking you about your childhood. Could you tell me when and where you were born?

Thomas Martinek: Yes, I was born in a suburb outside of Chicago, Hinsdale, Illinois and I was born in 1943 and that was the beginning of a wonderful pathway that led me to where I am today.

Brittany H.: Could you tell me about your family and your home life?

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, I have a brother. He still lives in the Chicago area. My folks, both, were very connected to the family. We have a very close-knit 00:01:00family. My mom was a secretary for different businesses, real estate firms, different types of companies that she worked for. My dad was an accountant for Electro-Motive, a subdivision of General Motors for years and years and he worked there throughout his life, but they are all connected to the family and to our schooling and various parts of our lives.

Brittany H.: Okay.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, they're great. I was very fortunate.

Brittany H.: Where did you go to high school?

Thomas Martinek: Downers Grove Community High School. Downers Grove Community High School. It was the only high school in Downers Grove. That's where our house was and it was a large high school. It was about maybe 2,500-2,600 in the school at that time. Now, it has gone to two schools. Went through elementary school at a place called Washington School right next where we lived and then 00:02:00another school called Herrig Junior High and we walked to school. We never were driven. We're close enough where we can walk to school every day. It was a great educational experience.

Thomas Martinek: Mostly middleclass, working class families went to these schools and most of the kids that we went with went to school with elementary we were with them all the way through school. There was a couple of private schools. There's some Catholic schools. In fact, my wife went to one of those, but anyway other than that, those three schools were the centerpiece for the educational experiences that kids got.

Brittany H.: Did you enjoy school?

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, it's a great life. School is always a big part. Yeah, we loved it, made all kinds of friends. We had a neighborhood, very close-knit 00:03:00neighborhood in those days. The neighborhood was really great. The kids in the neighborhood went to the same school, so it was all part of it and that also helped in terms of bringing the families together and the neighborhood as well. The school is really an important part of our lives. Church was also. It was just a very, very great time in terms of just having things available and opportunities to socialize and to play.

Thomas Martinek: Sport was a big part of our lives too. We all engaged in sports in different areas in football, basketball, baseball, you name it. But those experiences were also supported by the parents and helped us in terms of staying 00:04:00engaged and enjoying it in ways that were always positive.

Brittany H.: Obviously you enjoyed sports.

Thomas Martinek: Sport was a big part of our lives. It always has been from elementary, middle school, well, we call junior high school, high school, college. It was all what I was about really, defined who I thought I was, but it did get me involved with the area that I'm in right now, kinesiology. It always has been an ally of mine in terms of my work and sport still continues to play a big part of my life.

Brittany H.: What were your favorite subjects in high school?

Thomas Martinek: Oh, boy. I can't say I clicked in the heels over a lot of courses, but it was -- Actually English, I like the best. I always enjoyed English, but I had some good teachers that really I thought helped foster learning in a unique way. Math was okay. I wasn't really great in math, but I 00:05:00don't think I ever put my best effort into it, so I don't know how good I could have been, but definitely English. Social studies was okay. I kinda liked that subject area. I was always interested in history. It was a good course that we had. Kitty Reuter was our historian.

Thomas Martinek: I remember her. She was really an interesting older teacher knew everything about our hometown historically and always shared that with us, but also had a good broad knowledge base and our football coach was a history teacher. He actually taught really a good class. Anyway, they are all good teachers and there are teachers that actually someone that my mom had. When she quit the school there, she went to Downers. We had a rich history there but good teaching and great experiences, lot to do, drama club, Spanish club.

Thomas Martinek: It was all sport for me. That's what I did. I look back in a way, I probably might have been a little more diversified, but that's the way it was. Like I said, it's probably what helped define me in many different ways.

Brittany H.: When did you graduate from high school?

Thomas Martinek: '61, 1961, yeah. That was a close class and we've had our reunions. I've dropped out of the reunions. As you get more and more, the people drop out, you get smaller group and much older looking, so it's an interesting phenomenon I think as -- When you first graduate, you always want to keep in touch with everybody and then it gets a little more difficult. Of course, everybody gets spread out, but anyway at the time, we were very close. We had a really close group of friends, and occasionally, we try to stay in touch with 00:07:00each other.

Brittany H.: Could you tell me a little bit about education after high school? What was that journey like?

Thomas Martinek: Well, everybody had to go to college. That was a big thing. It's like what it is now, but I wanted to go to some school -- My grades were not the -- they weren't knocking the roof off, but I knew I had to go to college. Neither one of my folks went to college. They're both high school graduates. That's about it. Also, like my dad -- In our family, my mom's mother lived with us also while I grew up and she never finished high school. The idea of education wasn't historically a real foundation in our family, but I was the 00:08:00first one to go to college because I thought it had to be done plus I wanted to play sport to be honest with you.

Thomas Martinek: I got accepted to a small school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa called Coe College and I didn't know a thing about it but they accepted me. The basketball coach was a good friend of my high school basketball coach and I think that's how the connection was made and so I went there to go to school. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but it was a liberal arts school and I went there also to play basketball. I went there for one year. The basketball coach, his name was Bill Fitch, he had an opportunity to coach up at another school at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.

Thomas Martinek: He called me up during the summer after my first year at Coe College and he says, "Tom, I'm going up to North Dakota to coach. I want to let you know they give scholarships up there," which they couldn't at Coe, because it was just a Division III school and he said, "I can offer you a scholarship to play up there. Do you want to go?" and I said, "Sure. I'll go." I had no idea what North Dakota was like or the school, but again, it just seemed like a great opportunity. I ended up going up to North Dakota, played basketball up there for three and a half years and then graduated in physical education. That was all PE. It was just PE, sport again and getting a teaching degree up there and then ended up --

Thomas Martinek: When I finished, graduated from North Dakota, I did one 00:10:00semester of graduate work up there, master's and then decided to come back home to Chicago and finish my degree and work also at George Williams College in Chicago and also got a teaching job at the same time and that was in the town that I was born, Hinsdale, and I was hired as a science teacher and a PE teacher. Anyway, I enjoyed that. I had taught two years. I was dating my wife at the time, coaching summer baseball. That's how I met her. Her brother was playing for me and so that was a connection and we ended up getting married.

Thomas Martinek: I had an opportunity to teach over in DOD, Department of Defense, in England for two years. I went there in England with my wife and we 00:11:00had our first child over there and then decided, "Well, maybe it would be nice to see some other country," so we did two years of teaching again science and PE at this junior high school right outside of London. We went to Ankara, Turkey and taught at a high school, George C. Marshall High School. I was the head basketball coach there and taught high school biology and taught PE and coached a bunch of other sports. We had our other child on the way over to Turkey and we loved that.

Thomas Martinek: That was a great experience and then ended up -- I thought we were going to ... had an assignment to Okinawa High School, Okinawa Air Force Base and said I will go back. We only have our family still, just wanted to get back to the roots and so I came back and I thought I'd try to get a college job 00:12:00somewhere and looked around. A lot of cold calls to small colleges, looked in Michigan, some in Illinois where our families were still in. I wasn't finding anything. Then finally, this job came open at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey and it was a half-time position.

Thomas Martinek: It opened up late in July and I called the guy. I found out about it through an advertisement in New York Times and I called the guy and he says, "Well." I told him a little bit my background and he says, "Come on in. I'll interview you," and came in and interviewed me and he says, "Well, here's the $64,000 question, do you want the job?" I said, "Sure. I'll take it." It was a half-time position, but I thought it was a college position and he said, "I can get you a job at an elementary school. You can get some extra money by 00:13:00working there as a PE teacher there," and it was a small Catholic school that I taught there.

Thomas Martinek: I picked up our family. We went to New Brunswick, New Jersey, rented a house and taught one year there and really enjoyed college teaching and the guy I worked for said, "Well, if you like college teaching, you should go get your doctorate." He introduced me to this person, he was the Head of the Human Movement Department at Boston University, John Jeffers. I had an interview with him and we really hit it off. I applied for it, got into the program. He offered a fellowship which wasn't much then, but I thought it was a great thing. We picked up our family, moved to Boston and started my doctorate.

Thomas Martinek: My wife, she was a social worker, so she did a lot of stuff with different outreach programs, but we decided to get my doctorate there and then we didn't have a lot of money. We had some money left over from DOD, so we looked for a live-in job which was a possibility of a lot of these small colleges prior to colleges like Wellesley, different, Endicott, all these small schools, but we decided we took this job as a live-in job. It's with the Greater Harbor Community Residence Program and it's for mentally handicapped adults who were transferred out of the state institution, state-funded institution in Massachusetts.

Thomas Martinek: The idea was to normalize their lives and get them into the 00:15:00mainstream. To do that, they set up these homes where they would live and then get these jobs and then you'd have to people there to manage the house, so my wife and I had decided to take that job while I was doing my doctorate. We did that. We had nine adults that we were engaged with. While I was doing my doctorate, my wife was handling that end. That was a live-in job. We had our two kids there. That was a great experience working with these people and working with their lives and at the same time doing my work at BU.

Thomas Martinek: That is the educational pathway that led me to UNCG as the first job that I've had at the University, a full-time job. I haven't left. In '76, I took the position and was offered a great salary, a wonderful blooming 00:16:00salary which was great and it's been a good experience, great faculty, great history to it and especially our department which was really the cornerstone of the University at that time, Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, or School of.

Brittany H.: Just a clarification, whenever you went to get your doctorate, I'm guessing you chose to get your doctorate in kinesiology. What made you choose that field?

Thomas Martinek: I always thought movement itself is such a great vehicle for studying. I was always interested in social cultural, social psychological aspects of teaching, different ways you interact and impact because I was always coaching kids ... I love just the interaction, working with individuals, with kids and so PE or sport is such a dynamic area of social interaction, of 00:17:00different types of challenges that kids confront and how they deal with them and that always intrigued me and so I thought sport was a great ally to continue on with that type of study and the guy I worked with, John Jeffers, that was his thing.

Thomas Martinek: We had these on-campus programs. We worked with kids from different diverse backgrounds. At the time, when I was doing my doctorate, Boston was going through desegregation and so our Department of Human Movement, which I was doing my doctorate in, we got involved with that whole process of desegregating south Boston and so we developed this magnet program using 00:18:00movement as a way of integrating kids from different backgrounds together. This curriculum was part of what I did and that just really was a great experience in terms of crystallizing my work, what I wanted to research, not only in terms of my doctorate but even past it.

Thomas Martinek: Movement was just a great vehicle for doing that and it continues to be that way for me. There's a lot of great researchers that are using movement also for their own research. That's where I am today.

Brittany H.: Well, you arrived in 1976.

Thomas Martinek: Right.

Brittany H.: Can you tell me about your first days on campus? What was your first impression, is it what you had expected?

Thomas Martinek: I really didn't know UNCG that well. I knew that it used to be a women's college and it was fairly new in terms of its co-educational status. The Department had a great national reputation. I knew that. The faculty here were very strong faculty, very strong willed. Professionally, they were very anchored in the field, very dedicated to teaching. Coming in as a new fledgling faculty member trying to figure it out, it took some doing to see where I fit in. The first couple of years was a little bit challenging. It was daunting because of the faculty, but they were great.

Thomas Martinek: They really made a point of trying to keep people to be connected, especially new faculty. I remember having my first interview and it 00:20:00was all women sitting in front of me, all these strong women. I could remember Celeste Ulrich, Gail Hennis, Betsy Umstead, Marie Riley, Kate Barrett, all of them sitting in front of me and asking me questions. I said, "Oh, boy." I said, "I don't slip up anywhere and say the wrong thing," but they were very supportive but also very -- They wanted to know what you were doing. They didn't want you kind of doing your thing, but they want to make sure everything was connected to the mission of the school.

Thomas Martinek: I think I really learned that it was a really important part, but I also knew that I had to do researching and that was a thing, just getting your footing on solid ground for research and the psychosocial area and started 00:21:00doing some work, getting connections to the schools and doing some in the schools right away. The first impressions were just like all new faculty, just trying to figure it out and make sure you're in a position to be able to be successful and be part of the team and knowing what the team is all about, but very, very strong faculty, great, great faculty, a very dedicated profession and that really helped in terms of solidifying my position, what I looked at in terms of my role here.

Brittany H.: I do have a question, I could be wrong, but was the Kinesiology Department always the Kinesiology Department or did they change the name?

Thomas Martinek: No, it changed. When I was here, it was the Department of Physical Education. In fact, most departments in the country were the Physical Education. It was very focused on preparing teachers in the schools. That was 00:22:00our mission. That was it. We were part of the School of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. Each had their own departments. Health Education prepared teachers in health, recreation specialists and dance, had a great Dance Department, but we were all under the same building. By the way, athletics was part of our school, so coaches were part of our program. There wasn't a separate entity in our University.

Thomas Martinek: Anyway, that Department of Physical Education for years, we had a master's and a doctorate, so we focused mainly on teaching and doctorate was a 00:23:00Doctorate of Education which had focused on educational research and then probably in the early, I don't know, maybe '80s or '90s, they started to split her up. PE started to change. There was an article by this guy. You would know him. His name was Franklin Henry. He was saying that PE was more than just teaching. It was made up of a lot of a different sub-disciplines. That's like sports medicine, physiology, kinesio, biomechanics and all of that and so that started people looking at PE at a little broader area to look at it, more of different disciplines.

Thomas Martinek: It changed the whole landscape of PE and so as a result of 00:24:00that, it became more rather than a professional program. It became more of a science program. In the '90s, we switched from PE to exercises and sports science to capture the sub-disciplines. Then we continued on with that. Then I don't know about eight years or nine years ago, we took an umbrella of kinesiology as an even broader umbrella to capture all of these different areas. We've gone through the changes. You still have professional practice, but you have all of these different disciplines and there's arguments for and against that because you create these siloes of academic study and you create these 00:25:00different professions that people belonged to.

Thomas Martinek: PE no longer has all of its people going to their conference. They have all had their own separate conferences now and so that's how it evolved. That's the reason for it. Right now, we're trying to bring it all together. Let's see what happens. It's tough.

Brittany H.: What were your areas of focus in teaching, practice and scholarship?

Thomas Martinek: I was always interested in the psychosocial area. My role initially was in teaching pre-serviced teachers, how to teach mainly and then I had also taught graduate courses. I studied courses focused on the study of teaching, the psychosocial dynamics of teaching. Analyzing teaching behaviors 00:26:00was a big part of my dissertation, looking at decision-making efforts or decision-making models in teaching and how it affects some of the psychosocial issues of kids. Anyway, that area probably, for the first half of my professional career here, was the focus what I did and I had, as I say, courses that I taught methodology courses and graduate courses and psychosocial aspects of teaching and evaluation of teaching.

Thomas Martinek: Then I started probably in early '90s to develop these afterschool programs, so that it would provide an opportunity to do research and to make sense of some of the things, theories that we are working on to be able 00:27:00to put them into practice. We developed these afterschool programs and a lot of these afterschool programs are dealing with focusing on kids with at risk issues in school, just really having trouble with staying focused in school and making bad decisions, so we started those programs and started with a middle school or junior high school.

Thomas Martinek: There's a principal from one of the elementary schools, Deborah Jones, who was actually a student of ours here. She ended up being a principal there at Hampton School that was connected to Morningside Homes and she asked if we could start an afterschool program for some of her kids because she was really concerned about these young kids in Morningside. They just had free time 00:28:00and they're running around Morningside. Morningside was a pretty difficult area because there's just a lot of crime going on and drugs and all kinds of stuff.

Thomas Martinek: I said, "Yeah. We can start a program." We got a little grant and we started an afterschool program and it was values based. If you ask why sport is so important it was it provided this values-based program using sport to get kids to be socially personally responsible, looking at goals in which they could show how they could work together, respect each other, how they could set goals and be a little self-directed and maybe in some instance help each other out. We developed these learning experiences through sport, so these kids could experience these particular values.

Thomas Martinek: We did this with this school and we had about 24 kids we started out that were referred to us and we're going to do the program out of 00:29:00Hampton, but the principal said, "Oh, any way to bring them over to campus and run the program there?" We had a small grant at that time from the State Department. We're able to pay for bussings, so we brought them over here and we started that program in '94-'95 and it was great. I mean the kids were all over the place. I mean they were just -- It was really a bumpy start, but I had a couple of my graduate students and some undergrads helped me out and so we did it twice a week and we liked it so much we wanted to stay with these kids.

Thomas Martinek: We didn't want it to stop, so we started the program the second year. We started with third, fourth and fifth grade kids the first year and then 00:30:00the fifth grade kids went to junior high school, so we decided the second year, we won't go with the junior high school plus the elementary, so we can stay with these kids and staying with that for a couple of years and then these junior high school kids were going on in high school and so we just started to extend the program to a leadership program. The leadership program provided opportunities for kids that were in the elementary, middle school program to run a program for other kids in the neighborhood. We called it the Youth Leader Corps.

Thomas Martinek: We did that and that started in '95-'96 and so we had these elementary program and leadership program going and it still goes. We're still running. Anyway, that was a great vehicle for me and for our graduate students to work with different elements of PE and looking at some of the psychosocial 00:31:00dynamics that impact kids and help them along in life and we were able to do some research off of it, but also, probably most important is, it provided a way for our school and our department to be engaged in the community in a proactive way.

Thomas Martinek: That really has been a foundational part of my professional career here is that work and also going back to my original pathway was teacher education pulled me a little from teacher ed into a more afterschool programming and youth development work. That's where I am today in terms of my professional goals, but teaching is a part of it still. I mean I haven't left that, so we still maintain a connection, but youth development stuff is a big part of what I 00:32:00do right now.

Brittany H.: Very interesting.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, it is very interesting. Now, we worked with Wiley School over here and we also worked with refugee groups right now and we have a middle college here. I don't know if you knew that. Anyway, it's an alternative school that we put on campus, so those high school kids help in terms of delivering the program and they've been great.

Brittany H.: Are there any social or academic events that stand out in your mind?

Thomas Martinek: Well, I saw that question and I started to think probably the biggest one right now is the Middle College. It's the big one. That was one that 00:33:00I personally had been trying to get into this campus for three years and the reason for that is that in my afterschool program, I mentioned to you as Youth Leader Corps, the kids in the high school program, they're really great. They come here planning a lesson, work with these little kids, did a great job. Some betters than others, but by and large, they did a nice job and it was really great to see, but the problem is they go back to high school and still screw around and just didn't get it. They go to school and maybe cause problem, go to school, not do anything or not go to school sometimes.

Thomas Martinek: The high school is just a challenge for them. It just was not working out. They just hit a wall. I always thought, "Well, it would be great to have some alternative high school experience for these kids." I thought, "Well, 00:34:00it would be nice to start a high school," and I thought maybe that might do that and thought about a charter school. I don't know if you what charter schools are, but North Carolina is big at them. But I found out just studying what it would take to get it to charter school, you have to have of course, you get some money funded, but you also have to have other money and you have to have a building. You have to hire teachers, principals, you're pretty accountable which is good, but I'd have to leave the University if I was going to do that.

Thomas Martinek: I wasn't ready to do that. Anyway, I found out about what they call middle colleges and the middle college is a drop-off prevention model that provides opportunities for kids who are disengaged to go to a high school that is placed on a college or university campus and provide small class sizes for 00:35:00their students. Some flexibility to curriculum, although they have to basically follow a plan of study that's a state-guided one. They can use University resources. If they're ready, they can take college classes, so it's a really plus. Some of these kids who want to go to college can get a head start, take college classes. It's run by the public school, so I said, "That sounds like a great opportunity," and I talked to the superintendent then, it is Jerry Greer, and this is back in 2005 or '06. I can't remember.

Thomas Martinek: I said, "Would you be willing to set up a school at UNC-?" "Oh, yeah. When do you want to start?" He was all for it. I said, "I don't know." I said, "What do I need to do?" He said, "Well, you got to get space and you got 00:36:00to get the University to buy into it." Well, those are two big challenges. First year, I tried to get it going and space was a big issue and there wasn't any space on campus. I looked at churches all around here and see if we can get. I think there were possibilities, but anyway it just didn't work out. The second year, I tried again and I thought I could get space, looked at different other options on campus and I thought we could get it. We presented it to the Dean's Council and they said they just weren't ready for it.

Thomas Martinek: I tried it again third year. I thought we could do it, got another little push back. I was ready to chalk it and then the fourth time, the 00:37:00University was moving toward health science and also our school was focusing more on it and our dean, Celia Hooper, said, "Yeah, we really want to focus on health science. Let's really try to sell it with the focus of the school being a focus on getting kids interested in health science." Anyway, that caught some people's attention, one of which was the chancellor. Linda Brady was the chancellor and she said, "Well, that's a possibility if you can get the space squared away."

Thomas Martinek: We worked. Space was a big challenge. Celia got our School of Health and Human Science and we had classroom space there and she said, "You've got it. We'll give you that." Of course, that didn't make faculty very happy. We 00:38:00got that space. We brought it to the Dean's Council. They said, "Okay, let's give it a shot." Then we had to get it to the school board and we had to sell them on that. That wasn't an easy sell, so we pushed through. We had two meetings to get that through and finally they voted on it. It's August of 2011 we put the middle college here on campus.

Thomas Martinek: That's a big ... here and the University has been great about supporting it, just incredible and we graduated our first 50 kids in May 2012, a great group of kids and then we've had another group last May and we'll have our third group graduating. These kids take college classes. They're typical high school kids. There's always little challenges, but we've had good teachers, good 00:39:00leadership. Angie Polk-Jones is our principal. She's gallant. I knew she was a student here when I was here. The faculty and -- So I would say, to answer your question, that's probably one of the big things, big footprints that I would say is a significant one here at UNCG.

Brittany H.: That was all because of you?

Thomas Martinek: Well, that and Celia Hooper. She really pushed it, but the other thing, the other event, I don't know if it's an event, but I think the fact that the University, when I first came here, I wouldn't say it was a really community-engaged university. It was operated on its own, but one of the things that I think has really been significant is its effort to reach out. I mean it's 00:40:00just I would say probably this started mid '90s where it really became more and more of a community-engaged university and I think that's been a really significant, I don't know if you call it an event, but it's an involvement at this University.

Thomas Martinek: We have so many different outreach things. We have Office of Leadership and Service Learning. We have now 10-year promotion. We've created a new stream of evaluation for community-engaged scholars, so it's really kind of changed the face in terms of the mission of the school, which I think has really been a significant, significant change here. Maybe a third one, athletics, sports, going from a Division III to a Division I school has changed its implications for different things. Anyway, I was trying to think all of 00:41:00different things. There's just a lot of changes here, a lot of different things, recreation, new recreation building, huge, huge.

Thomas Martinek: When I first came here, you know what recreation was? There was a little cubby-hole in part gym. You don't even know what part gym was, but it's where the humanities research building is on the corner of Forest and Spring Garden. That was a gym. We used to have basketball games there, but we used to have construction and then the corner of the gym was a weight room and that's where you could work out for students. It's amazing. Then they built that building over there which was a really nice structure and then just got that I don't know if you've been over there.

Brittany H.: I've heard about it.

Thomas Martinek: You haven't been over there yet?

Brittany H.: No, but I heard it's wonderful.

Thomas Martinek: It's really something. The University has grown in a lot of different ways.

Brittany H.: That leads me to another question. What are your proudest 00:42:00accomplishments or contributions during your time here at UNCG? You're talking about the Middle College so that-

Thomas Martinek: I'd say two things. I want to say my afterschool program still works. We serve over a thousand kids. It's on its 22nd year, so that's my proudest, probably the one thing that I'm really proud of and the other thing is probably the Middle College, just having the Middle College placed on the campus. The only reason for that is I just think it really, really accentuates the mission of being truly an outreach university and I think the University, to me, seems to have really embraced it well and that's what's so important. I think it's one of the better middle colleges. I really do. There's other ones 00:43:00here. Bennett has one. Greensboro College has one. GTCC, they have two or three of them.

Thomas Martinek: Typically, the middle college is at a community college campus. We're one of the few universities that have a four-year middle college and so it's unique in that respect, but I would say that's probably the one I guess the biggest. I can't think of anything else other than-

Brittany H.: Those are pretty significant I guess.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah. It will be nice and it will stay. I don't know. We'll see what happens as it continues on. Each year, we graduate 50 and bring 50 new ones in, but it's a great service. It's great service to the community and to the public schools. It really does. It provides a great opportunity for kids, really 00:44:00is. I mean you couldn't ask for a better education. In that school, the mission of the school, it promotes careers in general health field, but one of them is medical and the other is a health-servicing agencies, medical field and then I have youth development in there as well. Those are three career pathways that we try to get kids ready for and try to clarify their vision of where they want to go after high school, what they want to study.

Thomas Martinek: We have a program in there that we created which is called Pathways to Health, Medical and Youth Development Careers and the kids every week go out and work with a professional that aligns with their particular interest, their career interest at least where they think they want to go. Then they have a course that goes with that just to prepare them in terms of the work 00:45:00site, skills, how to behave, how to interact, getting knowledge about how to pursue your career pathway and what's in front of you, but it really positions kids to at least when they graduate, think about what they want to do or think about what they know they don't want to do.

Thomas Martinek: They find out, "Maybe what I thought I wanted to do isn't going to work." I wish I would have that in my high school. It would have helped.

Brittany H.: Are there any professors either in your department or in general that made an impression on you while at UNCG?

Thomas Martinek: Any what?

Brittany H.: Professors, fellow co-workers?

Thomas Martinek: Oh, that's a good question.

Brittany H.: Anyone that really made an impression on you while you were here?

Thomas Martinek: While I was here?

Brittany H.: Well, you're still here. I guess during your time here.

Thomas Martinek: Well, that's a good question. Gosh! There's so many of them. I think the initial group of teachers, faculty that I worked with probably were really the strong ones I would say. I think one was Betsy Umstead who you don't know. She was a faculty here, great dedicated professor. Kate Barrett, so dedicated to teaching, just really focused on creating good, not only knowledgeable teachers, but just ethically what it meant to be a good person. I would say our dean, the first dean that hired me I thought was great, Margaret Mordy and she was a great leader I thought at that time.

Thomas Martinek: Oh, gosh! There's a bunch of them. I mean I can't think of really one particular one. I do think that one that really has helped in terms of spearheading our program in a direction of becoming more research-oriented was Shirl Hoffman. Shirl was our department head. He really focused on the idea of becoming more of -- In fact, he got the EDD. It was our doctoral program, but he actually created the PhD and pushed that and pushed it to become more of a research oriented ... That impressed me a little because I was always focused. I 00:48:00really wanted to do research when I was here because you had to first of all, but I also was very committed into it and he really helped to solidify that notion so he was pretty strong as well, but there's a bunch of them.

Thomas Martinek: I don't know if anyone sticks out. Just general atmosphere, the culture that was created by a collective group of very dedicated individuals certainly impressed me, a lot of different ways.

Brittany H.: What are some of the other ways that the department has changed over the time you've been here?

Thomas Martinek: Well, we're much more science oriented. That's a big change. Teacher ed, I told you that was a star now it's in the background. So you got sport medicine, fitness, now you got neural biomechanics. I mean terms I never 00:49:00would have thought ever come to the surface early in my career, now it's part of the program study, but it's definitely a more focused degree and scholarship is really an important part byproduct of that. Let's say our department has changed in a sense that there's such a big focus on scholarly output more so than ever and I don't know if that's good or bad. I guess it helps in terms of the overall status of your department as it's compared to others.

Thomas Martinek: Also I would say the other thing is just good teaching too. I mean the focus on research is really important, but also I think our department really has some great teachers. They really are good. I think that has really 00:50:00kind of evolved and become better and better throughout the years.

Brittany H.: What about the type of students you've had in your department over the years?

Thomas Martinek: Same, very different. I would say the students that we've had in teacher ed, they're very dedicated to the profession. Maybe their research focus isn't quite the same as a physiology student, but I would say students that come in right now are really much more focused in their discipline, much more dedicated to their discipline as opposed to students who just come in and had a little broader view I think of the profession. I think that's just nature of the beast, just the way that the way universities are preparing students now 00:51:00because they say, you've got all these different sub-disciplines. I taught an introduction course this fall, Introduction to Kinesiology which is a study of the field.

Thomas Martinek: We covered all the different disciplines in the fields, so you've got all of these students who wanted to do sports medicine. I think they like it because it's a sexy term, sports medicine, but there's a lot of ways you can go on in that, but they're very tied into that and there's people, fitness leadership and then a couple of trickling of teacher. I mean we have such a small percentage now, so that's really changed over the years. As I say before, it was all teacher in the background.

Brittany H.: Before we started the interview, you were talking about playing basketball with some of the other I guess professors from different departments and staff, what-

Thomas Martinek: Yeah. That's evolved.

Brittany H.: When did that start?

Thomas Martinek: Oh, god! That started back in the '70s, the early '70s, the early '80s. We've had noontime ball for years and years. This happens on a lot of campuses, but we started that. We started playing actually started Saturday mornings and a good colleague of mine who I hired, we hired, means I was on the search committee, Bill Harper, still with us, great guy and we started playing ball. We had other faculty and some of the coaches because we were close to the Athletic Department and are small and we just started doing that and then it started during noontime and just played half-court games and just kept going and going.

Thomas Martinek: Eventually, throughout the years, we added more and more faculty and Mark Elliot is one of them and Jeff Jones. We had some people from all different areas, Math Department that are a bunch now. It's grown and grown and grown and so now it's three days a week. From Saturday, now it goes three days a week and we have people from outside now that come in and play and a great group of guys. It's fun. I try to stay with them right now, hobbling around just hoping they'll get me the ball.

Brittany H.: How do people get involved with that?

Thomas Martinek: It's just word of mouth. It's just word of mouth, but we used to play over at Coleman Gym for years and years and then space was hard to get there to do it and the crowd got really big. It was the big pickup game in 00:54:00Greensboro at noon, so everybody got a little nervous with the space. Anyway, Ken Norris, the assistant director for the recreation building says, "I'll block out some gym space over at the rec building," so he does that for us, so we play over there now. But that has a rich, rich history, really a rich history and it's going on and on and on and a lot of different people, but yeah, it started out very small group and then keeps to continue on.

Brittany H.: Okay. I wanted to ask you about your interactions with the different chancellors since you've been here, Chancellor Ferguson, Moran, Sullivan, Linda Brady.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, I've seen them all. I was here when Ferguson was a 00:55:00chancellor and I don't remember that much about him. He's a very soft-spoken individual. He had a very Southern demeanor too, but offered some solid leadership while he was here. He wasn't chancellor very long until, who was that, I think it was either-

Brittany H.: Moran.

Thomas Martinek: Bill Moran. I knew Bill really well. I would say he's very thoughtful. He's a very thoughtful thinker. He just didn't jump out and do things, but he's very thoughtful and deliberate in his thinking and decision 00:56:00making. He was also I think a visionary too in many ways because I think a lot of brick and mortar stuff that's taking place on this campus, physical changes are due to him and also our transition in sport, Division I, he pushed it. He was the guy that started the whole thing going. He was very thoughtful, a very visionary guy. I liked him. I thought he did a really great job.

Thomas Martinek: Then Pat Sullivan. She was great. She was very engaging. I think she really tried to connect with the students in different ways. She probably was a little more outreached in terms of connecting outside resources than the other chancellors, just a little bit more, but I liked her too. She was 00:57:00good. And Linda, I thought Linda -- There's some good things. She had some challenges I think with the faculty. I think she's very steadfast in what she thought was right. I guess she held onto her principles, what she thought was the right thing to do, but to her credit, the Middle College would not have been here if it wasn't for her.

Thomas Martinek: I have to say she went to bat for me. She was there at the school board meeting. I got an award with the Boys and Girls Club. It's a yearly award they give to people who'd worked with them. She was there for it. I really appreciate her support. I can't say bad things about her because I don't have anything to say bad about her other than a little thing that we had going on 00:58:00there with the faculty, but I think Linda just really -- There were some things that she held onto and she wasn't going to change and that's the way she was. That can be good and bad. It depends on what you hold on to. Then-

Brittany H.: Our new chancellor, Chancellor Gilliam.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah. He seems all right. I mean everybody seems to like him. He's very engaging and he's salting the earth and he seems very student focused and he has a real nice demeanor and we'll see. Time tells all. I mean he'll have some challenges, but as far as I know, he seems to be nice change in terms of the type of leadership that we've had. He seems to be out there in a lot of 00:59:00different ways. They're all different and they're always, but you have to see all of them. I don't know. I don't know if I'll be around long enough to see another one come through, but I think Gilliam is going to stay here for a while.

Brittany H.: You mentioned an award. Are there any other awards you want to talk about?

Thomas Martinek: Oh, gosh. I don't know. I always like the awards from the Community Awards. Boys and Girls Club, I've gotten several awards there because we work pretty closely with them and they had a Channel 2, Those Who Care Award that they gave. That was a nice one that I got. I thought that was really, really nice. The Bullard Award, I got that in 2012. I don't know. Just little 01:00:00awards, different, but they're always nice to get. It always affirms your work in some ways. I'd be lying if you don't say that they don't matter, but I think they do.

Brittany H.: You talked a lot about community outreach and it seems that you've done a lot of work in the community yourself.

Thomas Martinek: Yeah. Well, we've worked with a lot of schools. I've always worked with the schools. I've worked with middle school. When they went to a middle school concept, it was junior high school when I first came here. Actually it was seventh, eighth and ninth grade and then went to seventh and eighth and they wanted to do a middle school curriculum. At that time, it was Greensboro Public Schools and the High Point City schools, so they're separate. We didn't have them merged. The Greensboro Public Schools, they want to do this 01:01:00middle school concept and they asked if I would help in terms of developing the middle school physical education curriculum.

Thomas Martinek: I thought that was really nice of them to ask. I did that and they gave us -- The Guilford County School gave us money each year to help develop a curriculum and help deliver it in this six middle schools that were here and help pay for the graduate students who worked out in here and evaluated and ran workshops. We did that for about five or six years. It was great. It was great connection and it just kept us solidified with the public schools. I've always been connected to public schools. I like working with them.

Thomas Martinek: I mean they got to rely on resources and the universities in this community, they're important resource for them and I think we've done that, 01:02:00but I've always felt that that's an important part of a role as a professor if you're just going to keep yourself at the University and serves that purpose, but I think it really is important to extend your work so that you can not only get it out there, but also serve a purpose in terms of providing yourself as a resource to others, so we've been able to do that. Yeah, that's always been nice, but we'll see if we'll continue on with it.

Brittany H.: Well, tell me about how working at UNCG has impacted and affected your life and what does UNCG mean to you?

Thomas Martinek: Well, it's a big part of your life, you can't help it, but I would say it's a -- It probably has impacted me in terms of just providing a 01:03:00reason for why what you're here for and I always felt that UNCG has been a great platform reaching out and I'm not one that's going to go out and create my own necessary program, but I think at UNCG, knowing that I have this place, the resource to be able to do it and to leverage things to happen in other places to help has helped me in terms of becoming I guess an instrument for others. I think that's been good. Also, I think it's made me a better person.

Thomas Martinek: I mean the fact that I have opportunities to help others and be 01:04:00able to be engaged makes you a better individual in terms of knowing why you're here. Also, family-wise too, it's been great. The family helps in terms of just -- I have three great kids and they're all working with others. They all have a service job, occupation, profession, so I think my engagement here and where it's focused on outreach I think has also influenced in terms of how my kids want to see their lives and that has shown up and my wife too, the same thing. It's all helped developed a package I guess in terms of where you are and what you can do.

Brittany H.: Well, we're doing these interviews as part of the 125th Anniversary 01:05:00of the University which is an excellent opportunity for reflection, but it also helps us to think about where we're heading in the future. What do you think the future is for UNCG and where do you see UNCG going as an institution in the next 25 to 50 years?

Thomas Martinek: Yeah, I think UNCG's mission right now is if it can hold on to it, it will be a mission that will really serve the broader community and continue to do that, it would be a really important entity to not just Greensboro itself, but even beyond and I think that mission right now that we've created I think is going to gain momentum and be strong and I see that in terms of the type of faculty that we're bringing in and also the faculty that are presently working at the University. I think the mindset, the way we look at 01:06:00scholarship and the role of scholarship can play not only in terms of the individuals, the faculty's life, but also how it impacts others is really important.

Thomas Martinek: I see this university is being a huge player in terms of impacting a wider community as being a part of that community in terms of better lives, health, continuing to be a really great resource for others and along with that I also think that the University will probably evolve in terms of its academic mission. I don't think it will be a trade off in any way, but I think it will also continue to be a really strong academic entity in terms of its production of scholarship in some ways. I don't know how many years, 20 years, 01:07:0025 years?

Thomas Martinek: I think that is going to be a really important end point for the pathway that it's on right now, is to really be an important contributor in different ways, both in terms of outreach as well as its academic output. Great faculty on this campus and I think we attract good faculty. I do think we have to also be able to measure and be able, I guess, to do what we can do given budget constraints and challenges because those are always be there, but I think we have a pretty good sense of that. I think we're able to accommodate any kind of constraint that hits us to be able to maintain that vision and not have it 01:08:00dismantled in any way.

Thomas Martinek: I think that's a good part and I think Gilliam will be a big part of that in terms of helping us to stay on track. I think it will be important. I think UNCG has been an important player, but I think it will become an even greater player in the broader arena. That's it.

Brittany H.: Well, I don't think I have any formal questions for you. Do you have anything you'd like to add about your time here? Are there any experiences you would like to mention?

Thomas Martinek: I think it's been a great journey. I don't know how much longer I'll be here. This is my 41st year at UNCG, so it's been a long run. I've seen a lot of changes, but it's been a big part of your life. I think UNCG has been a 01:09:00great partner. I think the one time I looked maybe at another job, this is at the University of Illinois in Chicago. There was an opening there with a good colleague of mine. We worked with youth and I was really seriously looking at it, but that never evolved, and in a way, I'm glad it didn't, but I've never, never looked at any other position other than this one.

Thomas Martinek: It's always been great. The first couple of question when you get here, it's always ... It's true with anybody. It's always a little challenge because you're trying to figure it out and push yourself, and of course, you want to get tenure and all that stuff. You got to do the right things there, so you're really focused on that, but I always felt ... it was always supportive. I never felt like getting pushed in the corner or anything. There's always been 01:10:00different ways in which you help keep you going. There's always little things that happened that encourage you and spark you and energize you and that's what's been great about working here and it continues to do that.

Thomas Martinek: I really have enjoyed being able to connect with the community in different ways. That's been a big part of it, in fact a major part and I'm enjoying working with the schools, the teachers, the kids who work with, just getting engaged there with them, it's just been a really great, great foothold for me in terms of doing what I like doing. We'll see how much longer I'll last, but you never know. It's one of those things you carry as far as you want to 01:11:00carry it and you always have that great memories from it so it's not something that you're going to leave behind. It will be with you. I hope that's the case. I mean as a historian, this is a great place to study because it's had a lot of different types of things happening, evolving from Women's College to where it is now. It's really changed, the landscape, the whole bit. That's my story.

Brittany H.: Okay. Well, thank you so much.

Thomas Martinek: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for asking me. You've got a lot of faculty that you're doing?