Oral history interview with Dr. Celia Hooper, 2017

Lacey Wilson: It's going and today is Wednesday ... the eighth of February, 2017. I'm here with Cecille Hooper, Dr. Cecille Hooper.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Celia.

Lacey Wilson: Dr. Celia Hooper, I'm sorry.

Dr. Celia Hooper: That's okay.

Lacey Wilson: We are going to get started, but you are the dean of the Health and Human Sciences, is that the name of this department? Yes.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It's a school. Yes.

Lacey Wilson: School of Health and Human Sciences.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Health and Human Sciences, right.

Lacey Wilson: Alright, so we'll just get started at the beginning. Where were you born?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I was born in Edenton, North Carolina, near the coast.

Lacey Wilson: When?

Dr. Celia Hooper: In 1951, but I grew up in Thomasville. That's really my hometown. Which is near here.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. What'd your parents do?

Dr. Celia Hooper: My father was an attorney and my mother was a third grade teacher.

Lacey Wilson: When you were in high school, what subjects were you drawn to around that time, do you think?

Dr. Celia Hooper: My favorite class was debating. I did high school debating and enjoyed that a lot. I liked science. Wasn't as wild over English. But now I love 00:01:00it, so it was just a product of the high school, I'm sure.

Lacey Wilson: Probably, yeah. So when you were thinking about applying off to colleges, where were you thinking?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well I wasn't sure. A lot of my family had gone to, women of course back then, had gone to UNCG and Wake Forest. I applied to Wake Forest and then two out of state schools thinking I would do college debating. So Wake Forest invited me to a recruitment thing for debaters. I think I got in there, back then there were only 144 women in my class. They had just let women in. It was hard to get in. I think I got in because of debating. And then when I got there, I just thought it was so hard, I wasn't gonna debate. But they still let me come.

Lacey Wilson: That's good.

Dr. Celia Hooper: But there were so few women, it was very hard. You'd often be 00:02:00the only woman in your class. I got a sense of what it might feel like to be a minority student. I decided for graduate school, I would come here where there were lots of women.

Lacey Wilson: So you wouldn't have that feeling anymore.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: But what was your, was it a BS or a BA? A bachelor's?

Dr. Celia Hooper: A BA. BA in undergrad.

Lacey Wilson: And it was not in debate, it was in speech communications?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, speech communication. Back then, there and here it was called drama speech. Back then theater department, speech communication, they even had two speech pathology courses, which I took. Which made me decide to go into that in graduate school. I also majored in classics as the second major, for fun. That makes your parents nervous. What are you gonna do with that?

Lacey Wilson: Did you know what you wanted to do with speech communications?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Back then, women could, it was 1969, things were changing, but 00:03:00still the message was you can be a teacher or a nurse or a secretary. I didn't wanna be a teacher or a nurse. Speech pathology was a new profession and I thought it's helping people, it's not too medical, so I thought I would try that in graduate school. So I took the course, two courses at Wake Forest and then in the summer I came here and took the prerequisites.

Lacey Wilson: Okay.

Dr. Celia Hooper: So I kinda went down that path pretty early.

Lacey Wilson: So, your mother went here didn't she?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lacey Wilson: So did you come here before coming in for prerequisites at all?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I'm sure I did. I went to ... we took high school trips here because my hometown was pretty close. In fact ... I ... I can't even remember what we came to, but the area colleges, they bused us in. Because we're the underprivileged Thomasville children.

Lacey Wilson: Right, to show them a college.

Dr. Celia Hooper: That's right.

Lacey Wilson: For like events and stuff?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. So you probably wouldn't-would you even remember your first time here?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I can't even remember it.

Lacey Wilson: Okay, so what were those like, taking prerequisites here?

Dr. Celia Hooper: It was interesting.

Lacey Wilson: Because there were more women here.

Dr. Celia Hooper: The summer, yeah, there were only 100 men. We called them co-odds. They were all in the school of business. It was ... really different from Wake Forest because it was bigger and I really enjoyed it. The speech language pathology and audiology program, even then it was best in state and it's nationally ranked now. But it was just, it was hard. And so ... I enjoyed it and I kinda pulled a fast one. I didn't tell the people at Wake Forest I was taking these courses, but eventually I got them transferred and I worked with my advisor, who was very creative, and I graduated in three and a half years because money was a problem. Wake Forest wasn't cheap. I mean it's cheaper than 00:05:00it is now. I managed to graduate in December and I got to start graduate school in January.

Lacey Wilson: Oh very nice.

Dr. Celia Hooper: So I knocked off some time and saved a lot of money.

Lacey Wilson: So you started graduate school here in-

Dr. Celia Hooper: In January.

Lacey Wilson: January of '60 ...

Dr. Celia Hooper: '74.

Lacey Wilson: '74.

Dr. Celia Hooper: No, '73.

Lacey Wilson: '73?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I graduate, I'm trying to-yeah, I graduated. I was supposed to be class of '73 at Wake Forest, but I graduated December '72 and then ...

Lacey Wilson: Started December '73. So did you have to move or were you living from home?

Dr. Celia Hooper: No, in Wake forest I lived in a dorm and in the summers I lived at home and commuted here. When I came here, there weren't any dorms for grad students. I lived in a horrible apartment, but I liked it. It was cheap.

Lacey Wilson: Was it like close?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, Blandwood Ave. it's still there.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. That's interesting.

Dr. Celia Hooper: The funny thing, I had two advisors at Wake Forest. One of them was Tom Tedford. I mean Harold Tedford. Harold Tedford is still alive in 00:06:00his 90s. And I visit him. He was a theater professor, but again, the department was called drama speech. You had to take two theater courses. But his brother was in speech communication here, Tom Tedford. He was really a national expert in the first amendment, free speech. So I came from one Tedford to the other.

Lacey Wilson: That's kinda funny.

Dr. Celia Hooper: That was kinda cool.

Lacey Wilson: Did you know ahead of time?

Dr. Celia Hooper: No, I mean ... I guess he'd mentioned it, but I didn't really tune in until I got here. They kinda looked alike.

Lacey Wilson: I feel like if I'd known that, I would've been like, "Your brother says hi."

Dr. Celia Hooper: I know. It's a very small town.

Lacey Wilson: So you started grad school here. So you're back here as like a full time graduate student now. What's the feeling stepping on campus at that point?

Dr. Celia Hooper: When I was a graduate student?

Lacey Wilson: Yeah.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well it was a wonderful feeling because the town I grew up in, 00:07:00very few of my classmates even went to college. Back then Thomasville was a furniture and cotton mill town. A lot of people worked in factories and I knew how lucky I was. But to go to graduate school was very rare. I had to go to graduate school in speech pathology. Back then it was changing. A master's degree was gonna be required to work. It felt pretty special to be here. I knew where I was in the world, you know. Small town. So it was a good feeling and this campus then, was a lot smaller than it is now. It kinda prepared me for later when I moved to Cleveland and lived in larger cities. It wasn't overwhelming.

Lacey Wilson: Sure, sure. Do you remember some of your first classes?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I think ... my professors were ... classes I had with Mariana Newton, who is a friend now. Mariana taught ... cleft palette, craniofacial 00:08:00anomaly, a lot of the child courses, which I eventually worked with older adults. I enjoyed those classes. One class I took that was special, we had to take classes in other departments was from Rosemery Nelson, who is now Rosemery Nelson-Gray. She was a brand new professor who came from Stony Brook in the psychology department to teach a course in behaviorism. You know, Skinner and all that stuff was new. It was the first course like that.

Dr. Celia Hooper: She is still here. She's the last professor still working that I had. My joke is when she retires, my childhood is over. But she was in her 20s when she taught me. I guess we could figure out her age, but it was really an exciting course. Years later, I was on a dissertation committee with her in psychology. I found in some old boxes, her syllabus, which was mimeographed from 00:09:00... 1973 and I sent it to her in campus mail. She said it made her feel old.

Lacey Wilson: That's fascinating.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, I enjoyed taking courses in other departments.

Lacey Wilson: Did you work on campus?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I had a lot of jobs.

Lacey Wilson: What kind of jobs did you have?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I worked in the dining, for dining services. I did special banquets and ... I also worked at ... in the speech and hearing clinic. I had an assistantship and I would help check people in and that kinda thing. And then if you had an assistantship or a job on campus, you weren't supposed to have another job. Back then they could run your life. But I snuck and got a-because I didn't have enough money, I worked at Bill's Pizza Pub. Which, it's moved, but back in the '70s it was near the coliseum on what was then Lee Street. I 00:10:00actually worked ... the 1974 NCAA finals. They were here. Back then the coliseum didn't really sell food. So between games people would rush out to the nearby restaurants and you could walk. It was fun because you made a lot of money.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah because there was suddenly a rush of people.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. So that was fun.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. Let's see what have we got? What was your area of focus? I think you mentioned you ended up working more with older adults. Would you say that was your focus?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well for your master's degree in speech pathology, then and now, you have to have a wide range of courses and clinical experiences. You don't really specialize. Although you can tell what you like and you can get a job in that area. But then, after I worked a couple of years, I went back for my PhD. By then I knew I loved working with older adults. So that's when I specialized.

Lacey Wilson: Okay, so we're still at ... we're at UNCG and got a master's 00:11:00degree. Are we thinking about getting a PhD at this point?

Dr. Celia Hooper: No. I mean, ask any student, undergrad. Most students would never think of that. I had really good professors and I worked ... when I graduated, I worked in the Mount Airy schools for one year and that's when I learned I really liked older adults. I didn't like working with children.

Lacey Wilson: What were you teaching?

Dr. Celia Hooper: What?

Lacey Wilson: Were you teaching?

Dr. Celia Hooper: No, I was a speech pathologist. I worked with children with disorders. Then I got a job in Winston Salem in a large nursing home, senior living community. I loved it. I knew how much I didn't know. That's when I thought about going back. So Mariana Newton, the woman I mentioned, who was department chair at the time, helped me figure out where I should go that would specialize in that and ... help me get, I got partial scholarship, but she 00:12:00helped me get a loan. She was very helpful. As we do here if our students wanna move on, it's good for UNCG.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, very much a mentoring relationship.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yep.

Lacey Wilson: So you're applying at PhD. You're going to Cleveland?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I applied to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and, Cleveland Museum of Art is great, and I applied to Vanderbilt. By then I was married to my starter husband, as I call him. And my husband, I got in both places. He got in Case Western, so we went there. I ... enjoyed it. I stayed there. I was gonna get my PhD and leave. I got divorced. My advisor there, right before my dissertation, died and so I took over his classes. I enjoyed it. The department told me if I finished my dissertation, they would hire me. So I-

Lacey Wilson: That's impressive.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well, you know you're not supposed to work where you got your PhD, but it was handy.

Lacey Wilson: What an opportunity.

Dr. Celia Hooper: So I ended up staying there ten years. I met my second husband, we had children. Life moved on. But I really wanted to get back to North Carolina. So we moved to Kansas, the University of Kansas while he did a postdoc. Then I came to Chapel Hill for 16 years and then the same woman, Mariana Newton, called me to be department chair here. I said no. They never filled the position. She called me back a couple years later and I came for the interview. I said, "Okay. I'll come."

Lacey Wilson: What changed?

Dr. Celia Hooper: My department in Chapel Hill, although I loved my work there and my friends, but it was in a School of Medicine and I'm really into health and wellness. Medical school is very sickness and disease oriented. Plus if you're in allied health and your department's in a School of Medicine, you 00:14:00really are a peon. Whereas here, we're not under anybody. We're our own school. And so it ... I figured out on the interview, this might be a great place. I was kinda burned out on white jackets and hospitals. So I came and I've really enjoyed it. Not to put down my previous place, but this was a better fit.

Lacey Wilson: Sure, I get that. So did you think you would be working in administration?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well a department chair is 50% administrator and 50% faculty. So the plan was to just die a department chair or retire. And then my dean who was Dave Perrin, took me to lunch one day. He was a candidate to be provost. I'd been here four years. He was a candidate to be provost and he took me to lunch and he said, "This is confidential. They're gonna announce that I'm provost on Monday. I'd like you to be interim dean." This was Friday. So I had 48 hours to decide.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I said, "Dave, I mean not to be Woody Allen and put myself down, but why me?" He said, "Well you have the whole university in mind." Because by then, my department where I got my master's was in arts and sciences and had moved to Health and Human Performance. I was kinda liberal arts-ish and I had the university view. So he liked it. So I said, "Give me until Monday." So I decided if I was going to be interim, I was gonna be all in and I was gonna apply for the job. I wasn't just gonna do it for a year unless they chose somebody else. So on Monday I said I would do it. And I was gonna be a candidate.

Lacey Wilson: That's nerve-racking.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yep.

Lacey Wilson: How was that process?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well it was ... luckily, you know, a lot of people become deans and the previous dean is gone, but I had him to ask questions and he left 00:16:00me great records. And I had already, I knew all the other department chairs, so you know, there may have been some people who wish they had been selected, but nobody said that or nobody made me feel uncomfortable. It worked out fine.

Lacey Wilson: It was a good, supportive environment.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. Yeah, the thing about our professions, all of them in HHS, most of them are called helping professions. You get really nice people.

Lacey Wilson: I get the sense.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It's a different crowd from the medical school.

Lacey Wilson: Competitive in different ways, I imagine.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: So when you, wanna go back to when you guys became, switched over to be more liberal arts-y, because you were here for that.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah I was. Back then ... I laugh, one time I wrote-when I was department chair I wrote a email to all of the chairs who'd grown from that department. The department called drama speech was ... is now speech 00:17:00communication, theater, radio, TV, communication sciences and disorders, and one more. I don't know, I can't remember who grew out of that. I sent an email and said wouldn't it be fun if the faculty of all those departments had a wine and cheese reception and got to know each other. Back then you took theater, voice and diction, communication disorders, you took everything kind of communication in general.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Everybody thought it was nuts. Nobody did it. But it was a focus, those of us in communication disorders had to understand normal, human, communication. Including acting, to go down that pathway. People my age and older who are in my profession had a very broad liberal arts view. It's interesting. My little sidebar as an undergrad in classics really tied in as 00:18:00well because ... you know, ancient Greeks and Romans, communication was key.

Dr. Celia Hooper: So anyway, that's why, moving to a professional school, first Health and Human Performance and then Health and Human Sciences, I really am happy here that our students have the gen ed curriculum. One of my favorite courses or series was history. You never know what you'll enjoy. You don't have to do it.

Lacey Wilson: You don't have to like completely enroll enroll, but it's good to get it at all.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. Yeah, you're a educated person. I think UNCG does a good job of that. Students complain, especially students who know early on what they wanna do. I act like a mother and say, "We know what's good for you."

Lacey Wilson: It's like eat your vegetables.

Dr. Celia Hooper: That's right. That's right.

Lacey Wilson: I think you were also here with the naming of this building, is that correct?

Dr. Celia Hooper: That's correct. The flash forward at the School of Health and 00:19:00Human Performance was closed, as was the School of Human and Environmental Sciences. I'll talk about our restructuring later. But for a couple of years after the School of Health and Human Performance was closed, this building was still called Health and Human Performance Building. I talked to a board of trustees member, Kate Barrett. She was a retired kinesiology faculty member worked in this building.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I said, "Kate, it's really awkward to have a building named for a school that doesn't exist." Like the Stone Building used to be called the Home Economics Building because there was a school of Home Economics. When something closes, and the name is still there, people get lost on campus, they don't know what is it. She came up with the idea of going back to the original name. This building is two buildings and one in the middle. So it's really three 00:20:00buildings, which is why it's so strange. But the original piece of it from the '20s was Coleman and ... Mrs. Coleman was the first dean of physical education. She was called a department chair back then. A lot of the departments of Health and Human Performance, including dance, grew out of physical education.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We contacted, Kate and I wrote this document about why it should be changed for kinda negative and positive. First, it's the name of a school that closed. It's awkward. People get lost. Secondly, let's go back to the original history, which I always appreciate. And we found her great nephew, Mrs. Coleman's great nephew in New York, he loved the idea. So the board of trustees had to vote and they voted yes. We had a big ceremony and her nephew came down and we hung her picture downstairs in the lobby.

Lacey Wilson: Oh that's cool.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It costs a lot of money. You have to rename ... all the maps. 00:21:00All the stationary. But it was worth it.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, yeah. It's good to like get everyone to coalesce into one building under one name as well.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, the nice thing of naming it about, you know, after we went through Aycock, it's very controversial. A lot of schools are saying we're not ever naming buildings after people. We haven't gone there. I mean the Kaplan family gave money for the wellness center. We would wanna honor them. But the nice thing about her is we already knew her history was spotless. She dedicated her whole life to this school, had a great reputation. So we weren't gonna get in any trouble.

Lacey Wilson: No, none whatsoever. Trying to figure out what I hadn't asked you yet.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Restructuring.

Lacey Wilson: Let's do restructuring then.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Oh my. I use it as a, I teach an administration and leadership class to doctoral students in health and nursing. It's a case study. I'll give 00:22:00you the fast story as fast as I can. The-

Lacey Wilson: You don't have to.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Summer of, I'm trying to think what year it was. 2010 maybe. Six years ago, Chancellor Brady and Provost Perrin called the administrative team, which is all the deans and vice chancellors. We got this email to report tomorrow in the chancellor's board room ... no it was provost board room. Doesn't matter. But we had to go to the provost board room at this certain time. No information. So we all called, what is it? What is it? Nobody knew. Secret meeting.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Two people were on vacation. It was summer. Laura Sims and Terri Shelton were on vacation, so they phoned them in. So we go there, we were all looking at each other. It was a secret meeting. We were to tell no one. Chancellor Brady said that she was going to restructure UNCG. That she was going 00:23:00to form a school around health and she was going to close the School of Health and Human Performance and she was gonna close the School of Human Environmental Sciences and it was gonna save a million dollars.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We were all just okay. I'm sitting there as the dean, oh and there would be one less dean. So I'm dean of Health and Human Performance. Laura Sims is phoning in. I couldn't see her face. She was dean of Human Environmental Science. I thought well okay, I can go back to communication sciences and disorders. I have tenure. I won't be on the streets. I remember thinking Lamaze breathing comes in handy. I'll just go like this. But then she said what she was gonna do is form a faculty committee in the fall.

Dr. Celia Hooper: This was summer. It was about seven weeks until school started. She was gonna form a faculty committee and that faculty would decide, 00:24:00that group would decide what departments moved into the new school and maybe some others would move around. They would decide. They would decide whether nursing and health were together in one school or separate. That the committee would do that. To prepare information for the committee, she divided us, everybody in the room, into twos or threes and gave us an assignment. I was paired with Laura Sims, the other dean, of Human Environmental Sciences. Our job was to look at models around the country that had nursing or didn't have nursing and make a recommendation, and also what departments were there, if nursing was involved.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Since she was on vacation, I told her I would call her later. What we, I think we agreed then that we would meet at her house as soon as she got back and we would work on this. So just a few days later, and again, we were 00:25:00all, the chancellor said if we talked, we'd lose our job. I mean we would be ... so I'm a good soldier. I'm told not to talk, I don't talk. So a few days later, I go to her house and ... she said, "Are you gonna tell your people?" I said, "No, we were told not to. It'll cause a lot of trouble. She's gonna put the group together in the fall anyway."

Dr. Celia Hooper: So we started looking at models and I discovered that Purdue was a year ahead of us and was doing the same thing. I thought it would be fine to have nursing and health together, but it really wasn't my call. It was just to prepare information. I came back to school the next day and ... my phone started buzzing. Apparently she had talked to her ... associate deans, her administrative team and then talked to alumni and it hit the fan. And they had a 00:26:00rally at College Place Church because the alums were very loyal. This was the old home economics school. There were five departments in there.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I'm not knocking it, but it really ... they were very much against it, said terrible things about the chancellor. Change is hard. So my faculty started calling me and I could tell they were getting upset. So I called a meeting here, opened this wall, we packed in here, and they were what's going on? What's going-and I emailed the chancellor that I was having this meeting. I said the word's out. She was okay with that. I just told them what I told you in a shorter version. They said, "Why didn't you tell us? Dean Sims told her people." I said, "She told her administrative team who let the word out." I said, "When somebody tells me not to talk, I don't." I said, "The chancellor was gonna announce it in the fall to you." I said, "Right or wrong, sometimes I tell 00:27:00some of you things that are confidential. I'm a good soldier."

Dr. Celia Hooper: And they all said, "But she said there'd be one less dean. Are you still gonna be our dean?" That made me feel good. Like they didn't say, "Yeah, you're out."

Lacey Wilson: Right, they wanted to keep you.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I said, "I don't know." And I told them that I knew, I named some other universities that had gone through this. I found out later 25% of my colleagues in our National Dean's Association had been through restructuring in the last five years. It's very common. Universities always reorganize. I said, "Let's look at it positively." We plowed through that year positively and that is, I wasn't being a suck up, I actually thought it was a good idea, but they asked me to be interim dean of HHS. The other dean who was not positive, retired. I mean, she chose to.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I thought she was a good dean and we were friends. It was tough. Then I applied for the job and they did a search and I got the job. But it was ... the reason I use it as a case study, when you look at frames of leadership, you have to think about who you tell what to and what are the political ramifications. At the same time the chancellor was doing this, she was building Spartan Village, planning on the wellness center. She took a beating from faculty and she eventually had heart problems. She's still here, but she stepped down. It was very stressful.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I think ... I don't ... I would never be chancellor. It would make me nuts. When you make a big change, you've really gotta do the political legwork. I don't know that I would've had that secret meeting. Asking a room full of people, 20 people, not to talk is challenging. So if I drop dead 00:29:00tomorrow, the thing I'm most proud of is putting this new school together because we started from scratch, our structure, our traditions. I've really enjoyed it.

Lacey Wilson: How was that process, starting it from scratch though? That's gotta be intimidating to build a whole school.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah it is. It is. Luckily, to her credit, when I was a new dean of HHP, the old school, I asked the chancellor, you know a lot of new faculty or new deans get a startup package. They send you to a workshop. I asked her to send me. I knew friends of mine had been to a great workshop at Harvard on management and leadership. It's two weeks, you live in the dorm. I mean it's very intense. I went to that workshop and it was, I learned so much about leadership. I used a lot of those skills for starting the school. For example, you study structural frame, the political ring, human resources.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I looked at org charts. How would we organize. I had a lot of freedom. Dave Perrin was provost and Linda Brady was chancellor. They gave me a lot of freedom to put the school together. It's differently organized from other units. I mean we're all different. But I put together an office of research, an office of community engagement, an office of diversity and inclusion and an office of internationalization. Those four offices really run a lot of our procedures in the school. So it was fun.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, it sounds that way. Intimidating but fun.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. I was ... a nervous wreck but I faked it. I thought it's gonna work out. I also have wonderful department chairs. I know how to delegate. I have good associate deans. I picked smart. You have to pick people to do these things. You pick people that will be on your team, not that they agree with you. 00:31:00We're all very different. I didn't want people, I was very careful to select people who were not part of the crowd that thought this whole thing was ... a disaster. Because that would be counter productive.

Lacey Wilson: Right. You do wanna pick people who are supportive and intelligent on their own way to be able to do these things. Let's get to that because we can talk about ... impressive colleagues that you have here. Working here. That's always fun.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. Well, I mean I could talk all day. The ... we have, I'll start with faculty. We have so many that are just world renowned researchers or experts in their field. I'm not gonna name them all. You can look on our website. I will say that I admire people who've been here their whole career. I'm not one of those people. I've been at four universities. I could never fit that. I've been here now 14 years, but there are some people who've been her 20 00:32:00or 30 years, but they keep changing. They have a rich love for this university. One of them is my associate dean Kathy Williams. She ... she was ... graduate of the University of Wisconsin. But she was a professor in kinesiology. Motor movement disorders and motor movement is her area.

Dr. Celia Hooper: She was department chair and now she's associate dean for undergraduate programs. And she absolutely loves undergraduates. Any problem an undergraduate has, she will try to fix it. Very dedicated. A lot of patience. And then my other associate dean, Dave Demo came from Human Environmental Sciences. I didn't know him. I knew of him, but ... he's an expert in human development family studies. He was very positive about the restructuring. He 00:33:00spoke to the board of trustees. They had a big hearing. He spoke about how he thought it was a good idea. And I ... asked several people who would be a good associate dean for graduate programs. Several different people named him. I didn't really know him when I asked him to be an associate dean, but he worked out fabulously. That was good.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We've had two associate deans for research. HHS is very research intensive. They're fabulous. My second one, Cheryl Lovelady is getting ready to retire. So Esther Leerkes will be the third one next fall. That's an important position.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah it is.

Dr. Celia Hooper: But we have a culture here, I think ... I joke and say I'm gonna have buttons made that say be nice dammit. We don't tolerate, and I hope it starts with me, nastiness, you know what I mean? You've gotta be kind to each 00:34:00other and to students. Occasionally I've had to talk to people who are nasty within their departments or to students. I don't know that that's my role and I always say that. I don't know how appropriate it is for me to even bring this up, but we've had so many complaints. Your teaching avows and your colleagues, is that really how we wanna live all day long every day at work?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Some people take it seriously, others choose to work somewhere else. It's a real cultural thing there, probably because of our disciplines. We have faculty driven committees with names. One of them is call work life balance and they have a lot of programs for faculty. Another one is, it's gone by several names. G Sams is one, for Good Samaritans, but they do our health fair 00:35:00and they do parties for faculty and just take care of each other.

Lacey Wilson: Very supportive.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: How else would you describe the culture of UNCG?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I've thought about that a lot because, again, it's my fourth university. It's probably better to ask people like at their first year here. Now I'm so ...

Lacey Wilson: Used to it.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Used to it. I would say ... I was very surprised ... at, I mean the culture is kind and supportive. I was very surprised at the high quality of work here. Because it's not as 'famous' as ... some schools. When I was in Chapel Hill, the dean of the School of Medicine referred to the lesser 00:36:00UNCs, meaning not Chapel Hill. I thought that was very elitist and I thought what a stupid thing to say. Then I came here and I thought it was really a stupid thing to say. Because some of these programs are nationally ranked. They're better than those. But there's not an arrogance here.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It's a, people are kind of comfortable in their skin here. They're not feeling like a lesser UNC. The other thing that's different here and one of the reasons I came, I've worked at Case Western, Kansas, Chapel Hill, and now here, is the student population. They're not driving Maseratis. They didn't come from New England prep schools. Nothing wrong with that. But growing up as I did, where I did, I saw how lucky a very small part of the population is to go to college. There's an acknowledgement here that you wanna help people do that. I mean we have students who are very privileged too, but it's a different 00:37:00feeling and they're ... even people in offices that registrar's office, financial aid, the housekeeping staff, they're all swimming in the same direction to help students.

Dr. Celia Hooper: If you go to any of the schools I've worked, they'll say the same thing, but I really feel like it's a little different here. I don't know how you feel as a student though.

Lacey Wilson: You know this is not about me. So let's transfer a little bit back to administration. You came, I think, did you come in under Brady, or did you come in under Moran?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Brady. Oh actually, I'm sorry. When I was a department chair, Pat Sullivan.

Lacey Wilson: Pat Sullivan. Okay.

Dr. Celia Hooper: She hired me.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. Then we can start there. So tell me about Pat Sullivan.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well, my first month as the department chair, I'm eating in the dining area in Elliott University Center in a little booth and somebody 00:38:00scooted in beside me and bumped me over and said, "How's it going?" And it was her. You know, I came from giant universities with 30, 40,000 people and you saw the chancellor twice a year. So here she is. I said, "It's the big dog." She was very personable. That was 14 years ago, 15 years ago. And ... she was a very on campus chancellor. You saw her every week. She was in the dining hall. She was in the dorms. You saw her a lot. That is a model that many chancellors had years ago. Now chancellors need to be more external. Linda Brady was both internal and external and now Chancellor Gilliam is much more external. I was on the search committee that found him. I can take no credit. The search firm did all the work.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We said we need a chancellor to be external. Universities on the rise, which we are, get that way from having an outward facing chancellor. Some people are having trouble with that. Especially, those people that I've said good things about that have been here forever, they remember chancellor Sullivan who was here every day and Moran and previously. But it's a different, I mean back in the day chancellors didn't raise money. The state paid 90% of the expenses here. It's a different job. I really did appreciate her. She got sick with pancreatic cancer near the end of my first year as a dean, so I never got, you know, to experience her very much. Provost Perrin for a short time was chancellor and provost until we hired Linda Brady.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. And you worked with Linda Brady because she was involved 00:40:00with the restructuring.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Right, right. I worked with her her whole time as chancellor. She came in after Perrin and then, I mean he was still provost and then she stepped down a couple of years ago. But we had already hired Provost Dunn. So for a semester Provost Dunn was provost and chancellor.

Lacey Wilson: That sounds like an intimidating amount of work.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Oh I don't know how you do it. She did a great job though.

Lacey Wilson: And Perrin because he also did that same thing.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, he did the same thing. And Perrin decided. He went, he told me he loved being a dean. I said, "Oh now you can't have your job back." But he went to the University of Utah, which is higher than us on the academic food chain and they have five health schools. Medicine, dentistry. He's dean of Health Sciences there, so I see him periodically. But he's very happy there. 00:41:00Anyway, and Provost Dunn is now just the provost, which is plenty to do.

Lacey Wilson: I imagine. But you were on the search committee for Gilliam.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah. That was fun. It's the most unusual search committee. We all talk about ... it was too, we thought it was too big. It was 23 people I believe. Maybe I have the numbers slightly off. Most search committees are about ten people. So organizing it was a nightmare. A lot of board of trustees members, people from all over campus. Because the Brady years had been controversial, everybody wanted a say in who was on that committee, so I represented the dean's council. We really, for some reason, really enjoyed it. We got to know each other and it was a year long experience.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It was just so much fun that we now occasionally have search committee reunions. We had one at my house. The first one we had was downtown at 00:42:00this place like Joymongers. I can't remember, it was a bar, and the chancellor came. It was a rewarding experience.

Lacey Wilson: And what do you think of Gilliam as our chancellor now?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well of course we think he's wonderful. We interviewed, we had a big short list and then a small short list. He rose to the top. I think this is public. It is now. He was everyone's unanimous choice. It's really nice. I've been on search committees when there's internal arguments, but we just knew he was the right person for us now and it was great.

Lacey Wilson: That's good.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I like his style. I remember on the interview, he said, "Are you ready for me?" He's kinda out there, which I love. I just think he's perfect for us. I worry that this is not a thrilling place as UCLA, Los Angeles. He 00:43:00can't have lunch with Denzel Washington. But it's, you know, I think he enjoys it here.

Lacey Wilson: That's good. What would you recall about any other administrators during your time here?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Other administrators?

Lacey Wilson: Yeah.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well I really appreciated Lynne Pearcey, she was dean of the school of nursing for nearly 20 years and Jim Weeks was dean of the school of business for about that long. Jim and Lynne came in together. When I was a new dean, I really relied on them, asked a lot of questions. They were both very supportive of me. I could ask them any question. I could always ask the provost, but sometimes you don't wanna ask your boss a question and look really stupid.

Lacey Wilson: I understand.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Lynne and Jim and I, we all had a different style. But they were in different schools.

Lacey Wilson: The styles would fit different schools.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah, yeah.

Lacey Wilson: How would you describe your style?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I think I'm a little more collaborative. Lynne, we teased her. 00:44:00Lynne's in a school of nursing. Was. And nursing schools are more like the army. So Lynne would say to me, "Sue just make your faculty do so and so." I said, "Lynne I don't make faculty. I have to inspire them to do things." There's a little more ordering people around in a school of nursing. Our faculty would kill me and they should.

Lacey Wilson: It just doesn't fit here.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It was different. And the business school is kind of a business model. I'd say in both business and nursing, there's a little more chain of command and more people have worked outside of academia than inside. People come and go and ...

Lacey Wilson: So almost, you could almost say the styles of the industries that work in that really influence the academic side of it.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Just like arts and sciences.

Lacey Wilson: Of course.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I'm sure Dean Kiss can't order people around. It's very faculty governance oriented. I like that.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. That's really fascinating. Campus culture. What social and 00:45:00academic events do you think stand in your mind at UNCG?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Now or when I was a student?

Lacey Wilson: Let's do both.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I ... when I was at Wake Forest and then at the same time at UNCG, they had required chapel. Even though this was not a religious school. Wake Forest, I was there the last days it was Baptist. It went independent. That's an odd phenomenon. It makes me feel 100 years old. And especially in schools in the south, either once or twice a week, all student body went somewhere for something. To their credit, both at UNCG and Wake Forest, they had all religions. We would have, we'd learn about, but it was very spiritual. And I 00:46:00would never advocate for that again, but there's something to be said, you know, being in a room with all your friends and having a spiritual moment.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Of course, that died. Required chapel ended. When I came to UNCG, they didn't have it. But they had a lot, more than they have now, a lot of guest speakers in now UNCG Auditorium, then Aycock Auditorium. I remember I ... they would do it in the mornings. There was a time when there wasn't classes. Or late afternoon. And I heard Jesse Jackson speak there in 1975. He put together the Rainbow Coalition. In my mother's time, I'm hopping around, Harriet Elliott, for whom Elliott Center is named, was really good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt and so Eleanor Roosevelt came for that required chapel and my mother went to that.

Dr. Celia Hooper: So I don't know who was in charge of all that. As a student, you just went. But it seems to me, the school is bigger now and you can't get 00:47:00the whole student body in one place. There's also, there's so much going on now, you could go to something every day. I sound like an old fogy when I say I kinda regret that, but it was a nice cultural thing. So I go to things now on campus and you see subsets of students.

Lacey Wilson: But it's not gonna be, it would never be as big as it was then because there's just too many. Any other traditions like that you can think of?

Dr. Celia Hooper: No, I would say when I was here as a graduate student, it was much more of a commuter school. I'm sure you've heard out in front of Elliott University Center was a gravel parking lot. There weren't the traditions that you have now, the rock and all the, you know. It's nicer now. It feels more like a college that's been around a long time, because it has. But it didn't have all the traditions as some of the formerly male schools had.

Lacey Wilson: That's interesting.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Yeah.

Lacey Wilson: Can you think of any, what sort of events have you been to recently? You said you've been to a couple where you see some subsets.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I'm on the Board of Campus Ministry of the Wesley-Luther Foundation. I've go to some of their events. I've gone to women's basketball, men's basketball. Since I'm in this building, Coleman, and we have so many student athletes are majors, particularly kinesiology, I pop into a lot of events, like volleyball. I'll just come for ... if they're in the day time, I'll just run down for 20 minutes, see how they're doing. Tennis is right out there. Soccer. I got to, and I'm not a sports nut, but I like to go. Sports here are done right, as opposed to some of my other schools. I also go to lectures on campus.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We sponsor a lot of them here. I pop into the Science Olympiad and the graduate student expo. We have a lot of career fairs. You can do 00:49:00something every night.

Lacey Wilson: You can. Do you ... are you involved in extracurriculars? Was that-yeah.

Dr. Celia Hooper: When I was here?

Lacey Wilson: Were you, yeah.

Dr. Celia Hooper: As a graduate student-

Lacey Wilson: No?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Not so much. I was an officer in our National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, UNCG chapter. Most graduate students are very focused in their professional stuff. I did a few extracurriculars as an undergrad. But not so much as a grad.

Lacey Wilson: Later, no. Sure. Are you over any as a dean or anything?

Dr. Celia Hooper: The Wesley-Luther Foundation, I'm chairman of the board.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah, I didn't get the name of that one.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I was a founding member of, with Bill Johnson, one of our student success coordinators, we helped form the Golden Key Society. The reason we did, and it's very active now. It's a volunteer student group of students 00:50:00with a high grade point average. There are some organizations, you may know better than me, but when I first came, there were organizations where honors students or high GPA students were selected.

Dr. Celia Hooper: The nice thing about Golden Key is if you have a 3.5 you're in it if you wanna be. Because there are a lot of students who may be quiet or they might not be in 58 activities. A faculty member might not notice them or select them, but they're great. So we got a lot of students in Golden Key. Very smart. Not scattered but wanting to focus on a few things. So I was very proud of that.

Lacey Wilson: Oh cool, when did you start that?

Dr. Celia Hooper: That was ... seven or eight years ago. I have to look up the date. So it's fun. And then all of our departments have professional organization, speech and hearing, the nutrition group, the kinesiology club. 00:51:00What I do is I offer, if they want me to come in and give a talk or pop in. But I don't go to all of them because there's just so many.

Lacey Wilson: Can't have the time.

Dr. Celia Hooper: No. I would say the nutrition organization. They often win organization of the year. They do a lot.

Lacey Wilson: Wow, very cool. So we're actually just gonna hit the wrap up questions now. Unless there's anything else you-

Dr. Celia Hooper: Good stuff.

Lacey Wilson: Okay. So how do you think you serve beyond UNCG in professional organizations and the community of Greensboro?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I have been on several boards, usually health related. I was on the board of the Alight Foundation, which was formed by a woman who had breast cancer. She helped set it up. It raises money to help low income women who have breast cancer for things insurance won't pay for. So a lot of them have 00:52:00to stop work. We help with rent or food. It's run through Cone Hospital Social Work. We don't distribute it. We don't even know who it goes to. We just raise the money.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Then they do, the Alight Foundation does a lot of education for women. A lot of our students volunteer there. The other thing, I'm ending my time, for six years I've been on the Wesley-Luther Foundation. That's the group of students, about 500 of them, that run the Spartan Open Pantry. And I really like that mission. They also have a strong LGBT ministry, which you don't have to be religious. They just serve students on campus. A very safe place. I like that.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I'm entering the board of a place called Peacehaven, which is outside of town, which is a facility for developmentally disabled adults, where they live. They can take courses here and ... courses out there and we have a 00:53:00lot of our faculty work in that area. That's good. Trying to think of, I'm part of the American Heart Association's efforts for heart prevention. So things like that. I'm trying not to get on anymore boards, but just to be involved in things. I go, I meet with the head of Cone Health periodically. I'll meet with a lot of people.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We have a Sullivan Alliance statewide. I represent UNCG, that's for diversity and healthcare professions. Just a lot of that. In the ... I'm the incoming president of the College of Health Deans, which is my people in the Untied States and then I used to be active in the American Speech Language Hearing Association, but I kinda finished that when I became a dean.

Lacey Wilson: Sure. What changes do you think you've seen during your time as faculty and dean at UNCG?

Dr. Celia Hooper: I would say of course the restructuring. I think ... a bigger focus on research. Greater appreciation of how that ties in to help students. I think we've become ... more professional in our advising. We understand how advising relates to student success. In the old days, it was a crapshoot. You got a good faculty advisor or a bad one. At least we try to make that better. I think that we pay more attention to enrollment and what areas of focus we should have for students. So we've gotten rid of some things that society doesn't need or value, good or bad. We're not educating home EC teachers anymore. I have some 00:55:00regrets about the fact that the public schools no longer offer physical education. With childhood obesity I think that's sad. We're still teaching PE teachers.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I think we have a chancellor-I've already mentioned the chancellor has become more outward focused which helps us. I think the job of a dean has changed. Really I'm the first wave, nine years ago, of deans that had to raise money. In the old days, deans were only academic. Now we have to raise money too, which I like. Because all I do is talk about our good programs and scholarships for students.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah. So what do you think makes our speech pathology department stand out?

Dr. Celia Hooper: The attention to students and our good clinical placements. Every program that's nationally ranked and we have several in this school and several on campus, every one of them has faculty who do research that's groundbreaking. That means they have often graduate students and undergraduates 00:56:00involved. Faculty aren't out there doing research alone. There's always students involved. The other thing that makes a department great is ... the achievement of their students. That means you've picked the right faculty.

Lacey Wilson: Right.

Dr. Celia Hooper: We don't have a high tolerance for divas, you know?

Lacey Wilson: What makes our School of Health and Human Sciences stand out?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Well I kind of just said it. It's hard for me to separate communication science and disorders with HHS. I would say ... we brag that we have the most, we have outstanding enrollment and graduation rates. HHS is 40, depending on the year, 40 to 45% diverse. We have very diverse faculty, which is why we have diverse students. You wanna see faculty who look like you. We have 00:57:00diversity of thought. We're the most research intensive academic unit and so our biggest problem is modesty, I always like to say. It's a very good school. You haven't asked me what makes UNCG unique this time, but something that I've noticed-

Lacey Wilson: I was getting to it.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Right now, and it was true in the past. It's really good now. The seven academic deans really get along. We work for the good of UNCG. We get together for adult beverages. We ... not the whole crowd, but in pairs, we eat at each other's homes. We call each other up for help. We're really united. Most, I don't know if people or students surely don't understand that that's a good thing. For example, we had a backlog of 500 students in anatomy and physiology and biology was teaching it. We had a big meeting. We discovered 00:58:00biology was teaching animal biology and we need human anatomy and physiology for our students. So kinesiology has faculty who can teach it. So we teach for health sciences students and nursing. You can take human anatomy or biology anatomy and we've gotten rid of the backlog. That took the dean of arts and sciences and me and our faculty working together. And if everybody had said, "Oh, no that's my course. Only I can teach it." Students wouldn't graduate on time. That's my example.

Lacey Wilson: That's a good example. So what do you think are your proudest achievements or contributions at the building office? Sorta the same structures. Speech pathology, health human sciences, the new institution.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I thought about that. Kinda the thing I'm proud of in communication sciences and disorders is kinda two pronged. I think they're related. Three of us as a team wrote the doctoral program and that doctoral 00:59:00program has now started graduating students. I'm very proud of that and at the same time I spent a lot of money. They had saved money and I spent it sending faculty to conferences and buying research things. And they, out of 280 programs, they've never been ranked. They were ranked for the first time when I was chair. There were 30-something and now they're number 30. They're trying to get to be number 29. I'm proud of that. As dean of course, the restructuring and putting the school together. I have a lot of old things under that, but I'm really proud of that. It took 1,000 people but that was fun.

Lacey Wilson: Alright, we're in our last two now.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Okay.

Lacey Wilson: So tell me how UNCG has affected your life and what it means to you.

Dr. Celia Hooper: I am amazed that I almost didn't come here because I was a cog 01:00:00in a wheel in a medical school of 900 faculty where ... if what I did in my own research or teaching wasn't as valued as it is here. And so, what was your question? The ... I've forgotten the question. I got off on a tangent.

Lacey Wilson: Tell me what UNCG, how UNCG has affected your life-

Dr. Celia Hooper: Oh how it affected my life.

Lacey Wilson: And then what it means to you.

Dr. Celia Hooper: What it means.

Lacey Wilson: Yeah.

Dr. Celia Hooper: It's just really ... personally and professionally, it's just the right fit. Sociologists talk about person environment fit. You can do a great job somewhere, but if it's not for you, this just feel like a much better fit. On a real personal level, some of my research, I published the first article in working with male to female transsexual people. I do voice work. In the '70s I started doing that work and in Chapel Hill, it was not valued and now 01:01:00... I came here and we had a transgender clinic. I did a lot of publishing. I got grants. And it was viewed, because UNCG is so diverse, nobody blinked an eye. They didn't think it was odd work. It was very valued.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Right away, I thought this is a different place. I don't have to keep this part of my research a secret. Now there's plenty of people who don't value it, but not here. On a bigger level, I've already said it's the kind of students and the diversity here is just everything's accepted and valued. Not everything, but most things. If somebody at this university sees a problem, seems like it can be fixed fairly easily. I often say as a dean or my chairs 01:02:00will come to me, this is crazy. Why do we do it this way?

Dr. Celia Hooper: Somebody up the chain will look at it and think about it. That's kinda very impactful if you've worked places that are what I call the great grinding machine, where nothing ever changes.

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

Dr. Celia Hooper: Who am I to guess? I recently went to a meeting with several deans and the chancellor and some consultants to talk about the millennial campus. And the chancellor has looked at our strengths on campus and with a team, has outlined two strips around campus and including campus for two areas 01:03:00of focus for millennial campus. And a millennial campus means kind of a public, private partnership. The two strengths are health and the arts. That goes back 125 years because we were always known as education, music, and health. Health meaning nursing and the careers we have now, including nursing.

Dr. Celia Hooper: And so it's gonna be exciting. I saw all the land that UNCG owns. Some of it will sit there for 20 years. We don't have any money. But we own so much land that I didn't realize we own. I think we're gonna have a new, someday, childcare education building. That's a real strength. We'll probably have some of our hallmark programs and departments in health along Gate City Boulevard. Somebody even talked about having a conference center hotel classroom 01:04:00building so when we invite scholars they can be on campus. So I see all that happening and I would imagine that we will have, I can't talk about the arts, but in health, we'll probably have professions and disciplines that I can't think of right now. I mean 30 years ago, there was no such thing as a physician's assistant or a nurse practitioner. So we'll have some things that we need that'll be part of that.

Lacey Wilson: Alright.

Dr. Celia Hooper: That's it.

Lacey Wilson: That's it. Thank you.

Dr. Celia Hooper: Sure.