Second Interview with James Taylor (March 20, 2007): Tapes 3-5

James Taylor (#847) Transcript RL: This is tape number three, side one, of the ongoing interview with emeritus professor of chemistry James Taylor. Today is March 20, 2007. Jim, we want to start by looking now at your teaching career here in the department of chemistry from the time that you arrived here in the fall of 1966, that's when you began teaching, right up until your retirement. If we could go through your undergraduate courses, your graduate courses, some of the developments that you made in the courses. So perhaps a place to start is what were you hired to teach? JT: When I first came, I was hired to teach quantitative analysis. This is a sophomore course, Chemistry 221 or 223. 221 is primarily for those students in nursing or premed. And 223 is primarily for the chemical engineers or someone going on in the sciences. They are pretty much basically the same curriculum, except the science has more mathematics associated with it, more calculation, and the 221 for nurses has more applications. But they are sophomore level courses. And the medical school requires 00:01:00 that, of all their pre-nursing students, at least they did back when I first came. So that was the course that I started teaching. RL: Was that fairly rigorous? JT: The 223 was a rigorous course, because that was training chemical engineers, and they needed to know how to make the calculations, and make them correctly. The 221 for the pre-nursing students was primarily targeted on technique. We taught them laboratory technique, because a number of those pre-nursing students might be laboratory technicians in the hospital, in addition to or in place of going into nursing. So the difference was calculations versus laboratory technique. RL: Did you mind teaching courses at that level? JT: No. I had taught freshman courses at Newcomb that were close to this. And there was a sophomore course in analytical chemistry that I taught at Newcomb as well. So I knew the material. Although I did not have that course, or did not TA that course in Illinois. So that was a learning experience. RL: You said yesterday that the students you had at Newcomb, at Tulane, the undergraduates were some of the brightest students 00:02:00 that you had ever had. JT: That's right. RL: So when you think back on your undergraduates in 221 and 223 here, that still is the case, I take it? these were competent students? JT: Yes it is. The 221 students were really willing students, but their mathematical skills were best described as poor. RL: Really? JT: So we had to teach them some mathematics to be able to make sense out of how you balance equations, how you do the calculations for normality, and how you make solutions at a particular concentration. And so they had some trouble with that. The chemical engineers were really more interested in what can I do with this when I finish. What does this course prepare me to do. They had the mathematics, but they may not have been as motivated to master the material, unless you could provide some reason for them doing it. And they were different. They were very different students. I would say that a good number of the students in 221 were from our farm families. These were students who had worked their way through. They were providing for, in many cases, their own tuition. So they were hard working. No doubt about that. But in terms of brilliance, no. But I liked them. They were just different. That's the point. RL: Yeah. Interesting. How many years did you teach those intro level courses? JT: Well, it was interesting. When I came, Irv 00:03:00 Shain was the chair of the analytical division. And the next year, he became chair of the department. The primary course that Shain had taught was the first year graduate course, instrumental analysis. And when Shain became chair, his teaching responsibilities were reduced. And so he asked me to start teaching the Chemistry 621 course. Which was an interesting thing because Shain's area of expertise was electro-analytical chemistry. And of the 45 lecturers in the course, charitably 30 of them were [unclear] analytical chemistry. [laughter] He would agree. And my task, and it was the first task of learning diplomacy in a university system, was to convert the course from 30 lectures of electrochemistry to 15 lectures of electrochemistry, and finally five lectures on electrochemistry. And to introduce other instrumental techniques into the course. That one had a four-hour laboratory associated with it. So teaching the course and the laboratory was a fairly extensive teaching load. I was in the laboratory two afternoons a week for four hours. Plus three hours of lecturing in the course. The class size was not huge. Thirty to forty was about the maximum. And all of our entering analytical chemistry students would take that course. So any of them who 00:04:00 wanted to major in analytical chemistry would be in there. We had a number of students from water chemistry, from chemical engineering, from pharmacy, from biochemistry, that were in that course. It gave me a good opportunity to use some examples from industry. So we would talk about a technique, and then I would show them an application of that technique and why it was important. And then we kind of changed the way the course was structured to focus on samples and problems, rather than teaching one technique, going to another technique, going to another technique. We would start out with a problem, and then we would try to choose the technique that would be the most applicable to that particular problem. Which was a very different way of teaching instrumental analysis in the Midwest. RL: And it certainly was a change from Shain's teaching. JT: Yes. Yes. Shain was a very, very good teacher. RL: Oh, really? JT: He really was. Yes. He did an outstanding job of teaching. Did a very good job in research as well. Electro-analytical 00:05:00 chemistry has his stamp all over it. But electro-analytical chemistry has somewhat faded in use in industry and analytical problem areas. It used to be the dominant technique, or the dominant science in analytical chemistry. And now it's not. Maybe in the 10-15 percent range. RL: Interesting. Again, we were talking yesterday about your span of 50 years in the field. And you were talking about one site where they didn't have the equipment. JT: That's right. That's right. RL: So when you were given Shain's 621, you dropped 221 and 223. JT: That's right. That's right. RL: So you only taught that for a year. JT: That's right. RL: Did you ever have to return to-- JT: Oh, yes. Several times. The instrumental analysis course was offered 00:06:00 only in first semester. So the incoming graduate students would take it. We had an electronics course that was taught in the second semester. We had organic analysis course that was taught in second semester. So I, in a given year, I might teach the instrumental analysis course, and then teach the organic analysis course. The next year I would teach the instrumental course. I might teach 221 or 223 in second semester. We also introduced an accelerated course for freshman, an honors freshman type course called Chemistry 110. And these would be for the students who had high school chemistry, and who tested their knowledge of chemistry. And so in Chemistry 109 and 110, in two semesters they would have the equivalent of three semesters of college chemistry. So I taught the second semester 110 course. These were the honor students, and they were bright. They were comparable to those at Tulane. They were really the cream of the students who would be coming out of Wisconsin High School. RL: And these, presumably, 00:07:00 were the majority of them going on to become majors? JT: Not necessarily majors. They very well could be premeds. The could be planning to major in chemical engineering. But they were pretty clear, they were going to be associated with science in some way, shape or form. RL: Thinking back on the gender split, do you remember, were most of the kids boys? Or were there a fair number of-- JT: [unclear] probably three-fourths were boys. It very quickly got half and half. I think the sense, 109 and 110 was mathematically based. It was mathematics that helped choose whether they would go that way or not. And when I first came, back in '66 or '67, there was the perception that girls could not do mathematics. Which was not true. They could. They were just simply not encouraged. And that was a major change, where we would have a class of half and half. There were not many chemical engineering students who were female until the last twenty years. And now, if not half and half, it may be 20 percent and 30 percent, even in chemical engineering. So it's mathematics that made the major change. RL: Interesting. And you liked math yourself, didn't you? JT: Well, I had a double major in math and chemistry, so yes, I did. RL: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Now I think John Wright said that you really were perhaps focused on graduate students as opposed to 00:08:00 undergraduates. JT: Well, I took the task of being the first-year advisor for the graduate students. So any of the graduate students who would come in and wanted to major in analytical chemistry, I would advise them what courses to take, set them up with interviews with professors, so that they could choose a major professor. When they got into academic difficulty, which was not often, but they did, I would talk with them about dropping courses or adding another course. What Wisconsin did with the entering graduate students in all schools was to give them qualifying exams. And this was a way of leveling the admissions standards from other colleges and universities. If a student had a really good preparation, and they passed all the qualifying exams, and there were four--analytical, inorganic, organic and physical--if they passed all four, then they would move very quickly through the graduate program and get into research, and let research be the guide. Those who came in with some academic deficiencies, usually in inorganic chemistry, not many of them, would have an advanced course. And then I would look at their qualifying exam results and recommend that they take Chemistry 511, which is our senior inorganic chemistry course. Sometimes they would have deficiencies in physical chemistry, and we would recommend a senior course in physical chemistry before they had a graduate course in physical chemistry. So I took on that responsibility, so I was really focusing on the graduate students that way. And teaching the first-year graduate course that they would have to take. I was also involved with the seminar program where the graduate students were required to give a seminar in their first year. One of the characteristics of graduates of Wisconsin is their ability to speak on their feet. And that's recognized nationally. RL: Really? JT: So we spent a lot of time 00:09:00 and energy teaching them how to give seminars, how to condense their research into a few significant sentences so that someone would understand the ability of that person. We also had them do a research proposal as part of their graduate work, so they knew how to put together a research proposal, to defend it in front of a committee of five. So we worked hard with making our graduates really outstanding. RL: Was that an initiative that you helped develop? JT: I helped develop it. But I think that all of us in the division were in favor of that, with the possible exception of Bledel. But that's another issue all together. But certainly John Wright, John [Shrog?], were very, very strongly interested in that. RL: Now you said, I noticed in your notes in preparation for this, you said that the seminar system at Illinois when you had gotten your PhD was so brutal-- JT: It was. RL: That you decided if you were ever in a position, that you would not do that. Would you talk about that a little bit? JT: Well, Illinois felt that there were times when you were presenting your research when you needed to be able to defend yourself on your feet. And their process for doing that was to have students give seminars. And the faculty would sit in the front row. And about five minutes into the 00:10:00 seminar, one of the faculty would raise his hand and ask a penetrating question. Now if you knew your material well, you could answer it. But then once you answered it, the next one raised his hand. And they kept doing that until they got you in a corner. And the idea -- I'm giving them a charitable description--I think the idea was the make you able to withstand criticism on your feet. Now I had two of my colleagues, and one of them in particular who got up to give a seminar and put his hands on his desk to kind of brace himself, and started his seminar, and passed out. So they came behind the podium and kind of helped him up and gave him a drink of water and asked him to start again. And he put his hands back on the desk and passed out again. So that was tremendous strain. And those who couldn't give a seminar under those conditions either left Illinois, or left Illinois with only a master's degree. Now I had had some experience of presentations at [Seconi Mobile?] and in front of vice presidents and 00:11:00 presidents and board of directors of [Seconi Mobile?], so I was comfortable on my feet. But there was no escape. They would continue asking questions until you got to the point that you simply did not know how to answer, other than to say, "I don't know." And that answer was never satisfactory. Next question was, "Why don't you know?" So I just decided that although that stress technique worked, I never have gone into a talk without preparing the talk and then preparing for any question that I might get. That makes you awfully nervous when you get in front of someone. But it also makes you confident that when you get up there you have something to say, and that you will say as much of the truth as you possibly can in the time that you have to present it. RL: Are you glad, then, that you went through the Illinois experience? JT: I think it, I think it developed some stars. And I think it made me think what is a better way of doing this? And a better way of doing that, and the way that we developed, we had students give the seminar to a major professor before it was given to the group. And so if there were some areas of a lack of knowledge, if there were some techniques that the student would be using that would be distracting to the 00:12:00 audience, such as saying, "Uh, I'm uh going to uh tell you uh about--" that's terribly distracting to the audience. We would work with them to get that speech pattern out before they got in front of a group. And we would talk about the techniques of giving a presentation. How you would master your slides so that if the slide projector bulb happened to burn out, you could turn around to the blackboard and continue your talk until the light bulb was replaced. So the slides were not leading the talk. The slides were a complement to the talk. We also taught them how to give a chalk talk, so that we didn't rely on slides and data that no one really masters anyway. And made them focus on the significance of what they were saying, and how it might be applied to some other areas. So those were the things that we talked about that I didn't get at Illinois. So when they got up, they had some confidence that 00:13:00 they'd been through it once. And the first time around, there were mistakes. There were things that you'd want to correct. So after the talk was over, you would sit down and go over with the students, starting out first, here's some things you really did like. Here's some things that came through. Here are some positive things that the audience heard. Here are some areas that you need to work on, and here are some ways to go about it. I thought that was a much better way than the Illinois approach. RL: Did you get resistance from your colleagues, either here or at other settings, based on the premise that it's better to throw them in the water and have them fight their way through, rather than coddle them? I'm being pejorative. JT: I understand. One of the things I'm working on right now is a book on how to write a dissertation. Because there are some major professors who believe that if you deserve the degree, you will wrest it from my hands. That I don't have to help you write the dissertation. If you really deserve the degree, you will figure out how to do the dissertation by yourself. I believe the opposite. I believe that you should help the 00:14:00 student as much as possible to understand what's behind the dissertation, what's required, why it's required, some of the pitfalls, some of the difficulties, so that the student really produces a piece of work that's ready for publication and is able to focus on producing something positive rather than worrying about something negative. "Coddle" is maybe a word that I would bristle at. [laughter] RL: I'm sure it is. It was calculated on my part. JT: I understand. I understand. I understand. But there are two schools of thought. I just think a positive approach works longer and has more positive approach than one of them that is negative. RL: And I suppose it's obvious to say, but for the record, you are not suggesting less rigor in your approach. JT: Absolutely. Absolutely not. RL: So the standards aren't at all different. It is the essential approach that you are discussing. JT: That's right. That's right. No, I think that actually the standards wind up being higher by the approach that we in the division take. You must realize that this is a division effort. This is something that all of us in the division try to do. It wasn't something that was my idea, but it was something that I pushed really hard because of those scars from my Illinois experience. RL: Jim, looking at your course list, we've done 221 and 223. 524, Intermediate Analytical Chemistry. Who was that for? JT: This is for seniors. The American Chemical Society had some required courses that you needed to have for a certified degree in chemistry. And one of them would be 00:15:00 the inorganic course that I mentioned. And the other one would be the instrumental analysis course. So this was primarily for seniors. 621 was primarily for graduate students. So the level of the course was a little lower. Some of the techniques were the same. The rigor was different. But that, that course I taught maybe every third year, something like that. RL: Jim, this issue comes up a lot in my interviews. I'm interested in your perspective on teaching at this research university. And the tension between research and teaching, and where you place teaching in your professional list of priorities. JT: Well, this is one of the reasons that we did some things with the Teaching Academy. Basically, teaching, all across UW campus, is outstanding. But as we said, it's a subversive activity. We don't talk about it. if someone asks, "What are you doing?" we talk about our research. The reward structure was set up to be 95 to 98 percent research. So what you did in quality teaching was because you wanted to, because you cared. And there were an enormous number of faculty who really 00:16:00 cared, and cared about students. So they spent the time and energy and effort to do a really good job in teaching. But at the same time, they had to do a really good job in research. I had a lot of trouble explaining to some of my relatives how many hours a week I work. A Memphis police captain, for example, said, "Jim, how many courses do you teach in a week?" I said, "Well, I teach one course." "Oh," he said. RL: How nice for you. [laughter] JT: How nice for you. "How many hours of lecture do you have?" And I said, "Three. Plus two laboratories." "Oh," he said. "What else do you do?" [laughter] And I tried to explain to him that this may work out to be sixty to seventy hours a week. preparation of graduate course, trying to keep ahead of really, really bright students, trying to develop new laboratory experiments that will challenge them, new pieces of equipment 00:17:00 coming in, trying to do research, trying to guide graduate students. At one time I had a research group of seventeen, which was a large number. RL: Huge. JT: It was very large. That's something that is very large to explain to the public. Why it takes that sort of time commitment and intensity to get it done. There were times that I slighted teaching because research was really, really pushing me hard. There were times that I tried to compensate for that and do a better job in teaching. But there's the tension, always. How much time do you put in one? How much time do you put in the other? And their reward structure is clearly on the research side. No doubt about that. And you understand that when you come to a research university. RL: Do you support that? JT: Well I don't think that we're going to have research quality in this nation unless we have people who really put a tremendous amount of time and energy into that. I 00:18:00 think one difference may very well be what faculty believe is the most important product of the university. Is it training students? Or is it publications? Or is it number of proposals that you get funded? I've always felt that having the student as the primary product of what my effort has been, and so that's the emphasis that I put on, and publications and the research are consequences of that. I don't know that large numbers of faculty look at that that way. There's also the question of allegiance. Are you professing your allegiance to the funding agency? Or are you professing your allegiance to the university? Or are you professing your allegiance to the students who have come to work with you in your research group? Or come into your class to be guided by you. I don't believe you can say "taught," but guided by you in a course for which you're responsible. Those are different decisions. RL: Yes. JT: I think they change. Sometimes in the same semester, they will 00:19:00 switch back and forth. RL: This concludes side one of tape three. RL: This is side two of tape three, Jim Taylor. Jim, we were talking about research and teaching. Sometimes it seems in the state of Wisconsin there's a mixed perception as to whether the UW Madison is a research university or a teaching university. And I don't know whether that issue has been resolved, or if it is resolvable, or if clearly the university is one or the other. And I'm just interested in your, if you were chancellor of the university, where would you be leading the university? JT: Well I think that University of Wisconsin research capabilities should remain. We'll probably get into the Teaching Academy, but one of the things that David Ward, who was chancellor of the university, charged this committee to do was to look at teaching quality and rewards. And one of the things that we did was to survey a number of the faculty around the campus and ask them about what they felt the quality of their teaching might be. David was concerned because a number of the smaller institutions in the UW system were claming 00:20:00 that poor teaching went on at Wisconsin, Madison, and that it was simply a research institution. If you really wanted good teaching, you should go to one of the smaller campuses. Well what David wanted was some ammunition to say not only do we do good research, we also do good teaching. And our survey certainly showed that to be the case. There were no rewards for it. I keep emphasizing that. But it was still being done because people cared about the discipline. And I think that goes with a research university. If you really care about your discipline, you want to do the very best job that you possibly can. And research is one way of showing that you're a master of your discipline. Because you're at the cutting edge. You're pushing your discipline. You're trying to make it more useful or amenable to further advances. And so that's what a research university ought to be doing. There is a problem of where your heart lies. Whether it lies with a funding agency or it lies with the university. And I think that is an area where it would be helpful to have more 00:21:00 discussion. Since the university doesn't provide any funding for research, except some of the seed grants through the graduate school, an occasional summer salary or support of a graduate assistant or something like that. There isn't a lot of money that the university has to support research. They do provide startup funds, but that's about it. But the funding agencies provide all this money. They provide the acclaim, the notoriety, and everything else. So they have built in a reward structure, which the university doesn't. but still, there are just enormous number of people who really care and show it in their teaching. RL: Does the university benefit, then, from your own commitment to your discipline? JT: Yes. Yes. RL: A subset of you are so passionate about your discipline that you want to teach it. JT: That's right. 00:22:00 That's exactly right. And you can see that. There is, there's almost fights over teaching graduate courses. Because that's advancing the discipline. People do teach undergraduates because they care about majors, they care about those students who are coming through the program. But having an opportunity to advance the discipline through teaching a graduate course is something that many, many faculty push to be able to do. RL: To bring this back to you, you have a very distinguished research record. I've talked to a number of people who have affirmed that. You are one of the best teachers on campus, and you have an extraordinary list of publications. And we haven't even touched on how you got into university service. And then you play a very major role in university service. How did you do that? JT: [laughs] Working seventy hours a week. [laughter] RL: Okay. You've hit that one out of the park. JT: Well, I don't know. I think you, if you look at all of it being done simultaneously, it's not possible. You take on a certain task, and you have a purpose in doing a certain task. And then when you finish that task, you try to then pick up the slack on something else. One of the things I learned early on in teaching my classes is that if I was really unprepared, and there were some times when the kids were sick and I would be up a good deal of the night with them, with various things-- RL: Right. JT: --that we don't need to go into. [laughter] And I would come into the class and I would be tired, and I wouldn't be thinking really clearly. And I would say to the class, 00:23:00 "I really have been up most of the night. I'm really not at the cutting edge. If you see me making a mistake on the board, stop me. Or if I say something that's not clear, ask. And let me see if I can't clarify." And I found the students were really willing to work with me on that. RL: You didn't feel diminished by doing that. JT: I didn't at all. They were so kind. When they corrected me, they did it gently: "Professor Taylor, do you really mean that?" Instead of saying, "You made a mistake on the board!" No, they didn't do that. They'd say, "Did you mean to--?" No, I didn't mean to say that! And then we would move on. Now I couldn't do that often. But I found students willing, because they have had the same things happen to them. They have had a night of maybe drinking. They've had a night when their kids have been up and kept them. So they understood. 00:24:00 And they let me be human. And they let me know that even professors can make mistakes. And I found that quite refreshing in teaching, that they would be willing to let you be human. And I think that helped them, too, when they made mistakes, to realize that they could correct them. That things could be okay. But there were a number of times in my teaching career when I had to say that. And initially there were some times that I was afraid to say that. But I got to the point that it just wasn't honest to try to go through the class with that sort of preparation. RL: I take it that there was never a sense on your part that teaching was a chore. JT: No, I enjoyed it. I really did. I enjoyed watching the students start out somewhat unprepared. And to take on more and more difficult problems and to solve them. Maybe we can later get on to some of the 00:25:00 experiments that I tried doing in the course to see if there were not some new ways of learning. Now I didn't have any education courses when I was coming along. So I was not familiar with the educational literature on cooperative learning or some of the other techniques, or learning styles, or anything else. So I was experimenting in class, trying different ways to see if I could get the class to perform better. They didn't realize I was doing experiments with them. For example, I tried not giving any homework at all. I figured that these were graduate students, that they ought to be self-motivated and self-directed. And so we would simply have the lectures and the laboratory and then the exams, and they would learn. No. So I had to give homework. So I gave homework. And we spent a lot of time grading homework. RL: In your graduate-- JT: 00:26:00 In the graduate course, yeah. Because that was the only way I could be assured that they were keeping up with what was going on. And then I found that it was probably better to give them hard homework problems that they couldn't solve by themselves, and to tell them that they could work together on the homework problems, provided they gave me their answers that were not copies from someone else. So I kind of forced them to work together on problems. And this was cooperative learning, and I didn't even know about it. And I found that when they had harder problems where they had to work together, they really got the material. There was one time that I changed textbooks. And some of the problems in the back of the book that I was using for homework were really simple. And I did the same thing with them. And I noticed that the quality of their understanding was plummeting. And I couldn't figure out why. And my colleague John Wright came in and surveyed the students, looked over the material, and talked with the students about how they were mastering the material. And of course the students would never tell me, but they told John Wright, "Those homework problems are trivial. I don't need to talk to anybody else about them. I can just slap them out and be done with it." And so when he came back and told me that, I figured out that this talking together and working together and working through a problem together was a better way of learning the material than trying to do it completely by yourself. So those were some of the experiments that I tried in those courses. There's one thing that I really want to emphasize, and that is the support of the colleagues in [unclear] chemistry. We really had some tremendous discussions on learning. Good discussions on 00:27:00 what made a good exam. Good discussions on what materials should we be teaching graduate students so they were prepared to go in the profession. RL: Oh, really? JT: We really had some very, very good discussions. RL: From my position, I would assume that you all would be talking about your research. JT: We had division meetings once a week at noon. And those division meetings would primarily be on teaching administration of the division. Graduate programs, setting up the cumulative exams, setting up the qualifying exams, those things. We would talk about our research in seminars. But those division meetings were primarily on the program, and the courses that we were offering. When they were offered and what was in those courses. RL: For the record, would you name the colleagues that you-- JT: The two of them that I really enjoyed, and one of them was John Wright. And he's done probably the definitive work on cooperative learning in chemistry. A very well done experiment to show how powerful that was. John [Shrog?] is the other one. So those two I really, really appreciated and enjoyed. Bledel played a role, too, because Bledel, in some respects, kept questioning, questioning. "Do you 00:28:00 really mean this? Is this what you want to do?" And before he became so difficult, he was a necessary component to that. I think that if we had not been challenged on whether this was the right thing to do or not, we may have done some things that were dumb. And he provided the break to keep us from doing some things that were not bad. Shain was supporting, but Shain was supporting from the chair. He was not a member of the division at that point, didn't attend any meetings. But he was supportive for whatever we wanted to do. And that was, that was really very helpful. RL: Jim, do you consider yourself, if you strip yourself down to your essential being, a teacher or a researcher? JT: I don't know that I can distinguish between the two. I think that research was the method of teaching, the depth that you needed to know. Classroom 00:29:00 teaching was the way that you provided the background so that you could begin the depth of study. I look at it as a continuum. RL: Do you think that's common among the premier faculty at this institution? JT: I do. I really do. I think that certainly the colleagues I admire do that. There are some that are totally focused on their own advancement, so they don't do that. But that's not a large number. Usually those leave us. RL: Oh, really? JT: They're bought by another university. Because their focus is the national scene, their focus is visibility, their focus is not investing in the university itself. And so by raising their visibility, they do become candidates for the purchase by another university. I feel that a large number of the University of Wisconsin faculty look at their task in that way. RL: It's interesting to me how many faculty I've met who have chosen to stay here when they could have gone. JT: That's right. RL: And I get that sense from you as well. Again, we're not at university service yet. But there seems to be a certain kind of loyalty, for lack of a better word. There's no reason that the University of Wisconsin should be in this mid range, small state. JT: You're right. You're absolutely right. I think one of the major reasons for that is, I'm going to use the word faculty governance, but I actually mean shared governance. You have some 00:30:00 control over what the university does, as a faculty member. It is not handed down to you. It consumes a fair amount of time and energy for a department to operate democratically. But you feel as if you have had a part in defining how a department operates. Other institutions who have heads, or have a dictatorial structure, don't have that same loyalty. I felt as if I had put some things in place. Then I was responsible for making sure that they worked. And if they didn't work, I was responsible for changing it. And so that's one of the features, I think, that Wisconsin has that I have tremendously appreciated. A regent by the name of [Wansneen?] that I had some-- RL: That's in your file. [laughter] JT: Well he did say one thing that I think is appropriate to this discussion. He said that the university is like a major ocean liner. That it is sailing in one direction. It has a large number of crew. It has a large number of passengers on that ocean liner. And you are a tug. You can push on the liner, and you can change its direction a little bit, but it's still going 00:31:00 to move on. And I think having the opportunity to change it a little bit is really very powerful. If you decide to really make a change in the university--- and it's a good idea. It's going to take you a while, and it's going to take a lot of pushing -- but it can happen. And I have seen colleagues at other institutions that just throw up their hands to say that there's just no return for the effort of trying to make a change, because it just isn't going to change. Wisconsin has been responsive to that. RL: Is that still true today? JT: I think it is. It's becoming less so because of all the politics that go along with it. Students have shared governance role. And I think having a student voice in a number of these things is very good. I don't think that the way students are selected is uniform and democratic. It comes through the Student Association, and they don't represent more than 15 to 20 percent of the students. It may be the students' own fault. But I do think you need 00:32:00 the voice of the students, the faculty, and the administration to make the right decisions. RL: You don't seem to be afraid of the students. JT: Not at all. Why should you? RL: No reason. It's just I don't often hear an affirmation of the significance of the students. JT: Well, if you're developing a graduate program, and you're developing the next generation of graduate students, doesn't it make sense to ask the students, "How are you perceiving what we're trying to do?" Doesn't it make sense to say, "Look, this is what we're trying to do. Is there a better way to do it?" I think most of the time they're going to answer you honestly. And that helps make a better program. It's not something that we do to students; it's something that we do with students. So I'm not afraid of students. RL: I would assume by that that you're generally in favor of student evaluations of professors. JT: [laughs] We will get into that later. RL: Okay. JT: But yes, as part of the teaching academy this was one of the task forces that I led. It was probably the biggest defeat that I have ever had of any initiative that I have proposed. We'll get into that in some detail. Yes, I am in favor of student 00:33:00 evaluation. I am in favor of peer review. A number of those things. Yes. RL: You must have a pretty high degree of self confidence, yourself. JT: I don't know that I do. I worry about the things that I do. I try to test them and try to see whether this is something that is helpful or it's something that is hindering. I'm not afraid of trying, if that's what you mean by confidence. I'm willing to try something, but I'm not so sure that I have the answer when we first start. And I think if someone were truly confident, they would know they had the answer when they started. RL: Oh, interesting. I have to think about that. That's interesting. To go back to, from the sacred to the profane a bit, when you started your teaching career here, which was in the fall of '66, it was just on the cusp of quite a tumultuous time at the university up through 1970. How did that affect you and your teaching? JT: Well, the teaching wasn't really affected very much. The disruption of classes by 00:34:00 fire alarms, the tear gas that would come through the air conditioning system and be distributed all through the building was a major concern. My undergraduate teaching laboratory was teaching right across the driveway from Sterling Hall. So when the explosion took place, all of the windows were blown out of that laboratory. And a good deal of the equipment that was out on the surface of the lab benches was destroyed. So that struck pretty hard and pretty direct. There was a time when a colleague and I were standing with a fire hose at the entrance of the chemistry building, ready to defend doors. And students were rapping on the doors to come into the building. And at that time, we had no way of isolating the laboratories. So if they decided to come in and rampage through the building, that would have been disastrous. To life as well as to property. Because chemistry has many volatile solvents. So if you start even a minor fire in some places, you could create a major explosion. Or you could release some highly toxic chemicals. So one of the things that I have some regrets about was to stand in front of the front lobby with a fire hose, ready to turn it on if they swarmed into the building. They didn't. And so I didn't have the opportunity to test the 00:35:00 resolve. I probably would have swept them out at that time. We had a liquid nitrogen tank at the back of the building. And there were three bullet holes--well, not bullet holes, but bullet dents -- in that liquid nitrogen tank. RL: Really? JT: If it had been penetrated, if the hole had gone through the metal, that would have been a major, major problem. It probably would have hurt some of the students who had fired the shots. Because if the tank had split, the liquid nitrogen could have spilled out. And that would have taken away their oxygen or it would have frozen them in place. That was a very, very difficult time. When I first started teaching, we all wore shirts and ties. During that period, the ties came off. And they never came back. [Lange laughs] We were not going to be identified as faculty by our ties. So that was a major positive thing from that period. [laughter] RL: Were you astounded to find yourself a professor in one of the nation's better universities dealing with this kind of chaos and anarchy? JT: It just didn't make sense to me. I guess, with my military background, I was not as antiwar as some of my other colleagues were. I was not pro-war. I just, I didn't share the antiwar sentiment. So I had trouble understanding both sides in that issue. I was trying to learn what my position would be. And eventually it came to be against war. But initially, I guess I was neutral. And was defending the university 00:36:00 property. RL: Were you surprised that Sterling Hall was bombed? JT: Very much so. RL: You had not seen that as inevitable. JT: No. I hadn't. No. RL: Were you in town when that happened? JT: Yes, I was. And we heard the explosion. We lived in [Greentree?] And I was getting up early and heard the explosion. Heard the noise. Had no idea what it was, and didn't know until I got to campus what had happened. My office was in the chemistry research building, but my teaching was across the street in that building. So I went over and looked at the laboratory and was just appalled. Chemistry building was interesting in that the beams that held the floors together were in kind of slots. Kind of like this. If the wall had gone out far enough from the explosion, the floors could 00:37:00 have collapsed on that building. And so it could have been horrendous damage both to chemistry and to Sterling. It turned out the walls didn't move enough to let those beams loose. But we had to redo that laboratory. RL: Did you, on a personal level, did you and your family consider leaving Wisconsin at that time? JT: No. RL: You were just going to wait it out. JT: We were going to wait it out, because at that time, a number of campuses were the same thing. Berkeley was going through the same thing at the same time Wisconsin was. A number of Eastern schools were. And shortly after that, the Kent State shooting took prominence. And so there was no place to run. [laughter] Except back to Tulane, and we couldn't go there. RL: Interesting. This concludes side two of