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| Dec. 2, 2004 | ||||||||
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Other sites of interest: Student Government Association Center for Student Involvement & Leadership Appalachian & the Community Together Multicultural Student Development |
Q&A: Chancellor Peacock's first semester On Nov. 17, Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock sat down to talk about his role as a chancellor, his accomplishments and failures. Q: Let’s start with your first semester as a chancellor. On a scale of one to five, how would you rate yourself? Five being the perfect score… A: On a scale of one to five … I would say around a three. Right in the middle. There’s always room for improvement, but it hasn’t been a disaster by any means. Q: What do you see that you could improve upon? A: I need to have more accessibility to students and faculty and staff members. And that’s tough to do. The job itself requires so many hours of being in [my] chair, with e-mail, on the phone, with those responsibilities, reviewing papers, reading mail … that, it’s so time-consuming. And you have to face the facts. I’m new at this. I’m reading things that someone else that has been here for a year or two may be able to go through a lot faster, but I’ve had to give it careful attention to make sure I truly understand what I’m about to do and the impact of it.
So that, coupled with the travels for the Appalachian Caravan, I’ve been out of town for two days a week for a while for fundraising purposes and that’s important. Now I don’t give myself an F on that, because Rosanne and I have found ways to have students at the house for informal kind of conversations and I’d like to do more of that. We’ve had faculty groups; some staff, not at the house yet. There are other things like that that I can do a better job at. Q: What would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment since you’ve taken office? A: Well, we’ve had some successes with some fundraising, and that’s part of what a chancellor does, he raises money. Those dollars go for students and for faculty and for staff initiatives. So I think one of my greatest accomplishments would be some of those funding initiatives, such as I’m proud that we have a name for the honors college. I’m pleased that we have a name for our visiting writers lecture series, so that’s good. I’m pleased with being able to connect with as many alumni as we’ve been able to connect with through the Appalachian Caravan. We’ve been getting the message out about some of the objectives of the university, new programs, new initiatives … with our health care discussion going on there, with the professional science master programs, with the discussion on this new wine course and how we can get involved and helping that emerging industry. That is, to me, would be some successes to say. We have some new programs underway at Appalachian, some new ideas that will help our students prepare for leadership roles in the state. At the beginning of the year, I asked the students, faculty and staff to dream with me. It was a year to dream and dream big of new beginnings and using that terminology, I didn’t say we’re going to have this started this year, we’re dreaming about it to see if it works. I’m a dreamer. I like to throw things out and say; ‘What do you think about?’ ‘What’s your idea?’
Q: We’ve talked before about how Appalachian missed out on an opportunity earlier this semester to receive some extra construction money from the state. What happened? A: The bottom line, nobody asked for Appalachian. But at the same time, let’s make sure that people understand that this happened very quickly. It wasn’t as if we had several days notice about this. This happened in the eleventh hour of the short session last year. The funds were on the table and nobody spoke up for Appalachian. When we asked about why some did not speak, I think a couple did and they said, ‘Well, Appalachian got money several years ago in the budget for the Holmes Convocation Center’. That [was] 10 years ago. That’s old news. So it’s time now to get another approach to this thing. I have met with legislators. I am convinced that [N.C. State] Senator [John A.] Garwood will be a strong spokesperson for us. I believe that [N.C. House] Representative [W. Eugene] Wilson is on the Appalachian team and will speak up for us. I had lunch … with Representative Phil Fly from Ashe County, and they are on board for supporting Appalachian. Q: Did we miss this because someone here dropped the ball? A: No, no. It all happened in the 11th hour and I feel like the UNC system lobbyists should have spoken up. Appalachian will have a strong presence in Raleigh, in all the legal senses of that word, but they’ll know we’re there. Q: This year, the football team ended with a 6-5 finish. Next year, can we expect some changes in the football program? A: Well, we can expect changes all across campus. Athletics, arts, academics … our university is never going to be stagnant, never going to be status quo at all. So obviously I’m looking at all programs to see what we can do, make everything better. It’s a time to do a lot of dreaming and when we get to athletics, the question comes up about the stadium. Will we, will we not? I honestly don’t know. I don’t even have all my facts yet on this. You know, when I get my facts, there’s a double-side to it. Is it right for Appalachian? I’m getting a lot of people to give me their opinion on this, and that’s exactly what I want. This was a rough season, this was a bad season, and I think anybody would say that. We saw on campus, the quality of the team that we had and we have a couple of players that are just conference-award winners. Q: You brought up the new stadium. You’ve had the chance to gather feedback from the community. What are people saying? A: People are really polarized. Some are saying this is the best thing that has ever happened. It helps with parking problems, it helps with safety issues; we have a stadium [now] with one way in and one way out. I’m hearing good things like that. I hear others on the other side saying, ‘This is the worst idea you have ever had. How blessed we are to have the football stadium in the center of campus’. It’s accessible to students, they can walk from their dorms. It doesn’t create parking issues for students; they can walk to the game. You’re going to make it tougher for them to get there. We continue to explore. First of all, can we do it, and honestly, I still don’t know that. We’ve got a consultant coming here … to look at the property. I’m still getting information from people. I’m still getting feedback. Q: Let’s say the stadium is completed. Are you still going to be able to let students in for free, or would you implement some sort of lottery like UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State have? A: I would love it if we had a lottery. I would love to know that we had that much student interest. Now I won’t lie, don’t get me wrong, my son goes to State [and] hates the lottery system. You want to go but you don’t know if you can go or not. I would make certain the students were taken care of and we could get them in. One of the drawbacks of having people say ‘I want to go because I can walk now and I can’t walk there,’ well, how many would come, though, for the tailgating experience? Students do that as well as the alums do it. Q: What would you build in place of Kidd Brewer Stadium? I heard residence halls are a possibility. A: That’s a decision not made. That’s a possibility. There’s also a possibility for a new honors dorm for the honors program. There’s a possibility for a college of education facility. That’s been discussed. The thing I’ve heard lately, more than anything, would be another living learning-type center, but that’d mean, that’s what we would do with it. We do need more on-campus housing. I’m hearing that from the students when I meet with them. I’ve also had people say that would be a great place to have a general classroom building, put it in the middle of campus so that you might have an English class there one minute and you might have a music therapy class there the next section of that. As the general classroom, we are so constrained on space. It could be a general office building or classroom building; some campuses have that, we don’t. We haven’t had that, but that’s a possibility.
Q: The family that we bought the property from, the Edmistens, how are they reacting to the possibility of a new stadium? A: Well they’re not happy about it by any means, and I first learned about this from [Watauga Democrat]. I was surprised when I read the newspaper article. I had gotten calls from Mrs. Church and I tried to return that call but all I got was an answering machine, but I did leave a voice mail. I was out of town at the time, called again, got the voice mail. Then I called the reporter from Watauga Democrat, so I kind of walked into it. I was just returning his call, I didn’t know what it was going to be about. Q: So you first heard about it in an article in the Watauga Democrat? A: Right. And in the Democrat, they were very upset about it. But we bought it at a full price, and there were no strings attached as to what we would do or would not do with the property. We dealt with a real estate agent, two agents, that were at the table all the time, and the spokesperson for the family is an attorney, a good attorney. Rufus Edmisten. So there was no trickery or anything done; I was certainly wasn’t trying to deceive anything. At the time, all I remember saying was, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with this property,’ because honestly, at the time, I didn’t know. I did not know what we were going to do with it. Q: What will happen to Owens Field House? Has a decision been reached? A: It has not. I want to wait until after the December consultant meeting to find out if we need to refocus. If so, we need to stay here and use this while we are trying to get our act together for the other property, because the other property is going to be tied to some state support as well. I don’t want us to have to do it all on the back of fees, and we’re not. So I have delayed taking it down. I may have delayed it because it may have come down, we would have thought, very soon now, and it may still come down very soon. I’m going to wait until we get the report back from the consultant to find out whether we can do it or not, what our funding chances are for external funds, from the state funding sources, and then make that decision. It may be delayed for up to a year. Q: The Board of Trustees will be meeting soon. Will you be going with the fee committee’s recommendation for student fees? A: Right, I will. Q: One argument has been that while students are paying more, they get their money back in the form of quality education. Do you think this is true? A: I think we are. That’s the only reason I would go forward with it. I find having to have fees at this level and campus-based tuition increase, I find it extremely distasteful. I believe it is the responsibility of the state of North Carolina to provide for a quality education system and to fund it with tax dollars. I mean, that is their primary responsibility. They’re not doing it. And some of that was the economy issues. You know, even now the state faces problems like the floods; the dollars have to be allocated to go to flood victims. So there are legitimate reasons why we haven’t got this. I can’t look and say ‘You people are not education-focused.’ That’s not justified, but I do think we’re getting back. |
© 2004 ASU Student Publications
