The Reporter, April 2011

The Reporter is a publication produced by Western Carolina University featuring news, events, and campus community updates for faculty and staff. The publication began in August of 1970 and continues digitally today. Click on the link in the “Related Materials” field to access recent issues.SEARCH Search Home About Archives Subscribe Contact WCU Home April 28, 2011 Email This Post Print This Post Share | ACHIEVEMENTS Bromberg selected to participate in national meeting on nonprofit management Dan Bromberg, assistant professor of political science and public aairs with the master’s degree program in public aairs, was selected to participate in a meeting on performance measurement in nonprofit management in June at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. The meeting will have a special focus on nonprofit organizations and on transparent reporting of results. The event is being hosted by the Wagner School and Charity Navigator at the request of and with support from the Hewlett Foundation to convene a workshop comprising teachers and trainers to explore eective approaches and tools for teaching performance measurement and management. Participants were selected from nominations submitted from institutions nationwide. CATEGORIES | THE REPORTER TOP STORIES NOTEWORTHY NEWS ACHIEVEMENTS EVENTS PHOTOS | WCU NEWS SERVICES CALENDAR 5/29/2017 Ancient Forms, Modern Minds 5/29/2017 Print Plus One: Beyond LINKS Calendar Higher Education NewsWatch WCU Hub AFRICA! MORE THAN A CONTINENT © 2011 Western Carolina University. SEARCH Search Home About Archives Subscribe Contact WCU Home April 14, 2011 Email This Post Print This Post Share | Susan and David O. Belcher TOP STORIES Chancellor-elect, wife meet campus community His father was a pastor. His mother was a schoolteacher. And his wife was magician David Coppereld’s rst onstage assistant. Those are just a few of the personal tidbits revealed Monday, April 11, by David O. Belcher, Western Carolina University’s chancellor-elect, in his inaugural public address to campus. Provost and vice chancellor for academic aairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Belcher was elected WCU’s next chief executive oce Friday, April 8, by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors in a meeting at Chapel Hill. He will ll the vacancy that will be created by the retirement of longtime Chancellor John W. Bardo starting July 1. After a quick return trip home to Arkansas over the weekend, Belcher and his wife, Susan, arrived at WCU on Sunday afternoon for a two-day whirlwind of get-acquainted meetings highlighted by Monday’s campuswide welcome assembly. In an address punctuated by moments of humor that frequently had an audience of about 500 faculty, sta, students and community members laughing out loud, Belcher provided some insight into the career path that led a trained concert pianist to become the chief executive officer of a regional comprehensive university. Among the inuences he cited was a piano teacher from his undergraduate days at Furman University. “I was sitting at a piano lesson when I was about 19 or 20 years old, and he looked over at me and said, ‘You’d make a great department chair.’ I didn’t know whether to be insulted or what. Can I not play the piano? But you know, that stuck with me,” Belcher said. Later, while Belcher was working toward his master’s degree in music at the University of Michigan, another teacher told him that he’d make a great administrator. “Think about your own lives, whether you are students here now, or faculty or sta. You’ve had people all along the way who said those special things to you that have triggered thoughts about your possibilities,” he said. Belcher also credited his current chancellor at UALR, Joel Anderson, with giving him “leadership opportunities that most provosts don’t get to have” – including fundraising, chairing that institution’s NCAA recertification effort and responsibility for campuswide strategic planning. A native of Barnwell, S.C., Belcher pointed to his upbringing as the son of a minister and a teacher as key factors in his career choices. “My parents made me as a kid get up in front of people and speak in public,” he said. “They have a passion for education. They have a passion for high standards. They have a passion for a fundamental commitment to other people. Those are the things that undergirded my childhood and teenage years.” In introducing wife Susan, who teaches voice at UALR, Belcher described her as a full partner in a leadership team. “Susan and I see ourselves as partners and colleagues with all of you,” he said. In addition to once serving as the assistant to a famous magician, Susan Belcher also worked with the United Nations travel oce, is an acclaimed vocal performer and has competed in the New York City Marathon. “I do have a bone to pick with you. She fell in love with you a lot faster than she fell in love with me. She’s as happy to be here as I am,” the chancellor-elect said. “We have found here at WCU a campus community that is absolutely passionate about excellence. You see it all over the CATEGORIES | THE REPORTER TOP STORIES NOTEWORTHY NEWS ACHIEVEMENTS EVENTS PHOTOS | WCU NEWS SERVICES CALENDAR 5/29/2017 Ancient Forms, Modern Minds 5/29/2017 Print Plus One: Beyond the Glass Matrix 5/29/2017 Water Portraits: Barbara Tyroler 6/9/2017 Musical Variety Show 'Livin' the Dream' 6/10/2017 Musical Variety Show 'Livin' the Dream' LINKS Calendar Higher Education NewsWatch WCU Hub AFRICA! MORE THAN A CONTINENT WCU Chancellor-elect David O. Belcher (center) puts his arms around, from left, outgoing Student Government Association President Daniel Dorsey and incoming SGA President T.J. Eaves. place. You see it in this robust Honors College that you have put together. You see it in superb faculty at this institution. You see it in the Coulter Faculty Commons. You see it with the Millennial Initiative, a very foresightful approach to pulling students, faculty and public-private partners together in a really robust learning environment. You see it in the extraordinary promotion of undergraduate research. You see it in the QEP. I see excellence written all over the place here,” he said. That commitment to excellence is balanced with a commitment to student success, including numerous programs and support systems to help ensure that students adjust academically, socially, culturally and financially to university life, he said. Belcher provided answers to what he said are the three top questions that people have asked him since he was elected chancellor. “They ask, ‘What’s the rst thing you’re going to do?’” he said. “My rst job is to get to know you and to listen to you. I have worked for 17 ½ years in administrative positions at two great universities. But this institution is not the same as those two. I have to learn who you are, as individuals, as units, as a university, as alumni, as community members.” The second question people have been asking is about Belcher’s vision for WCU. “While I do have some ideas, I would not presume to conjure up a vision without your consultation. My modus operandi is a consultative approach,” he said. “It’s not about my vision; it’s about our vision.” The other big question concerns the state’s budget, with deep reductions in state funding expected for the coming year on top of previous years’ cuts, he said. “Of course I am concerned, but budget challenges are everywhere. They are forcing us to make some really hard choices. We’ll have to continue to make strategic choices about what we will and what we will not do,” Belcher said. “But I take the long view. WCU is going to be here in 50 years. It’s going to be here in 100 years. It’s going to be here in 150 years. We – you and I – are stewards for a time. We must do our utmost to ensure that, within existing circumstances, Western Carolina is as strong as it can possibly be in order to fulfill its mission far into the future.” The Belchers were introduced to the crowd by Steve Warren, chair of WCU’s Board of Trustees who also chaired the chancellor search committee. Warren displayed a large photograph of the chancellor-elect with his arms around outgoing Student Government Association President Daniel Dorsey and incoming SGA President T.J. Eaves shortly after the election Friday in Chapel Hill. “For those of us who are alumni, we remember how this university put its arms around us, how its faculty put its arms around us, and how the sta put its arms around us, and how we were pulling in one direction the whole time.,” Warren said. “Just as he embraced Daniel and T.J. on that day, we need to return that favor. Let’s embrace him. Let’s put our arms around him and Mrs. Belcher.” By Bill Studenc Tags: David Belcher, Susan Belcher © 2011 Western Carolina University. SEARCH Search Home About Archives Subscribe Contact WCU Home April 14, 2011 Email This Post Print This Post Share | Chancellor John W. Bardo TOP STORIES Chancellor shares ‘last lecture’ at convocation Chancellor John W. Bardo welcomed chancellor-elect David O. Belcher and his wife, Susan, before making remarks at Spring Awards Convocation on Tuesday, April 12. At the end of a long run in a job like this, it is not uncommon for this final talk to be a valedictory that goes over the major accomplishments that the institution had while the person was in office. Today, I want to take a different tact. I’ll leave the summing up to others. What I want to share with you is a bit more personal. Instead of a valedictory, I thought that I might treat this talk as a “last lecture.” And, in the “last lecture” tradition, I thought I should share with you a bit of perspective and perhaps something of an explanation of why I felt that it was so important that WCU took the direction that it has. In German, there is a word “Geschichte.” The word “Geschichte” has many meanings that in English we think of as separate and distinct. “Die Geschichte” means “history,” but it also means “narrative,” “story” or “tale.” Underlying this concept seems to be the notion of weaving together disparate actions and activities to create meaning and understanding. Our histories do not include all possible facts, but neither do our stories. We sift and sort, and focus on relevant facts to bring life, coherence and understanding to a massive endeavor or to something that is, in reality, unknowable in its sum and total. I also see our own individual lives in that same way. We cannot know or remember every instant of our lives, so our minds sift and sort, and weave together a tapestry of memories and understandings of self. And, we interpret these memories and images within the context of our current experience and in conjunction with how we are received by others. (In my field, this is referred to as the “looking glass self” where one sees oneself imaged in the eyes of others.) It is important therefore, that we understand how our actions affect others. It is equally important, as we struggle to create meaning in our lives, to reflect on those key elements of our narrative, our Geschichte, to understand who we are and what we value. Knowing that I am leaving the chancellorship has caused me to look back over my own narrative and ask questions about what it is that I value. It has caused me to reflect on why it is that I think that the work of this university – your work, your approach, your direction – is so very important. In fact, in my mind it is more than important, it is critical for the future. Today, I want to share with you three short snippets of memory that in reflection I think were among the most important in helping me set a personal direction that pushed me to lead this university down a particular path. All three occurred in my youth. Each was fleeting – lasting no more than a few minutes – but each had very lasting impact. The first memory I can place almost exactly. It was September of 1957. I was 8 years old. My family and I had been to an extended family get-together. It was late before we got back into the car to go home, and my younger brother had fallen asleep. My mother sat in the back seat with him, and I rode up front with my father. By the time we left the party it was after midnight on Sept. 29. My father turned on the radio and I remember hearing a special news report that stated that President Eisenhower had sent federal troops to Little Rock Central High School because the governor of Arkansas was trying to stop nine children from going to school. I remember staring at that old AM radio in the car in total disbelief. My 8-year-old mind could not comprehend why any governor would want to stop children from going to school. I didn’t sleep much that night I was so upset by that news report. And the next day at breakfast, I asked my parents, “Why?” Later, years later, I asked “How did things get that way?” and “What could we do about it?” The desegregation of Little Rock Central High is the first time that I can remember being affected by the actions of people I would most likely never meet. That was a very important moment for me and, in reflection, it teaches a very important lesson. Each of you who are here today have had some similar experience where you asked yourself, “Why?”, “How?” and “What?” For many of you, these questions led to your academic specialization. For others, it led you to a career based on serving others and helping make their lives better. But, as with Gov. Faubus, President Eisenhower and the “Little Rock Nine,” they had impact – a great deal of impact – on people they never met. So too, in your work, you are having impact on generations of students yet to come, and through them, tens of thousands of people who will never set foot on this campus or who may never hear of Cullowhee. The second moment in time was in the summer of 1960. My father recruited scientists for federal laboratories, and he had to travel to a professional meeting in Los Angeles. Because it was summer, he decided to drive to the meeting and take his vacation in California after the professional meeting was over. We lived in Cincinnati, and it was a long, hot drive in a non-air-conditioned car back in 1960. On the CATEGORIES | THE REPORTER TOP STORIES NOTEWORTHY NEWS ACHIEVEMENTS EVENTS PHOTOS | WCU NEWS SERVICES CALENDAR 5/29/2017 Ancient Forms, Modern Minds 5/29/2017 Print Plus One: LINKS Calendar Higher Education NewsWatch WCU Hub AFRICA! MORE THAN A CONTINENT Chancellor John W. Bardo second day of driving, around lunchtime, we entered Gallup, N.M., and my brother and I were whining in the backseat about how hot and hungry we were. My folks stopped in downtown Gallup, and we went into a local restaurant. The waiter brought menus, and we were looking over the options when all of a sudden my father put down his menu and announced that we were leaving. He got up, said something to the waiter and walked out with all of us trailing behind. Being a good 12-year-old, I complained that I was hungry and that there was nothing wrong with that restaurant. My father then pointed to a sign in the window – a sign that he had missed on the way in – that said “no Indians.” He looked at me and said, “That’s wrong, and we will not eat there.” We walked down the street and, on a side street, we found a restaurant without that sign in the window and went in. As soon as we walked in, an older Native American man came out from around the counter and said to my father, “Are you sure that you want to be here?” My father asked if it was OK with him if we stayed, and he said that it was. That was the first time that I had ever eaten Southwestern food, and it was the first time that I can remember my family being the only white people in a room filled with other people. As time passed, I thought about that incident many times, and I realized that there were key life lessons in it. When you truly believe that something is wrong, you must take action. I doubt that my father’s action changed the lives of either restaurant owner or that it had any impact at all on broader issues of discrimination. But it did teach some significant lessons: judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin (I think that I heard that somewhere before); and stand up for what you believe to be true and good. My friends, these two values are at the core of what it means to be WCU. You have a long history on this campus of caring about people – not white people or young people – but people. You also saw that higher education was not doing the right things by the people that it was designed to serve, so you did something about it. You created a new approach to education – our QEP – and you willingly and actively focused on engaging with the people to understand their needs. But unlike my father’s action, when you stand up together, you have the ability to change the face of education and to help all our people have better lives. Please don’t ever lose that caring and focus – it means everything. The final moment that I want to share with you involves my high school German teacher. There was a reason that I know what die Geschichte means. For those of you not familiar with Cincinnati, it has a very large German population, and when I was growing up it still had a German language newspaper. My German teacher was Hugo Eichelberg – an observant Orthodox Jew. That is key to this snippet. He was from Hamburg, Germany. When the Nazis took over Germany in the 1930s, he was spirited out of the country and hid in the hold of a cargo ship headed for New York. Many of the Jewish people he knew back in Germany, and I suspect many of his family members, faced the concentration camp. But Hugo Eichelberg was treated as a refugee and managed to find a home and to later graduate from college. In the 1960s, languages were taught in a way that assured that most people would see the class as a substitute for purgatory. Raw memorization, translation of meaningless paragraphs, and declamation were as close to torture as the law would allow. But Mr Eichelberg was a better teacher than that. He brought in children’s books and magazines for us to work with. He taught us songs and even made us a German lunch one day. He also taught us Christmas carols. And for several nights before Christmas break, he would take us around the area to sing to old German people. Our last stop of the evening was at a house in a valley. It was cold, and the old lady we had come to serenade was not well. Her family had her stand in the front doorway so that she did not get overly chilled. The porch lights were on so you could see her face, and the yard was fairly well lit. Our last song was “Stille Nacht” – “Silent Night.” About midway through the song I noticed that the old lady was crying. She was hearing – perhaps for the last time – the songs of her youth and homeland. It was a truly moving experience. Mr. Eichelberg was standing near me, and I looked directly at his face. And in the look on his face, I saw and understood – perhaps for the first time – the true meaning of forgiveness, the value of empathy, and what it meant to truly have God’s grace. Mr. Eichelberg never said a word about that evening, and I never spoke to him about it. But it made a lasting impression. I have thought about that night often, and in recent years I have seen the lessons of that night replayed on this campus hundreds and hundreds of times. I saw it in the financial aid office as they did everything they could to assure that a student whose family had lost everything and was now homeless had a place to stay and had money to stay in school. I saw it in the engineering and technology faculty members who gave up winter break one year to fashion a mold so that a sheltered workshop in Boone could compete for and win a Walmart contract so that a dozen learning disabled people could have jobs. I saw it when faculty members in sociology took the time to work with a student who was having trouble in class and discovered that he was dyslexic. And I see it every day in the way people on this campus go out of their way to help. The people of WCU are always ready to give a hand up. It also is why you are known for giving opportunities to those who aspire to make a difference in their world. You make that difference every day, every year, and it makes you very special. I will close now by simply saying thank you. Deborah and I count ourselves very lucky to have worked with you and been a part of you for the last 16 years. You are special people in a special place. With David and Susan’s inspired leadership, I know that you will continue to do great things. Ihre Geschichte geht weiter: Your story continues. Thank you so very much. Editor’s note: The transcript above reflects the remarks as written. There are slight differences in the remarks as delivered. © 2011 Western Carolina University. SEARCH Search Home About Archives Subscribe Contact WCU Home April 28, 2011 Email This Post Print This Post Share | ACHIEVEMENTS Christina Reitz presents at conference Christina L. Reitz, assistant professor of music, recently presented “The Dies Irae in Nineteenth Century Symphonic Repertoire: Horror on the Concert Stage” at the 2011 joint conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture Association and the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association held in San Antonio. Reitz also moderated the session “Horror-Literary and Cinematic: Traumatic Sights and Sounds” at the horror-themed national conference. CATEGORIES | THE REPORTER TOP STORIES NOTEWORTHY NEWS ACHIEVEMENTS EVENTS PHOTOS | WCU NEWS SERVICES CALENDAR 5/29/2017 Ancient Forms, Modern Minds 5/29/2017 Print Plus One: Beyond LINKS Calendar Higher Education NewsWatch WCU Hub AFRICA! MORE