MB: How would you describe Dr. Messick as a President?
EB: Oh, in every way favorable. He had a good, pleasant personality. He was not, not autocratic in any way with me. Very sympathetic about the AACSB ambition that we had. And did, I think, all he could have done to get us the funds. Although at that time, I sometimes doubted that we were getting funds that the legislature meant for us, but got shuffled after it got here. I think that occasionally happened. That they thought they were appropriating funds maybe for ten more PhD's for the School of the Business because the Legislature was also cognizant about AACSB. They were appreciative of the, what it meant to the university to have an AACSB school. Dr. Ure just told me this morning. I said "You're fortunate that it is an AACSB school" and he said, "Yes, I wouldn't have come here if it weren't, you know." Which is true, you wouldn't get a good man if it weren't.
MB: There are still a lot operating without it aren't there? I mean, it's still a very select group of schools that are accredited.
EB: I imagine it is. I imagine it's still very select. At the time we went in, in sixty, it must have been seven, but could've been sixty-six. We were one of four schools admitted that year. And there were 122 members of the AACSB and we four schools made it 146, 126 and at that time there were some over 1200 departments and Schools of Business in America. Either departments or schools.
MB: Like 10%.
EB: So it was 126 out of more than 1200 in the nation. And my guess is that it is still that exclusive. About all the schools who offer seriously a business education, about that percentage of them are in AACSB. Because of the finances it took money to be appropriated to get in. There are a dozen schools here in this state, there were then, that couldn't hope to get that kind of money. The private schools especially.
MB: Well now, Dr. Messick was very interested in developing the School of Business while it was still the department of Business.
EB: Yes, that's right.
MB: And he was, well he was interested in developing it.
EB: And therefore he saw the fact that development meant AACSB membership or not at all. So he was interested and sincere in pushing it, and therefore, I have a good opinion of him.
MB: And Dr. Jenkins too.
EB: Dr. Jenkins too. When Dr. Jenkins came in, we were. No I'm mistaken we didn't come in AACSB under Dr. Messick. We came in under Jenkins. But they both, they both pushed it.
MB: It took a long while to get through it. But under Dr. Meadows, how would you describe him in general. How would you, as a college president, he's quite different from Meadows and different from Cooke.
EB: Who, Messick?
MB: Messick, yes.
EB: Yes, I'm not sure how I would say it. Dr. Messick came here from New Jersey and had a seemingly, a broader experience in administration that Meadows and Cooke didn't have. Nor Dr. McGinnis, who was my best personal friend of all, but he only had experience here on this campus. So I felt that Dr. Messick was more mature, maybe less naive, in handling things than the others had been. That's not against them, but that was my opinion. And it also carried over to Dr. Jenkins. But they had a broad outlook about education. Both of them sympathetic with the faculty and the students. Although in both cases there were people who severely disliked them to the extent . . .
MB: There aren't very many. There are very few that people haven't, that something will happen.
EB: That's right, you don't get anything done if your around, if everyone is your friend. That's the truth.
MB: I think with the exception of Dr. Wright. I don't know, maybe it's too long in the past for people to remember. But he seems to have had the fewest critics.
EB: Yes, that's what I thought when I came here. I didn't heard anybody say anything about him.
MB: Negative.
EB: Critical. Nothing at all, nothing at all. But those days, that was the DAY, that was the atmosphere of that day. And it was changing very, very fast.
MB: And he was here so long. But it's in recent times it's more difficult. But I had the impression that Dr. Messick was really the one who charted the school in what you could call it's take off period. I mean it was under Jenkins that it developed so rapidly, but under Messick it was collecting it's momentum.
EB: I heartily agree with you. Dr. Messick was building what had to be a very modern university. It had to be. It had to take off into a lot of directions that hadn't been followed out before. And he did it very well. He put the foundations in for it on this campus. And then Dr. Jenkins was a person built on a, in a different mold who was quite competent to do something about that. Was to build on that foundation. The minute that Dr. Jenkins stepped into the office that was the feeling I had. Now we have a person who will build on it. Really build on it, the Medical School and everything else that was going on and so forth. Getting the school in to AACSB, the School of Business.
MB: I was very interested in following your battle from the time Jenkins became president he seemed to really put the School of Business, I mean, well, it became the School in 1961. But that seemed to be one of his priorities. To push very fast to get both the MBA program and the accreditation.
EB: Yes, he had a kind of set there that was obviously right, but he had to do it. Had to get an MBA, you can't, for instance get an MBA accreditation in the AACSB unless your also an AB certification. He knew that.
MB: I got the impression that it was a real battle with the Board of Higher Education.
EB: Yes.
MB: That you and he were fighting because they were obviously very much opposed to it.
EB: Yes, they had a tough job. A man on the higher board at that time was, had been in my School of Business for awhile, then moved over and graduated became a lawyer, Robert Morgan. And you know about him, I guess, from your research.
MB: Yes.
EB: Now, these people had to look at the whole school. And you just couldn't go up there and say "well the School of Business has to have 12 PhDs's this year" when they maybe didn't have enough funds for 12 for the whole university. Our demands were great and therefore it put me on the spot to make such a ridiculous demand. And yet Dr. Messick and Dr. Jenkins would sorta scold me. And say, "Now, when are you going to get into AACSB, next year? Next year? Next year?"
We took 12 years, I think I told you that, from the time that we got the idea of working before we were members. From the time that we first started any movement toward membership. And they would support me in having experts come here and AACSB would send three, usually three deans, not of my choice. The only thing that they weren't allowed to do was send any AACSB deans from within the state. There were only two AACSB deans in the state at that time, that was Wake Forest and Carolina. But neither one of the ever served on the committee. They didn't permit that, which you can see why.
But anyway, these men would come every year, stay two or three days, go in the library, go over everything. Corrine Heath will tell you. Before they came we had to do weeks of work gathering data. Then they'd start the rounds, in the library, in everywhere. When they would leave, they would say to me, "Now, we've got these gripes that you just aren't doing anything. Do you want us to write to you and you give it to Dr. Messick or Dr. Jenkins?" Invariably I'd say "No." Or they'd say, "Do you want us to tell him when we say good-bye." So in every case I'd say, "Tell him. Tell Dr. Messick that we can't get anywhere without more books in the library." They would, they'd say. And that made a point for me.
If I told them that they'd say, "Well you just want to be a big somebody in AACSB" or something like that. So they would listen. But this put us on the spot with, as you say, with the higher board. And that evolved into money they couldn't afford at that time. And it was a fight. Not a hostility. I don't think I made any enemies by it. But there it was and until money got more plentiful we just couldn't do it at all. And Robert Morgan was the one that would tell me that because he was a personal friend. And he would say to me, "You understand, the board sympathizes, but they'll not give you that many Ph.D.'s this year." It put everybody on the spot, but a legitimate one. Not a hostility at all.
MB: It took a long time of hard work to achieve it. It's come along way, much of it, well, 32 years under you.
EB: 32 years. I worked under the five presidents and I never had a hard time with any of them. And looking back on it I can understand their resistance to my pressures more than maybe I understood it then, you know. But I can see after it was all over that I put them on the spot a lot of times.
MB: Well trying to do what they wanted you to do . . .
EB: . . . want to do and with the funds that were available.
MB: We have a very interesting history I think. More politically involved than most schools.
EB: Yes.
MB: From the very first with the political battle to get started and it never let up.
EB: Never let up. The year before we got accredited and the meeting was in San Diego. And Corrine prepared all the papers and I was a little optimistic that we would, that we'd be accredited that year. And when I got to San Diego a friend, a dean of the School of Business at the University of Wyoming, who had been here on one of my committees. He called me aside during the meeting, the conference, the three day convention there. He said, "If I were you, I'd withdraw that and wait another year. Because there are some people opposing, and if they win on the vote opposing it, you may be 15 years getting over that."
MB: Oh, it's a black mark if you've been turned down.
EB: It's a black mark if you've been turn down. And I quickly listened. So I quickly withdrew the application and called in the next year another committee. And they straightened out what my friend told me personally. Sort of a secret to tell me. He didn't really have the right to tell me what they were really pinning me down on that was negative. But I came back with knowledge of that and told Dr. Jenkins. And we worked on it and the next year we put it through.
MB: You had to have more doctorates?
EB: Yes, you had to, doctorates was one of the things. The library was a problem always. Had to have more books about economics and business in the library. Wendell never, never resisted any.
MB: No, it was getting more money.
EB: Yes, he worked 100% for us.
One of the times when a dean from West Virginia University came. And I knew some of books that he had written, this dean. I said, "Wendell, get those books for me. And then when this guy comes, you be sure and pull them down off the shelf."
MB: ???
EB: Which he did.
