Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.

Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.

Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.

Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.

Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.

Description of the video:

Scarpino: 1977 you went back to the University of Oklahoma?

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: You held at least three administrative positions…

Jischke: Right.

Scarpino: …and you had obviously decided while you were a Fellow that that’s the direction that you wanted your career to take.

Jischke: Exactly.

Scarpino: You were a director and professor of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering from ‘77 to ‘81. Is that the equivalent of a department chair?

Jischke: Yes. I was head of a department, I think we had twenty-two faculty and five or six hundred students.

Scarpino: How did you exercise leaders as a director or a department chair?

Jischke: These are some themes that have followed all the way through my time as an academic administrator or leader—strategic thinking. I actually developed a strategic plan as a department head and I did as a dean and as a president. Strategic thinking, trying to think longer term, asking how can you make a difference, what’s going to make this a better place. Second, a focus on resources; I started a private fundraising effort as a department head. External relations; I put an advisory board together of prominent and successful alums to help. Third, lots of communication internally as well as externally. Patty and I would entertain every faculty member in our home at least once a year. I met with every member of the faculty at the end of the year for a review—department meetings where real information was exchanged. We talked about important questions, I regularly visited with people—a lot of personal interaction. I focused an enormous amount of attention on recruiting talented people. I believe that you strip it all away, nothing is more important for an organization, but particularly an academic organization, than the quality of the people in the organization. If as a department head or a dean or a president you can attract and retain talented faculty, talented staff, and talented students, you have an absolutely first rate unit. If you don’t do that the buildings can’t be pretty enough to make it up. So, people were a huge focus of mine and tried very hard to figure out how I can help people to be successful.

Scarpino: How do you help faculty be successful? I mean, I would think that would be an important quality for a successful department chair.

Jischke: One, you articulate the measures of success. I mean, what is it that we’re looking at? Second, that you then try to facilitate that. Sometimes it’s through money. Sometimes it’s through appointments. Teach this course or that course. Get release time. I mean, you try to facilitate, encourage, help. Then, the third, deliver on the rhetoric. That is, reward those who perform and for God sake, don’t reward those who don’t perform. A corollary to all of this is don’t waste a lot of time on people who aren’t performing. While all the world loves a reformed sinner the odds of reformation are low. You’re much better off devoting most of your time to people who are having success and with help will have more. I think always, always articulating the sort of basic purposes, values, mission of the place. Why are we here? Talking about students, you know, talking about research, trying to be a good role model as both a teacher and a scholar, encouraging seminar programs. All of the things that lead to a vital intellectual unit and, as I say, trying to do the things that only you as the department head or the dean can do. Don’t do other people’s jobs and try to help. I did the same thing as a dean.

Scarpino: Did you ever find yourself feeling as though you were maybe working at cross purposes while on the one hand you’re trying to foster vital intellectual community and on the other hand you’ve got to pay attention to the bottom line?

Jischke: No. I mean, I never saw those as in conflict.

Scarpino: How did you make them work together?

Jischke: I think part of having a vital intellectual community is to not indulge those who aren’t very intellectual or very vital. Put in more positive terms, I think excellence is the quality of a department is defined by its best people not its average or its weak people. So, I made certain that the best people understood that they were loved and respected. I mean, I would say it to them. Tell them I admired them and when it came time for salary adjustments, if I had any flexibility, it would be to recognize that excellence. I was prepared to talk about this. This was not done in secret. I mean I didn’t hang people out to dry but I was prepared to talk about the principles that lie behind what we were trying to do and I worked very hard to bring in better people whenever we opened a position. It was done in a very open and a democratic process. We’d advertise everywhere. We’d call everybody. We’d try to get the best people. We’d bring them in for an interview. We’d give them a seminar. We’d bring the faculty together and say—what do you think? Who’s the best person here? Then, we’d try like hell to recruit them. I was pretty good at recruiting.

Scarpino: Other than to referee publications, how did you make your judgments about what constituted a quality person? What did you look for?

Jischke: I tried to make it multi-dimensional and ultimately reflect the mission of the institution. So, we tried to look at, on the research side, clearly publications and indicators of quality. The journals they were published in. We would look at comments of referees, references. We tried to look at invited papers. We would look at levels of sponsorship of funding. We would look at how their graduate students did and the quality of the research that came out of that. On the teaching side, we would try to look at innovations in teaching new courses introduced. I would sit in on the classes of every untenured faculty member seeing how they were doing. Actually what I was really doing is telling them what was important by showing up. It was funny. Everybody was very nervous including the students. The students wanted to know why is the department head here? I had students actually come up to me and say, you know, Professor Jones is really a very good instructor. I mean they were worried that…

Scarpino: That you were after Professor Jones.

Jischke: Yeah, exactly. I tried to help people by taking the student evaluations and reviewing them with them and saying these are techniques you can use. I had my own personal collection of books on teaching that I would share with people and sort of articulate what I thought lie behind good teaching. We’d look at student evaluations. We’d also look at service. Were they involved in committees? That didn’t carry near as much weight. Then the other thing that I tried to get at as a department head beyond these measurable, individual activities was the extent to which they contributed to the overall vitality of the program. There were a few people in the department who played a very interesting leadership role in setting standards and helping others. There was one guy, for example, that lots of people consulted with on research problems because he was particularly gifted mathematically. I mean, he could solve math problems that other people couldn’t. It never showed up in his own publications. It never showed up in his own teaching. But, he played a role as a force in the department that I thought it was important to recognize. So, I was willing to stick my neck out as a matter of judgment and say I believe this person is better than all these numbers would suggest. So, I always left room for interpretation and I was willing to be held accountable for it.