University Daily Kansan, August 21, 1985
Page 4
Heads hustle Day in life of a chancellor made of people, problems
By J.P. Conroy Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Chancellor Gene A. Budig, addressing the last summer orientation for new students and parents in Woodruff Auditorium, asked to see a show of hands.
A small percentage of the crowd in the auditorium in the Kansas Union raised their hands.
"How many of you are going into engineering?" he asked.
"How many of you are planning on going into law?" he asked.
A larger percentage of the students raised their hands.
Not one hand went up.
Budig may joke to an audience about being the chancellor of the largest university in Kansas, but to follow him throughout a day in his life shows his responsibilities and how he carries them out as chief administrator of the University of Knasas.
"This truly is an exceptionally intelligent audience." Budig said. The crowd laughed.
Budig arrived at his office at 7:10 a.m. July 15, Eugene Staples, vice chancellor for hospital administration at the University of Kansas Medical Center, briefed him by phone on the weekend patient occupancy rate told Budig the occupancy rate for last year was running ahead of last year's.
"Let me ask how many of you are coming to KU to become a university chancellor or president?" he asked.
Budig said that each Monday he received a weekend report of patient levels at the hospital because the Med Center represented more than half of the total budget of KU.
One of Budig's secretaries, Debbie Walker, stepped into his office at 8:13 a.m. to take dictation of a statement for Tom Shatel, sportswriter for the Kansas City Star and Times.
Budig, who worked his way through the University of Nebraska as a reporter for two newspapers, the Lincoln Star and, the Lincoln Journal, said he gave reporters written statements because he liked to put his thoughts down before making statements for the University.
"I cover the right points," he said. "If it's important, I want to do justice. I am careful of what I say because I want to represent the University of Kansas. Most news representatives, when they leave this office, feel they were given what they need. Their concern is substance."
At 8:30 a.m. the chancellor put in a call to Michael Davis, dean of law.
about faculty turnover in the School of Law.
"Mike, over the weekend somebody asked me about turnover in the School of Law." he said. "Is there anything unusual? ... OK, there's nothing to be concerned about ... OK, Mike, thanks again."
Budig said he came to KU with a commitment to the Board of Regents to stay here at least seven or eight years. The chancellor will have come to our years this month. Budig was given a gift to increase by the Regents in May. His salary increased from $90,800 to $96,000 for the fiscal 1986 year.
"I would make no decision until I've met my obligation," Budig said. "This is a strong state university but it can be much better. The University of Kansas is the people and programming to be one of the finest state universities in the United States."
However, Budig said, there was a serious problem in adequate compensation of faculty.
"It is a problem which demands public attention," he said. "It is imperative that the legislative leaders must address this salary issue if the University of Kansas is to attain its potential. The state's future is tied directly to the well-being of the University of Kansas."
"The Kansas University Endowment Association has awarded more than $140 million over the past decade to academic programs at KU." Budig said. "In numerous instances private funding has given KU a competitive edge.
The chancellor gave credit to exceptional private support as a reason that the University was able to maintain high academic quality.
"Clearly, we're No.1 in the Big Eight in financial assistance from the private sector. Nebraska is a distant second."
Walking down the steps of Strong Hall for his 9 a.m. orientation address, Budig again emphasized the amount of private support KU has had. He said, "Think about it. I1 would like to about it." $140 million. That's a lot given by the Kansas University Endowment Association."
"Be assured by your choice," he said. "At KU you will find a cadre of faculty, staff and students who will make every effort to see that your
In his orientation address, Budig cited facts to new students and parents to support reasons for choosing the University.
time here both instructive and enjoyable. You have chosen well."
The chancellor was back in his office briefly before he went into the Regents Room to attend his weekly Academic Administrative Council meeting at 9:33 a.m.
Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs, reported that 53 faculty members had left the University in the 1984-85 academic year. She compared the loss to 1983-84, when 55 left.
Chancellor Gene A. Budig entertains former Sen. Jennings Randolph, D-W. Va., during a recent lunch at the Adams Alumni Center.
"Five cited salaries and 13 cited professional advancement," she said. The rest departed, she said, because of retirement or because they didn't make tenure.
"We're basically doing the same as other universities," Oroke said.
The meeting broke up at 10:28 a.m.
 Six minutes later Budig was back in
 the Regents Room as chairman of the
 Finance and Finance Committee
meeting.
"Have you spent time checking with other universities to see what the department is up to?"
Budig asked her to bring him the reasons for faculty departures in 1983-84. Tacha was to meet with him later that afternoon.
Rodger Orok, director of support services of facilities operations, said at the meeting that facilities operations tests identified more than 55 campus buildings containing asbestos, but he said the asbestos areas that were inaccessible to KU students were Facilities operations is spending $60,000 on equipment and $20,000 to train personnel for removal he said.
Before West Virginia University, Budig was president of Illinois State University in Normal for five years.
John Lechiter/KANSAN
During lunch, Budig praised Randolph for his support of West Virginia University and for helping it to become a top school in coal energy research.
"What I remember of Jennings Randolph was that he was always there." Budig said.
Budigid told Randolph that his son Chris, 21, was attending KU. He was in North Carolina for the summer, Budig said, working at a lumber company. His daughter Mary Frances, 19, is attending the University of Illinois and plans to pursue a law career, he said. He said she was in Kansas City, Mo., working for a law firm this summer.
cond child to be born during the tenure of a KU chancellor.
The Buddgs also have a year-old daughter, Kathryn. She lives at the chancellor's 26-room residence, 1532 Lilac Lane, with the chancellor and his wife, Kathryn was only the se-
To follow Chancellor Gene A. Budig throughout a day in his life shows his responsibilities and how he carries them out as chief administrator of the University of Kansas.
While Budig was driving his white Buick Electra back to his office, he said of Randolph, "I'm not the man who that man is history and he is hupile."
This is Budig's 13th year as a university chancellor or president.
Budig said he had known Randolph when Budig was president of West Virginia University from 1977 to 1981
Budig, 47, earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Nebraska. He met his wife, Gretchen, while working on his master's degree.
The chancellor left the budget and finance meeting at 11:30 a.m. to pick up former Sen. Jennings Randolph, D-W. Va., who was touring the campus and meeting with students, to take him to lunch at the Adams Alumni Center.
only person in Congress that has a listed home telephone number."
"I have also had the unique opportunity to work with two Senate majority leaders," Budig said. "That is Bob Dole and Bob Byrd."
Sen. Robert Byrd, D.W. Va., was Senate majority leader until 1983, when the Republicans gained control of the Senate.
Marshall Jackson, assistant director of educational services, saw the
Four minutes later Budig met with Gil Dyck, dean of educational services, in his private office. They talked about fall enrollment predictions for the Lawrence campus.
Looking at his watch as he walked into Strong Hall at 1:28 p.m., Budig said, "Well, we're back about on time. You notice that I try to keep on schedule. I don't like to have people waiting for me."
Randolph served in Congress for 40 years under nine presidents beginning in 1932. Among the legislation he has drafted were the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, the act that established the Air Force as a separate branch of the armed forces and the bill that established the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington D.C.
chancellor at 2 p.m. about minority enrollment for fall. Jackson said there would be a small increase in minority enrollment. Some other large universities are experiencing declines in minority enrollment.
"I would like to meet with a group of minority students next fall and get the perception of their first year up here," Budig said. "I'm interested in initial expression. A candid exchANGE might help retention programs."
Budig said after the meeting, "I have worked hard to increase the number of dollars available for minority scholarships at KU and will continue to do so."
At 3 p.m. Budig had his last scheduled appointment for the day. Tacha brought Budig statistics on reasons for faculty departures for the past five years. She said 18 faculty members left in 1983-84 because of insufficient salaries or professional advancement.
But being KU's 14th chancellor has some disadvantages, such as a lack of privacy, he said.
For instance, the chancellor said he was working on a speech one night and called to have a pizza delivered.
"I told him this was Gene Bung,
1532 Lilac Lane," he said. "The guy laughed and hung on me. But I also have had pizzas that I didn't order arrive at 2 or 3 in the morning."
Tacha isn't twiddling thumbs awaiting judgeship call
Staff Reporter
By Shawn Aday
Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs, is awaiting word from the White House on whether she will fill one of four judgeships in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Tacha. If Deanell Tacha likes the sound of that title, she isn't saving.
Tacha, 39, is vice chancellor for academic affairs. But in June, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., recommended her for a judgehship in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court. Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.
"I really haven't decided," she said recently about accepting the judgeship if it is offered by President Reagan.
John Lechliter/KANSAN
Martin Dickinson, professor of law,
also was recommended by Dole for
one of four judgeships open in the
10th Circuit.
A spokesman for the circuit executive's office in Denver said he did not know when Reagan would make the selections.
Tacha said she might be able to continue living in Lawrence even if she were to accept the judgeship. Appellate judges can maintain an office anywhere in the district and the court is required to convene only once every three months in Denver.
"It would be a very prestigious appointment." Tacha said. "It would be an opportunity to affect the direction of federal and constitutional
However attractive the judgeship may be, she said, she still has deep roots planted in the University of Kansas.
Since her appointment as vice chancellor in 1981, Tacha has shown that commitment in advocating a broader, more challenging undergraduate education at KU.
She is a University administrator with a playful interest in acting. She said she had always wanted to play the 1820s flapper, Molly, in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."
"I've spent a lot of my life here," said Tacha, a 1968 KU graduate "Leaving education, which I've always had a total commitment to, would be very hard."
She illustrates her own message in full color.
Tacha is a lawyer who plays the flute, the piano and the organ. She is a professor of property law who enjoys gourmet cooking, gardening and golf and who loves to read, but
"I've always admired her spunk," Tacha said.
spends most of her summer evenings
watching her children play baseball.
My life wouldn't be happy without all the things that never contributed a day to it.
Her mother, Mary Reece, recalled that Tacha had many interests while growing up in Scandia, a small town in north central Kansas.
Rescue, a 1942 KU graduate, set a busy example. She performed volunteer work while her three daughters were growing up. She now serves on several boards, including the University of Kansas Alumni Board, and speaks several times a month to school and trade groups about political and economic education.
"I've always believed that women should have an education and means of livelihood," Reece said. "But I always enjoyed my family, too. I told them raising a family is the most challenging job of all."
To marry her husband, John;
Tacha left her early career with a
law firm in Washington, D.C., to return to Kansas.
"Friends were always asking me when I was coming back to Kansas and I'd say 'Never,' " she said. "But he never would have come to Washington. I've never recritted it."
Tacha said she wouldn't be happy without both a career and the traditional role of wife and mother. However, she said, she pays a price for playing the dual roles.
Tacha credits her husband with at least half of the rearing of their four children: John, 10; David, 9; Sarah, 5; and Leah, 1. John owns Bureau of Lectures and Concert Artists Inc., 205 W. Ninth St., a company that schedules educational programs and entertainment for school licevens.
"I have virtually no time for myself," she said.
On a typical day she rises at 6 a.m.
and gets the boys off to their basket
ball camp, starts meeting with facul-
ty groups at 8:30 a.m., takes Sarah to
gymnastics class at noon, returns to
work until 5 p.m. and then goes to the boys' 5 p.m. ball game and the pizza party afterward. At home, she tackles the pile of papers in her briefcase until shortly after midnight.
"I usually like to read a little novel before I go to sleep," she said. "I just finished 'And Ladies of the Club.' I like historical novels."
Tacha earned a bachelor's degree in American studies at KU in 1968. Her adviser was Norman Yegman, who has been a professor of American studies at the University for 19 years.
"She's a gem. She still has those qualities of joy and exuberance she
"She is one of the most outstanding persons I have ever taught," he said. "I get a lot of extremely bright students, but very few have her depth of character, her sensitivity or her personality.
After graduating in 1971 from the University of Michigan Law School and working in private practice.
Tacha returned to KU as a law professor in 1974. Since then she has been director of the Legal Aid Clinic, associate dean of law and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs.
After her appointment as vice chr acellor for academic affairs in 1981, Tacha began a crusade to uplift KU's intellectual climate for undergraduates.
"I was shaped enormously by the KU honors program," she said of her undergraduate experience. "That's when it was a model for the country."
"We need to balance the rights of students to choose with the faculty's responsibility to challenge the student," she said. "It's important to give a student a broad understanding of cultures, not just his own. It's important to get him to appreciate education for its own sake and not just as a tool."
But Tacha said the University backed too far away from curriculum requirements when it gave in to student demands in the 1970s for more freedom of choice.
Tacha said the protests that rocked KU and led to the relaxed requirements began in April 1968, a month before she graduated.
"KU changed almost overnight," she said. "I remember it was after I decided to go to law school. I was so glad I had decided to go because social justice, equality — how do you inform yourself the best?"
"Active involvement in a profession is the best way to change. I don't believe protest is the best way to make change. I think there is a lot of uninformed protest."
To find an undergraduate curriculum that would recover academic excellence in liberal arts, yet fit the needs of all schools in the University, a committee was set up and Tacha was appointed chairwoman.
inertia to change," he said. "She continued to call meetings, assign tasks to keep new ideas on the table and insist that we meet when it seemed like we were saying the same things over and over.
The University Core Curriculum Committee worked three years before it settled on a proposal in February. The other members said Tacha was the driving force that kept the committee going.
A member of the committee, Dennis Domer, associate dean of architecture, said it was difficult to reach a consensus because for at least years each school had had full control of what it wanted to teach.
"The University has tremendous
"She didn't push her point of view, but she was determined to see us understand conversations," said Peter Thompson, master of art and a member committee.
"And then she would say, 'OK, now we're going to vote.'" Domer said. "Academics can talk forever. It's not in their nature to make decisions. But she wouldn't allow us to do that."
Although Tacha was determined, other committee members said she was not forceful.
Al Johnson, associate dean of law and a committee member, said, "I think she listened to everybody. She sought out a broad range of opinion and one of her great strengths is that she can talk to anyone — the scientist, the humanist, the social scientist."
Domer called her a superb politician.
"She had to refere, she had to be a good listener, she had to stimulate discussion," he said. "She looked for the middle ground."
Tacha has had previous opportunities to develop political skills. She was selected as a White House Fellow in 1971, and during her year of work in the Department of Labor a couple of other tellows were Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Reagan, and Henry Cisneros, mayor of San Antonio.
She is now president of the selection committee for the White House Fellow Program. Each year since 1965, about 15 young people have been selected to work for a year at the cabinet level of the executive branch, she said.
"We've formed an astonishing network around the country," Tacha said. "We are readily in touch with each other when an important issue comes up."
Tacha made one decision about Washington long age. So she may be feeling another sentiment there. If she turns down the judgepsh, given her connections, there might be more.
But does Tacha have political aspirations?
"Not today," she said.