Anthony Perzigian

Interviewee: Anthony Perzigian

Interviewer(s): Robbie Due

Date: 03-29-2019

Transcribed by: Katelyn Parvesse

Edited by: Katelyn Parvesse

Byline: This interview was recorded as part of The Covid 19 Oral History Project, a project of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute associated with The Journal of a Plague Year: A Covid 19 Archive. This interview was conducted through the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of credit for HIST3158 under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca S. Wingo.

00:00:00

Robbie Due: Alright, this is Robbie Due interviewing, will you say your name please?

Anthony Perzigian: Anthothy Perzigian.

RD: And it is Friday, March twenty-ninth twenty nineteen. How are you doing today?

AP: I’m doing terrific Robbie, thank you.

RD: Okay, now, could you tell us when and where you were born?

AP: I was born in Salem, Oregon. In July of 1944, so I am a war baby. [gestures] that’s my [unknown]. (chuckle)

RD: (chuckle) okay. Um—what did your parents do while you were growing up?

AP: Uh—my parents were uh—uh basically in sales. Um—my father was in uh furniture business, and my mother—uh—worked in uh, department stores. So they were both in uh, retail.

RD: So your mother worked at the time too?

AP: Right.

RD: Okay. Um—where did you go to school? Wha—can you go us through your academic history?

AP: Okay. Well I grew up in um, Waukegan, Illinois, which is halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. And that’s uh where I spent my my formative years. And when it came time to uh, selecting uh, college, I was the uh first attendee in my family to go to, go to a college. Uh—I think because I was an only child and my parents were very protective, they uh, pushed my toward going to a small liberal arts college. And I enrolled in Mammoth College in west central Illinois. It was there that I uh, majored in biology. And that provided me then a springboard to go to graduate school at Indiana University, uh, not in biology, but in biological anthropology. And I got my PhD at at Indiana University, and then uh, moved to UC.

RD: Okay, so um—what made you pursue a career in higher education, did you always know you wanted to be a professor?

AP: Well I—preparing for this uh, interview I had a chance to reflect, and what were the key triggers in my life, and I was in fact reminded of my first week as an undergraduate at Mammoth College, when I went to my um, biology 101 class, and there was a new assistant professidor, Dr. Allison, professor in that class, and during the course of uh 101 biology, he took some time out, and he was a freshly admitted PhD, and he took the time out, uh, to do um, a overview of his PhD research. And he brought to class uh all his documents and all his research papers, and you could see all the steps that he took in his research leading to his PhD and his Assistant Professorship at Mammoth College. Uh—he was so enthusiastic, and when I saw all the steps that he took to get his PhD and excitement of research, and now standing before a class of undergraduates. I really admired the guy, it was a infectious presentation, and it was right then, a freshman in biology, that I said well I wanna be that guy. And I want to be a professor someday. So, that triggered uh then uh completing my undergraduate degree and then um, moving on to graduate school.

RD: okay, and what did you write your dissertation on if I may ask?

AP: Oh okay, uh that’s another uh, interesting story. My uh, PhD professor at Indiana University was uh notorious at keeping his graduate students for a long long time. And I’m talking like uh, five to eight years um completing their PhDs. And I was too impatient for that, and my professor’s area of research uh, his specialty wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. And I can’t remember exactly how I struck upon my topic, but I settle on a subject that he didn’t have any particular expertise in that would give me some latitude to do my thing and graduate in a timely way [chuckle]. So uh, his field was um, looking at relationships among prehistoric native American populations was um, uh s—skeletons, and, so I was steeped in working with uh, prehistoric native American populations, and uh—I ended up uh, doing my research on osteoporosis, which is a common malady today, especially in most menopausal women. So the question was did prehistoric native American populations in different settings, uh did they experience what today is a universal phenomenon, bone loss, bone mineral loss uh with age. Uh, I was very fortunate to have um, uh linked up with the medical school in uh, Indiana University in Indianapolis, where at the time there was experimental new methodologies for measuring bone mineral in living people, and that was photon absorptiometry. So uh, using uh, iodine isotopes, uh I was able to pass photons through the radius bone in these prehistoric peoples, and very precisely measure bone mineral content knowing the age at time of death, of the person I could look at the relationship between age at time of death and bone mineral content. Low and behold, uh those native American prehistoric peoples who were able to live into their forties and fifties underwent the same pattern of bone loss that we do today, so it’s kind of a universal phenomenon of of aging, and her uh, males are clearly at an advantage, they do lose bone at a lower rate than do uh, females. So it was a, interesting topic, and um and it gave me some freedom to [chuckle] to get the project done in a timely way. Uh, so I came to uh UC in 1970, and I had not completed my PhD at the time, uh and I’ll never forget that uh first year at UC as an Assistant Professor without my dissertation but of course plenty incentive to finish. It was in uh, April of my first year at UC, which was beginning of spring quarter at the time, and I was giving a paper in Boston and I got a call that sadly my advisor died. Right in the middle of my dissertation.

RD: Wow.

00:08:04

AP: Uh, fortunately, I had some backup professors on my committee who were able to um uh s—s—step in, and um, help me through the ending stages of completing my PhD, so in seventy-one, after my first year at UC, I completed my PhD.

RD: That’s really cool. Um, so you’ve come to UC, was it just, they were hiring and you came here or did you know anything about the program or anything like that?

AP: Well, my decision making prog—process uh at UC was um, uh kinda serendipitous. Uh, I had uh, gone to the national meetings of the American Anthropological Association. This would’ve been in um, the fall of um, sixty-nine, and I was doing a lot of interviewing, and uh this was a time of uh really explosive growth in higher education, um—uh we—our country had re—received a real scare from the Russians with Sputnik, and uh—in response its—there was rapid growth in higher education in in college uh enrollments, and so UC was part of that, and they were were growing, and uh, so uh—I interviewed four five schools at the meetings, including UC, and as it turns out, uh even without a PhD I was getting offers from Oregon State, Brookland College, in addition to uh—UC. And I per—liked it particular, the head of the department who’s Duff Carlson, I, found him um, an inspiring person, someone I’d like to uh, work with, work for, and so I gravitated toward uh, UC, and in particular I was uh gravitating to UC because I was looking long range in my career, uh—where should I start my career. And so I opted for UC because frankly, it was the closest big university to Bloomington Indiana [chuckle], and it would be my my stepping stone. So I came in fall of seventy, began my career, and uh—low and behold, Cincinnati uh, grew on me and uh I stayed for forty years.

RD: Wow. So what uh, jobs did you hold during your time here at UC?

AP: Well that’s uh, interesting uh question and uh one we could spend a lot of time on, but I’ll I’ll try to be brief. Uh, I I’ve had uh the good fortune of serving in in many roles at UC. Uh my early part of my career of curse was 100 percent uh professor doing teaching and research, but um, there wa—an opportunity arose in the early 1980s, when um, uh Arts and Sciences was undergoing a transition, and uh there was appointed uh acting dean. And uh the acting dean in fact uh a professor of history, of all things. And uh, he and I were well aquatinted and uh we had a good repour, and he asked me to step in on a temporary basis to be the acting associate dean. And uh, I thought well why not uh it’s not a life sentence so uh, I’ll give it, I’ll give it a go, and I wouldn’t have to give up my teaching, and I would continue to teach. So in the early eighties I became uh Acting Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, and then uh, that opened up uh uh a series of um developments uh in administration. Uh, during that time I became Acting Associate Dean and became Associate Dean, and then uh, there was a transition going on in the department of African American studies or Africana studies I believe it’s called today. And uh, I was wearing two hats uh as Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and Acting AD of Africana studies, so I did that uh for a couple years. Uh, then in early nineties, uh, um, an opening was created in the provost’s office, uh Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. And uh, I felt that I had some um, measure of success as administrator in Arts and Sciences, so I applied for this Vice Provost position, and uh was selected in 1991 to be Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. I served in that role, until December of 1993, when um, uh the President uh of the university, Joseph Steger, uh who at the time serving as President and as Acting Provost, uh I I was asked to step in on an emergency basis to be the Acting Provost. This was in fact December seventh 1993, the day that we remembered [chuckle]. So um I agreed to do this until uh the summer of uh 1994 when uh hopefully the Provost search would be completed, I had no interest at all in being Provost. Well you never can control things all together, and uh the Provost search did not go well, in fact there were a couple fail searches, so I found myself as Acting Provost uh until—uh 1996. So, I served twenty-eight months as Acting Provost, and then UC hired a Provost, and then I went back to my role as um as Vice Provost. Uh, well as things worked out, during that return as Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, there was uh, another development in the university where the athletic director was fired. And uh [chuckle], at the time I was chairing the NCAA certification self study for the university, and the president figured, well I might know something about sports, so uh, with four hours notice, uh he asked me to be the AD, and he wanted a quick decision because the AD had to go and he needed to find a quick replacement, so my life completely turned on its head within four hours as I became uh the acting Athletic Director of the University of Cincinnati [chuckle], in 1997. So uh, that was obviously an interesting uh turn of events, and um I was in that role for about nine months and had a great time quite frankly. Uh, then, at the end of 1998, uh you never know what’s going to happen, uh the Provost and the President had a falling out so to speak, and the President asked me for a second time to be the Acting Provost [chuckle]. So, uh, I agreed to do it the second time, but only this time uh we reached an agreement if I wish to peruse the job fulltime, uh I would have the freedom to do so. So, in December of ninety-eight, I became uh Provost again, uh and um, I applied for the job in 1999, and then in March of 2010—excuse me March of uh 2000, uh I became the the Provost, and was in that position until uh August of 2010.

RD: Wow, so you’ve been all over the map and—

AP: Been all over the administrative uh map, uh and for much of the time, that I was uh, Provost, I continued to teach my uh, survey of Physical Anthropology of Biological Anthropology course, uh but by about 2007 2008 it became um uh too orderous to do everything, and I knew deep down that uh my students were not getting all of me, and uh, so I uh um stopped teaching in uh in 2007.

RD: Um—it’s a typo on here

AP: It’s okay.

RD: So, you’ve told us a little bit about your time in the administration. Uh, your time as a teacher, what—can you tell us a little about your time there, there collogues that stand out in your mind, you’ve mentioned a few already. Um, and then what sort of differenced were there between being in the academic department and the administrative side of things?

00:18:43

AP: Well uh, when I came to UC in 1970 and began my professorial career uh—it was a different culture at the time. And, I was sort—brought up in a culture that uh, students should appreciate professors, they should respect professors, they should follow the professors, they should listen to the professors, and our uh only obligation was that we would go to class, and we would do our thing and deliver our material, and the students could take it or leave it. And they were just fortunate to have us in their presence. Uh, but uh, that was in 1970 and for many years uh thereafter. But, uh the university uh changed and uh relationships between professors and students changed. And during my time at UC, uh what evolved was uh, a partnership, where professors and students shared equally the responsibility for the teaching and learning environment. So, uh, as the years unfolded and as I became more plugged into trends in higher education, uh I began to appreciate the importance of assessment. Assessment not only at the level of a classroom—a class, but assessment at the programmatic level as well. So uh, toward the end of my time uh teaching, I tried to use as many devices as possible to ensure a partnership with the students if things were flowing uh profitably in the classroom. So I opted to use the so called five minute essay, so uh at least two or three times a week uh I would stop five minutes early at the end of my class, and asked the students to do a five minute essay. Where they would uh, scribble down uh one, what was the most interesting thing that happened in class today, and two, what was the least understandable thing [chuckle] that happened in class today. And that was a treasure trove of information. Getting feedback on how the class went that day, and it was always illuminating to see uh where I thought I was crystal clear, but where the students were completely befuddled and didn’t follow uh, how the class uh, how the class was going on. So I uh, uh during my time uh as a professor, became more invested in the classroom assessment, and then as an administrator involved with the accreditation and university, I began to appreciate even more the importance of uh assessment at the program level. Uh, where it’s incumbent upon us as uh professors, as departments to set clearly defined goals for our majors, and to assess the outcomes of that work at the graduation level, to see if our graduates have uh, realized uh the student learning outcomes and goals, and if not, uh what kind of changes do we make in what we teach and how we teach to ensure that uh the learning objectives, learning object—objectives are met. So uh that was I think uh a change in my philosophy and in my orientation to become more student responsive, more student uh engaged in both the department and the program level and at the classroom level as well. Uh, and during my time at UC, uh, it was very refreshing to see UC moving more and more to use of technology in the classroom. I can’t say that uh I was an active participant an, because I had moved on to administration, but um, clearly that was a major development in the teaching and learning environment uh at UC.

RD: You s—you speak very fondly of of a lot of these developments, but obviously there’s—

AP: There’s many others, yeah

RD: Uh, ye—yeah there’s uh, both positives and negatives to every kind of change

AP: Right.

RD: But you seem to, would you agree that you view most of these changes as positive for the university?

AP: Oh yeah, yeah. Uh, as I look from the, again, the vantage of the, my forty years, uh, I’m particularly proud that uh, I was part of an administration in the mid 1990s that was really visionary. And uh, in fact I want to give uh, some very explicive cred—explicit credit to Joseph Steger. Uh, his legacy for most people was primarily the building renaissance, uh, the incredible development architecturally of the university. But what doesn’t get enough credit, and here I think I want to give myself credit as as his provost, that um, we recognize, he in particular, where higher education was going. Uh, in 1994, the state directed all the universities to author functional mission statements, the statewide to make sure we had our act together that we were a a function a functioning system. And so one step toward that was to look at yourself as an institution and articulate your functional mission statement, uh who are you what are you what are your priorities. And uh, Dr. Steger was uh almost unilateral in writing that, he didn’t go through a comprehensive process of engagement with everybody, and he kind of authored the universities functional mission statement. But it was truly visionary as we we look back. And, we recognize four trajectories for higher education. One was globalization or internationalization. So, university too active steps to create an office of international affairs. That turned out to be a brilliant move in terms of where higher ed was going. President Steger recognized that uh, higher education to stay vibrant and to stay engaged and to stay productive, needed to be interdisciplinary. There was sort of a standing joke in higher education, that the world has problems, and how does the university respond, well they respond by creating these silos called academic departments as if anthropology is going to solve all of the problems in the world or biology or history or philosophy. So, in the mid-nineties, higher education was becoming more interdisciplinary solu—solutions to problems are complex, problems are complex, so you have to bring multiple disciplines, so interdisciplinary multidisciplinary became the watchwords of higher education. UC was ahead of the curve in terms of this interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. So, globalization, mul—uh uh multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary, in addition, uh, technology, uh UC was ahead of the curve in recognizing the importance of technology in the classroom, and the forth uh pillar was pedagogy. Putting teaching and learning, bridging that together. Until then, we all only spoke about effective teaching, we only talked about teaching but never the outcome of it, learning. And so I’ll never forget uh, a sentence in our functional mission statement where President Steger quipped, UC will be a place where students can’t not learn. And uh,

RD: That was good.

AP: {laughing] That was pretty good. And so that became the guiding motif into the into the next century and I feel very proud to have um, been part of the administrations thrust around that and as pros—provost, um that became my guiding motif in terms of executing my work, in terms od evaluating programs, evaluating professors, uh evaluating the university, and alike.

RD: That’s really cool. Uh, so you sort of touched on uh a number of them but, what would you say are some of your more memorable experiences uh, the specific examples of something that you were involved in that you were particularly proud of maybe? Uh, could you get into uh one or two of those examples?

00:29:07

AP: Well, uh, I wish that I could start with a graphic academic uh example, but um, I I I have to say, when the acting athletic director position fell in my lap, uh that was um, one of the more interesting experiences um in my uh in my career um at UC, and uh, it uh obviously raised a lot of eyebrows in in the community not the least of which uh one of the um columnists at the Cincinnati Enquire, Paul Daugherty, who’s still very active today, and I remember uh, he was at the press conference when my appointment was announced, and uh, the next day he wrote a column about this anthropologist who is now the athletic athletic director and he made a joke about well I don’t know how long he’s gonna be in that role but we hope he doesn’t forget everything he ever knew about neanderthals.

RD: [chuckle]

AP: So uh, any rate uh, I think that acting athletic uh uh director position was uh one of one of the more um memorial—uh one of the more memorable ones uh to me. Uh, another particular otter for me uh at the university, if I can be modest for a moment um, one of the thrills for me uh was getting the Oscar Schmidt Public Service Award. Uh at the time um, uh, university had uh, well we’ve always had awards for teaching and uh research and student engagement, but the university implemented uh a award for public service. And one wouldn’t normally think that uh an anthropologist uh uh in arts and sciences would get the public service award, but uh, I had spent uh many many years uh service as uh consultant at the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office uh as a forensic anthropologist. So I was particularly, proud to get the public service award for my work at the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office.

RD: That’s really cool. What do you think—you’ve mentioned that UC was ahead of the curve

AP: Yeah

RD: and and changing and the vision is the visionaries that have been leading it, but what do you think really makes UC stand out as an academic institution?

AP: Well uh, UC in in many ways is comparable to many other schools, but uh, if we were to uh highlight its strengths uh, its cachet in higher education, uh and not to come across as just too clishé but uh, I think if you were to try to distinguish or characterize UC, I think you have to start with its uh its comprehensiveness. Uh, we are a comprehensive public research uh university, and so I think that uh it doesn’t distinguish us necessarily from a great many peer institutions, but it does uh accurately uh define us and establish us as a major player in uh American higher education. So, stepping down, o o stepping away from just the observation of our comprehensiveness, uh I think you have to uh obviously note, that um we are a place where there are academic strengths, and traditionally we’ve had very strong professional programs. And as everyone knows, uh co-op was founded at the University of Cincinnati in 1906. And so in 2006 when we celebrated the centennial of co-op, that was really a big deal. Uh, so co-op I think renders us uh as a distinct and distinguished university. So we have uh many traditional strengths when we look at our top ten programs uh nationwide or, or internationally, it’s very distinctive uh our strengths uh in medicine, our strengths in engineering, our strengths in music, our strengths in classes uh we have uh s—strengths across the board the human—humanities and social sciences across the life sciences, or stem disciplines, so I I think uh our our professional programs are very distinctive and bring a considerable strength to us. And of course uh, I’d be remiss in not identifying athletics uh uh as well, uh we, I think tend to forget the connection between um athletics and academics, but in uh my time in uh the athletics department I learned that the athletes at UC preform equal to or surpass non athlete students at UC. So, the teaching and learning environment at UC is uh um greatly accentuated, through the athletic programs. And I think uh UC has always been a diverse institution, proudly speaking, and uh I know that um our international enrollments uh have grown uh and I think UC can look proudly uh at that, both at the graduate level and the undergraduate level, proliferation, the growth of international students, and I’m particular proud in terms of our distinctiveness to note that uh we’ve been leading it leading edge cutting edge in terms of uh online learning. Uh, I think we were really ahead of most of the other public research universities in Ohio and advancing toward uh online programs including online degree programs.

RD: Just, as you look back on your time here, and and from what I’m hearing is you’re describing all this, would you say it’s fair—wou—would you say it’s fair to say that you hold a lot of love for the institution, this place is a special place in your heart?

00:36:25

AP: Oh uh, I kinda bleed black and red, uh, I’m a bearcat uh for life, uh I exude pride for the institution, I’m proud to say that uh my two children uh attended UC, uh my daughter uh completed her um her degree in arts and sciences in economics, and my son um came to UC and um attended the College of Law where he graduated, and my daughter uh also attended the College of Law and uh graduated, so UC and my family uh it’s a family affair be be short. And so I, I do look quite proudly and fondly and uh on my forty years at UC, and as it turns out uh my connection with UC has turned uh turned out to be uh different as a Professor of Emeritus, and that I now work for another university, uh the Future University in Egypt. Um when I retired in uh 2010, I uh moved to Egypt uh in actually in December of 2010, and lived there for five years working with the Future University in Egypt, FUE. And uh, in 2013, uh the Future University of Egypt engaged in a formal, began a formal partnership with the University of Cincinnati, this was in fall of 2013, and so I very proud of that obviously that my Egyptian university was now a formal partner with my former employer, the University of Cincinnati, and in twenty uh eighteen, the five year partnership between UC and FUE became uh renewed, and President Pinto uh visited FUE in November of 2018, and signed uh renewaled the agreement uh for five more years, so very gratified and proud of my home institution and my new institution in terms of this very productive partnership, and again targeting back at UC as an international agenda, as a very important footprint in the Middle East, um no more so than in the so called capital of the Middle East, Cairo.

RD: That’s really cool. Is I guess just in closing, is there anything that you want to say that I didn’t ask, any—you already gave a shout out to one president, anyone else you want to thank or say? It’s okay if you don’t, just any final thoughts.

AP: Yeah. Uh, well uh, final thoughts um, again reflecting on the uh big picture, uh, when I arrived at UC, in uh fall of 1970, we were a respectable institution, we were a municipal university, part municipally supported part state supported, uh as the 1970s unfolded uh that changed, dramatically and decisively, when in the late seventies we became fully state supported, that was a big deal, another big deal was that uh the university faculty unionized in the late seventies, uh and, uh between going full state and unionized faculty, major uh developments uh to be sure, and as the eighties nineties and early 2000s unfolded, UC underwent an incredible incredible transition from being uh I would describe as a regional university to a key major player as a comprehensive public research uh university, ranked in two for in the top 200 in the world. And so I think uh UC, as emeriti, should feel justly proud in being part of that transition becoming a public research university without ever shirking its responsibility uh to its students.

RD: That’s really great. Alright well thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us.

AP: Thank you Robbie.