Marie Reid Oral History

[00:00:00] Marie Reid:
My name is Marie Reid. My job right now, as of today, is secretary to the president, secretary to the board, and office manager. Just happened. When I came in 1969, I worked with Lyle Swetland in the development office. Something really interesting happened. I was out here visiting our friends the Melms, and they took my family for a tour of the campus, and during that time, we found out that they were starting a new department, the development office, and the president, new president at that time, said, when did you make out an application? And I talked with the business manager, who was Bill Watkins, and he said, sit right down, and they went out, and I said, there's no way I could move out here from Minnesota. Well, to make a long story short, I filled out an application, and then three days later, when I was back home, I received a call, and they said, we would like you to come and work. Those were the days before the screening committees and the selection committees.

So I said, well, I just don't think that I can do this, but I talked with my family, and there were a lot of things that were hindering. My mother was in a rest home, and I had a house, and I had a job, and there were a lot of things that had to be considered. But I called them back in a few days and said, well, all right, I'll come. So we moved out in August, and I started at college the following Monday on the 18th of August in 1969. And Mr. Swetland had never seen me, and I had never seen him, but I talked to him on the phone.

[00:01:45] Interviewer:
What do you think you must have speculated as to why they were so encouraging at the time?

[00:01:54] Marie Reid:
Well, the college is brand new. They don't have been on campus a year, and everybody was real excited. And when they found out that I had been working in development or with foundations where I was working, they thought it might be helpful. And as it turned out, my job there was just the opposite of what it was here. At that position, we were funding money to institutions. This one was going to foundations to ask for money.

[00:02:28] Interviewer:
I think what you knew probably helped, too.

[00:02:31] Marie Reid:
Well, I hope so. We had a very delightful year. I worked with Mr. Swetland for about a year and a half, and then they did a reorganization like they do every once in a while. And I moved over to work with Ray LaGrange here for six months, and then I came over to the president's office. So I worked with Bert Dawson from 1972 until 1982 for ten years, and I came over as board secretary and working with Bert Dawson, sister of the president.

[00:03:00] Interviewer:
You were saying that in between there, you were working for someone who-

[00:03:04] Marie Reid:
Oh, Ray LaGrange. He was here before Jim Piercy, an associate dean. He's now president of one of the community colleges in Washington.

[00:03:13] Interviewer:
I see. What kind of work did you do then?

[00:03:15] Marie Reid:
Secretary.

[00:03:17] Interviewer:
Was there anything- now you've been in three different positions, right?

[00:03:17] Marie Reid:
Well, actually, this is your fourth. This one. Well, this one is very much like what I was doing because I still have all the board work that I brought with me to this job. And the secretary, I've been working with the president ever since I came anyway. So it's really one office, although my responsibility, of course, will be to the president now rather than it was to Bert Dawson and Larry Warford.

[00:03:48] Interviewer:
Now, when you had those different jobs, can you define the different departments, the kind of different sort of things that they do?

[00:03:57] Marie Reid:
That's one of the things that I find that a lot of people might not understand the different departments and what they need. The development office was created just before I came, and it was really just finding its feet. We had one big push that year, and that was what they called a national advisory council, and it only lasted one year. We invited a lot of people from all around the country to come and view the college and to see what way the college could help industry and business. And it was productive that way. We had people from Portland and all over, you know, way back in the Midwest even, and someone from Arizona, the kinds of things that the college presented and how we could help. And it was a productive thing, but we only did it one year. After that, then they went into fundraising around in this area, and Lyle Sweatland and working with Dottie Chase later, and also with Pat Williams have done the special things that theater parties and that kind of thing have raised money.

[00:05:12] Interviewer:
So that's what the development fund does. What did you do with Dottie?

[00:05:16] Marie Reid:
I didn't really work with Dottie, but the development fund did. She came to work as Lyle Sweatland's assistant.

[00:05:26] Interviewer:
Public relations kind of thing?

[00:05:27] Marie Reid:
Yes, uh-huh. The development fund is heavy on public relations because they go out and talk with the public trying to get funds for the college. Well, it's not really for the college more, it's for the students or for special programs, and then they refund, take that money and fund it to something else. They have special projects that they fund like ten a year that staff can apply for funds for that. We have a lot of students that apply who do not qualify for financial aid, for instance, and they find themselves in a hard place, and then they go talk to Lyle Sweatland, and he lets them have money on a loan or he gives them funds. They can't make the rent, and they know that next month their check is going to be here. It's a really good thing. They have a non-designated fund, and then they have funds that the various departments have that they raise money somehow or other. Somebody passes away and somebody gives money for the development fund and all those funds they use like that.

It's a real interesting place to work. You meet a lot of the students and, of course, you meet a lot of staff.

[00:06:40] Interviewer:
I interviewed Mr. Sweatland the other day, and he was saying he's been hearing just an awful lot of really hard financial stories, and I didn't quite understand why he would be in that position because I figured the development fund was just getting a large amount of monies for programs.

[00:06:56] Marie Reid:
Well, they do get money for programs, but they also get money for particular cases. For instance, there are funds that come from Sacred Heart and other people who want to give money so that the inhalation therapists or the nursing program or dental program students will have enough, and they give it through the development fund and get then money credit for their income tax because it's a non-profit organization. And then the development fund is the agency by which the students apply and receive that kind of thing.

[00:07:38] Interviewer:
Do you remember when you were working for Mr. Sweatland, any specific sort of individual story that you could relate about someone who was helped to go to school?

[00:07:48] Marie Reid:
There were several. That was really unusual. I remember one nursing student, for instance, from the East Coast, who had been going to school who could not qualify because she was in her third year and you can't qualify then for loans. You get to know them quite well because when they pay them, they come in every month. And you get letters back from people. I surely do appreciate your help. I would never have made it. I'm working now. And that kind of thing, it's really a good feeling.

[00:08:24] Interviewer:
Well, you were telling about one specific person.

[00:08:27] Marie Reid:
Oh, she was a little nursing student. I don't even remember her name right now, but I can tell you what she looks like. She's a little short, pretty little lady. And she came in and if she didn't have some fun, she would have had to quit school and go to work or go back to the East Coast. But Mr. Sweatland saw that she had a loan and then she came in all that summer and repaid it when she went back to work. It was a real good feeling.

[00:08:54] Interviewer:
It's not often that you get in a situation where you get that kind of a feedback, too.

[00:09:00] Marie Reid:
It's a really good feeling. Doug White has a lot of people in his area, in health occupations, that he takes really good care of his students there. And he always tells them, if you have a real hard problem, come talk. We'll see what we can do. And he is a regular group that just, I don't mean certain people, but he does send people down regularly to the development fund.

[00:09:27] Interviewer:
Now, tell me about, first of all, why did you leave and why did you go to the other place and what was it like in that place?

[00:09:35] Marie Reid:
Oh, well, there was a reorganization. And they needed somebody over in the other area and it was right over here in the corner where Jim Piercy sits.

[00:09:48] Interviewer:
What kind of department is that?

[00:09:50] Marie Reid:
That's an Associate Dean of Instruction.

[00:09:52] Interviewer:
Oh, okay.

[00:09:52] Marie Reid:
Ramon Lagranger. He was a real little fireball and he was really a lot of fun to work with. Because that was an opening and I was put in that position, I didn't feel really comfortable there, although everybody was really nice. They told me I was overqualified and you know how you feel then, as though you should be somewhere else. But I worked there for six months and then this position with the board and with Burt Dotson opened and I applied for that and was transferred. Dr. Lagranger was over the division that Dean Piercy has right now and that way I learned to know all the people on campus. Because you deal a lot with the department heads and the departmental secretaries and everybody was really, really nice. Jerry Rasmussen was an Associate Dean at that time and we were all in that corner together. It was a really nice feeling.

[00:11:06] Interviewer:
When you talked about re-shuffling or reorganization, was that a policy or was it just something that kept on happening? Do you know what I'm trying to say?

[00:11:18] Marie Reid:
No, I don't really know what you're trying to say. It happens every once in a while that budget wise it just seems prudent to make some changes. They cut back in that area because the development fund was new and they wanted to give it a little more time. So they cut back on the expenses and they transferred me out of there and they didn't hire anybody then for quite some time. Then they filled it back in again later when it got going a little better.

[00:12:01] Interviewer:
I guess what I was just trying to figure out is it seems to me that it would be a positive thing that the structure is shook up a little bit every once in a while.

[00:12:20] Marie Reid:
Well, it is if it needs it, yeah. It's positive. I have to say that President Schaeffer is such a fair man and he always gives everything another chance. He's very careful about the people that work with him that nobody gets pushed around and everybody gets used.

That was, I believe, his way of seeing that the development fund could function and seeing that the positions were filled with people that we had rather than say, well, you know, this isn't doing as well as I thought it would in a year. We'll just let it go and we'll just fire everybody and take up our marbles and do something else. He's extremely fair and it works out really well.

[00:13:13] Interviewer:
Okay. Now, when you began your job with the board, how did your job change at that point? Nicely enough you knew everybody by that time, right?

[00:13:24] Marie Reid:
Well, I knew just about everybody on campus at that time. And this was an exciting job for me because not only did I get to know more people on campus, but you get to know the people that the board deals with. And you attend every one of the board meetings and you send out all the material that goes to the board and then you take the minutes of the board meetings. And it's really interesting. You learn a lot about the college.

[00:13:51] Interviewer:
Were you surprised to find out what the board got involved with?

[00:13:56] Marie Reid:
Well, no, not entirely because working with the departments, you see what goes to the board and then you can read the board minutes. And after every board meeting, we used to all sit down with our bosses and talk about the board meeting that was the night before and what had happened and what it meant to our area. So it was a real nice thing. I don't know if they still do that or not in some areas, but they do here, did here.

[00:14:23] Interviewer:
How often did the board meet?

[00:14:25] Marie Reid:
They meet every second Wednesday, every month. And then for a long time, they were meeting quite often like the third or the fourth Wednesday probably of the month for a work session. So they were met twice a month. Now, they usually meet just once a month. During budget time, they meet a little more often.

[00:14:44] Interviewer:
Can you give me some examples of what a board involves themselves in?

[00:14:49] Marie Reid:
The board sets the policy of the school. They have to approve every major purchase. They have to confirm all personnel appointments, faculty and management staff. They have to approve and adopt all the policies that the board governs itself by. They are heavily involved, of course, with all the budget matters and the things that come down from the legislature or from the federal or state government somehow that have to do with the funding of the college and the building of the buildings and the general running of the whole college.

[00:15:38] Interviewer:
How long time do they get appointed?

[00:15:40] Marie Reid:
Oh, they're not appointed. They're elected. Board of Education are elected by all the people in the Lane Committed College District. There are five separate zones, and two of the board members are what are known as at-large positions, and they represent everybody. But there's one from the Eugene area mostly, and there's one mostly from the Springfield area. There's one from the South Lane area, one from the west on over into Florence, one from up in Junction City, Harrisburg area.

[00:16:17] Interviewer:
Now, I'm going to go and talk to Mr. Brower. Were you around when he was there? Right. What should I ask him about?

[00:16:24] Marie Reid:
Ask him about how the school started and the enthusiasm that came from the Florence area. He was heavily involved in that, and he was one of our best board members, very fair man. Constantly listened to everybody. The staff knew that they always had somebody that would listen to him, not that he wasn't a favorite of anybody. He just knew that he listened, and he listened to students. We would have some big things that the students would get upset over, and they'd come 50 and 100 of them sitting here, all over the floor. And Dr. Brower was a really, really fair man.

[00:17:07] Interviewer:
Was he on the board during what's considered the disturbances? Was that very hard for the board?

[00:17:14] Marie Reid:
Yes, it was. The board has always considered itself that they had to listen to everybody, and yet it was up to them to decide the policy of the school. We've had some really good board members who stood right with the administration, and they gave directions so that the administration knew how the board felt about certain things, whether it should build a building or whether it should not, whether they should allow those things to happen on campus, and they were always very fair and very free with the students. Students have easy access to the board. They allow that a student representative can sit at the board table. They're not allowed to vote, but they have a right to say, hey, that bothers us. We don't like this, and for these reasons. And the union members, each of the classified staff and the faculty staff have a representative that sit at the board table along with the deans.

So it's not an easy thing to be a board member. It's a very deep responsibility because you have a large budget that you're governing, and you have a lot of students that their lives are affected by that. All the courses that are taught at the college have to be approved by the board, as well as the State Department. So there's quite a few things that happen for the board.

[00:18:45] Interviewer:
Can you tell me a little bit about the board members that you've known?

[00:18:50] Marie Reid:
I guess I don't know what you want me to say. I've known all of the board members since 1972. I didn't know Dr. Madsen very well. He's an earlier one from Junction City, nor Dr. Webb from Cottage Grove, but all the rest of them I've known. And they're all really fair people.

[00:19:10] Interviewer:
I was wondering more about, you know, from observing them, you must have some idea of how they functioned with the other people on the board.

[00:19:24] Marie Reid:
I suppose that's what I'm really asking.

It doesn't make much difference who they are. It usually takes about a year before they get to know the other board members and how the board acts as a unit. And usually the first year they don't say a lot. Once in a while you'll have someone come on that feels this is what I'm here for. But it doesn't take very long before they feel that nobody's here for one thing, everybody's here for everything. And the other board members gently say no, and it works really very well.

They all have their own special areas that bother them. If you're a farmer, you're interested in farm mechanics.

[00:20:16] Interviewer:
Can you give me some specifics on that sort of thing?

[00:20:20] Marie Reid:
Well, Mr. Pitney is really interested in, he's a dairy farmer, he's really interested in all the things that have to do with vocational courses. And yet he's one of our first ones to want tickets for the performing arts programs. And he's down at the downtown center a lot visiting, and he's heavily interested in how budgeting is taken care of. And he wants the faculty to have fair salaries, and he wants the students to have a chance. So though they have these things, their background, it seems as though they're able to expand their thinking when they come. And it's a real interesting thing. We have Mary Unruh is one of our newest people. She's in business, and yet she can easily grasp the fact that a vocational student or a vocational instructor has these kinds of problems. The material that we send to the board is quite lengthy, and if they read it and understand it, I mean, they can easily understand it. It just gives them a whole perspective of how the college operates and not just when they're in the unit.

[00:21:32] Interviewer:
Do you find that everybody has the time to read? I mean, is there a big mass of information that has to be consumed every fortnight?

[00:21:43] Marie Reid:
I think that's part of their responsibility, and they understand that when they come on the board that there is a lot of material that goes out. We do try to limit, so there's not just a bunch of stuff to read, but it's all pertinent. It has to do with the agenda. And along with that, we send copies of letters that staff have received, telling them what a good job they did. And so while we have letters of complaint, we go out and we share those with the board, along with how the administration responded. We try to keep the board well-informed of how the college is doing.

[00:22:21] Interviewer:
Well, you've been listening to what the board has to say and recording what they're doing for how many years now? Ten years. For a long time. So can you tell me, have you got any interesting or what you might consider a good example of the kinds of difficulties that the board has to overcome and has done a good job at?

[00:22:48] Marie Reid:
They've had some really difficult personnel matters that they've had to deal with, hearings they've had to have. And the board has always conducted itself gently with people.

[00:23:03] Interviewer:
Can you give me an example about using names? In some way, I would really like to get a little bit more specific about something like that.

[00:23:13] Marie Reid:
Well, there haven't been very many. I couldn't do it without everybody knowing who it was, because there aren't that many that come right to the board. Most of the personnel matters are handled in the departments. And if somebody has a real grievance, then it can go all the way to the board. And those things that the board has had to hear, they've always been very fair and they listened and would have to make the final decision. A person can always go to the courts after that if you still feel that you've been wrong by the school.

[00:23:50] Interviewer:
But the administration in itself tries very hard to solve problems so they don't have to go to the board.

[00:23:56] Marie Reid:
Then it gets to be very public, and it's not a good thing for the school. And I think the board and the administration is very well aware of the effect of any problems on the community, because the community supports us. And all the kinds of problems that come up, they try very hard to solve where they are.

[00:24:17] Interviewer:
Now, I was talking to Mel Gaskell on Friday, just a delightful man.

[00:24:23] Marie Reid:
Isn't he a wonderful man? And he was saying that he felt that every staff member should read the guidelines. I think he called the staff rules, or certain rules, I don't know what he called them. The board policy handbook, probably.

[00:24:42] Interviewer:
That's it, yeah. Do you think many people do that?

[00:24:47] Marie Reid:
Well, I have the master copy of that, and every time there is a change in the policy, I send it out to every department. I don't believe that probably the individual staff member, as a teaching staff member, would be reading it very often. If there was any kind of problem, they'll talk it over with the department chairman, and the department chairman will say, well, let's see what the board policy handbook says on this, or see if we have a policy on this. There's also what we call the OYAP, the Office of Instruction Administration, the Administrative Procedures. And they, then, are the procedures that spin off from a policy. The policy says, we will do this. The administrative procedure says, this is how we'll do it. And the same thing with what we call the BOM, the Business Office Manual.

That governs facilities, and the plant services, and financial services, and personnel, and all of those procedures and policies from there. And they all stem from the board policy handbook, so they're all tied together. I think maybe what we call the BOM and the OYAP would be more widely read.

[00:26:00] Interviewer:
The board policy handbook is the original thing that was established for the running of the college.

Is it readable?

[00:26:15] Marie Reid:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Each one of the policies are divided into administration, or the board first, and then the administration. Then business areas, then personnel, general procedures, personnel in the community, the students, and then the community. So each one has a separate unit. There's about six different areas.

[00:26:37] Interviewer:
Over the ten years, how could you say that policies have changed?

[00:26:43] Marie Reid:
Well, they changed a lot when we received federal guidelines, for instance, for affirmative action, compliance, review, those kinds of things. The policies had to be restated. I don't think that the policy of the school changed that much, but the policies had to be restated so that they complied. And we had to establish like an affirmative action plan, and so the board came out with a statement. We support affirmative action in the college, and we pledge that we will see that everybody's treated fairly. So a policy was established that way, and then the whole plan had to be written for the college. Tuition has changed drastically. When I first came working with the board, the tuition policies stated right in there exactly what everything would be and everything. And now they're a little more general. And there are a lot of policies that were personnel policies that had to be changed when the unions came, because then the union contract governed, and then the board policies had to change that they agreed with the union contracts.

[00:27:56] Interviewer:
Was it a good thing for the union to come in? Do you see that as a positive event?

[00:28:06] Marie Reid:
I suppose it's a positive thing. I see that it did two things, a couple of things that I didn't like. One of them is that it made us us and them, which is bad.

And yet I don't think it's changed the way the college is run, because the administration of the college, I feel, still thinks of the college as us and not us and them. I think that was one of the most interesting things that happened when I came out here. I had never worked in education before, and there was all this exuberance, and everybody was here, and we are here for one thing, and we're all working together. When the unions came, they became interested in how people are taken care of, and the salaries, and all the benefits that they should have. The emphasis seemed then to shift to that direction. That's the only thing that I think made it different. I don't say that it's bad, it's just different, but it didn't stop. The friendships that you have on the college, or whether you're a union member, I don't look at somebody and say, oh, he's a union person. They're just somebody else that works at the college.

One thing that Mr. Gaskell was talking about is how at the beginning everybody just pitched in and did whatever needed to be done, and then we felt it now. Everything is very regulated. It is. It is, yeah. It's different. It isn't that the school is not being run as well, it's just handled differently. Now, if an instructor wants to start a new class, or decides that really what we need now is instead of this, we'll say, instead of mechanics on this type of airplane, we need to start working on another one.

[00:30:19] Interviewer:
Would that sort of thing come into the board?

[00:30:21] Marie Reid:
Eventually, it'll come through a curriculum and programs. It goes to the department, and then they discuss that. Any curriculum kinds of changes are discussed in the curriculum procedure group that meet, and then you have to write a program, and it has to be approved all over campus. And I'm not really sure of this. You'll have to talk with Mildred Hawley and Dean Rasmussen could help you a lot with that. And then it is sent to the State Department because you have to be careful that you're not treading on another school's program, if it would be something new, and if it's just a revision in our program, that has to be noted. And eventually, it would go to the board for approval.

[00:31:13] Interviewer:
Can you remember many grand schemes that came to the board that would make good stories?

For programs?

Or anything else?

[00:31:36] Marie Reid:
No, I'm not right off the top of my head. Things are pretty well settled by the time they come to the board. They know it's going to fly, or they bring it knowing that the board will turn it down, and then we don't have to worry about it anymore, one of the two things that usually goes. We try not to surprise the board on anything. It's just not good public relations for the board to come here and say, have the ball sit there and say, we never heard of that before, because that's not good policy. That's not good administration of a college. So what Niall Williams said about the fingernail, he said he didn't like any surprises. Nobody, no good administrator likes to be surprised. If they're running a college and somebody comes along and says something, they need to have been advised of it. And every good administrator holds people with whom he works responsible for keeping him informed. And so on all sides, whether they agree with it or not, they still need to say so that the administration can decide how things should be run,

and then the board needs to know if things need to be changed.